Girl, Serpent, Thorn(33)

“No,” Parvaneh said, her voice ringing through the cavern. Her hands clutched the bars so tightly that her veins stood out. “This is no game to me, Soraya. I need that feather. I don’t know why you bothered coming back without it—did you think you could trick me into revealing the divs’ secret plans? I’ve kept far more precious secrets to myself while enduring worse than this dungeon. So if you didn’t bring me the feather—”

“I can’t bring it to you,” Soraya snapped. She gestured to her face, to the veins pulsing under her skin. “Don’t you think I would have used it by now if I could?”

Parvaneh held Soraya’s gaze, the eerie glow of her eyes becoming stronger as she said, “But you know where it is, don’t you?”

Soraya let her silence answer for her.

“It’s not that you can’t find it, but that you can’t take it. Why?”

“If I took it,” Soraya said, “I would have to betray my family and everything I’ve ever known.”

“Why should you care about them?” Parvaneh nearly shouted. “Are they truly your family if they’ve failed to accept you as their own? If they cast you out and treat you with disdain? Why do they still matter to you?” Her face was contorted, her voice frantic, and if Soraya didn’t know better, she would think Parvaneh was on the verge of tears. She wondered what was fueling this sudden burst of emotion, but whatever sympathy she felt shriveled up when Parvaneh said, “You’ll never lift your curse if you’re unwilling to face any hardship.”

“Unwilling?” Soraya spat back. “How do you think I found out where the feather is? I stepped inside a dakhmeh tonight. I spoke to a yatu, and he tried to attack me. I had to—”

Her voice broke before the words left her throat, and then, finally, the tears came, pouring out of her with such violent force that she sank to the ground, her forehead resting on the dirt and stone as if she were prostrating herself before some divine authority.

She let the tears come—she felt like she was expelling the dakhmeh from her lungs. And when she was finished, wrung dry at last, she was no longer tense or angry. She was almost drowsy, and she thought she could probably curl up there on the dungeon floor and fall asleep.

She looked up to find Parvaneh now sitting on the floor across from her, watching her intensely. “What happened at the dakhmeh, Soraya?”

She heard Azad saying, Let’s leave this place and put it out of our minds. But why else had Soraya come here, if not to bury her confession in this dungeon? And who better than a demon to hear that confession and not judge her?

“I went there for answers,” Soraya said, the words spilling out as easily as the tears had. “I asked the yatu where to find the feather, but the answer he gave me was … impossible.” Soraya closed her eyes, not even the darkness of the cavern enough to protect her from the truth of herself. “What I did find out tonight was what happens when I touch a living human being. I found out that I’m capable of killing—not as a mistake, but with purpose, with intent.” She swallowed. “With rage.”

She opened her eyes then, because she knew she would find no judgment on Parvaneh’s face. But what she didn’t expect was for Parvaneh to drop her gaze when Soraya looked at her. She seemed distracted, staring at a spot on the ground, her forehead creased in thought, lost in some private conversation that Soraya couldn’t hear. Finally, she looked up at Soraya and said, “So you’ve made your choice?”

Soraya shook her head. “There is no choice. I’ve always wondered who I would have been without my curse, what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t grown up hidden and ashamed. But after tonight, I wonder what kind of person I’m becoming, what this path is doing to me. I was always afraid the poison would make me a monster, but what if trying to get rid of it makes me more of a monster than I was before?”

Parvaneh didn’t respond. She was staring at Soraya with something heavy and unreadable in her eyes. And again, Soraya found herself wondering what kind of life Parvaneh had lived before now—what was the “far worse” she had endured? Why did Soraya think she could read her own remorse written in the lines and patterns on Parvaneh’s face? A delicate sympathy floated in the silence between them, like ashes falling after a fire had burned itself out.

“Then don’t do it,” Parvaneh said at last. Her voice rang out in the cavern with the clarity of conviction, and she shifted closer to the bars. “You were wrong when you said there is no choice. You made a choice. Now embrace it. You are the most powerful and protected being in Atashar. Why would you want to give that up? Why make yourself vulnerable? This is a dangerous world.”

Soraya thought again of the yatu—but this time she saw him not dead but alive, bending over her, tying her wrists together while her eye throbbed. Hadn’t she thrilled with the power of her curse when she had grabbed his wrist? Hadn’t she marveled at how easy it was to bring her attacker to his knees? Without her curse, he would have killed Azad and held her for ransom—but without her curse, she wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

“It’s because of you and all your talk of power that I killed the yatu,” Soraya snapped. It was an unfair accusation, but it comforted her a little. “That was what ran through my head tonight. I thought I was being powerful when I killed him, but all I’ve done is lose a piece of myself. It’s not power to be dangerous, to have to hide away behind walls so you don’t shame your family while everyone you’ve ever known leaves you behind. I want my family. I want companionship. I want—” But the word love refused to move beyond her lips, too new and precious to lay itself bare for mockery.