Girl, Serpent, Thorn(60)

Parisa tilted her head, the movement so much like Parvaneh’s that Soraya almost smiled. “Are you like your mother?” she asked.

Soraya flinched inwardly. Was she like her mother, a woman who was determined and ruthless enough to go to a dakhmeh at night, who had freed a parik and tried to thwart a div, who had let her shame fester inside her until the consequences spiraled out of her control? “Yes,” Soraya said, her voice thick with a mixture of pride and regret. “I’m very much like her.”

Parisa called back to the others, “We can trust this one. If she brings us the simorgh’s feather, we will stand with her and the humans against the Shahmar.” She turned to the other pariks. “Does anyone disagree?”

The other pariks all shook their heads. “No, Parisa. We trust your judgment,” the bat-winged parik said.

“We must leave this clearing at once.” Parisa turned back to Soraya. “You will return to Arzur, of course.”

Soraya swallowed down the lump in her throat. It was unthinkable that she should leave behind the freedom of the forest and the open sky to crawl back inside that prison of a mountain. But she nodded, accepting the task she had given herself.

Parisa looked to Parvaneh now. “When you have the feather, you know where to find us.”

The pariks all began to move deeper into the forest, and Soraya watched them go with a feeling of loss she didn’t quite understand.

When they were alone, Parvaneh said, “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t have the feather anymore?” There was no anger or resentment in her tone, only curiosity.

Soraya turned to face her. “I didn’t know if you would keep helping me if you knew. Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t welcome among the pariks?”

“I didn’t know if you would give me the feather if you knew,” Parvaneh answered.

Standing face-to-face, it was almost as if they were in the dungeon again, trading pieces of the truth through the bars. “Why did they cast you out?” Soraya asked.

“I made an error in judgment that they still haven’t forgiven me for. They were lenient with me because of my age.”

“I thought divs didn’t age,” Soraya said with surprise.

A weak smile crossed Parvaneh’s face. “Not as humans do. I was never a child, but at that time, I was the most recent parik to emerge from Duzakh. By div standards, I’m not much older than you are.” Before Soraya could ask anything more, Parvaneh continued hastily, “We shouldn’t linger here, either.”

She set out in the direction they had come from, leaving Soraya with no choice but to follow.

The forest felt less liberating to her now that it was the path back to her prison, but still, Soraya tried to absorb it into her memory, breathing in the smell of wet soil. She hoped one day she could come back here in the sunlight.

“Thank you,” Parvaneh said, breaking the silence between them. She kept her eyes ahead of her as she continued. “Not just for freeing them, but for what you said. What you offered. It’s a dangerous task you’ve given yourself.”

“There’s not much else I can do,” Soraya muttered as she tried not to trip over her dress. “I’m not strong enough to fight a div, I can’t see in the dark, I’m not even—”

She tripped over a root, but Parvaneh caught her before she fell. Soraya straightened, but Parvaneh didn’t move away, still holding Soraya’s arms. “You’re not even what?” she asked.

Soraya had spoken without thinking, but now she faced the truth directly. I’m not even poisonous anymore, she had meant to say. But when she tried to say it aloud, her throat closed up. She had betrayed her family to be rid of that curse; she had no right now to mourn its absence.

But Parvaneh heard the words anyway. “You miss it now, don’t you?”

The lump in Soraya’s throat began to loosen at hearing the truth from someone else’s voice. Why was it that all of her secrets came to light whenever she was alone with Parvaneh? Was it her, or was it the darkness, the feeling of being so far from her old life that anything seemed permissible—or forgivable?

“You must think me such a fool,” Soraya said, her voice waver ing. “You warned me, but I didn’t believe you. And yet I believed him. I trusted him so completely.”

Parvaneh’s hands tightened around her arms, and her eyes flashed in the darkness. “He gave you reason to trust him—and then he abused that trust. Don’t waste your anger on yourself. Save it for him.” Her hands fell away, and she stood there for a moment, watching Soraya before she stalked off in a different direction. “Follow me!” she called back.

Soraya quickly followed, not wanting to lose sight of Parvaneh in the dark forest. “Where are we going?”

Parvaneh slowed down for Soraya to catch up and said in an impassioned flurry, “You’ve lived your whole life with this curse because of him, and you can’t even enjoy yourself once you’re free of it because of him. Why should you suffer for what he did?”

Parvaneh stormed ahead again, and Soraya followed, muttering to herself, “But where are we going?”

Somewhat abruptly, Parvaneh stopped, and Soraya nearly collided with her. Parvaneh sniffed the air, put her hand on a nearby tree, and nodded. “Hornbeams,” she said. She led Soraya a little farther ahead, into a patch of moonlight that managed to pierce through the canopy. “Wait here,” she said, and then walked over to one of the trees. Hornbeams, she had said. Soraya looked around at the not-quite-identical trees around her, all of them with thick, sinewy trunks.