The court shimmers with color. You stand at its center, iridescent tail fanned wide, the eyes of a hundred peahens fixed on you like sunlight on water. Their voices rise — your name, your name, your name — a chorus you have heard so many times it almost sounds like silence. Then the silence becomes real. The crowd parts. Not gently. They press back the way tall grass bends before something that does not slow down. He is massive. Amber-eyed. Stripped of ceremony in a way that makes the gold at his throat look like a warning rather than an ornament. Rajan, King of Tigers. He came to take something from your kingdom today. The way he looks at you suggests he has already decided what it is.