Girl, Serpent, Thorn(39)

For the first time in her life, she was completely defenseless.

The Shahmar lifted one clawed, scaled hand to hover over her cheek, and Soraya froze, years of habit forcing her to stay still when someone came too near. She looked for the eyes she had known before, but now they were yellow, the pupils vertical slits—the eyes of a serpent.

“Brave, ruthless Soraya,” he said, an oddly tender note in his deep voice. “I’m much fonder of you than I thought I’d be.” His hand fell away from her face, and she fought down the instinctive disappointment she felt, her traitorous skin still longing for touch, even from a monster. “I have other matters to attend to,” he continued, turning away from her. “Stay out of the way, and you’ll be safe.”

Before she could find her voice, he had stepped out of the fire temple. His wings spread out to their full span, each one the length of a human body, and carried him up into the air.

Soraya recovered at last and ran outside, looking up at the shape of the Shahmar soaring overhead. A shadow fell over the palace—he had paused in front of the sun, his wings blocking its light. She gazed up with a mixture of terror and awe, wondering how this fearsome creature had ever contained himself in the shape of a human, how he could have fooled her so utterly.…

Then the screaming began.

The screams seemed to surround her, a wave of terror crashing over her from every direction. And soon she knew why. From her vantage point on the hill, she could see the northwest quarter of the city. She saw the fissures running down the streets, splitting open to release a horde of divs in a kind of hellish earthquake. She saw people run screaming through the streets, trying not to be trampled underfoot or crushed by falling rubble from overturned buildings.

He promised he would show me the city during the day, Soraya remembered. But would there be anything left to see?

She had been frozen, numb with horror and shock, but now she ran. Soraya tore down the hill and around the side of the palace, going in the direction of the nearest screams—to the wedding party in the garden where the most important people in Atashar were all currently gathered like a herd of sheep. She had been so shocked by the revelation of Azad’s identity that she had forgotten the reason for the entire pretense. He made me put out the fire, she thought. Never mind that she had put it out willingly, that in fact she had convinced him to come with her—the truth was that he had been leading her to this moment step by step. He had been waiting for her to find the feather so that he could strike.

And now Soraya’s family—her entire country—was in danger because of her. Because of her one selfish action.

Even as she ran, her chest stinging from breathlessness, she wondered what use she would possibly be now that her only weapon was gone. She could do little more than warn people of a threat that was already upon them.

As if echoing her thoughts, a shadow fell over her, and she didn’t need to look up to know it was the Shahmar, circling the palace like a vulture over the dakhmeh. He was signaling the divs, she realized, purposefully making himself visible to let his accomplices know when to strike. But how had they been able to attack from below?

Soraya heard the answer to her question in her own voice—an innocent, thoughtless remark from nearly a month ago. There used to be tunnels underneath the entire city, she had told Azad. Either he had already known from the days of his reign, or she had handed him a way for the divs to infiltrate the city. He had planned everything so thoroughly, and it all depended on Soraya, on his certainty that she would make the wrong choice again and again. He had made a traitor of her, and she hadn’t even known it.

Soraya tore through the orchard that bordered the garden, then stopped to catch her breath and observe the damage she had caused.

At first glance, the garden seemed to have descended into chaos. Large pits spotted the garden where the openings to the water channels had been, and divs appeared from these enlarged tunnels as well as from the now-battered palace walls. Tables of food had been overturned, entire trees uprooted, and rugs trampled over. The panicked wedding guests were running in all directions, but none of them made it beyond the garden borders, because at every turn, a div was there to stop them.

Not even Soraya’s visits with Parvaneh had prepared her for seeing a div attack. None of these divs were pariks, with their mostly human forms. Instead, they were beastly in appearance, like the illustrations she had seen in books. They were as varied as they were terrifying, some with scales and fangs like the Shahmar, others with long tusks and bristling fur growing over their bodies. Though some were of human height, many towered over the guests like giants. A few had wings like the Shahmar, and they hovered overhead or scaled the walls of the palace, throwing down chunks of stone to block the paths of the panicked guests.

Soraya ran farther into the garden, trying not to notice the corpses—crushed and broken bodies of soldiers and palace guards, their skulls caved in and limbs snapped to reveal the white of bone, their torsos ripped open, staining the grass red with blood. People kept brushing past her in their attempts to run to safety, reminding her of what she had done—of the price she had willingly paid to be able to stand here in a crowd and be harmless.

She heard the sounds of battle and turned to see one of the remaining soldiers lunging at a furred, fanged div with his sword. His back was to her at first, but then she caught a flash of his profile and inhaled sharply in recognition. Ramin. His expression was fierce and focused, but the div easily blocked the sword with a large plank of wood torn from one of the banquet tables and used it to wrench the sword out of Ramin’s hands. Defenseless and unarmored, Ramin began to retreat, looking around him for a weapon, and his eyes caught Soraya’s. In that brief, surprised pause, the div struck, his claws raking against one side of Ramin’s waist. Soraya’s hands covered her mouth to hold back a scream as Ramin fell heavily to the ground, his life’s blood flowing out of him.