Girl, Serpent, Thorn(42)
Soraya tried to pull herself out of his grip again, but his claws were piercing her skin.
“Allow me, then”—he looked down at Soraya, the beginning of a smile on his thin lips—“to tell you the truth of the shahzadeh’s curse.”
The Shahmar pointed directly at Tahmineh, who was still in the grip of the div. “When her children were first born, your beloved queen mother—then, the shahbanu—took her infant daughter to the divs and asked them to grant her protection.”
Protection? Soraya froze, no longer struggling. She had told Azad that her mother was the cause of her curse, but not even she had known the reason for it. But if he knew the reason, then he’d known the truth all along, watching her stumble from the dungeon to the dakhmeh to the fire temple, looking for answers while her hands grew more and more stained with blood. But even as she hated him for it, she longed to know what he would say next.
“And the divs agreed,” he continued, “because the shahbanu had helped them once, and they owed her a debt. They laid a curse on the child and filled her veins with poison, so that she would be deadly to the touch.”
The crowd’s murmuring was louder now, like the furious roar of a wasp nest. How could the shah’s mother have committed such an atrocity? How could the shah have kept his sister’s curse a secret from the court all this time? What else was this family hiding?
But Soraya knew the worst was still to come.
The Shahmar spun her around again, holding her in place by her arms, so that she couldn’t look away from her brother’s grief-stricken face. “And so this girl decided to take her revenge on the family that had cursed her. She waited until the day of her brother’s wedding, and then she went to the fire temple, slew the guards, and put out the Royal Fire, because she had discovered that inside the fire was the one object that could free her from her curse—the simorgh’s feather.”
The Shahmar didn’t have to explain further. He put one hand under Soraya’s chin and held her face, so that all could see him touching her bare skin without consequence.
Soraya couldn’t even turn her head to look away from her brother’s broken gaze. “I’m sorry,” she tried to say, but the words were so mangled by the sob trapped in her throat that they were barely audible.
The Shahmar released her then, and she fell immediately to the ground, crushed under the weight of her guilt, her brother’s shame, and her mother’s secrets. She managed to lift her head and see the Shahmar approach her brother slowly, with the same elegance that she had so admired in him when she thought he was hers.
“Well?” he said. “Do you still believe your Creator will keep you safe? Do you think you can protect Atashar better than I can? Or will you kneel?” He turned to the crowd. “Will you kneel,” he called out, his arms outstretched, “to save your land from ruin?”
Soraya didn’t know who was the first to kneel. She didn’t know if it was done out of anger at her family or out of hopeless despair. But all around her, one by one, the most influential people in Atashar went to their knees and chose a new shah. She didn’t blame them; pride or loyalty would only lead to more destruction.
Soon, all the bozorgan were kneeling except for relations of the shah—aunts and uncles and cousins Soraya had never really known. Laleh and her wounded father, huddled together. Tahmineh. And Sorush.
From where she lay on the ground, Soraya watched her brother, waiting to see if he would look at her. But Sorush kept his eyes on his usurper as he slowly went down on one knee, then the other, before pressing his forehead to the ground in supplication.
The Shahmar had won.
14
For years, Soraya had thought of herself as a prisoner in the walls of Golvahar, but now, she actually was one.
Her prison was luxurious, certainly—one of the rooms in the new wing, usually reserved for the shah’s most important visitors. Its beauty was slightly tarnished, though, since the divs had stripped the room nearly bare, removing anything that could be used as either weapon or escape route—bedding, letter openers, and vases, as well as practically any piece of furniture that could be lifted. When the div had first locked her inside, Soraya had almost longed for the shadows of the dungeon—they were more comfortable to her than a room where there was nowhere to hide.
But more important, there was no way to escape. Soraya didn’t need to wonder why the Shahmar had chosen such a gilded prison for her and her family. She already knew the answer:
These tunnels run all through the palace?
Everywhere except for the newer wing on the other side.
Still, the first thing Soraya did was check the walls for hollow spaces. It was something to do other than wonder how long the Shahmar planned to keep them all alive. She had expected him to execute her brother on the spot once Sorush had bowed his head, but the Shahmar had simply ordered his div soldiers to herd together the shah’s family and anyone who hadn’t kneeled, and keep them confined to the new wing. Soraya didn’t think it was mercy—she assumed the Shahmar wanted to kill them later in secret, so as not to upset his new subjects.
Around the room she went, putting her ear to the wall as she knocked, listening for the echo that would tell her she was wrong about there being no passages linked to these rooms. But all she heard were the words echoing in her head to the rhythm of her knocking: Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.