Girl, Serpent, Thorn(14)

She led him through the passageways, past stairways and doors that would open into different rooms in the palace, turning corners by instinct. When they reached the set of stairs that would take them down beneath Golvahar, she remembered to warn him to watch his step. Once they had descended, she let go of Azad’s hand to find an unlit torch in its sconce, along with a piece of flint that she knew would be in a crack in the wall. She hadn’t needed the torches in a long time, but she was grateful for them now as the fire illuminated their surroundings.

They were in a rounded chamber at the hidden heart of Golvahar, with three pathways leading onward—one straight ahead, one to the left, and one to the right, which was blocked by a door. Azad stood in the center of the chamber and looked around at the stone walls that encased them. Soraya flattened herself against the wall and tried not to look at the arch of his neck, the flicker of light and shadow caressing his throat.

“These tunnels run all through the palace?”

Her head snapped up to meet his waiting gaze. “Everywhere except for the newer wing on the other side. I’ve read that there used to be tunnels underneath the entire city, too—a way to smuggle in supplies in case of siege during the early Hellean wars—but they haven’t been used in so long that I’m not sure they still exist.”

“Who built the passageways in the palace?”

“No one knows for certain. The common theory is that a paranoid shah wanted to ensure he always had an escape route.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Paranoid or clever?”

“Perhaps a little of both. But either way, I suppose I owe him my thanks. I would be confined to my room otherwise.”

Azad gestured to the door. “Is that the way to the dungeon?”

Soraya nodded. “I asked my mother once why that door was locked, and she told me it was probably so no prisoners could escape.”

Azad went to examine the locked door. After an experimental try at the handle, he backed away and threw his shoulder against the door. The wood didn’t even budge, and so he tried again, and again, but ended up unsuccessful and breathless—and probably bruised, Soraya thought. It had been foolish to think they could break through a door that was meant to deter prisoners.

But Azad was still standing in front of the door, head tilting to one side. “I wonder…” he murmured.

He fell silent until finally, Soraya couldn’t help asking, “What are you thinking?”

“If I were a paranoid yet clever shah with a network of secret tunnels at my disposal,” he said, “I wouldn’t keep a secret dungeon key on my person, where it could be stolen. I would hide it somewhere no one would think to look for it, but where I could easily find it.”

“You think the key might be somewhere here?”

Azad shrugged. “That doesn’t help us much. It could be buried or inside the walls. It would take anyone ages to find it, if it’s even here at all.”

But Soraya stopped listening when he said “inside the walls,” because at hearing those words, an image flashed in her mind. Azad was right—it would take anyone ages to find the hidden key. But Soraya had grown up in these tunnels. She knew all their secrets, all their hidden grooves and notches, which meant that if there were any mysteries here, she would remember them.

Without saying a word to Azad, she went back toward the opening of the chamber and knelt on the ground. The colder months had always been difficult for her. Her golestan would wither away, and she would grow bored of her books, and so she had little else to do but explore the passages that belonged to her. When she was a child, she had noticed that one of the bricks here had an X carved into it. It would have been easily missed by anyone else, but at that age, the brick had been at her eye level. Now, on her knees, she found it again, running her fingers over the carved lines. A mystery she had never solved—until today.

The brick gave way under her hands, and she pulled it out. Inside the gap was a small silver key.

When she brought it back to Azad, he looked at her with something between awe and admiration. “How did you know it was there?”

She didn’t answer, but only smiled and fit the key into the lock. Let him still have some sense of wonder about the mysterious shahzadeh.

Azad carried the torch behind her as Soraya led the way into the unfamiliar passage. There were no stairs or side passages here, which she hoped meant that this tunnel would lead them straight to the dungeon. She noticed, too, that the ground was inclined downward, taking them lower and lower beneath Golvahar.

Finally, they reached what appeared to be a dead end, but Soraya quickly found the edge of the stone slab in front of her and tried to push it to the side. It only budged a little, after years of disuse, and so Azad placed the torch in an empty sconce on the wall and came to help her. Soraya’s breath caught in her throat as his arms reached around her, his hands on either side of hers against the stone. The slab moved more easily now, but Soraya was too worried about his proximity to her to feel any kind of excitement.

“That’s enough,” she whispered, her voice a rasp, when they had created a gap large enough for them both to pass through. She waited until he had moved away from her before she let herself breathe freely again.

“Let me go first,” he whispered back to her, and she agreed, not for her own safety, but in case any passing guard collided with her as she emerged from the wall.