Girl, Serpent, Thorn Page 10

  “Soraya.”

  He was dead, and she had killed him, and he was so much bigger than a butterfly.

  “Soraya, what have you done?”

  She thought it was the yatu who had spoken, repeating his final words, but then she realized it had been Azad’s voice. He pushed himself off the ground and went to examine the body, putting his fingers to the yatu’s throat.

  After a brief but painful silence, Azad said, “He’s dead.” He looked at Soraya, mouth slightly parted, eyes wide and round with awe. “You killed him.”

  I did it to save you, she wanted to say. I had no other choice. But even as she scrambled for righteousness, she knew she was lying to herself. She might have found something heavy to knock the yatu unconscious. She might have only threatened him with death without actually touching him. She might have thought of something else, except she hadn’t thought at all. She had killed the yatu because she was angry with him for what he had said to her all those years ago, because he hadn’t given her the answers she wanted … and because it was easy. Because a little part of her had always wondered how easy it would be, and then she had had the perfect excuse to find out.

  Soraya gagged, putting her hands—one gloved, one bare—over her face, trying to block out the sight of the yatu’s open, glassy eyes. But she couldn’t block him out—he was part of her now. That corpse on the ground was hers. She was responsible for it. “I’m sorry,” she said, but the words changed nothing. When she lowered her hands, the body would still be there, and she would still be a murderer.

  Azad took hold of her wrists over her sleeves, careful to avoid her skin, and pulled her hands away from her face. “Don’t be,” he said firmly, letting the words echo through her mind, her memory—to the day they’d first met, when he had defended her against Ramin. “You saved us both.”

  His gaze was as sure and unflinching as his words. Shadows swam over his face, his skin tinted orange in the dim light. Perhaps, if she let him, he could burn the guilt out of her with words, with a look, with a single touch. She started to lean toward him, not even realizing what she was doing until she stopped herself. But still, she felt an undeniable pull toward him, a thread that wound around them, tying them together. Whatever happened now, this moment belonged to the two of them alone, joining them together like a macabre wedding.

  Azad’s brow furrowed. “Are you hurt?” he asked her.

  A laugh escaped her, the sound of it loud and hideously inappropriate in this place of death. “No one can hurt me,” she said, a frantic note in her voice. She continued in a calmer tone. “It’s over now. The story ends here, Azad.”

  “What do you mean?” he demanded, his hands tightening on her wrists. “What did the yatu tell you? You can’t tell me it’s over without any explanation.”

  He was right. He had endangered himself for her, rushed to save her, comforted her when she was at her worst. It wasn’t fair to shut him out now—not until he knew the truth and understood why it had all been for nothing.

  “In order to lift my curse, I need the simorgh’s feather. That was why I came to the yatu. He used to be the high priest, until he was arrested for treason. I asked him how to find it.”

  Azad watched her, rapt. “And did he tell you?”

  Soraya told him what the yatu had told her about the feather and the fire, how together they gave the shah the simorgh’s protection. “Do you understand now? I would have to betray my family.”

  She waited to see some sign of resignation on his face, but instead he was shaking his head, a stubborn glint in his eye. “Soraya, no. You can’t stop now. Maybe the yatu was lying. Maybe if we go to the fire temple, we’ll find some way to borrow the feather without endangering anyone.”

  “No,” she said at once. She pulled away from him and looked at the corpse, reminding herself how easy it was for her to lose her self-control. “I don’t trust myself to do that.”

  “I won’t give up,” Azad said. “Together, we’ll find a way.”

  He reached for her again, but she backed away, looking at him in disbelief. “I don’t understand you. I’m a murderer, Azad. You saw me kill someone. Why would you even want to help me anymore?”

  Azad shook his head slowly as he came toward her. “You saved me, Soraya,” he said. “How is what you did any different from what soldiers do on the battlefield? No one would blame you for killing a yatu. You said yourself he was already wanted for treason.”

  His words sounded reasonable enough, but Soraya knew that what was true for anyone else could never be true for her. If her family found out she had killed, they would see her differently—not as a sleeping serpent, its poison dormant, but as one that was awake and poised to strike. Soraya thought of the Shahmar with a shiver.

  “It’s different,” she said.

  “How?”

  “Because I touched him to see what would happen!” she cried out, her arms wrapping around her waist. “I wanted to see for myself what I was capable of. It wasn’t the duty of a warrior. It was…” She shook her head, a bitter taste in her mouth. “It was a show of power.”

  She watched for Azad’s reaction, waiting for his disgust for her to show on his face. She saw the movement of his throat as he swallowed, saw his fingers curl slightly at his side—but otherwise he was unreadable.

  Her eyes kept flitting between Azad and the lifeless figure of the corpse, each painful in different ways, and so she turned her back on them both, arms tightening around her waist, her back hunching over. But it was too late to make herself small. The damage had already been done.

  Gentle hands settled on her shoulders, and as if they had released her from some enchantment, Soraya’s shoulders went slack, and her eyes fluttered closed. From behind her, Azad spoke, his voice so low and quiet that it might have been coming from her own mind. “Listen to me, Soraya,” the voice said, wrapping around her. “Whatever your reasons, and no matter what anyone else might say, I’m glad you did it. I think you’re … extraordinary.”

  The last word was an exhale, his breath warm on the curve of her neck. She wanted nothing more than to lean back against him, to let him hold her so close that she would forget everything outside the circle of his arms. She wanted his words to seep into her skin until she believed them. The longing was deeper than she’d ever felt before, a craving for something more than human touch. There was a dull ache in her heart as she opened her eyes.

  “We’ll leave the body here for the vultures,” Azad said. He removed his hands from her shoulders, going to retrieve her other glove.

  “No,” Soraya said with surprising firmness. “We have to put it on the platform.” Dead flesh belonged to the Destroyer, and would pollute the Creator’s soil until there was nothing left but bone. She had already broken too many rules tonight; it seemed vitally important to her to keep this one.

  Azad looked like he wanted to argue, but he sighed and said, “Fine.” He threw the corpse over his shoulder and carried it to the platform, hoisting it up onto the rock. Soraya tried not to focus on the yatu’s feet dangling over the edge.

  “Now let’s leave this place and put it out of our minds,” Azad said. He held Soraya’s glove out to her. “But our story isn’t over yet, Soraya. I promise you that.”

  She was too exhausted to contradict him—especially when she wanted him to be right. “Take me home,” she said softly as she took back her glove. She slipped it on, put her gloved hand in his, and let him lead her out of the dakhmeh, back into the world of the living.

  11

  Soraya was barely aware of her surroundings as she followed Azad back through the empty city streets to the palace gates. Once again, both the guard at the city walls and the guards at the palace gates let them pass despite the late hour once they saw Azad’s uniform, and even through the haze of her guilt, Soraya couldn’t help thinking how easy it was for Azad to make his way through the world. With his new status and his air of confidence, he could go anywhere he wanted, while Soraya couldn’
t even leave the palace without ending up with blood on her hands.

  The yatu’s face still flashed through her mind, his eyes somehow both blank and accusing at the same time, the poison in his veins spreading up the strained muscles of his neck.

  Something touched her shoulder, and she flinched before realizing it was only Azad, his hand dropping away at her reaction. He said something—asked her how she was, if she wanted him to stay with her—and she shook her head, hardly able to understand him over the roar of guilt in her head.

  She wanted to cry, to have a measure of release, at least, but she felt withered and empty. The smell of death and dirt from the dakhmeh still lingered on her clothes and in her hair. It was trapped inside her lungs, along with powdered bone remains that also stained her gloves and dress. But Soraya knew that even if she bathed and changed, even if she burned these clothes, she would carry the dakhmeh with her for the rest of her life. That was why the living should never enter the dakhmeh—there was no way to truly leave it behind.

  They parted ways outside the golestan. Soraya entered alone, using the key that she had slipped in her sash when she had left earlier this evening, but she couldn’t bring herself to continue on to her room. Her body didn’t want to move, and she wondered if she would still be standing in the dakhmeh over the yatu’s body if Azad hadn’t been there to lead her away. She had always thought guilt was an emotion, but now she understood that guilt was a sickness, a fever. It made her feel like all her muscles were being stretched beyond their limits, her body twisting itself around this new and terrible truth.

  She was a murderer. She was a monster.

  Soraya looked around at her garden. It was the furthest place she could imagine from the dakhmeh—teeming with life, the air fresh and clean with the scent of dew and roses. It was all life that she had nurtured herself, with her own hands. It was life that she couldn’t kill.

  It was an elaborate and beautiful lie.

  Without realizing what she was doing, Soraya shed her gloves, strode over to the nearest rose, and tore it from its stem, crumpling it in her hand. As long as she had this garden, she could convince herself that she was good, that she was not designed solely for wickedness, for killing. But tonight she had learned how easy it was to become something cruel and murderous, how much effort it took to be good. To be small. They were the same thing for her, weren’t they?

  With a muffled cry, she lunged for the roses and began ripping them all from their stems, not even caring when the thorns pierced her skin. She moved through the entire garden in a frenzy of destruction, pulling the rosebushes apart and crumpling them underfoot until she had laid waste to it all. She knew she’d feel ashamed when she confronted the wreckage in the morning, but now—now—she felt nothing but the purest relief. She lost herself, and yet for the first time she was herself, more than she had ever been before.

  She was breathless when it was done, her hands smeared with dirt and red streaks that were either blood or crushed petals, her dress ruined. The grass was littered with crumpled roses and broken stems. Anyone who saw the golestan now would think a storm had struck.

  There was no sound but the rush of blood raging in her ears, but it all went silent as something gray and fluttering landed on a bare stem in front of her. Parvaneh, she thought, naming both the creature on the stem and the face that came instantly to her mind.

  Even now, Parvaneh was waiting for her, still holding her stolen glove hostage. Come back for it, she had said, and Soraya felt the pull of those words as strongly as if there were a cord tied between her and Parvaneh, one monster linked to another. She was the only one here who could make Soraya still feel human. Not even Azad could offer her that. He was too innocent, his hands too clean.

  Soraya reached out, one fingertip hovering over the moth’s wing. Would it matter anymore if she killed it? What was a moth or butterfly compared to a human being? But before she could make that choice, the moth fluttered away to safety, leaving Soraya feeling strangely bereft.

  Come back for it.

  Soraya slipped out the golestan door, heading toward the secret entrance in the stairway that she had shown Azad. She understood now that it wasn’t the golestan she needed tonight—not the comfort of her roses or even the assuring words of Azad.

  What she needed tonight was another monster.

  * * *

  The cavern was almost completely dark, the brazier emitting only a few sparks of light. Soraya was glad. The darkness was effacing; it hid the streaks of powdered bone on her dress, the bleeding scrapes on her hands, and the poison under her skin. Here, she was nothing but a voice.

  Or so she believed until she heard Parvaneh say, “You’ve had an eventful night, I see.”

  Soraya squinted through the bars until she saw the inhuman sheen of Parvaneh’s eyes. “Of course you can see in the dark,” Soraya muttered.

  Parvaneh walked up to the bars, more visible now that she was closer. “You came back. Does that mean you have the feather?”

  A wave of anger burned through Soraya, warming her cold hands. “You knew from the beginning that the feather could lift my curse,” she said, her voice little more than a tired rasp.

  Parvaneh’s face fell, her shoulders slumping. “So you found out,” she said, her voice dull with disappointment.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you never would have brought me the feather if I had.”

  “You were using me, then?”

  “And what were you doing with me?” Parvaneh said sharply. “If I had told you from the start how to lift your curse, you never would have come back here or spared me another thought. We owe nothing to each other except for the deal that we made. You would bring me the feather, and I would tell you how to use it to lift your curse. I would have kept my promise.”

  Soraya shook her head in disgust. “This was all a game to you.”

  “No,” Parvaneh said, her voice ringing through the cavern. Her hands clutched the bars so tightly that her veins stood out. “This is no game to me, Soraya. I need that feather. I don’t know why you bothered coming back without it—did you think you could trick me into revealing the divs’ secret plans? I’ve kept far more precious secrets to myself while enduring worse than this dungeon. So if you didn’t bring me the feather—”

  “I can’t bring it to you,” Soraya snapped. She gestured to her face, to the veins pulsing under her skin. “Don’t you think I would have used it by now if I could?”

  Parvaneh held Soraya’s gaze, the eerie glow of her eyes becoming stronger as she said, “But you know where it is, don’t you?”

  Soraya let her silence answer for her.

  “It’s not that you can’t find it, but that you can’t take it. Why?”

  “If I took it,” Soraya said, “I would have to betray my family and everything I’ve ever known.”

  “Why should you care about them?” Parvaneh nearly shouted. “Are they truly your family if they’ve failed to accept you as their own? If they cast you out and treat you with disdain? Why do they still matter to you?” Her face was contorted, her voice frantic, and if Soraya didn’t know better, she would think Parvaneh was on the verge of tears. She wondered what was fueling this sudden burst of emotion, but whatever sympathy she felt shriveled up when Parvaneh said, “You’ll never lift your curse if you’re unwilling to face any hardship.”

  “Unwilling?” Soraya spat back. “How do you think I found out where the feather is? I stepped inside a dakhmeh tonight. I spoke to a yatu, and he tried to attack me. I had to—”

  Her voice broke before the words left her throat, and then, finally, the tears came, pouring out of her with such violent force that she sank to the ground, her forehead resting on the dirt and stone as if she were prostrating herself before some divine authority.

  She let the tears come—she felt like she was expelling the dakhmeh from her lungs. And when she was finished, wrung dry at last, she was no longer tense or angry. She was almost
drowsy, and she thought she could probably curl up there on the dungeon floor and fall asleep.

  She looked up to find Parvaneh now sitting on the floor across from her, watching her intensely. “What happened at the dakhmeh, Soraya?”

  She heard Azad saying, Let’s leave this place and put it out of our minds. But why else had Soraya come here, if not to bury her confession in this dungeon? And who better than a demon to hear that confession and not judge her?

  “I went there for answers,” Soraya said, the words spilling out as easily as the tears had. “I asked the yatu where to find the feather, but the answer he gave me was … impossible.” Soraya closed her eyes, not even the darkness of the cavern enough to protect her from the truth of herself. “What I did find out tonight was what happens when I touch a living human being. I found out that I’m capable of killing—not as a mistake, but with purpose, with intent.” She swallowed. “With rage.”

  She opened her eyes then, because she knew she would find no judgment on Parvaneh’s face. But what she didn’t expect was for Parvaneh to drop her gaze when Soraya looked at her. She seemed distracted, staring at a spot on the ground, her forehead creased in thought, lost in some private conversation that Soraya couldn’t hear. Finally, she looked up at Soraya and said, “So you’ve made your choice?”

  Soraya shook her head. “There is no choice. I’ve always wondered who I would have been without my curse, what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t grown up hidden and ashamed. But after tonight, I wonder what kind of person I’m becoming, what this path is doing to me. I was always afraid the poison would make me a monster, but what if trying to get rid of it makes me more of a monster than I was before?”

  Parvaneh didn’t respond. She was staring at Soraya with something heavy and unreadable in her eyes. And again, Soraya found herself wondering what kind of life Parvaneh had lived before now—what was the “far worse” she had endured? Why did Soraya think she could read her own remorse written in the lines and patterns on Parvaneh’s face? A delicate sympathy floated in the silence between them, like ashes falling after a fire had burned itself out.