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.
Another meal, and then the seamstress returned with the gown. Once the gown was on, Soraya couldn’t stop herself from asking the spotted div, “Could you bring me a mirror? Just for a short time?”
The div considered this, then nodded. She guided the seamstress away and returned several minutes later carrying a full-length mirror.
Once the div set down the mirror, Soraya walked up to it, hands trembling in anticipation. This was the first time she would see herself since lifting her curse, the first time she would see her face unmarred by a web of veins waiting to spread.
In the mirror was a young woman in a dress that fit her perfectly, her hair braided with jewels, her eyes rimmed with kohl. Soraya wanted to hate the sight of herself—but she couldn’t. She looked more like her mother now, the promise of her poise and beauty finally fulfilled. She looked like the queen that Laleh should have been. She looked like everything that had ever been taken from her. This was who she would have been if she had never been cursed.
And as the leopard-spotted div drew her away from the mirror and led her out of the room, Soraya wondered—what would she do if Parvaneh didn’t return in time? What would she allow herself to become?
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Soraya stepped into the shade of the ayvan, shielding her eyes as she looked out into the garden. She could recognize some of the divs gathered there—Nasu was the first to catch her eye, but she noticed others who seemed familiar to her from Arzur. Interspersed among them were members of court, glancing nervously around them. Did they know what this gathering was for? Did they regret buying their freedom in exchange for accepting Azad as shah? Soraya supposed she should have felt disdain for them, but she was in no position to judge their self-preservation, and mostly she hoped they wouldn’t all die tonight because of her.
Kneeling at the head of the steps were three bowed figures, their hands tied behind their waists. First Sorush, then Laleh, and then Tahmineh, their backs all to her. Soraya’s eyes locked on them immediately, so intently that she didn’t notice when a long shadow removed itself from the wall and came to her side.
“You’re even more beautiful than I imagined you would be,” Azad whispered in her ear. “You look like a queen already.”
Soraya looked up at him and forced a smile. “It’s a beautiful gown, but executions are messy, and it would be a shame to spoil it. I should go back and change.”
He brushed one knuckle against her cheek. “Soraya, the only thing that could make you more beautiful to me than you are now is to see you covered in that young man’s blood.”
She had no response to that.
He took her hand and led her to the head of the steps until they were standing beside the bound figures of her loved ones. Azad had chosen the position carefully—from here, Sorush’s blood would run red down the white marble stairs.
“Tonight, you shall have a queen,” Azad called out to the crowd. “But first, you will have blood.”
The divs cheered at this, while the humans in the crowd all looked faintly ill. Soraya kept her eyes on them, not yet ready to see how the three figures beside her were looking at her. Did they think she had agreed to this? Could she blame them if they did?
Azad drew a sword from his side and wrapped Soraya’s hand around its handle. “Soon it will be finished,” he murmured, too low for anyone else to hear. “It will be easier than you think.”
She turned, sword in hand, to look down at her brother’s hunched form. She could still hear his vicious words from the throne room, and she had been afraid of what she would find in his eyes now. But she hadn’t expected that he wouldn’t look at her at all. He kept his gaze straight ahead, his spine as straight as his bindings would allow. He would die a king.
Beyond him, Laleh wasn’t looking at her, either, because her eyes were too full of tears, her head bowed so she wouldn’t have to witness Sorush’s death. But why wouldn’t Sorush look at her? Why wouldn’t he look up and see if she had some hidden message for him, some silent reassurance that all would be well? Soraya’s grip tightened on the sword handle. This was what he had always done—turned away from her when the sight was too difficult to acknowledge, or when it would damage the royal image he wanted to project. He had known how unhappy she had been, and yet he had done nothing to help her. Again, Soraya found Nasu in the crowd, and as their eyes met, Nasu gave her a small nod of approval.
She raised the sword, laying the flat of it against the nape of Sorush’s neck. He flinched at the feel of cold metal against his skin. You can’t ignore that, can you? “Bow your head,” Soraya said coldly—because Azad was watching, and she couldn’t show too much hesitation, or he would suspect. It will be easier than you think.
Sorush bowed his head, and as he did, her mother’s face came into view. She was the only one of the three prisoners who was looking at Soraya, her eyes red but dry. When Soraya’s eyes met hers, Tahmineh mouthed two words: I’m sorry.
The sword wavered in Soraya’s hand, and she felt the urge to cry—to throw the sword to the ground and crawl into her mother’s lap, as she had always wanted to do when she was a child. Instead, she looked down at the curling hair at the base of Sorush’s skull, at the ridge of his spine, and wondered if she would have the strength to kill him in one blow.
Because she would have to kill him—there was no way around that now. She was using the drama of the occasion to stall for time, hoping Azad would think she was trying to torture her brother, but she couldn’t do so for much longer. Parvaneh wasn’t coming, and if she didn’t kill Sorush, then Azad would murder him anyway, along with everyone else in her family. This was not an execution, but a sacrifice. And if Sorush would only have looked at her, she could have tried to tell him that, so he would know he was dying for a worthy cause.
She raised the sword …
… and almost dropped it as a piercing cry filled the air. It wasn’t a human sound, but the battle cry of a bird of prey. Soraya looked up and found the majestic form of the simorgh swooping down over the cypress trees. A mother coming to protect her young, she thought with a wave of relief.
Every head in the garden turned upward—and the first rain of arrows fell from the sky.
“What is this?” she heard Azad shout, and as he spoke, several of the divs in the garden—all of them with wings, Soraya noticed—fell to the ground, arrows lodged deeply in their chests. Above, at least twenty winged figures remained out of reach as they let loose more arrows. Parvaneh found the pariks, Soraya thought with a burst of pride.
Soraya acted quickly, kneeling beside Sorush and cutting through the rope around his wrists with her sword. “Here,” she said, putting the sword in his now-freed hands. “Be their shah again.”
“Soraya—” He finally faced her, mouth hanging open for a moment before his eyes hardened into a determined stare. And for the first time since he had become shah, Soraya saw herself reflected in those eyes, the two of them in perfect understanding. He gave her a short nod and rushed into the fray.
Next, Soraya freed Laleh, who didn’t need Soraya to tell her what to do. She grabbed Soraya’s head, kissed her cheek, and then ran into the palace, where her father and the other captured azatan were waiting.
“I knew it,” Tahmineh was saying as Soraya began to undo her bindings. “I knew you would find them.”
But before Soraya could completely free her moth
er’s hands, she felt a grip like iron clamp down on her wrist. Azad pulled her up from the ground like she was weightless and spun her around to face him. “You knew,” he said, and even in the growl of his voice, she could hear a note of hurt. “You deceived me.”
“You taught me how.”
His grip tightened around her wrist. “Remember that I warned you, Soraya.”
He might have said more, but then an arrow hit his shoulder, lodging in the armor of his scales. With a cry of surprise, he released Soraya and took a staggering step backward. “You,” he snarled, looking at someone behind Soraya. “But how—”
“Did you think I wouldn’t be here to see you fall?” Parvaneh said, stepping forward to Soraya’s side. Her bow was still drawn, a fresh arrow pointed at Azad. “Nothing could have kept me away.”
Azad wrenched the arrow out of his shoulder and tossed it aside, drawing a dagger from his belt. “Stay back,” Parvaneh said to Soraya. “I’ll keep my promise to you. On his knees, remember?”
Soraya gave Parvaneh’s shoulder a quick squeeze and hurried back to Tahmineh. “Look at them,” Tahmineh said quietly, her eyes fixed on the battle in the garden. “They’re fighting back.”
Soraya followed her mother’s gaze and saw that she was right. The simorgh and the pariks were still fighting the divs both from above and on the ground, but they weren’t the only ones. The other humans in the garden, perhaps rallied by Sorush’s example, had retrieved weapons from the fallen divs and were now doing their best to strike against the divs while they were distracted from above.
Tahmineh’s hands were free now, but when Soraya looked back to check on Parvaneh, she went cold with fear. Parvaneh’s bow lay in two pieces on the ground, and beside it was Parvaneh on her back, Azad poised above her with his dagger. Just like the dakhmeh, Soraya thought, only now Azad was in the place of the yatu. She had saved Azad then, but she’d had poison in her veins. What did she have now?
From above, the simorgh gave another fierce cry, and when Soraya looked up, she saw something floating down toward her. It was a green feather, tipped with orange—her birthright, granted to her freely.
Soraya leaped to pluck it from the air, then rushed toward Azad. She didn’t think she would have the strength to plunge the feather deeply enough to break through the scales and pierce his skin—but Parvaneh certainly did.
Azad was lifting his dagger over Parvaneh, and Soraya knew that she would need to do more than grab his wrist, as she had done with the yatu. She threw herself down over Parvaneh, shielding her with her body, and looked up at Azad with all the defiance she had been holding back.
His arm still in the air, Azad froze, his slit pupils becoming razor-thin. Slowly, he lowered his arm. “You care for her, don’t you?” he said, sounding despondent. “All this time, you’ve been working against me.”
Still keeping her eyes on Azad, Soraya’s hand found Parvaneh’s, waiting until she felt Parvaneh’s fist close over the simorgh’s feather. “Are you truly surprised?” she said. She started to rise from the ground, keeping herself between Azad and Parvaneh. All around them was violence and destruction, and yet the two of them might have been far from it all, Azad’s attention focused purely on her. “You’ve used me from the start. You used me to hurt my family—”
“You made that choice on your own. All I did was refuse to hold you back.”
“No,” she said forcefully, satisfied when he took a startled step backward. She had blamed herself so many times for what had happened, for the choices she had made, but at the root of every misguided choice, every terrible consequence, was one name. “If I have to bear the blame, then so do you. I thought it was my fault for trusting you, for being such an easy mark for you,” she said, moving steadily toward him, her fists bunched in the skirt of her gown. “But you were the one who betrayed that trust.” With each step she took, he retreated back from her, and it made her feel dangerous again. “I put out the fire, but you were the one who attacked Golvahar and made my brother kneel in front of you. My mother cursed me, but you were the reason why. Everything that happens to you now is your own—”
“Enough!” Azad barked, reaching to grab her by the shoulders. “None of this matters,” he said to her through clenched teeth. “You won’t win. Every div killed here today will be replaced in my army. All you’ve done is sentence your family to death.”
Soraya offered him a cold smile. “Your army won’t follow you for much longer.”
“And why is that?”
But she didn’t need to answer, because while they were speaking—while Soraya had kept him distracted—Parvaneh had risen from the ground and begun to circle around them. Soraya saw her now behind Azad, a flash of green in her hand. And immediately after Azad spoke, Parvaneh leaped onto his back and plunged the sharp end of the feather into his neck, burying it in a patch of exposed skin not covered by scales.
Everyone in the garden—div and parik and human alike—went still as the Shahmar let out a scream of rage and pain before falling heavily to his knees at Soraya’s feet, just as Parvaneh had promised.
As he’d fallen, Parvaneh had pulled out the feather and jumped down from his back, breathing a sigh of relief, her mission finally fulfilled. But now she was watching Azad in awe along with Soraya and the rest of the garden—because something was happening to the Shahmar. His scales rippled over his skin like they were eating him alive, and then, slowly, they began to recede, leaving him a mottled mixture of scale and skin, demon and man. He covered his face in his hands, and Soraya watched as those sharp nails became blunt, and the scales on his head were replaced with hair. He still had his wings, but when he looked up at her in despair, his eyes were human.
He looked so exposed, so vulnerable, kneeling in front of Soraya without his armor. She remembered that strange sense of emptiness when she realized the poison had left her, and she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of sympathy.
He rose on unsteady legs, and even though his transformation was still incomplete, he was human now in a way she had never seen him before. There was a murmur of discontent coming from the garden as the divs realized that their leader had become useless to them, but Soraya kept her eyes on Azad, willing him to ignore the divs. She held out her hand to him, and when she said his name, he looked at her, eyes wild and pleading. “It will be over soon,” she said softly. It was not a boast of victory, but an assurance, an attempt at comfort. His fight—with her, with himself, with fate—was over, and he could be free.
Soraya never knew what choice Azad would have made, because the silence between them was interrupted by sounds of battle coming from the back of the garden, near the palace gates.
People were surging onto the grounds—people from the city, bearing torches that shone against the darkening sky, bearing weapons they had forged and hidden away. The simorgh’s cry must have let them know that the time had come to fight. Soraya thought of the people she had seen in the city, seemingly defeated but in truth waiting for the right time to strike, as she had done, and she felt a surge of pride at their boundless resilience. The battle began anew, but it was clear now that the divs would be outnumbered.
She had lost her tentative connection with Azad, whose eyes were wide with panic. “Azad,” she said again, but when he turned to look at her, there was a familiar cold glint in his eyes. Ah, there he is, Soraya thought. She unconsciously recoiled from him, which seemed to awaken his remaining predatory instincts. Soraya saw the flash of his dagger in his hand before he lunged toward her. Parvaneh immediately bolted for him in response, but before either of them could reach their target, someone roughly shoved Soraya to the side.
Tahmineh now stood where Soraya had been, and so it was Tahmineh who ended up in Azad’s chokehold, with his dagger poised across her throat. “No!” Soraya shouted, and behind Azad, Parvaneh froze, afraid to provoke him.
“Don’t follow,” Azad snarled as he began to back both himself and Tahmineh toward the palace doorway. But as he began
to retreat under the ayvan, figures appeared in the doorway with swords bared. Soraya recognized the spahbed—his waist was still bandaged, but he stood firm, sword pointed in Azad’s direction. Beside and behind him were other wounded soldiers recovered enough to fight.
Cornered again, Azad let out a cry of frustration. And then, with a flourish of his still-powerful wings, he rose up into the air, taking Soraya’s mother with him.
29
“No,” Soraya kept saying under her breath, that one word over and over again. She watched in terror as the two figures flew up over the roof. But the effort of flying had used up the remaining force of Azad’s wings, because when they were barely over the palace, his wings began to crumble like dry leaves, and he and Tahmineh crashed down onto the surface of the roof.
“Go!” Soraya shouted to Parvaneh, but Parvaneh was already flying up to the roof, and Soraya ran past the soldiers into the palace.
She’ll be safe, Soraya told herself. She’s always been able to outsmart him. But Azad’s promise to slaughter her family still rang in her ears as she rushed toward the stairwell to the roof. Just as she reached the stairs, something with claws grabbed her by the back of her dress, a low growl coming from above her. Soraya let out a frustrated cry and wildly thrashed against the div that held her, but soon the div let out a yelp of pain and the claws released her.
Soraya spun to find the div’s severed right arm on the ground. And behind the div was a familiar soldier, his sword red with the div’s blood.
Girl, Serpent, Thorn Page 27
