Girl, Serpent, Thorn(15)

With fluid grace, Azad passed through the wall, and a few moments later, he reached his hand through the gap for her. She took it and stepped out into a dimly lit corridor that smelled of sweat and stale air and something else that Soraya couldn’t quite detect.

After replacing the stone slab in the wall behind them, Azad gestured to the left and said, “This way.”

Soraya looked from right to left, both paths indistinguishable to her. “How do you know?”

“The ground.”

Soraya looked down and saw that the ground continued to incline downward to their left, upward to their right. She nodded and they continued down the corridor.

The strange smell grew stronger as they walked, until Soraya finally recognized it. “Esfand,” she murmured to Azad. The pungent smoke of burning wild rue seeds weakened divs, sapping their unnatural strength and making them lethargic. In a confined space like a dungeon cell, the smoke would be strong enough to manage a div in captivity. “If we follow the smell, we’ll find the div.”

The smell of the esfand acted as a beacon, and Soraya was thankful for it, because as they moved deeper into the dungeon, it became a labyrinth, full of twists and turns and dark hallways lined with doors that Soraya tried not to wonder about.

When the smell grew even stronger, and wisps of smoke became visible in the dim torchlight, Soraya knew they were close. “There,” Azad said, pointing ahead to a set of stairs heading downward. The smoke was clearly coming from below.

They had to duck their heads in the narrow stairway, and as they neared the bottom, Soraya saw the glow of a torch. Accessing the dungeon had been her main concern, but now that she was here, Soraya remembered that there was a monster in that cell, and she was heading straight toward it.

The stairs opened into a chamber hewn out of the rock. Halfway into the chamber, iron bars stretched from the top of the curved roof to the ground, creating a cave-like dungeon cell. Hanging from a hook in the wall near the stairs was a brazier, where the thick scented smoke was emanating from, as well as a torch. The torch created a circle of light, but half of the cell was still in shadow, and from those shadows, Soraya felt something watching them.

Soraya took a breath of stale air before stepping forward. What would she find inside that cell? According to the priests, divs were pieces of the Destroyer sent out into the world, given monstrous form by the Creator so that people could recognize evil when they saw it. Soraya had seen illustrations of divs in the library, but they all took different shapes. Some were enormous, with horns and fangs and sharp claws; some were scaled and reptilian with skin like armor; some were deathly pale, while others had mottled fur.

Soraya peered into the cell, adjusting to the dim light until she saw the amber glow of the div’s eyes. She watched as the figure slowly stood and stepped forward into the light. She braced herself for the monster’s hideous appearance, and then she saw it—

It was a girl.





6


At first sight of the young woman, Soraya thought they had made a mistake, and this wasn’t the div’s cell at all. But then the young woman walked all the way up to the bars, her long black hair falling away from her face, and Soraya knew there was no mistake.

The div’s skin had an odd pallor, with gray and brown patterns on her face like permanent shadows, and the amber glow of her eyes was unnaturally bright. At certain angles, they had a luminous sheen to them, like the eyes of nocturnal animals. Those eyes watched them now with a fierce stare that reminded Soraya of a hawk.

And now that Soraya was here, seeing a div for the first time, she didn’t know what to say. “I’m—”

But she barely managed to make a sound before the div held up a hand, her fingers slightly longer than a human’s. In a voice like nectar, a voice the color of her eyes, she said, “No need for intro ductions, shahzadeh. I know who you are and why you’re here. But I won’t speak to you unless you come to me alone. No guards … and no soldiers.” At that last word, her eyes flitted to Azad, behind Soraya’s shoulder. The div’s eyes narrowed slightly at the sight of him, and Soraya remembered that he was the one who had stopped her from killing Sorush and allowed her to be captured.

Soraya turned to Azad, who was glowering back at the div. She brushed her gloved fingers against his arm, and he looked at her, his face softening. “Please,” she said.

He hesitated briefly, then gave a curt nod. “I’ll wait at the top of the stairs and keep watch. If you need anything, shout for me.” He threw one last warning glare at the div, who waved good-bye to him with a smug grin, and retreated up the stairs.

Soraya waited until he was gone, and then, before she could change her mind, she slipped off her gloves and tucked them into her sash. If the div did know why she was here, she would understand the implied threat of that gesture.

The div’s eyes darted from Soraya’s bare hands up to her face, and she smiled, a flash of sharp white teeth. Her fingers curled slowly around the bars. “Isn’t it better now that it’s just the two of us? More personal. Now come, Soraya, and ask me your question.”

The sound of her name on the div’s tongue startled Soraya. The div hadn’t been lying when she said she knew her. It bothered Soraya, though, that they should be on such unequal terms from the start, and so instead of asking the question the div expected, Soraya said, “Tell me your name.”