Girl, Serpent, Thorn(38)

But no, she wouldn’t think of that. She couldn’t think of it now, when she was so close to freedom.

Soraya remembered the yatu’s instructions. Hardly breathing, she pressed the pad of her finger against the sharp tip of the feather, hard enough for a bead of blood to appear, like a single pomegranate seed.

At first, she felt no different, and she wondered if this entire ordeal had been for nothing. But then a shudder ran through her, and her heart began to beat so fast—faster than the usual rapid pulse of fear or exertion—that she couldn’t catch her breath. Colors blurred around her, and she felt like she was blurring, too, her body losing its solidity, her insides draining away. It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t comforting, either, and she wondered if anything would be left of her once the poison was gone. Light-headed, she held up her hands and watched as the dark green lines running down her wrists faded to a faint blue-green tinge under her skin.

As her veins finished fading, her heart gave a last lurch and returned to normal, a steady beat in her chest that echoed through her ears. Her vision steadied, her blood stilled, and she knew it was over. The poison was gone.

A strange, muffled sound between a sob and a laugh bubbled out of her. She could feel the poison missing, but to her surprise, the absence felt cold, like a draft blowing through an open window, like the chill of regret. Soraya shook the thought away. She wouldn’t regret this decision, not once she told Azad or tried touching something. She tucked the feather into her sash in case she needed it again. When she was sure its effects were permanent, she would find a way to send it back.

Stumbling down from the pedestal in her haste, Soraya ran to Azad, who turned at the sound of her footsteps.

“Your face,” he said, his eyes wide. He took a step into the temple. “Your veins…”

“I think it worked,” she said, fighting to keep calm, to think rationally. “But I have to test it first, I have to touch something and see if—”

But before she could finish speaking, Azad had taken her face in his hands and crushed his mouth to hers.

Oh, Soraya thought. Oh.

It was the first touch she had ever known, and it consumed her. There were too many new sensations—his lips on hers, his hands on her face, his heart beating against hers, the heat rushing through her veins—and so she couldn’t focus on just one. It would have been like trying to feel a single raindrop during a storm. Instead, she gave herself up to it—to him—and stopped thinking at all, letting long-dormant instincts take over. Her hands did what they had itched to do from the beginning, and wound around Azad’s beautiful neck, pulling him flush against her. And all the while she was thinking, He’s still alive. I’m touching him but he’s still alive.

There was a sudden flash of pain like a pinprick on her bottom lip, and she let out an involuntary muffled cry—whether from pain or pleasure, she didn’t know. Her skin felt raw and sensitive, like it had been scoured clean, and so the line between pain and pleasure didn’t exist anymore. There was only touch, so overwhelming that it was almost unbearable.

But Azad must have thought he hurt her, because he drew her away from him, untangling himself from her hungry grasp. Soraya tried to catch her breath, and her eyes slowly fluttered open as she looked up at—

No.

The blood drained from Soraya’s face as she looked up, up, at a figure a head taller than Azad, a creature that wasn’t Azad but was horrifyingly familiar.

Her first thought was that she had done this to him. She had transferred her curse to him somehow. But the hideous scaled monster standing before her wasn’t at all surprised by his transformation. That neck that she had always admired was covered in patches of coarse green and brown scales. The hands that had just been on her skin were now longer, with spindly fingers tipped by sharp, curved nails like the claws of a lizard. His hair was gone, his head ridged and scaled like the rest of him. From his back emerged two large, leathery wings. And his face—his face was smiling, sharp, curved fangs showing between thin lips.

Soraya’s knees buckled, but she fought to remain standing, not wanting to be on her knees in front of this creature from her nightmares. “What are you?” she said, her voice escaping in a gasp.

He tilted his head, the curve of his neck painfully familiar to her. “I’m hurt, Soraya,” he said in a mocking tone. It was the same voice, the same cadence, but deeper now, like she was hearing Azad calling up from the bottom of a well. “I would have thought you’d know exactly who I am.”

Yes, she knew who he was. She knew even before she had asked. She knew when she had looked up and seen him in place of the young man she had expected.

But he still told her anyway.

“I’m your favorite story,” said the Shahmar.





13


Soraya prayed that she was dreaming, that this was yet another nightmare. After all, she had never heard of a div being able to appear as human, or to resist the effects of esfand. But in her dreams, she always woke soon after the Shahmar appeared—just when the dream turned into a nightmare.

This time, the nightmare didn’t end.

Azad—the Shahmar—took a step toward her, and for the slightest moment, she forgot to be scared. She forgot that she no longer had poison to protect her. And then the memory of Azad’s hands on her face, his mouth on hers, came back to her, and she shuddered—not from repulsion or regret, but from a fear she had never known before.