The memory of Tanvi’s pretty face glowered at him, accusing. He hadn’t missed the absolute despair scrawled on her cheeks when he’d found her packing in her room, let alone the panic in her gaze—and it was all wrong. Dream runners weren’t supposed to feel anything but the urge to harvest.

What could possibly make her panic like that?

Venkat grabbed for a towel from the selection arrayed in the linen cabinet. He shouldn’t have let Tanvi go. He’d scared her off when he should have made her feel like she could tell him what was going on. He was failing all of them—his runners and Nayan both.

His heart hurt. He would never forgive himself for not having worked harder to help Jai. To save him. And now this.

That was it. He had no choice but to tell Nayan what was going on.

Once he’d dried off, Venkat headed to his wardrobe. The early-morning sunlight buttered everything in the suite, illuminating the colorful murals on the teal walls, scenes of the nagas through history, their scales rendered in iridescent mother-of-pearl and their jewelry and crowns done in delicate applications of gold leaf. Where it passed through the perforated designs of the jali borders separating the small rooms, it left a thousand four-pointed suns scattered in its wake.

Everywhere Venkat looked, opulent gem-studded lanterns glimmered gold like celestial bodies, vibrant torans hung over windows, and colorful embroidered poufs peppered the floor. More couches and chairs with ornate frames and sumptuous fabrics than he could ever need sat spaced at aesthetically pleasing intervals, their ocean-green and violet hues reminiscent of dreamstone vials. He even had two custom-made marble bookcases with a motif of tiny gilt elephants, one on either side of his bed, each crammed with volumes and volumes of stories.

The suite was a haven, a place any noble would happily retreat to from the cares of court life.

But none of it made him feel any better, any more than it had when Nayan first set eight-year-old Venkat up here, stressing that any member of his house deserved only the best. Than it had when Venkat cried himself to sleep alone every night, sobbing for the parents and brother he would never see again, until he’d eventually learned to find consolation in stories.

Even if the silver-gray kurta pajama he pulled on now was sized for an adult, he felt as powerless now as he had back then, too small to fill such a big role.

He’d dreamed, he remembered suddenly, just before dawn—the old nightmare: the afternoon of the earthquake, when he’d lost his first family. Over and over, as the theater crashed down, Papa begged him to save them, and over and over, Mummy screamed that he’d failed them. That he was the one who deserved to die.