Girl, Serpent, Thorn(61)

When Parvaneh returned, her hands were sticky with tree sap. “Roll up your sleeves.”

Soraya considered questioning her, but something about the excited glow of Parvaneh’s eyes and their sudden rush through the forest made her want to play along. She rolled up the sleeves of her dress, which were hopelessly dingy by now, and said, “Now what?”

“Hold out your arms.”

Soraya obeyed, her stomach already flipping in anticipation, because she could guess what would come next. Parvaneh stepped forward and brushed her hands along the insides of Soraya’s forearms, and Soraya’s entire spine straightened at once, her breath catching in her throat. “What are you doing?” she said in an exhale.

“Hush,” Parvaneh said. “You’ll see.”

Once Soraya’s forearms and her palms were coated with tree sap, Parvaneh stepped away, leaning her back against the nearest tree trunk. “Now wait,” she whispered.

Ordinarily, Soraya might have felt ridiculous standing in the middle of a forest with tree sap on her outstretched arms. But the forest was alive. She felt it pulsing all around her. And so she knew she wasn’t simply standing, but waiting, with arms open to embrace whatever envoy the forest was about to send to her.

She didn’t have to wait long. She heard it first—a fluttering sound that seemed to come from the air—and then something tickled her arm. When she looked down, she saw a gray-brown moth settled on her left forearm, wings opening and closing leisurely.

Soraya barely breathed, afraid she would scare it away—or worse, that it would go still and fall dead to the ground, as that first butterfly did so many years ago. But her skin was covered in tree sap, not poison, and so the moth didn’t die, and soon it was joined by others. One—two—a third that landed on the very center of her palm. To them, she was no different from one of the trees, a source of nourishment and life, not death or destruction. Soraya laughed, and her eyes went blurry with tears.

Now she understood why Parvaneh had brought her here. Here in the forest, far enough away to forget about Azad and the divs and her family, Soraya allowed herself to enjoy the absence of her curse without guilt or complication. She would return to Arzur, and she would find the simorgh’s feather, and she would help save her family—but for now, she would marvel at the brush of moth wings against her skin.

She looked up at Parvaneh, suddenly self-conscious. Parvaneh was still leaning against a tree trunk, her arms crossed over her chest, watching Soraya with a small smile on her lips. It was the first time Soraya remembered seeing her smile in earnest, and she wondered if the same was true for her, if this was the first time she had seen Soraya genuinely smile.

“Thank you,” Soraya called to her. The words felt weak compared to the gratitude she felt.

Parvaneh came over to her, moving slowly so as not to startle the moths. As she approached, Soraya felt a strange kind of fluttering in her stomach, as if one of the moths had flown inside. It reminded her of something—something she hadn’t felt since she was a child.

“In the dungeon, I used to like making you angry,” Parvaneh said. She reached down to scoop up one of the moths and held it up to her face, brushing its wing against her cheek with a tenderness that only worsened the fluttering in Soraya’s stomach. Parvaneh let the moth fly away and looked Soraya in the eye. “But I think I like making you laugh even more.”

“Why did you like making me angry?” Soraya asked in mock offense.

Parvaneh grinned and swept aside Soraya’s hair, her fingers brushing Soraya’s cheekbone. “To see your veins, of course,” she said. Her hand moved down to trace the dull claw mark on Soraya’s collarbone with her fingertips. “I always thought you … I thought they were beautiful.”

The fluttering—she had felt it before. Not with Azad, though he had ignited a fire of his own, as sudden and scorching as lightning. This was more like the gradual, steady warmth of a summer day, a heat that spread all the way down to the tips of her fingers and her toes. She remembered that day—not summer, but spring—lying on the grass beside Laleh, feeling that fluttering as she told Laleh she wished she could marry her. Then Laleh had laughed, and it had died away, never to return.

But she felt it now, and when Parvaneh lifted her eyes to meet Soraya’s, neither of them was laughing.

Parvaneh’s hand was still curled against Soraya’s collarbone, and she was standing so close that Soraya felt her breath warm against her face. She was so keenly aware of all these points of contact—skin, breath, gaze—but most of all she was aware of the way her pulse slowed and quickened at the same time, giddy yet languorous.

Speak, Soraya willed herself. But she felt like she was lost in a maze, unsure how to find her way out. Deep at the center of the maze was the truth she didn’t want to acknowledge, that she had cared for Azad, and he had betrayed her so terribly that she had been unsure she would ever trust her heart again. In a way, it was a relief to know that the feel of Parvaneh’s fingers brushing along her skin could still stir something in her—it meant Azad was not her only choice, her only chance.

Speak. She could say that she had come to treasure their conversations in the dungeon, even if they had made her angry, because they were the only time she had ever fully allowed herself to drop all pretense and be herself. Or that now she realized it wasn’t the dungeon that had given her a strange sense of refuge all this time, but Parvaneh herself, with whom she had been even more honest than she had with Azad.