Once they were in the workshop, Nayan stopped before a finely wrought but easily missed gemstone tiger nestled amidst one of the murals. Nothing about it suggested the animal was more than a pricey decoration. Only when Nayan applied a matching key to the tiger’s amber eye would the treasury reveal itself.

“What am I not ready for?” Venkat asked, coming up beside him.

“I will show you.” Nayan produced the key, which featured a roaring tiger in midair, and touched it to the amber. The mural melted away, unveiling a nondescript recess in the wall barely wide enough to admit two people.

Together, they stepped into the now-visible treasury. Nayan pressed a spot on the wall, one Venkat had never noticed before, and something like a stacked cube organizer appeared. It reminded him of the shoe storage compartments he’d seen in the lobbies of mandirs on Prithvi. Only instead of shoes, each cubbyhole was filled with strange objects—a deflated soccer ball, a video game console, a chapter book, a plush bunny, a golden charm bracelet.

Nayan pulled one out. “Surely,” he said, his voice wry, “you do not need me to tell you what this is.”

“No,” Venkat agreed, his throat closing, and bent to examine the original tricycle Jai had brought with him and had always been striving to get back to through boons.

The yellow frame was dinged and scuffed, chewed-up gum was stuck to one of the tires, and something had scored a rip in the seat. It was what his grandmother would have called well loved.

In contrast, the tricycle he’d seen Jai purchase with his boon had been perfect. Immaculate and unmarked, something that had been idealized in nostalgia so many times that it turned into its own story.

“Why didn’t you give it back to him?” Venkat demanded. At the very least, Jai could have had his beloved tricycle again.

Venkat should have pushed for the details long before now. He should have asked where Nayan was storing the runners’ precious objects. He should have insisted on accompanying Jai back to Prithvi. He’d been a coward, and this was the result.

“Oh, I offered it,” Nayan said. “He rebuffed me.”

“What do you mean?”

Though Nayan spoke kindly, he couldn’t disguise his pity. “He preferred the comfort of the illusion.”

Venkat remembered how lovingly Jai had re-created the tricycle, the stand-in for the mortal life he’d given up. The comfort of the illusion—when the pleasure of pursuing the truth, over and over again, was better than the actual truth. An addiction.

The insatiable drive to earn boons. Nayan and Venkat had made that happen.