Girl, Serpent, Thorn (16 page)

Parvaneh glanced over her shoulder at her, and Soraya tensed, expecting mockery. But Parvaneh's expression was serious, and her voice soft—almost apologetic—as she asked, “Are you finished?”

“Yes,” Soraya said. “I think I repaired all of them.”

Parvaneh slowly opened her wings out to their full length, then closed and opened them again, and Soraya heard the barely restrained joy in her voice as she said, “Yes, you did.” Her wings collapsed, lying flat along her spine, and she put her shift back on. “Thank you,” she said, turning to Soraya. A hint of a smile played on her lips. “You have a gentle touch.” She headed for the stairway, leaving Soraya speechless behind her.

Once they ascended from the cavern, Parvaneh let Soraya lead the way through the dungeon. Soraya brought her to the secret entrance to the passageways, then paused to consider. She didn't know if the Shahmar had noticed yet that she was missing, but if he had, he would likely be waiting for her to emerge from the passages—and he already knew about one of the doors. She wondered if it would be safer to use the regular entrance to the dungeon, but that, too, seemed too exposed, too risky. Better to take Parvaneh in through the passages and surface somewhere behind the palace—near the stables, if possible.

Soraya pulled open the door to the passageways, and told Parvaneh to follow.

She took them back to the circular cavern, though she ventured cautiously in case any divs were lying in wait. From there, they continued on down the central tunnel, Soraya heading toward the far western corner of the palace. There was a door there that would open onto a terrace that overlooked the training grounds. From there, they could run for the stables. Parvaneh's presence behind her was an unexpected comfort—Soraya wasn't alone now. She had someone powerful on her side, and soon the other pariks would join them. Her promise to her mother wasn't bluster or desperation. It was possible. She could still undo what she had done.

As they neared the terrace, the passage became narrower, and Soraya had to duck her head. She was relieved when her hands met the low, square door at last. She pushed it open, letting in the crisp night air and the light from the stars, and began to crawl out
through the opening in the palace wall onto the white stone of the terrace.

And then something sharp clamped around her arm and dragged her out the rest of the way.

The beaked div stood alone on the empty terrace, as if he had been expecting her. “The Shahmar said I would find you here,” he said. “He's waiting for you.”

Soraya didn't have time to wonder how the Shahmar had known where to find her. She needed to be ready to make her escape—because she noticed at once that the beaked div was alone, and she had Parvaneh with her.

Except that when she turned to look down the tunnel, Parvaneh was gone, and Soraya cursed herself for trusting yet another div.

The div led her into the palace, down halls that were now lined with other divs. She had expected him to take her back to the new wing, but instead, he went all the way down the hall to the entrance of the throne room.

The throne room was exactly as she had last seen it on Nog Roz—except that a different occupant lounged on the throne, his posture relaxed and arrogant. The beaked div brought her to the center of the room, where Sorush was standing rigidly on the image of the simorgh.

A ring of divs circled the room, and Soraya cursed silently as her eyes went to the door hidden in the right wall. One of the divs was positioned directly against it, blocking any escape.
The Shahmar knows about the door,
Soraya thought at once, but that was impossible, wasn't it? She had never shown it to him, or even told him about it.

Following her gaze, the Shahmar said, “You're looking for the door, aren't you?” His voice rumbled with amusement. “I should have known better than to try to keep you prisoner here. You know these walls even better than I do. And I know them quite well myself—I built those passages that have hidden you away from
me for so long, and so I knew which one you would likely take to escape. Don't you find that poetic?”

A paranoid shah,
Soraya remembered.
Paranoid but clever,
Azad had insisted. She was beginning to think there was no way to detangle her life from his, or his fate from hers.

The Shahmar continued: “I would have retrieved you soon anyway. I want you to be here when I kill your brother.”

Her stomach lurched, and she tried to find Sorush's eye, but he kept his gaze straight ahead. Instead, she faced the Shahmar and said, “Why kill him? Isn't it enough that he's your prisoner?”

It was a weak argument, and they both knew it. The Shahmar shook his head. “I won't make the same mistake I did last time, Soraya. As long as he lives, people will have hope that he can rise against me, and I won't be overthrown by your family again.” He rose from the throne and descended from the dais. At once, Soraya stepped in front of her oddly passive brother.

“I won't stand and watch,” she said to the Shahmar as he stepped closer and closer. “I won't let you—”

“Soraya, stop.” Sorush's voice rang clear, his hand firm on her shoulder. “It doesn't matter.”

She spun to face him in astonishment. His face was blank and unfeeling, but somehow his calm demeanor only made her feel more frantic, more desperate. “How can you say that?” she said to him. “That is your throne. Those are
your
people!”

He gave a slight shake of the head. “Not anymore. You saw to that.”

The chill in his voice made Soraya shiver. “Sorush, I'm sorry,” she said to him, her throat dry. “I never thought this would happen. When I put out the fire, I didn't know—”

“And I didn't know you hated me this much. I didn't know you were capable of this.”

Soraya's hands clenched at her sides, and before she could stop herself, she snapped, “Of course you didn't know. How would you
know anything I feel, or what I'm capable of, when you've barely spoken to me since childhood? After you became shah, you left me behind.”

This was wrong—she wasn't supposed to be angry with him, not now, not after what she had done. But her old wounds hadn't disappeared just because she had struck him a new one, and Sorush's coldness toward her only reminded her of what had driven her to the fire temple in the first place.

Sorush's eyes flickered, but only briefly. “You're right,” he said. “I left you behind, and I worried about you often—but I had to worry about everyone else in this country as well. And now you've had your revenge on all of us—a very thorough one.”

The Shahmar's scaled hand came down on her shoulder before she could respond. “As much as I enjoy seeing you like this, I think we're finished here.”

He gestured to one of the divs, who came forward to lead Sorush away.

Soraya started to follow, but the Shahmar kept her in place. “Where are you taking him?” she asked hoarsely.

“I've changed my mind about the execution,” the Shahmar said, circling around to stand in front of her and block her view of Sorush's retreating back.

“Why?”

“Perhaps your tender plea has moved me.” His hand encircled her wrist, and he pulled her alongside him as he strode out of the room.

Soraya fought to keep up with his determined stride, which only halted when they were both outside the main doors of the palace. The wreckage of the garden was masked by the darkness of night, but still, Soraya couldn't bear to look at it.

“Where's Sorush?” she demanded. “What are you going to do with him?” Her voice was growing ragged with the start of tears.

“You needn't worry about him for now.”

“And my mother?” she said, Tahmineh's pained cry still fresh in her mind. “Is she…?”

“Is she alive, or did I let her bleed to death after creating a distraction that allowed you to escape?” the Shahmar finished for her with a sneer. Soraya waited, hardly breathing, until he said, “She's alive and safely bandaged.”

“Let me see her.”

“No,” he said without hesitation.

“Fine,” she said, weariness draining her remaining resistance. “Return me to my room.”

“No,” he repeated with a note of amusement. His lips twitched as he tried not to smile.

It was that hint of a smile, so maddeningly familiar, that shattered her last remnants of composure. “What more do you want from me, then?” she shouted at him as she ripped out of his grip. “You're like a cat with prey, the way you've toyed with me all this time.”

The Shahmar's smile was gone, but his eyes gleamed in the dark. “It's strange, isn't it? I thought I would surely kill you once you handed over the feather.” He reached for her, hooking one claw into her sash and using it to drag her toward him. When he withdrew his hand, he pulled the feather out from its hiding place, too, enclosing it in his scaled fist. “And yet, as I told you, I've grown quite fond of you, Soraya. You impressed me greatly during our time together. I find that I don't want to kill you—I want to keep you.” He took hold of her again, his long fingers encircling her upper arm in a firm grip. “But I clearly can't keep you here. You would escape me eventually. I'll have to take you elsewhere.”

Before Soraya could respond, he swept her up in his arms and beat his massive wings until they were both high up above the palace.

In fear, Soraya clung to him, her eyes squeezing shut. She had read a story like this once, about a girl who was carried away by a monstrous bird to Mount Arzur. But the bird was enchanted, and
when the girl kissed him, he turned into a handsome young man. It was fitting, Soraya supposed, that she would kiss a handsome young man and turn him into a monster.

She risked opening her eyes again, looking down as her conquered home and the charred outline of the city became smaller and smaller. Her breathing grew thin, and she gasped for air before her terror and exhaustion were finally strong enough to make the world go dark.

 

Soraya woke with a gasp. The last thing she remembered was moving up toward the stars and seeing Golvahar disappear below her. She remembered the beating of wings and the sharp points of claws digging into her skin. But these were all just memories. She was lying on something solid now—a bed?—and she was alone. Or at least she hoped she was alone. The light was dim, wherever she was.

Soraya sat up cautiously and squinted in the low light. When she touched the wall beside her for leverage, her hand met cool, uneven stone. What had the Shahmar said? That he couldn't keep her in Golvahar, and so needed to take her elsewhere. She tried to keep her breathing even as she considered the possibilities—was she in a cave somewhere in the forest? Did he intend to keep her locked up here until he tired of her? She still wasn't entirely convinced he didn't plan to kill her.

She rose from the bed, and went toward the source of light. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that she was in a windowless room hewn out of rock. The light came from an iron candelabra set on a table, alongside a jug of water and a bowl of fruit. Everything in the room seemed cobbled together and slightly worn, from the rickety wooden bed frame to the chipped marble of the table to the moth-eaten rug beneath it. It seemed more like a mismatched collection than anything else, and it did nothing to alleviate the feeling that she had been buried alive.

But she let out a breath of relief when she saw a door set into the wall. The door, too, seemed misplaced—a rectangular wooden panel jammed into an arched opening—but more important, there was no keyhole beneath the handle. She wasn't trapped, then … unless it was a different kind of trap. What would happen to her if she opened that door? What would be waiting for her on the other side?

Soraya went toward the door, and as she neared it, she noticed deep grooves made in the wood around the handle—the kind of grooves claws might make.

She was still staring at the door when the handle started to move and the door started to open. She braced herself for the sight of the Shahmar, that face from her nightmares.

But it wasn't the Shahmar who stepped through the door. It was Azad. Soraya glanced at his hands, at his eyes, at his hair, but there was no sign of the monster she knew him to be. He was as beautiful as the day she'd first seen him.

He smiled when he saw her. “Good, you're awake. Now we can—”

“No.” Her voice echoed slightly.

He tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“Don't pretend. Not anymore.” Her throat clenched painfully as she tried to hold back angry tears.

“I'm not pretending, Soraya.” He stepped forward and reached
for her hands, thumbs tracing the line of her knuckles. Soraya wanted to pull away, but it was still so
new,
so strange to feel bare skin on hers, and she couldn't make herself deny something she'd wanted for so long. It was harder to remember to hate him when he looked like the boy who had comforted her at the dakhmeh.
That boy never existed,
she reminded herself, but when he slid his hands up her arms, when he cupped her face and began to lean in, she wanted so much to let herself forget.

“
No,
” she said, forcing the word out of her with all her strength. She tore away from Azad before he could kiss her, and she wrapped her arms around herself, curling inward as she always used to do. “No,” she said again, unable to look up at his face, though she could imagine the look of hurt and surprise—the vulnerability that he had cultivated to draw her in. “Your voice, your face, your hands—they're not real. They're not who you are.” She lifted her head, forcing herself to look at him and still deny him. “Show me who you are.”

His eyes narrowed, and when he spoke, it was with that other voice, his
real
voice. “Fine,” he said. “If that's what you prefer.” Azad began to fade away like smoke, and the Shahmar emerged.

But now that she had seen his transformation, she could find the points of commonality more easily—he had the same bone structure, the same athletic grace. The shift from Azad to the Shahmar wasn't a complete change; it was the burial of one underneath the other. She still didn't understand how he was able to appear as human—she had never heard of any other div doing such a thing—but she knew with certainty that when he did so, he was taking the form of the prince he had once been, before his corruption.

“Are you satisfied now?” he said in a low growl. He seemed insulted by her demand—embarrassed, even. Perhaps he had been as eager to forget as she was, and these past weeks had been a fantasy for them both.

But he had been the one to end it, not her.

“Satisfied?” she said in disbelief. “You've usurped my brother's throne and imprisoned my family, and now you're holding me captive. You've lied to me at every turn and gained my trust while guiding me toward my family's destruction.” Her voice was growing louder as she spoke. There was no poison in her veins anymore, no one to hurt as a result of her anger, and so she let herself revel in it, knowing the Shahmar was a worthy and deserving target. “You threatened my mother all those years ago,” she continued. “You're the reason I was cursed. You're the reason for
all
of this!”

The words came so easily to her that she knew, as soon as she'd said them, that she wanted them to be true a little too much. How easy it would be to lay all of her guilt on the Shahmar's scaled shoulders.

She was afraid he would challenge that last statement, or remind her of her role in this disaster. But instead, he only asked, “So your mother told you the truth at last? Did she tell you everything?”

Soraya heard her mother's voice saying,
He told me he would wait until I had a daughter, and when that daughter came of age, he would steal her away and make her his bride.
He had certainly stolen her away—but did he mean to keep the last part of his promise as well? She watched the flickering candlelight, unable to look directly at him, as she said, “Is that why I'm here? Because of some petty grudge you have against her?”

“No,” he said, taking a step toward her. “I didn't bring you here because of the threat I made to your mother. That was only ever meant to scare her. If she hadn't made you poisonous, I would never have given you another thought. I wouldn't have known about you at all, except that a parik told me about you after I captured her. In exchange for her freedom, she told me that the shah's sister was a girl with poison growing inside her, waiting to be unleashed. As I heard her story, I realized who you were—who your mother was—and I knew you were the key, the ally I needed to take Golvahar.
And…” His voice softened into a low hum. “I couldn't resist seeing you for myself.” He reached for her, brushing his gnarled fingers against her hair. “I felt as if I already knew you, as if you were already mine. Didn't you feel the same?”

It was all too familiar.
He
was too familiar—the cadence of his voice, the intensity of his gaze, even the way he touched her hair. And worst of all, she
had
felt from the beginning as if she had known him, as if she had dreamed him into existence.
As if you were already mine.

But if familiarity weakened her resolve, it also saved her. In some corner of her mind, a knowing voice whispered,
He's doing it again
. And she knew at once that the voice was right. In either form, Azad or the Shahmar, he knew the exact words she wanted most to hear, the exact gestures that would stir up desires that she had long ago put to rest. Even now, he was playing on her as easily as if she were an instrument, hoping the chord he struck would be louder than the screams from the garden.

He must have seen something harden in her expression, because his eyes narrowed and his hand fell away.

“Did you think the same tricks would work on me again?” she said coldly. “What do you even want with me? Why did you lock me up here instead of killing me?”

He stared at her in silence for the space of a heartbeat, then another, like he was waiting or searching for something, and Soraya realized,
He doesn't know, either.
He had meant it when he said he'd planned to kill her. But for all his planning and manipulating, Soraya must have managed to surprise him. That gave her hope—it meant there was still a part of her that he couldn't possess or predict.

Finally he said, “You're wrong about one thing, Soraya. There's no lock on the door. You can step outside anytime you'd like.” He gestured to the door, and Soraya tried to find some hint of his intentions in those cold eyes. But whatever was beyond this room,
she had to know, and so with a last suspicious look in his direction, she went to the door and pulled it open.

She blinked, thinking that she was still unconscious, that this was a cruel dream, because she could have sworn she was standing at the threshold of Golvahar's secret passageways. But then she noticed the differences—mud-brown rock instead of tan brick, wider walls and a higher ceiling, and a lit torch in a sconce on the wall.

“Go on,” the Shahmar urged from behind her.

Soraya stepped out into the tunnel, unnerved to be in a setting that was familiar and yet foreign, and to know that the Shahmar was behind her at every step. There was only one path to take, so she followed the tunnel until it opened out into a larger one, at which point the Shahmar grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.

“Don't leave my side,” he said. He led her out into the larger tunnel, still holding on to her arm, and soon Soraya realized why.

Divs roamed this tunnel—though Soraya didn't feel like she was in a tunnel anymore, but rather in a hallway that might have been lifted from Golvahar. High above her head was a vaulted roof, and the torches illuminated a series of carvings along the wall, all of the Shahmar victorious in battle. She might have been in a nightmare version of Golvahar, complete with monstrous inhabitants.

But Soraya knew where she was, and a soft groan escaped her lips. She recalled the feeling of being buried alive, and she had been almost right, except she wasn't underground. She was inside Mount Arzur, the home of divs. And now she understood why there was no lock on her door. She was trapped inside a mountain, and every div here was her jailor.

“It took me years to achieve this,” the Shahmar said with pride as he led her down the hall. Every time a div approached them, Soraya tensed in fear, but none of them noticed her. Instead,
they bowed their heads in deference to the Shahmar, passing her by without a glance. As much as Soraya hated to admit it, the Shahmar's presence beside her was almost like having her curse restored, a shield of safety that made her untouchable. “First to win the divs to my side,” the Shahmar continued, “to make them understand that they would be more powerful united under my command—then to carve this mountain into something worthy of a king. But it was only something to occupy me until I found a way to return to my true home—” He looked down at her. “Until I found
you.
”

His words stung, reminding her of her role in her family's downfall. But before she could respond, he turned her to the left, through a rounded opening that brought them into a massive cavern.

They were standing on a narrow rock bridge that spanned the entire cavern, and Soraya might have stumbled over the edge if the Shahmar hadn't held her back. “Careful now,” he said.

A metallic smell filled the air, the smell of blood and weaponry. Above her was the mountain peak, allowing no escape except for a few holes carved into the rock that let down beams of silvery moonlight. Below, inside a shallow, rectangular pit in the center of the cavern, two divs—one female with sharp horns, and the other male with bristling gray fur and the snout of a wolf—were locked in fierce battle, their battle-axes clashing loudly against each other. Soraya would have thought they were sparring, except they swung their axes wildly, without concern for limbs lost or blood shed. All around the pit were other divs, some cheering, some shouting curses, while yet others were occupied by sharpening weapons on grinding wheels, or performing drills.

The Shahmar kept his hand wrapped around her arm as he led her to the center of the bridge, where another div was watching the training below. He resembled the Shahmar more than the other divs—his build was leaner, closer to human, and his
skin was covered in a kind of shell, like a scorpion. But what caught Soraya's attention the most was the large, bloodstained club in his hand.
Aeshma,
she remembered from her books.
The div of wrath.

“Aeshma,” the Shahmar said to him as they approached. “Is all as it should be?”

Aeshma turned at the sound of his voice and quickly bowed his head. “Yes, shahryar,” Aeshma said in a voice like a rattle. He gestured to the fight below. “Please, watch the battle below and see if your soldiers are as fierce as you wish them to be.”

“Thank you, Aeshma. Leave us now.”

Aeshma bowed again and retreated to the other side of the bridge.

“Shall we watch?” the Shahmar said, positioning Soraya in front of him for her to see the fight below. “These are
my
training grounds, and the kastars are my soldiers,” he said with pride.

“Kastars?” Soraya echoed, remembering the word from before—something Parvaneh had said about different kinds of divs.

“Kastars are large and brutish divs, their methods of destruction more obvious, as you can see below. The div you just saw—Aeshma—is a druj. I use the drujes as my generals. They're smaller in build, but their minds are sharper and more strategic. Before I united them, the divs rarely worked together, their powers limited, which is why they were never able to accomplish more than petty violence and short-sighted raids. But joined under one vision, they can conquer kingdoms. As you've seen.”

“What about the pariks?” Soraya snapped, irritated by that last remark.