“We have been offering excuse after excuse for your missed appointments all morning, beti, telling everyone you stayed up too late after the party and needed your rest,” Asha’s father said. “How do you think this makes us appear?”

Asha huffed. “Everything is so dramatic with all of you! ‘The garudas will find us.’ ‘The secret will be revealed.’ ‘The world will end.’ So on and so forth.”

The wrinkles around Madhu’s eyes deepened. “Have you already forgotten the battalion of garudas attacking you when I arrived? Had I not rescued you in time, you would be in their clutches as we speak. I would scarcely call that ‘so dramatic.’”

Garudas had attacked them? Venkat thought his heart might rupture where he stood. From what he’d read, a casual brush of a garuda’s talon was enough to cleave through bone. He fought the urge to hug Tanvi and Asha close and focused on calming his breathing instead.

A muscle convulsed in Nayan’s jaw, a single twitch, before his features smoothed out again. Venkat knew how much he disliked being caught unaware. With Asha’s parents there, Madhu wouldn’t have had a chance to fill him privately in on the specifics.

“A garuda battalion! By Mansa Devi, are you trying to end me before my time?” Asha’s mother’s tail lashed the floor violently enough to knock someone over. She stared at her daughter in disbelief before wheeling on Nayan. “She travels to Prithvi on your authority!”

“You dare address Lord Nayan in such a manner?” growled Madhu. Nayan quelled her with an upraised finger. Her nostrils flared at the reprimand, but she bowed her head. “My apologies, my lord.”

Nayan clasped his hands behind his back, in that moment wholly the remote and austere lord whose counsel King Vasuki himself sought out. “Dear lord and lady, we are all deeply dismayed by this matter, but I swear to you that Asha did not receive my consent to travel this morning.”

Asha flipped her long ponytail over her shoulder. “It is not as if I asked the garudas to chase me down!” She sounded defensive rather than nonchalant, and she darted an anxious glance at Tanvi.

If Asha couldn’t even manage her usual imperious tone, she was in bigger trouble than Venkat had realized. What exactly had happened out there?

“Be that as it may, you have evidently flaunted yourself enough on your trips to Prithvi that they knew to await you,” Nayan said. “What if they had harmed you? If they had tracked your return path and breached the palace? A game this most certainly is not.”

Her parents exchanged a meaningful stare before her mother reached forward and undid Asha’s ponytail. “And what is this foolish playing at being mortal? It has gone on far too long. You are a princess!”

“But I must scout! We need a new dream runner candidate.” Desperation bled from Asha’s tone.