To buy some time, he held up a hand. “Let me take care of this first,” he said, his voice as soothing as he could make it. “Come in, Tanvi.”

When she did, he offered her his friendliest smile. “What can I do for you? Do you need more dreamstones?”

Tanvi stepped closer, but her movements were jerky, like she was fighting herself. She glanced at Asha, then back down at the floor. Venkat studied her more carefully. She looked off somehow, one hand curling in a fist at her side and her gaze not quite catching his.

Alarms blared inside him. She wasn’t burning out, too, was she?

In the next instant, however, her hand relaxed, and she raised her head. “Yes, more dreamstones,” she said, her tone as distant as her eyes.

Venkat sank back on his heels. He should have realized; the initiation had left his runners so dependent on routine that even something as simple as forgetting to order more dreamstones could throw them off. Unlike burnout, he could work with that.

Asha, of course, was listening to the conversation with no shame. “Fassssscinating,” she drawled, each syllable soaked in condescension. “I am utterly riveted. Shall I help you two select more vials? It will, without a doubt, be precisely the thrilling diversion I had envisioned for my day.”

Venkat shot her a sidelong glance. “I can handle my job, thanks.”

“Splendid! Then let us return to my request.”

“You’re incorrigible,” he muttered, but he felt better. She didn’t know about Jai. He’d had time to pick out her tells, ever since she first brought him here on the promise of a chance to start over. “What do you want me to do, conjure Nayan out of thin air?”

He’d half expected her to say yes, but in one of her mercurial changes of mood, Asha motioned to Tanvi. “Navratri is upon us. Do you not see how bored the runners are becoming?”

Bored? Venkat glanced skeptically at Tanvi. The dream runners couldn’t get bored.

Tanvi didn’t react to the exaggeration. He honestly couldn’t blame her if she’d stopped listening. “Why the rush in going to Prithvi, Your Royal Highness?” he asked, turning his attention back to Asha. “Got a craving for artisanal lavender-blackberry éclairs?”

Asha, as she well knew, had no business shopping or attending the theater or taking any of her myriad other detours while on scouting trips to the mortal realm, but she’d never let what she called pointless rules hem her in. Life, she insisted, was meant to be lived.

“Perhaps,” she allowed, angling her head in a move she probably intended to come off as mysterious. “I do not suppose you wish me to find you more novels?”