“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.
His hands tightened around her arms. “The pariks are spies, and cannot be trusted.”
With this new knowledge, Soraya surveyed the cavern once more, noticing that the divs practicing the drills were all larger than the divs who barked orders. Her gaze went back to the pit where the two divs were fighting—both of them kastars, large and menacing, showing no restraint.
Soraya had never seen a female soldier before. She had read stories of women who had donned armor and fought in armies, but she had never seen any herself, and so her eyes kept returning to the horned div and the pure, relentless fury of her movements. Soraya felt the impact of each blow that the horned div struck somewhere deep in her chest, as if the battle below were an extension of herself, the sound of metal against metal the scream that she had been holding inside her lungs for her entire life.
“Do you want to know why I brought you here, why I can’t bring myself to kill you?” the Shahmar said from behind her, his voice low and soft. “Because I know this is where you belong. I knew it the night we went to the dakhmeh. Before then, I thought you would merely be useful to me. But when I heard my story from your lips, when I saw you unleash all your fury on the yatu, I knew you deserved more than what your family had given you—as I once did.”
“I’m not like you,” Soraya said. She stared straight ahead, wishing she could tear her eyes away from the violence below and prove him wrong. “I won’t be like you.”
“That’s not what you told me that night, on the way to the dakhmeh.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, the tips of his claws brushing against her collarbone. “And do you remember what I told you? I said you were extraordinary—and I meant it. You came alive that night.”
Of course she remembered—he had stood behind her then, too, just like this, his hands on her shoulders, and she had wanted nothing more than to sink back against him.
Soraya twisted to face him, and his claws raked against her skin, leaving thin red scratches. “Then what good am I to you now?” she said in a rasp. “I’m not deadly anymore.”
He shook his head. “It isn’t the poison that makes you deadly, Soraya. It’s you. The poison was only a tool, a weapon like any other. But your will, your fury—that was what I saw in you. And I knew then that you were capable of anything. You proved that to me at the fire temple.”
At the mention of the temple, Soraya’s face went hot from shame. He kept using her words and actions against her, and she had no power to deny them. But before she could even try, a loud cry went up from below, and she spun to see the cause.
At first, she only saw the blood staining the dirt in the sparring pit below, and then she found its source: The gray div had buried his ax into the horned div’s arm. The horned div was bellowing in pain as blood spurted out of her like a gruesome fountain, while all around, the other divs cheered. The gray div removed his ax, and turned his back on the horned div, holding the ax above his head to the delight of the crowd. The horned div’s arm dangled uselessly from its socket, hanging on only by a few threads of muscle and skin, and her ax clattered down to the ground. Then the horned div ripped off the remains of her arm with a sickening tearing sound, threw it aside, and charged forward with a yell. Still boasting his triumph, the gray div didn’t notice the horned div’s attack until those horns went clean through his torso, impaling him.
Soraya put a hand over her mouth, afraid she would be ill, and turned away from the spectacle. Her hands were shaking, her eyes trying to blink away what she had seen, but along with the disgust and the nausea was a flood of relief that she was horrified at all—that she took no delight in the carnage, the way the other divs did. He’s wrong, her twisting stomach assured her. You don’t belong here.
The Shahmar silently led her away, back to the hallway. When they were in her room again, he told her he was returning to Golvahar, and so would not see her until the following night. Soraya heard his words in a daze, still trying to erase what she had seen.
“I would suggest you remain here until I return for you,” the Shahmar said, and he didn’t need to explain why.
He started to turn for the door, but Soraya gathered enough of her wits to call out, “Wait!” He stopped and looked at her expectantly. “What are you going to do to my brother?” she said.
“Why do you still care about any of them?” he asked, genuine curiosity in his voice. “Why are you still fighting me at all? Don’t you have everything you wanted? You wanted revenge against your family. You wanted to lift your curse. You wanted to be far away from Golvahar—with me.”
She shook her head. He wasn’t right. He couldn’t be right. As long as she fed the spark of hatred for him and let it spread through her, there would be no room for him to be right.
“I don’t want you,” she snapped. “I never did.”
“That’s a lie,” he said at once, and she hated that she couldn’t deny it. “And…” He took a hesitant step toward her, and in a voice she almost recognized, said, “And there’s no reason you shouldn’t want me still. My name truly was Azad, once, before it became lost to time and legend.” He held out his arms and looked down at his hands. “The face you knew was what I looked like before … before I became this.” His eyes met hers, and they were hopeful, almost human despite their color. “The gulf is not as wide as you think,” he said quietly, like he was telling her a secret.
I know, she almost replied, but to admit that was to admit that she had looked hard enough to see those remnants underneath.
“All that means,” she said, “is that I never should have trusted you in the fi
rst place. Now tell me what you’ve done with my brother.”
At once, his eyes went hard, and his hands clenched into fists. “I have plans for your brother, but you’re not ready to hear them yet.”
“If you harm him,” Soraya began, not even sure what she could threaten him with, “if you harm anyone in my family—”
“Don’t be naive. You know I can’t allow him to live for much longer.”
“If you expect me to ever speak to you again, you’ll allow it.”
A low growl escaped him. “I’ll return tomorrow night,” he said before he turned and left, nearly breaking the door in the process.
17
And now she was alone, with only her treacherous thoughts for company. Different walls, different furnishings, but in a way, she was exactly where she had always been.
She hadn’t wanted to take anything that the Shahmar offered, but her stomach demanded otherwise, so she ate the fruit on the table and wondered how she was supposed to pass the time until he returned. Perhaps that was the point—to leave her here long enough that she would be pleased to see him when he returned for her, hungry for any company. The thought made her shudder, because she knew that plan would work in the end. She had been lonely enough at Golvahar to be susceptible to his charms, and now her isolation was even worse.
Without windows, there was no sense of how much time had passed since he’d left her here. Soraya looked at her bowl of fruit, now missing one pear and several grapes. She had eaten without thinking, but now she realized she would need to ration herself more carefully. She had no idea if she would be fed again before Azad’s return. She would have to preserve her water, too. At least at Golvahar, she had never had to worry about food or drink—she had lived in comfort, lacking nothing except company. Soraya buried her head in her hands, guilt and regret turning the taste of the fruit sour in her mouth.
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