Girl, Serpent, Thorn(47)

Parvaneh nodded in understanding. “You still don’t trust me. But maybe if I show you what he’s done to me, you’ll believe that I’m no friend of the Shahmar.” Parvaneh turned, her back facing Soraya, and lifted her worn shift over her head. Startled, Soraya began to look away, but then she understood what Parvaneh was showing her.

Her mother had thought she was freeing a girl until the parik unfurled her wings—the wings of an owl. Parvaneh’s wings were, of course, the wings of a moth, bearing the same patterns as the ones on her skin. Or at least Soraya thought they were the same patterns—it was difficult to tell because Parvaneh’s wings were slashed and torn, hanging like ribbons down her back.

Without thinking, Soraya came closer, all the way up to the bars. From here, she saw the tears in the wings more clearly, long, clean lines as if from a dagger—or claws.

“He did this to you?” Soraya asked in a small voice.

Parvaneh put her shift back on and turned around to face her again. “Bit by bit over time, yes. I had hoped the simorgh’s feather could restore them.”

Soraya listened to her, but it wasn’t the words that spoke to her loudest. In the hollow sound of Parvaneh’s voice, the dimmed glow of her eyes, the tired lines on her face, Soraya recognized someone who had lost not just her family, but a piece of herself.

Soraya pulled out the feather from her sash, careful not to hold it out of Parvaneh’s reach. Parvaneh’s eyes locked on the feather with a hungry, desperate look. “You have it,” she breathed.

Soraya turned away from Parvaneh and went to the lit brazier hanging from the wall. Perhaps she was a fool to trust Parvaneh, but images kept swimming in her mind—images of destruction and despair, of sharp claws and leathery wings, of a terrified girl in the forest and a young shah on his knees. Soraya couldn’t undo any of the Shahmar’s actions—except that she could free Parvaneh.

For the second time that day, she put out a fire, upending the brazier and sending the coals to scatter over the ground.

Parvaneh didn’t need an explanation. As soon as the esfand smoke began to disperse, she wrenched two of the bars apart with unearthly strength and walked through them—free.

Soraya wondered if she had made another mistake, if Parvaneh would snap her neck and go join her master, where they would both laugh at the naive girl they had fooled. But Parvaneh made no move toward her. She closed her eyes, lifted her head, and took a deep breath. “Thank you,” she said.

“You said you would help me,” Soraya reminded her.

“And I will,” Parvaneh said. Impossibly, her eyes were even brighter than they had been before. “But I won’t be much help until my wings are restored.” She turned and lifted her shift again, her movements more fluid now that the smoke had cleared. Soraya took an involuntary step back. The idea of someone baring their skin for her was still unthinkable, and she looked from Parvaneh’s back to the feather in her hand as if she didn’t quite know how to bring them together.

After a lengthy pause, Parvaneh shot a pointed look over her shoulder at Soraya and said, “You’ll have to come closer.”

Her sardonic tone broke Soraya out of her trance, and she moved toward Parvaneh, observing the damage of her wings without touching her. She brushed the tip of the feather along the largest tear, and instantly, the wing stitched itself back together. But there were many tears—not just the long, clean ones, but also smaller, jagged ones that probably happened on their own. It was delicate work, and so neither of them spoke as Soraya continued to tend to Parvaneh’s wings, one tear at a time.

It was calming—the soft brush of feather against wings, the hushed sounds of their breathing, the feeling of putting something together. It reminded Soraya of working in her garden, pulling away vines and plucking away dead petals so that her roses could bloom and thrive. She wasn’t even aware of what she was doing when she first touched Parvaneh’s wing with her other hand, meaning to smooth out the surface so she could better attend to it. As soon as she realized what she had done, she drew back, but then her instinctive fear drained away, and she brushed her fingers against the wing again, thinking of that first butterfly from so long ago.

She continued her work, but her eyes kept drifting to the strip of bare skin between wings—to the matching patterns swirling like shadows on Parvaneh’s back, the soft down near the base of her neck, the curved ridge of her spine. It was almost like wanderlust; her fingertips yearned to explore new landscapes, new textures that they had never known before.

Only when she had finished repairing the last tear did Soraya allow herself to reach out with one faintly trembling hand and brush the pads of her fingers against Parvaneh’s skin, tracing one of the whorls on the inside of her shoulder blade where the wing was knitted into her back. Soraya was amazed at how soft Parvaneh’s skin was—softer than the petals of Soraya’s roses or the wool of her gloves. She let her fingers glide to the top of Parvaneh’s spine, and felt the strength of bone and muscle underneath the fragile layer of skin. She pressed down lightly, exploring the rise and dip of the ridges there, and she heard Parvaneh inhale sharply, her back arching.

Soraya pulled her hand away at once as if she’d been burned. She had forgotten herself—forgotten everything except her hunger for touch.

Parvaneh glanced over her shoulder at her, and Soraya tensed, expecting mockery. But Parvaneh’s expression was serious, and her voice soft—almost apologetic—as she asked, “Are you finished?”