Girl, Serpent, Thorn (26 page)

Are you curious to know how it's done? It's the blood of a div that made you poisonous. If a human bathes in blood from a div's heart, that
human takes on the properties of that div. You must have had only a few drops.

Would it be enough? The stains on the blanket were old and long dried. She would have to soak the blanket to get any use out of the blood, and even then, she had no idea if it would still be effective. If it were, though, then she could curse herself anew and become poisonous once more.
But what if I can't reverse it again?
The simorgh was not in such easy reach that she could safely depend on using her feathers to lift the curse—and she knew better now than to take one of the simorgh's feathers without her permission. What if the simorgh found her unworthy of such a gift? Would Soraya still be willing to make this choice?

Soraya's mouth went dry, her eyes locked on the blanket with such focus that the stars began to blur. Would her poison be enough to stop the Shahmar? Parvaneh had told her previous attempts to kill him had failed, or even made him stronger, but her mother had trusted in this poison to keep her daughter safe from him. Before she had used the feather, Azad had always been careful not to touch her … and at the very least, she would have a way to defend herself against the other divs. She had no other plan, no other option. If she didn't do this, she would very likely have to kill her brother and rule with Azad, or else watch her family die.

She was running her fingertips over the fabric without even realizing it, as if her hands knew what she was thinking and were trying to remind her of what she would be giving up. Her mother's arms around her. The flutter of moth wings against her skin.
Parvaneh.

But Parvaneh would sleep forever if Soraya didn't do something to help her. As for her mother, Soraya already knew what choice she would make. And Tahmineh was the only person Soraya knew who had beaten the Shahmar at his own game.

Are you like your mother?
Parisa had asked her.

Soraya clutched the blanket in her hands.
Yes,
she thought.
Yes, I still am.

She shoved the blanket back under the bed, went to the door, and began pounding her fists on it as loudly as she could. Within seconds, the door opened, and a div with spotted fur like a leopard's stood frowning at her. “Yes?” the div said.

“I'd like a bath,” Soraya told her.

The div nodded once and shut the door on Soraya.

She paced nervously as she waited, wondering if the div had simply nodded to appease her, when the door opened again, and the same div brought in a metal tub and two buckets of steaming water.

Cold water would have worked better for her purpose, but she didn't know how to ask for it without warranting suspicion, so she thanked the div and waited for her to leave.

Once Soraya heard the click of the lock again, she dragged a chair to the door to block the handle as an additional precaution. If anyone tried to enter and Azad questioned her about it, she could say she wanted privacy for her bath.

After retrieving the blanket, she poured the steaming water into the tub. She focused on the task like it was something routine—like when she was working in her garden—concentrating on each action so that there was no room for thought. Otherwise she might forget that she had chosen this—that at one time she had even missed seeing those green veins under her skin and knowing she was untouchable.

She dipped the blanket into the water and watched the water slowly turn pink. When she thought the water was as pink as it would ever become, and the water cool enough to touch, she removed the blanket, undressed, and stepped into the bath.

The water came up to her knees, and she looked down at her feet, wondering if even now, they were becoming steeped in poison. It had only taken a few drops to curse her the first time, but she didn't know if the blood would lose some potency when it was diluted with water. This was the best she could do with her limited
time and resources: submerge herself entirely in the blood-tinged water, and hope that it would have some effect.

Soraya sat in the tub, letting the water cover her entirely except for her head. Her heart was beating wildly, urging her to flee, but she ignored it. She tried to ignore every thought and every impulse, every doubt and regret. This was the choice she had made, and even now, it was possibly too late to change her mind. She drew in a long breath, closed her eyes, and dunked her head under the water so that every bit of her skin was submerged.

She counted to ten, and when she surfaced again, the breath she'd been holding came out as a sob, loud and almost painful. She buried her face in her hands, tears spilling from her eyes, her body heaving, like something was trying to escape from inside her.

When the tears slowed, and her breath no longer felt like it was being torn from her body, she looked down at her wrists. The veins there were not dark green, or even particularly noticeable at all. Maybe it would take time before the curse took hold, she thought, and she stood and used the other bucket of water to rinse the blood off of her. She wrapped herself in one of her dressing gowns, her wardrobe still intact, and looked down at the pink water in the bath with a frown.

Would a div notice or care that the water was pink? Soraya could say she had cut herself by accident, but there was nothing in the room sharp enough to make the lie believable, and she was ill at ease not knowing what would happen to the rest of the bloody mixture, assuming it did still work. Perhaps that was why her mother had kept the blanket all these years instead of trying to burn or dispose of it.

In the end, she decided to drag the tub to the garden doors and pour the water out into the golestan. It streamed through the crack in the door, down the steps, and onto the grass below. If anyone asked her why the tub was empty, she would say she used it to water the golestan, unsure if anyone had done so since she'd been gone. It was true, in a way.

As she waited for her attending div to return, she kept sneaking glances down at the insides of her arms, but she still found no change.

At last the div came, without any comment on the missing water in the tub, and Soraya murmured something polite as she came forward to help. She handed the div one of the buckets, allowing their knuckles to brush against each other, sucking in a breath as she waited to see what would happen in this final and most definitive test.

The div took the buckets and the tub without a word and left the room very much alive.

Soraya's last resort had failed.

 

A beam of sunlight woke her the next morning—which was strange, because her curtains had definitely been closed the night before.

Soraya blinked, shading her eyes from the sun streaming through her windows. It had been a restless night as she tried to decide what to do now that both of her plans—the simorgh and the blood—had failed. All night long, Azad's words kept returning to her:
I will slaughter your family as easily as I slaughtered mine.
What was the right choice, then? To refuse him, knowing that her family might die for it, or to kill her brother in order to save everyone else? Was Nasu's solution the only one left? She had drifted into sleep eventually, but still without an answer.

She sat up, looking toward the source of the light—and saw that the golestan had come to her rescue.

One of the double doors to the golestan had been forced open, allowing the light to spill in, along with a tangle of thorns and roses
that wound around the door and stretched across the floor. Soraya climbed out of bed and went to look more closely.

The last time she had seen the golestan, it had still been a ruin from when she'd destroyed it. Now it was more than restored—it was overflowing. The rosebushes had spread out across the length of the garden and were climbing up, so thick that the walls were almost entirely covered. But it wasn't the roses that caught Soraya's attention—it was the thorns. Her rosebushes had always had thorns, but the thorns growing from them now were longer and sharper than they had been, more like needles than the stubby thorns she remembered. Soraya bent down to examine one of the roses that had spilled into the room, cupping it in her palms. She almost dropped it immediately, because she could have sworn the rose was pulsing against her skin, like a misshapen heart in her hands. And there was something else, something that made her know without question what had caused this sudden overgrowth. The veins on the underside of the rose's petals, usually white, were now a dark, venomous green.

She had disposed of the bathwater by pouring it into the garden—and now the garden was imbued with the blood of a div.

Soraya opened the door and walked outside, careful not to touch any of the wicked-looking thorns. She knew with a certainty she couldn't explain that those thorns would be poisonous to the touch.
Like I should be,
she thought. But then, was it possible that the blood had simply needed time to take effect? The golestan had grown overnight; perhaps she had been too hasty to call her plan a failure.

Her veins were still normal, but she immediately began to look for some stray insect to touch. Navigating the golestan was difficult—the thorns left little room for safe passage—but she was used to shrinking herself down and moving through narrow spaces. She found a patch of uncovered grass and knelt, digging until she found a wriggling pink worm. She brushed her finger against it, waiting
several breaths to see if it would stop moving, but her touch had no effect at all.

Soraya let out a frustrated sigh, looking at the thorns around her with envy. But her disappointment didn't last long, because through the thorns, she could make out the shape of the garden door.

Escape.
Not from Golvahar—she would never make it that far, and she couldn't abandon her family to their fates. But if she could make it to the dungeon without being seen …

Soraya returned to her room and quickly dressed. It was still early—too early for Azad to send someone with food for her, she hoped. She didn't have much time, but she had to be slow and careful as she moved aside the thorns and roses blocking the door. A few of the thorns snagged on her sleeves, but they didn't touch her skin. When the door was clear enough to open, she tried the handle, relieved when it gave way.

She opened the door only a little, peeking through to make sure no divs were patrolling the grounds. She wedged a rock into the doorway so that she wouldn't be locked out and slipped through the door, ignoring the temptation to run as fast as she could. Instead, she stayed close to the garden wall, moving alongside it until she had come all the way around to the palace walls. Even then, she moved slowly and deliberately, thankful for all her years of slinking through shadows. There
were
divs patrolling the grounds—she saw one pass by in the opposite direction—but divs' senses were keener at night, and tucked away as she was, making no sudden movements, the divs didn't look her way or notice her.

Only when she had painstakingly edged her way to the dungeon steps did she allow herself to move quickly. She had no worry of divs here—she could already smell the esfand as she went down the steps—and so she tore through the dungeon, following the smoke to Parvaneh's cell.

The cavern was thick with smoke, and as she had seen in her dream, five braziers filled with coals were set out in a row in front of the bars. This time, though, Soraya could kick them over, scattering the hot coals over the ground. She waved some of the smoke away and saw the outline of bars, finding the two bent ones. She stepped into the gap between them, and as the smoke began to clear, she found Parvaneh's sleeping form on the floor. Soraya knelt beside her and waited for her to awaken.

Parvaneh's eyelashes were the first things to move, twitching against her cheeks. And then her eyes slowly opened, liquid amber glowing in the darkness. She blinked a few times and started to cough.

Soraya had wanted to keep her distance, unsure if Parvaneh would still be furious with her, but now she helped Parvaneh sit up as she finished coughing the smoke out of her lungs. When Parvaneh looked at her in surprise, Soraya quickly removed her hand from Parvaneh's back. Her wings were still intact, Soraya noticed with relief.

Parvaneh pushed herself up to her feet. “Soraya?” she said, her voice still scratchy.

“Please listen,” Soraya said with urgency as she rose as well. Since the dream, she had wondered what she would say to Parvaneh, how she would explain her actions, but the words spilled out of her now with no plan or preparation, a torrent of remorse. “I never meant to betray you, but I misspoke and Azad figured out that I had seen you, and he wouldn't believe me when I said I didn't know where you were, and I didn't want him to know I was working against him the entire time, and then he threatened my family and I had no choice, but I would never have given you to him otherwise, I'm still with you, I'm still your—”

“
Soraya,
” Parvaneh interrupted, silencing Soraya with a hand on her arm. “I know.”

“What?”

“I know you didn't mean to betray me. I was already in your room when the two of you entered. I heard what he said to you, that if he didn't capture me that night, he would start killing off your family. I knew it was a trap.”

Soraya was stunned. “All those things you said to me about knowing I would choose him, about deserving each other—”

“Those were all for his benefit, not yours. I wanted him to believe that you were loyal to him, that he should keep you close so you could finish your mission.”

“But if you knew it was a trap…” Soraya shook her head. “You were his prisoner for so long. Why didn't you fly away unseen? Why show yourself at all?”

Parvaneh hesitated, like she was trying to find the right words. Her voice solemn, her eyes full, she said, “I told you before. I have my loyalties.”

Soraya absorbed the words and their meaning—both spoken and unspoken—and then she stopped thinking at all and threw her arms around Parvaneh's neck, finding her lips with her own.

Parvaneh made a muffled sound of surprise as Soraya crashed into her, but it didn't take her long to respond. Soraya had never initiated a kiss before, and so she was happy to let Parvaneh take control, one of her hands twisting in Soraya's hair while the other guided her backward until Soraya's back thudded against the cell bars. Soraya wrapped her arms around Parvaneh more tightly, as if she could absorb everything that was fearless about her into herself. She ran her thumb along the nape of Parvaneh's neck, moving down to the space between her shoulder blades, that patch of skin she found so tempting.

They were pressed so tightly against each other that when Parvaneh withdrew, Soraya felt like a piece of her had been peeled away. But Parvaneh remained within the circle of Soraya's arms, her own hands gripping the bars on either side of her, and she
whispered into the crook of Soraya's neck, “What were you going to say before?”

“When?” Soraya asked, breathless.

“Before I interrupted you. You said you were still with me, that you were still my … my what?”

It seemed ridiculous that she could still blush in her current position, and yet she felt an unmistakable heat warm her face. “I don't remember,” she said.

Parvaneh lifted her head, eyes sparkling. “Liar. You're still my friend? My ally? Tell me. We have no secrets in this dungeon.”

“Yours,” Soraya said, looking Parvaneh in the eye, as if the word were a challenge. “I was going to say I'm still yours.”

Parvaneh arched an eyebrow. “Interesting,” she said. She leaned in again, brushing her lips against Soraya's shoulder. “And how long have you been mine?”

Soraya tugged lightly on Parvaneh's hair, making Parvaneh look up. “It was when I healed your wings,” she said, “when I touched you for the first time.”

Parvaneh smiled in response, but the memory of using the feather made Soraya think of the captive simorgh.

“What's wrong?” Parvaneh said, drawing away as she noticed Soraya's suddenly rigid posture.

Soraya shook her head. “It's always so easy to forget the rest of the world, or the passage of time, when I'm here with you. I have to go back before I'm discovered, but first I have to tell you what I've found.” She told Parvaneh everything then, from her discovery of the simorgh to her failed attempt at restoring her curse.

Parvaneh listened in rapt attention, and when Soraya was finished, she said, “I can do it. I can free the simorgh and return with her.”

“Not just her,” Soraya said. “The pariks, too—we need them all.”

Parvaneh went silent, her mouth a thin line. “I don't know if they'll listen to me,” she said at last. “Even with the simorgh, I
don't know if they'll receive me again. I don't think they'll ever…” Her voice broke, leaving the thought unfinished.

Soraya held Parvaneh's hands tightly in her own. “They will,” she said. “The day after you were captured, Parisa came to me and asked where you were. She said you're still their sister.”

Parvaneh soaked the words in like they were moonlight, her eyes wide with longing. She straightened and said, “How much time do we have?”

“He said the execution would happen before sunset today.”

Parvaneh nodded, but her expression was serious. “It's not much time.”

“I know,” Soraya said. “But even if”—
even if I have to kill my brother first
—you're not back in time, we can still put an end to this.”

“I'll make it in time,” Parvaneh promised. She kissed Soraya's cheek and whispered in her ear, “And then I'll deliver that bastard to you on his knees.”

It had been tempting to slip into the passageways from the dungeon—to let Golvahar hide her away until she disappeared. But her family was still beyond reach in the new wing, and if Azad found her missing, she may as well have condemned them all to death.

After watching Parvaneh fly away as a dark gray moth, Soraya returned to her room. As she made her careful way back through the golestan, she noticed that the garden had further expanded since she had last seen it—the vines and roses were now climbing up the palace walls. But she didn't have time to contemplate this; almost immediately after she returned, her door opened, and it continued to open and close several more times over the course of the day.

First there was breakfast, and afterward the leopard-spotted div
brought a very frightened human seamstress carrying an ornately embroidered gown. Azad had planned ahead, apparently, ordering the seamstress to make a new gown for Soraya using the measurements from the clothes in Soraya's wardrobe. Now the seamstress nervously asked Soraya to try it on so she could make any adjustments.

Soraya didn't bother arguing. She didn't want the seamstress to be punished for her own stubbornness. The gown fell over her skin in waves of green and gold—the same colors as the dress she'd worn on Nog Roz, when she'd first spoken to Azad. He was feeling sentimental, apparently. When she looked closely at the pattern of the brocade, she flinched, causing the seamstress to prick her with a needle by accident. The pattern that repeated on the gown was of a rose entwined with a snake.

When the fitting was over, more human attendants were brought to bathe and groom her—and only then did Soraya realize the point of the gown.
He's acting like this is a wedding
. An execution and a wedding together—they would be married in her brother's blood.

Again, Soraya didn't protest while the attendants performed rituals that would ordinarily be performed in the bathhouse the day before a wedding ceremony. And as they scrubbed the dead skin off of her with a rough stone and shaped her eyebrows using threads, she realized with begrudging acceptance that she didn't
want
to protest. Her mother and Laleh would have been used to these ministrations, but no one had ever braided Soraya's hair or painted her face. Not even her mother had ever been able to do this for her.

Azad would have known that, of course. He was once again offering her something that her family had never been able to give her—a reminder that she should choose him over them. But there was one thing he hadn't foreseen, one element that spoiled the relaxation of being pampered. Whenever she looked at her
attendants, their eyes quickly dropped, but Soraya still saw the traces of fear and resentment in them. They were not here by choice, and they would not forget that fact, even if Soraya could. Did they recognize her? Did they think she had joined the Shahmar willingly? If so, then they must hate her. Their hands were gentle, but their eyes were as sharp as thorns.