Girl, Serpent, Thorn(11)

Soraya pushed her questions aside. She was still in the middle of the garden, in the middle of a crowd, her head lightly spinning. “I need to get back to the palace,” she said, her voice hoarse. Once she was inside, she could escape back into the passageways, their cool darkness never so appealing as now.

“I’ll take you,” Azad said. True to his word, he proceeded to lead her through the crowd, his arm around her shoulder both holding her up and shielding her from stray touches. Soraya’s heart slowed, and her head settled. She felt weightless, all responsibility removed from her, like she was simply a passenger in her body.

But as they neared the palace steps, Soraya found something else to worry about—Ramin was standing in the shade of the wide ayvan that marked the palace entrance. If they went in now, he would be sure to notice her, and she wasn’t ready to face him again so soon after last night’s encounter.

Soraya halted suddenly, and Azad’s brow furrowed with concern. “Not this way,” she said to him. She veered to the right, and he followed her lead toward the trees of the orchard around the side of the palace. As soon as they were beyond the main garden’s borders, the crowd began to diminish considerably, until they were finally alone. Even so, Soraya didn’t move away from under Azad’s arm. His nearness was no longer just a shield now, but a kind of luxury, a sip of heady wine that she would probably never taste again. Was it so wrong to linger?

It’s wrong when he doesn’t know what you are, or the danger he’s in, a voice in her mind answered. He said he knew her, but he couldn’t possibly know the whole truth, not when he had put his arm around her so comfortably.

Soraya halted somewhat abruptly under the shade of a pomegranate tree, causing Azad’s arm to slip away. “Thank you,” she said, “but I can go the rest of the way on my own.”

“Of course, shahzadeh banu,” he said with a small bow of his head. “You honored me by letting me assist you. Please tell me if I may help in any other way.” He lifted his head from its bow, his dark eyes looking to her in expectation and … was it hope?

She opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t need any further help, but what slipped out instead was, “How do you know who I am?”

He looked down with an embarrassed laugh, and she tried not to notice the graceful slope of his neck, the pronounced dimples in his cheeks. This is foolish, she told herself. She should have dismissed him immediately.

“I knew who you were when I saw you on the roof a few days ago,” Azad said. “You were exactly as I had pictured you.” He was staring at her now as boldly as he had done when he had spotted her on the roof, and the longer he looked, the more real she felt, like she was taking shape under his gaze.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He spoke softly, his tone almost reverent. “My father was once a merchant. He traveled all throughout Atashar and beyond, and when he returned, he would bring me stories from wherever he’d been. When I was no more than ten years old, he told me the mystery of the shahzadeh. No one outside the walls of Golvahar had ever seen her or heard her voice, he said. She was a secret, hidden away in the palace like a carefully guarded treasure.”

Soraya couldn’t help lifting an eyebrow at that. She wanted to remark that she was no treasure, but the way Azad was looking at her—that gentle, dreamy look, like he wasn’t quite sure she was real—held her back.

“I was captivated,” he continued. “I would stay up long into the night, wondering what you looked like and why you were kept hidden, imagining that I would ride up to the palace in a majestic horse to free you. I used to think that we’d…” He looked away, his cheeks coloring slightly. When he faced her again, his eyes gleamed with something that Soraya couldn’t recognize. “Do you see now why I recognized you? You’re my favorite story. I feel like I’ve known you for a long time.”

Soraya drew in a breath, unable to speak. For the first time, she saw herself as Azad had imagined her—the heroine of a story, not the monster. It was only an illusion, of course, born from a young boy’s uninformed romantic dreams, but for the space of a breath, she let herself enjoy it.

She didn’t want to tell him the truth. She wanted his version of her to keep existing, if only in his mind. And so she knew what she had to do.

“Well, you did come to my rescue today, so now that you’ve lived out your dreams, I’ll be on my way.”

His face fell at once, a wrinkle of dismay forming at the center of his forehead. “Is there anything I can say to persuade you to stay and talk with me for a little longer?”

Soraya smiled sadly and shook her head. “Trust me. It’s better that we—”

But before she finished speaking, a loud voice startled them both: “I thought I saw you in the crowd.”

She and Azad both turned at once to see the approaching figure of Ramin. She took a hasty step away from Azad, but that only made her look guiltier.

“It’s reckless of you to be out on such a crowded day.” He looked at her with a significant arch of his eyebrow. “You’ve even made a new friend. Are you sure that’s wise?”

All of Soraya’s muscles tightened at once. He wouldn’t dare tell Azad about her curse—to do so was to risk angering the royal family. Soraya was torn between the competing urges to shrink away, or step forward and show him she was unafraid. But her guilt from almost losing control the night before still lingered, and so Soraya simply said, “That’s none of your concern, Ramin.”