Girl, Serpent, Thorn(32)

She wanted to cry, to have a measure of release, at least, but she felt withered and empty. The smell of death and dirt from the dakhmeh still lingered on her clothes and in her hair. It was trapped inside her lungs, along with powdered bone remains that also stained her gloves and dress. But Soraya knew that even if she bathed and changed, even if she burned these clothes, she would carry the dakhmeh with her for the rest of her life. That was why the living should never enter the dakhmeh—there was no way to truly leave it behind.

They parted ways outside the golestan. Soraya entered alone, using the key that she had slipped in her sash when she had left earlier this evening, but she couldn’t bring herself to continue on to her room. Her body didn’t want to move, and she wondered if she would still be standing in the dakhmeh over the yatu’s body if Azad hadn’t been there to lead her away. She had always thought guilt was an emotion, but now she understood that guilt was a sickness, a fever. It made her feel like all her muscles were being stretched beyond their limits, her body twisting itself around this new and terrible truth.

She was a murderer. She was a monster.

Soraya looked around at her garden. It was the furthest place she could imagine from the dakhmeh—teeming with life, the air fresh and clean with the scent of dew and roses. It was all life that she had nurtured herself, with her own hands. It was life that she couldn’t kill.

It was an elaborate and beautiful lie.

Without realizing what she was doing, Soraya shed her gloves, strode over to the nearest rose, and tore it from its stem, crumpling it in her hand. As long as she had this garden, she could convince herself that she was good, that she was not designed solely for wickedness, for killing. But tonight she had learned how easy it was to become something cruel and murderous, how much effort it took to be good. To be small. They were the same thing for her, weren’t they?

With a muffled cry, she lunged for the roses and began ripping them all from their stems, not even caring when the thorns pierced her skin. She moved through the entire garden in a frenzy of destruction, pulling the rosebushes apart and crumpling them underfoot until she had laid waste to it all. She knew she’d feel ashamed when she confronted the wreckage in the morning, but now—now—she felt nothing but the purest relief. She lost herself, and yet for the first time she was herself, more than she had ever been before.

She was breathless when it was done, her hands smeared with dirt and red streaks that were either blood or crushed petals, her dress ruined. The grass was littered with crumpled roses and broken stems. Anyone who saw the golestan now would think a storm had struck.

There was no sound but the rush of blood raging in her ears, but it all went silent as something gray and fluttering landed on a bare stem in front of her. Parvaneh, she thought, naming both the creature on the stem and the face that came instantly to her mind.

Even now, Parvaneh was waiting for her, still holding her stolen glove hostage. Come back for it, she had said, and Soraya felt the pull of those words as strongly as if there were a cord tied between her and Parvaneh, one monster linked to another. She was the only one here who could make Soraya still feel human. Not even Azad could offer her that. He was too innocent, his hands too clean.

Soraya reached out, one fingertip hovering over the moth’s wing. Would it matter anymore if she killed it? What was a moth or butterfly compared to a human being? But before she could make that choice, the moth fluttered away to safety, leaving Soraya feeling strangely bereft.

Come back for it.

Soraya slipped out the golestan door, heading toward the secret entrance in the stairway that she had shown Azad. She understood now that it wasn’t the golestan she needed tonight—not the comfort of her roses or even the assuring words of Azad.

What she needed tonight was another monster.



* * *



The cavern was almost completely dark, the brazier emitting only a few sparks of light. Soraya was glad. The darkness was effacing; it hid the streaks of powdered bone on her dress, the bleeding scrapes on her hands, and the poison under her skin. Here, she was nothing but a voice.

Or so she believed until she heard Parvaneh say, “You’ve had an eventful night, I see.”

Soraya squinted through the bars until she saw the inhuman sheen of Parvaneh’s eyes. “Of course you can see in the dark,” Soraya muttered.

Parvaneh walked up to the bars, more visible now that she was closer. “You came back. Does that mean you have the feather?”

A wave of anger burned through Soraya, warming her cold hands. “You knew from the beginning that the feather could lift my curse,” she said, her voice little more than a tired rasp.

Parvaneh’s face fell, her shoulders slumping. “So you found out,” she said, her voice dull with disappointment.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you never would have brought me the feather if I had.”

“You were using me, then?”

“And what were you doing with me?” Parvaneh said sharply. “If I had told you from the start how to lift your curse, you never would have come back here or spared me another thought. We owe nothing to each other except for the deal that we made. You would bring me the feather, and I would tell you how to use it to lift your curse. I would have kept my promise.”

Soraya shook her head in disgust. “This was all a game to you.”