Girl, Serpent, Thorn (20 page)

“Hold out your arms.”

Soraya obeyed, her stomach already flipping in anticipation, because she could guess what would come next. Parvaneh stepped
forward and brushed her hands along the insides of Soraya's forearms, and Soraya's entire spine straightened at once, her breath catching in her throat. “What are you doing?” she said in an exhale.

“Hush,” Parvaneh said. “You'll see.”

Once Soraya's forearms and her palms were coated with tree sap, Parvaneh stepped away, leaning her back against the nearest tree trunk. “Now wait,” she whispered.

Ordinarily, Soraya might have felt ridiculous standing in the middle of a forest with tree sap on her outstretched arms. But the forest was
alive
. She felt it pulsing all around her. And so she knew she wasn't simply standing, but waiting, with arms open to embrace whatever envoy the forest was about to send to her.

She didn't have to wait long. She heard it first—a fluttering sound that seemed to come from the air—and then something tickled her arm. When she looked down, she saw a gray-brown moth settled on her left forearm, wings opening and closing leisurely.

Soraya barely breathed, afraid she would scare it away—or worse, that it would go still and fall dead to the ground, as that first butterfly did so many years ago. But her skin was covered in tree sap, not poison, and so the moth didn't die, and soon it was joined by others. One—two—a third that landed on the very center of her palm. To them, she was no different from one of the trees, a source of nourishment and life, not death or destruction. Soraya laughed, and her eyes went blurry with tears.

Now she understood why Parvaneh had brought her here. Here in the forest, far enough away to forget about Azad and the divs and her family, Soraya allowed herself to enjoy the absence of her curse without guilt or complication. She would return to Arzur, and she would find the simorgh's feather, and she would help save her family—but for now, she would marvel at the brush of moth wings against her skin.

She looked up at Parvaneh, suddenly self-conscious. Parvaneh was still leaning against a tree trunk, her arms crossed over her
chest, watching Soraya with a small smile on her lips. It was the first time Soraya remembered seeing her smile in earnest, and she wondered if the same was true for her, if this was the first time she had seen Soraya genuinely smile.

“Thank you,” Soraya called to her. The words felt weak compared to the gratitude she felt.

Parvaneh came over to her, moving slowly so as not to startle the moths. As she approached, Soraya felt a strange kind of fluttering in her stomach, as if one of the moths had flown inside. It reminded her of something—something she hadn't felt since she was a child.

“In the dungeon, I used to like making you angry,” Parvaneh said. She reached down to scoop up one of the moths and held it up to her face, brushing its wing against her cheek with a tenderness that only worsened the fluttering in Soraya's stomach. Parvaneh let the moth fly away and looked Soraya in the eye. “But I think I like making you laugh even more.”

“Why did you like making me angry?” Soraya asked in mock offense.

Parvaneh grinned and swept aside Soraya's hair, her fingers brushing Soraya's cheekbone. “To see your veins, of course,” she said. Her hand moved down to trace the dull claw mark on Soraya's collarbone with her fingertips. “I always thought you … I thought they were beautiful.”

The fluttering—she had felt it before. Not with Azad, though he had ignited a fire of his own, as sudden and scorching as lightning. This was more like the gradual, steady warmth of a summer day, a heat that spread all the way down to the tips of her fingers and her toes. She remembered that day—not summer, but spring—lying on the grass beside Laleh, feeling that fluttering as she told Laleh she wished she could marry her. Then Laleh had laughed, and it had died away, never to return.

But she felt it now, and when Parvaneh lifted her eyes to meet Soraya's, neither of them was laughing.

Parvaneh's hand was still curled against Soraya's collarbone, and
she was standing so close that Soraya felt her breath warm against her face. She was so keenly aware of all these points of contact—skin, breath, gaze—but most of all she was aware of the way her pulse slowed and quickened at the same time, giddy yet languorous.

Speak,
Soraya willed herself. But she felt like she was lost in a maze, unsure how to find her way out. Deep at the center of the maze was the truth she didn't want to acknowledge, that she had cared for Azad, and he had betrayed her so terribly that she had been unsure she would ever trust her heart again. In a way, it was a relief to know that the feel of Parvaneh's fingers brushing along her skin could still stir something in her—it meant Azad was not her only choice, her only chance.

Speak.
She could say that she had come to treasure their conversations in the dungeon, even if they had made her angry, because they were the only time she had ever fully allowed herself to drop all pretense and be herself. Or that now she realized it wasn't the dungeon that had given her a strange sense of refuge all this time, but Parvaneh herself, with whom she had been even more honest than she had with Azad.

Speak
—but it was Parvaneh who spoke first.

“We shouldn't dwell much longer,” she said, looking up with concern at the lightening sky.

The moths had all flown away by now, and Soraya rolled down her sleeves. The sap was still sticky on her arms, but she could use the jug of water in her cavern to wash them later.

Parvaneh led her back in silence, stopping at the mouth of the hidden tunnel to drape the cloak over both her and Soraya. When they found her room, Parvaneh removed the cloak and told Soraya to hide it in case she needed it again.

“I'll return tomorrow at dawn,” Parvaneh said. She looked around the room, forehead wrinkled in concentration. “Here.” She went to the table and lifted the candelabra. “If he leaves again and it's safe for us to talk, keep the light on this end of the table. If he hasn't
gone, or if it isn't safe for any reason, move it to the other end of the table.”

Soraya nodded, twisting the fabric of the cloak in her hands. She didn't want Parvaneh to leave her alone here again, but she had made a promise—to her mother, to the other pariks, to Parvaneh—and she didn't intend to break it.

There was nothing left to be said, but Parvaneh lingered, looking at Soraya with concern. She came toward her, rested one hand on Soraya's shoulder, and kissed Soraya's cheek. “Until tomorrow,” Parvaneh said, her lips brushing the corner of Soraya's mouth as she spoke. Before Soraya could react, Parvaneh was gone, a moth similar to the ones in the forest fluttering in the air where she used to be.

Soraya watched her go through the gap between the door and the wall, and gently touched her cheek. Even after everything she had seen—demons and sorcerers and curses—there was nothing more astonishing or magical to Soraya than being able to touch Parvaneh.

 

Exhaustion set in, allowing Soraya to sleep before Azad's return. She woke to the scent of cooked meat, and found that the fruit on the table had been replaced by a plate of skewers and warm bread. It unnerved her to know that someone had come and gone without her knowledge, but she still ate ravenously, assured now that Azad didn't plan to starve her into submission.

She didn't know how much longer it would be until his return, but in the time she had, she formed a plan. She couldn't ask Azad directly about the feather without making him suspicious, and so she would have to approach the topic from a different path.

Pacing around the room, she rehearsed the words in her mind, until finally she heard a rap at the door.
How courteous of him,
she thought dryly.

As soon as he entered—as himself, not human—he frowned at her. “Your dress,” he said.

Soraya looked down at the pale turquoise gown she had first put on the morning of the wedding. By now, it was filthy—the hemline ragged and completely black, the arms and torso stained and torn in places. Her hair was probably a nightmare too. She would have changed before he'd arrived if she'd had the option, but as it was, she didn't think he would suspect the grime came from the forest instead of the mountain. She faced him boldly and said, “I don't know what you expected. You've given me no opportunity to change or bathe since stealing me away.”

He was draped in a robe of purple brocade himself, stolen from the royal wardrobe she had no doubt, and the contrast between his splendor and her disheveled appearance apparently disturbed him. “I'll remedy this,” he promised. “For now, though, I've assured your mother that you're alive and in my care.”

Soraya didn't know if he meant this as a kindness or a taunt, but her heart sank a little imagining her mother's reaction to that news. Every choice Tahmineh had made, misguided or not, had been for the purpose of keeping Soraya away from the Shahmar, and now she would think it had all come to nothing. She wanted to tell him what a monster he was, to wound him in some way in return for her own pain, but she reminded herself of her plan to gain his trust, and she held her tongue—she had plenty of practice doing so.

But still, she couldn't stop herself from asking, “And my brother?”

He crossed his arms and said, begrudgingly, “Still alive. For now.”

“Thank you,” she said, her relief audible. “Truly, I'm thankful, and … I'm relieved to see you again.”

He smiled, but there was a spark of suspicion in his eye. “Are you?”

“You knew I would be,” she said. “You left me here with no company, no occupation, except to think of you and wish for your return.”

He took a step closer to her. “And have you thought of me?” he asked, his voice a low rumble.

Soraya ducked her head and nodded.
Was I this easily fooled as well?
she wondered. She was thankful now for the lesson he had taught her in those early days together—that if you told people what they most wanted to hear, they would almost certainly believe you.

“I keep remembering what you said to me before—that there isn't much difference between who you are now and the young man you once were. The young man I knew.” She glanced up at him shyly, thinking of the way he had been so hesitant in those early days, feeding her lies while making her think she was drawing them out of him. “I want to know more about him,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

He was watching her warily, eyes slightly narrowed, as if trying to determine whether she was leading him into a trap. But then he simply said, “Come with me,” and turned for the door.

She followed at once, remaining close to his side as he led her back out into the tunnels. It was too much to assume that he would take her to the feather at once, but if she could keep him on the topic of his lost humanity, she hoped he would mention the feather himself in time.

As he led her down the winding path through the mountain, he said, “I forgot to ask you something. Do you remember the div that was locked up in the dungeon at the palace?”

Soraya's step faltered only slightly. “Of course I remember. You planted her there, didn't you?”

“I did, but when I went back to retrieve her, she was missing. When did you see her last?”

She tried to push away the memory of Parvaneh's hair shining in the moonlight, of her lips brushing the corner of Soraya's mouth, as if Azad might somehow be able to read her thoughts. “The night we went to the dakhmeh,” she answered. “She must have escaped after I … after the fire went out.”

“Yes, I would have assumed the same, except for the esfand burning in the dungeon.”

Soraya kept pace with his stride and said nothing.

“And you're sure you haven't seen her since before the fire went out?”

Soraya nodded.

“How interesting,” Azad continued in a voice like silk. “Then either the pariks have found a way to resist the effects of esfand, or they have a human helping them.”

Soraya abruptly halted, forcing Azad to stop and look back at her. “Are you accusing me of something? Please let me know what it is you think I've been able to do while tucked away in the room you put me in, unable to leave without fear of losing my life.” The words came out harsher than she intended, but the only way she could think to avoid his suspicion was to face it directly.

He held her gaze, then shook his head and kept walking. When Soraya was at his side again, he said, “No, I suppose you couldn't have done anything. But if you see her or if she comes to you, let me know at once.”

She didn't respond, hoping he would take her silence as agreement.

“Turn left here,” he said after they had continued a little longer. They went down a different passage and stopped at a door in the wall. But unlike the door to her room, this one was pure metal, with no space between the edges of the door and the wall. The door also had a keyhole, which Azad used the tip of one claw to unlock.

The security of this room gave Soraya hope—perhaps he was going to take her to the feather now after all.

But when the two of them stepped inside, all thought of the feather briefly fled Soraya's mind. Everywhere Soraya looked were relics of the past—vases and painted jars, goblets and gold-rimmed dishes, tapestries and piles of coins. And all of them bore the image of the same man—Azad, before his transformation.

She walked up to a tapestry hanging on the wall to study the image of a young man hunting. She recognized him from the profile that she had found so beautiful, her eyes tracing the curve of his neck up to his face. He was riding a horse, a bow pulled taut in his hands, with a fierce look in his eye—a hunter tracking his prey. She knew that look. She had seen it on that first day, when he had spotted her on the roof.

When she turned to face him again, he was watching her. And even though he was as monstrous as ever, he seemed pathetic to her then, standing in the middle of this shrine to his lost humanity.

“Look around you,” he said. “What do you see?”

“You.”

“What else?”

She walked around the cavern, eyes glancing over the hoard of useless treasure, at the image of Azad engraved and carved and painted on each relic. She found a plate on the ground, chipped around the edges, but with a clear image of Azad in the center, and she picked it up, frowning. It was a garden scene, etched in gold. Azad was seated on a rug, under the shade of the pavilion, and all around the pavilion were rosebushes. She brushed one of the roses with her thumb, and the indentations of the petals felt like a spiral.

What else?

I see a selfish child who betrayed his family.

I see a demon in the making.

Soraya's hands clenched tighter over the plate. She had the urge to throw it to the ground or dash it against the wall. She wanted to destroy everything in this room, not stopping until the images were unrecognizable and there were no longer any surfaces in which to see her reflection.

She didn't hear Azad coming nearer, but he was suddenly in front of her, prying the gold plate from her grip as if he sensed what she wanted to do to it. “You'd like to know more about who I am, who I used to be? You already know him. You
are
him.”

“Why did you do it?” she asked, looking up at him. It was one of the questions she had planned to ask to guide the conversation, but now she found that she truly, desperately wanted to know the answer. “What made you decide to destroy your family?”

He sighed and turned away from her, moving toward a pile of rolled-up rugs and tapestries. He knocked the pile down with one wave of his arm and picked up the tapestry at the very bottom. He gestured for Soraya to come see, and unrolled the tapestry along the ground.

Soraya came to his side and looked down at the woven image before her. A shah, middle-aged and full-bearded, sat in a throne at the center of the tapestry. Surrounding him were five younger men of different heights and ages. Soraya looked at each one in turn, but none of them resembled Azad. All along the edge of the tapestry were dark singe marks, as if someone had decided to burn it but then changed his mind, several times.

“Are … are those…?” Soraya couldn't finish the question, unsure of what reaction it would draw from him.

“My father and brothers,” Azad said.

“Was this before you were born?”

He snorted. “No,” he said. “I was the youngest, still a child, but that's not why I'm missing. All five of my brothers were destined to rule—the eldest as shah, the younger four as satraps of rich provinces. But I was born under bad stars. The astrologist told my father that if I ever ruled even the smallest province, dire consequences would follow. My father took this advice very seriously. While I watched my brothers become the princes they were meant to be, I was allowed no battle training, no education in affairs of state, no sense of my future at all.” He kicked the tapestry aside, letting the edges curl up over his dead brothers' faces. “I wanted so much to prove the stars wrong. I used to stay up through the night and read in secret or practice on the training grounds on my own, desperate for any opportunity to impress my father. He was never
cruel to me, but I knew how he must have seen me. I knew that I was…”

He trailed off, unable to find the words, and so Soraya provided them: “You were your family's shame.” No wonder he had found her so easily at Golvahar. He knew where to look for someone who felt unwanted.

Something strange happened then. Perhaps Soraya only imagined it, but for a moment, Azad's eyes changed—no longer cold and yellow, but the rich brown she remembered. And in that brief time, she saw in them the kind of self-loathing that seemed exclusively human. Once more, she became aware of the patches of skin showing through the scales, the pieces of Azad that refused to be swallowed up by the demon. She wondered if his transformation was even complete, or if he still woke sometimes to find another patch of skin covered in scales, another piece of himself gone.

“And then I met the div,” he continued, his voice hardening. “It's much as you once told me—one night, when I went out riding in secret, I caught a div. But I didn't want to take her to the palace with me yet. Instead, I kept the div trapped in a cave, and I returned every night to learn her secrets, hoping that I would discover something invaluable to present to my father. But you know as well as I do that when you learn a div's secrets, the div learns your secrets, too. The div became my most constant companion, and so when she began to tell me that I would be a better ruler than my father or any of my brothers, I believed her. When she told me how furious I must be at my treatment, I became furious. She made me question whether the astrologist's warning was even true, or if my father was lying to me for his own purposes.” He took a halting breath before continuing. “And so I approached a faction of powerful nobles and soldiers opposed to my father's rule, and suggested they should help me replace him. I had decided that if I could not rule with the blessing of my father or the stars, I would defy them all, no matter whose blood I had to spill.”

Soraya didn't know where to look—everywhere, she saw Azad, and so everywhere, she saw herself. She shut her eyes, but in the darkness behind her eyelids, she saw the young man she had known with blood on his hands, slaughtering everyone in his path to the throne. She tore her mind away from the image, reminding herself of her plan to find the feather.

She opened her eyes and asked, “And how did you … When did you become…?”

He hesitated, and when he spoke, his voice was hushed, like that of a child telling a secret. “I asked for this,” he said. “After my father's and brothers' deaths, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep control of Atashar. I had so little education on the subject, so I asked the div what I should do. She told me to tear out the heart of a div, and to bathe in the blood from that heart. I didn't want to kill the div I had, and so I hunted down another, one with scales and claws and wings. I didn't realize what would happen. I didn't know…” He looked down at his hands—clawed and scaled, gnarled and bloodstained—and then looked up at Soraya, eyes pleading for understanding.

And she did understand, of course. It was so easy to imagine their places switched. She knew, too, why he had been so affected on the night of the dakhmeh, when she told him his story. Because it was not just his story that he heard, but his fears, his own strangled heartbeat, echoing back to him from someone else for the first time.

“You appeared as a human to me,” she said, returning to her plan. “Why don't you do so all the time? Why would you choose to live as a div instead of a human?”

From the way Azad avoided her eye, she could tell he didn't want her to know the answer. “I tried, for a time,” he said. “But the effect is temporary, and the price is not always easy to obtain.”