Girl, Serpent, Thorn (12 page)

“Go ask her why,” Parvaneh said at once, an urgent note in her voice.

Soraya shook her head, which was throbbing in pain. “I shouldn't have come back here. Neither of us can help the other now.” She turned to go.

“Soraya, wait!” Parvaneh called. “This belongs to you.” She reached her arm through the bars, holding out something dark.
Soraya stepped closer, but she was too afraid to reach out with bare hands.

Understanding the source of her hesitation, Parvaneh said, “Don't be afraid. Take it. I'll be careful enough for both of us.”

Soraya slowly lifted her hand, reaching through the shadows until she felt the soft, familiar fabric of her glove. She took hold of it, remembering that if Parvaneh was the reason she had killed, she was also the reason she had been able to save herself and Azad.

Parvaneh didn't let go of it. Her mouth was a thin line, tense with unspoken words, her eyes burning with some unknown fire. But then she shook her head and let the glove slip out of her fingers. “There's much you don't know, much I can't tell you,” she said. “But trust me when I say that if I were you, I wouldn't shed my armor for the sake of a kind word or a gentle touch. That's my advice to you, from one monster to another.”

She retreated back into the shadows then without any word of farewell, as if certain that Soraya would return again.

 

The next morning—the morning of the wedding—Soraya's mother arrived along with her breakfast. Tahmineh was already dressed for the wedding in a gown of purple silk, her hair braided with jewels, and next to her, Soraya felt haggard and unkempt. She'd slept for maybe an hour at most, and those brief snatches of sleep had come with terrible dreams. In a way, she was glad she wasn't attending the ceremony.

Her mother took one worried look at her and carried the tray of food to the low table in the room. “I thought it would be nice to sit together this morning,” she said as she and Soraya settled on cushions across from each other at the table. “I know I haven't had as much time to spend with you this year because of the wedding, and I'm very sorry for that. But after today, I'll make up for it.”

Soraya put a date in her mouth so she wouldn't have to respond. It wasn't true, of course. Even after the wedding, Tahmineh
would want to help Laleh settle into her new role as shahbanu, and in a few months, they would all move on from Golvahar without her.

Perhaps Tahmineh expected Soraya to be sullen today; she continued talking, filling her in on court gossip without expecting Soraya to say much in return. This suited Soraya; all she could think about was Parvaneh's claim that Tahmineh was responsible for her curse, and she was afraid that if she spoke, the question would come tumbling out.

Soraya was fairly sure that Tahmineh had lied about the details of the curse, but she had never imagined that Tahmineh had
wanted
her daughter cursed. There was no logical reason for it. Soraya was a constant threat to their dynasty. She would be much more valuable to her family if she could appear at court or marry well or simply not be a terrible secret they needed to hide. Parvaneh's accusation didn't make sense.

Go ask her why,
Parvaneh had commanded, as if doing so would be as simple as posing the question. But Soraya knew that a question like that would be the same as an accusation, and to accuse her mother—to accuse the
shah's mother
—of associating with divs and meddling in forbidden magic was disrespectful at best and borderline treasonous at worst.

And what if Parvaneh is wrong?
Soraya thought. What if she ruined her relationship with her mother for nothing? Already, she felt a gulf far wider than the table between her and Tahmineh—a gulf large enough to fit the dungeon and the dakhmeh, the yatu's body lying at the bottom of it. What if there was a loneliness even deeper than the one she felt now?

When Tahmineh finally stood to leave, Soraya couldn't help feeling relieved. “I need to check in on the bride and make sure she'll be ready,” Tahmineh said. She tried to sound as if it were an obligation, but Soraya heard the pride and excitement in her mother's voice. This was the kind of relationship she wanted to
have with a daughter—why, then, would she have condemned her own to the shadows?

At the doorway, Tahmineh turned back to Soraya and said in a lowered voice, “I know how disappointed you were about the div, but I know it wouldn't have helped you. You can't trust anything they say.”

“I know, Maman,” Soraya said.

Tahmineh smiled. “I'm glad you understand. And even if you don't, trust me now and you'll understand one day.”

Soraya nodded, but once her mother was gone and the door was shut, she felt a scream building inside her chest.
How can I trust you,
she'd wanted to say,
when I don't know what the truth is anymore?
And yet, her mother was right—Parvaneh had destroyed her with a single word, a single suggestion. Soraya would never fully believe Parvaneh, but she would never be able to stop wondering, either.

Before she even realized what she was doing, Soraya went to the hidden door by her bed and stepped into the passageways. She had to do
something
to either confirm this suspicion or forever dismiss it. Since she couldn't bring herself to ask her mother directly, she would have to go digging through her rooms for evidence instead. Her mother would be with Laleh now, and then they would all go out to the garden for the ceremony—her rooms would be empty, and so Soraya could sneak in and out unnoticed.

Only when she arrived at her mother's antechamber did she hesitate. The room was empty, but her mother's jasmine scent was in the air, and as always, Soraya felt like an intruder.

But she had come there with no other intention but to disturb this room's peace, and so she began her search, beginning with the antechamber. She gingerly turned over cushions and peered inside empty vases, still feeling as if she were contaminating everything in the room.

There weren't many places to hide anything here, so she moved
on to the bedchamber. As her search went on, she grew less careful, less reverent. She looked under beds and chairs and even rugs, inside drawers and jewelry boxes and the wardrobe, pushing aside her mother's gowns with a roughness that felt strangely satisfying. She looked everywhere, without even knowing what she was looking for.

She was searching for some sign that her mother knew what had happened to her, but apart from a written confession, she couldn't imagine what that sign would be. And perhaps that was the reason she had chosen to snoop through her mother's things: not to prove Parvaneh right, but to prove her wrong.

And only when she realized this did she find something.

In her search, Soraya had taken down a tapestry hanging against the wall across from her mother's bed. As she went to replace it, she noticed that one of the stones on the wall was different than the others—it was scored, like someone had chipped at it. She went to her knees and examined it more closely. It was loose, and so Soraya removed it, still telling herself that it was simply a loose stone her mother had covered with the tapestry because it marred the beauty of her room.

She was halfway convinced of this until she found something inside the wall—something her mother had clearly wanted to hide.
Whatever it is might not be hers,
Soraya told herself.
It might have been here for hundreds of years before us
. Soraya reached into the wall and pulled out what appeared to be a bundle of rags—bloodstained rags.

Soraya unwrapped the bundle and laid it out flat on the ground. And then she let out a moan and covered her face with her hands.

It was a blanket, and yes, it was stained with blood. But beneath the blood, dust, and grime, she saw the fading pattern on the soft, thinning cotton: a pattern of stars.

She breathed in, and the smell of esfand seemed to be all around her as she heard Parvaneh's voice saying,
She brought
you to the pariks wrapped in a blanket of stars and asked for this curse
.

The pieces began to join together in Soraya's mind. The pained, guilty look Tahmineh always wore when she saw her daughter. Her insistence that Soraya not see the div in the dungeon, and her panicked insistence at knowing what Parvaneh had told her. Her dismissal of all of Soraya's questions when she was a child.
The ways of divs are mysterious and unjust,
she had always said, to cover up any cracks in her story.

Soraya heard her own breathing, sharp and quick, as she tried to read a different message in the pattern of stars. But they spelled out only one truth, over and over again:
She did this to me
.
She knew all along
.

Soraya still didn't understand why her mother would bring such suffering onto her daughter, but she couldn't deny this blanket, still stained with blood from a div's heart.

Why me and not Sorush?
She couldn't help asking the question that had plagued her since childhood. Why was she cursed, but not her twin? Why did she have to hide in the shadows so that he could grow in the light? Why had she chosen not to take the feather for his sake, when her family had never once done anything for hers?

She heard Parvaneh saying,
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?

She heard Azad's gentle voice promising,
Our story isn't over yet, Soraya.

She heard their voices so clearly, but when she tried to think of her mother, her father, her brother, or the people of Atashar—all she heard was silence.

In the stars of the bloodstained blanket, she saw her choice laid out in front of her. She could choose to cut these ties that had never done anything but strangle her so that she could be free to
live the life she had always wanted. All she needed was a feather to drain this poison that her mother had given her.

With shaking hands, Soraya folded the blanket under her arm and left the room, not bothering to replace the tapestry on the wall. Her blood pounded a relentless rhythm throughout her whole body as she made her way back to her room, the path ahead of her clearer than it ever had been. She felt like she'd been struck by lightning, and now there was a fire crackling all through her. If she waited too long to take the feather, then the fire would go out, and she would become nothing but ashes before she could lift her curse. It had to be today, before she could talk herself out of it. Everyone would be in the garden, including the priests, which meant that the fire temple would be unguarded.

In her room, Soraya hid the blanket deep under her bed, then rummaged through her gardening tools for the urn she used to water the roses. She filled it with water from the pool in the golestan and went out through the garden door—and nearly tripped over Azad's outstretched legs.

Some of the water in the urn sloshed as she recovered her balance. Azad had been sitting with his back against the garden wall, and he leaped to his feet at the sight of Soraya. “I've been waiting here all morning, hoping to see you,” he said. “I wanted to check on you after last night.”

“I'm fine,” she said flatly, and kept walking.

He followed, of course, and she knew it wouldn't take him long to realize what she was carrying and where she was going. “Shouldn't you be in the gardens for the wedding?” she said.

“I don't care about the wedding. Soraya, what are you doing? Did something happen?”

He took hold of her arm, forcing her to stop if she didn't want to spill more water. She looked up at him, wondering how much to tell him. He might find her plan abhorrent—treasonous, even—
but he had seen the worst of her last night, and he had stayed by her side. And in any case, he would know soon enough.

She looked around them to make sure no one was listening. The air was pungent with meat and herbs, flowers, and spices, but this part of the grounds was empty today—everyone was either inside the palace or in the gardens. “I'm going to the fire temple,” she said. “I'm going to free myself.”

He held her gaze, and then he shook his head slowly and said, “Whenever I think I finally know you, you surprise me. But Soraya, are you sure this is what you want? Your family—”

“My family
did this to me,
” she snapped, clutching the handles of the urn so hard her knuckles hurt. “My mother had me cursed and lied to me about it for years. So tell me, what do I owe my family? My loyalty? My affection? When have they ever given me either of those? They sacrificed my life and my freedom—I'm only taking back what they stole from me.”

For the first time in their acquaintance, Azad looked scared of her. His hand dropped from her arm and he took a step back, his mouth falling open in shock. But then he spoke, and she understood that
she
wasn't the cause of his growing horror. “Your mother did this to you?” he said. “Did she tell you why?”

“No,” Soraya replied. “I haven't spoken to her. I don't
want
to speak to her. All she's ever done is lie to me.”

“I understand,” Azad said, stepping closer to her again. “Trust me, I know that anger. I've felt it before. But are you sure you want to do this? Are you ready for the consequences?”

“Yes,” she said at once, but truthfully, she hadn't thought much of the consequences. She wanted to strike now, without worrying about what came after. The yatu had been sentenced to death for attempting to put out the fire. Soraya knew she would receive no less severe a punishment—unless she escaped, as he had. “Yes,” she said again. “I want this. And then I want to leave Golvahar and never come back.” She shifted the urn's weight to rest in the crook
of one arm, and then shyly, uncertainly, she put her gloved hand on Azad's chest, fingers curling over his heart. “Would you come with me?” she asked him in a whisper.

She didn't know what she was asking—for him to come to the temple with her, or to run away with her, or to stay by her side for as long as she wanted him. All of them, she supposed. The idea of freeing herself from her curse only to lose Azad seemed cosmically unjust when he was the one person she wanted to touch most of all.

He took a hesitant breath, but Soraya knew he would agree. She knew he must feel the same bond that she felt, that unspoken promise from the dakhmeh. She had become a murderer to save his life—and in return, he had agreed that there was nothing she could do that would drive him away. They would rise or fall together.

“Soraya.” He put his hand over hers, and she felt the heat of his skin through the fabric of her gloves. “I dreamed of you for so long. I would do anything to be with you. Even this.”

“I know I'm asking much of you, to sacrifice your position so soon after you earned it.”

He shook his head. “I've already learned how suddenly that can be taken away. I lost my family and my social standing a long time ago. I have nothing else to lose now—except for you.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her gloved fingers, a promise of things to come.

She wanted to linger, but she took back her hand and said, “It has to be now, while the priests are occupied and the temple is unguarded.”