Girl, Serpent, Thorn(68)
And Soraya was furious because it was working.
None of the divs reacted to her presence, but now the cavern began to grow quiet and the divs shuffled aside, parting to form an aisle that was heading straight toward her. Even before he appeared in the crowd, Soraya knew who was approaching.
She held his gaze as the Shahmar came toward her, striding down the aisle formed for him with singular purpose. When he was directly in front of her, he held out a hand as if he were still a heroic young prince. She wondered briefly if Sorush had ever greeted Laleh in this way, and she almost laughed, because if this entire banquet was a demonic version of the real thing, then it seemed right that she and Azad should echo Sorush and Laleh’s tender courtship. What a twisted version of them we would make, she thought.
His eyes swept over her dress with a smile, and only then did she notice that the rich purple of her gown matched the color of his robes. She placed her hand in his, and he led her back down the aisle, the divs murmuring as they passed, until they reached a raised platform like a dais cut into the rock at the other end of the cavern.
He guided her up onto the dais and turned her to the crowd, lifting their joined hands. “Here is your champion, divs of Arzur,” he called out, his voice booming through the cavern. “It is because of Soraya that we have taken the palace and dethroned the shah.”
The truth of Azad’s statement sent a chill through her, and she tried to wrench her hand away, but he held it fast. He turned his head toward her, watching her as he again addressed the divs. “Show her your thanks for our victory,” he said, “and let it be known that no div shall ever do her harm. From this moment on, she walks freely through the halls of Arzur, a friend to the divs.”
As one, the divs let out a mighty cheer and raised their goblets to Soraya.
The sounds of adulation were so unfamiliar to her that she wasn’t sure if they were cheering or protesting Azad’s decree. She tried to retrieve her hand again, tried to step backward, away from all those eyes, but Azad kept her in place, and soon the panicked fluttering in her chest began to slow. Now she could acknowledge the meaning of Azad’s decree and see the benefit in it—if she could wander Arzur freely, then she could more easily search the mountain for the feather during the day when Azad was gone. She wouldn’t have to rely on a cloak to hide her—or on Parvaneh, for that matter.
She took a long breath, and as she exhaled, she felt a part of her flowing out into the crowd, and she was no longer afraid. She knew Azad was watching her, waiting for her to react or say something, and so she stubbornly kept her eyes straight ahead, looking at this cavern of monsters who had accepted her more easily than her own people ever had.
A rough, scaly finger pressed under her chin, moving her head to the side to face Azad. “It’s rude to ignore your host,” he said, a touch of humor in his voice. “Especially after I went through so much trouble to make you feel at home.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked him, her voice thick with emotion.
“You’ve been hidden away long enough,” he said with unexpected tenderness. “It’s time for you to become who you were meant to be.”
She looked out at the divs and back at him, uncertainty furrowing her brow. “This isn’t— I’m not—”
But before she could figure out what she was or wasn’t, he began to lead her off the dais. “Come, meet your new people,” he said.
They walked out together into the crowd, dressed in the color of royalty, and the divs all stepped aside to make room for them. As she swept past, many of them kneeled down, placing their heads against the ground or reaching out to touch and kiss the hem of her dress, as she had seen people do for her brother, her mother, her father. And yet, Soraya did not feel moved by these gestures. She had seen the divs bow for Azad, and she had thought it was out of deference, but now there was something about these exaggerated gestures that felt mocking or insincere to her. Azad was walking with his head held high, and so he didn’t see the glimpses of amusement in the divs’ eyes before their heads touched the ground, but Soraya did, and they made her uneasy.
Before Sorush, the shah was always set apart at Golvahar, and Soraya wondered if that distance was too cold or unnatural for the divs, who lived in such close proximity inside a mountain. She wondered what would happen if that distance were closed.
Her head was spinning from being so close to so many, and so she hardly thought as she slipped her hand out of Azad’s and moved ahead of him, drawing closer to the crowd. A murmur of excitement went through them, the divs lifting their bowed heads to regard Soraya with new interest. She reached out one arm, letting the divs brush their scaled and furred and plated hands against hers, a new variety of sensation to experience. Some of them were bold enough to reach out and touch her hair or her dress, and they began to close in more tightly around her, but strangely enough, Soraya wasn’t afraid. Div blood had once run through her veins—divs had shaped the course of her life—and so it seemed right to her that she should belong to them, and them to her.
There was a tearing sound, then a flash of pain, and she looked down to see a rip in her sleeve, a thin line of blood welling up. The divs were surrounding her so completely now that she could barely move, and she felt another bite of pain, this one on her scalp, as strands of her hair were pulled away. She felt something else tugging at the hem of her skirt, fingers around her ankle and curling in her hair, breath against the back of her neck, claws scraping her skin like the prick of thorns in her garden when she didn’t wear her gloves. Tears were filling her eyes, but Soraya didn’t resist. She simply offered herself up to them, wondering what would happen if she allowed the divs to claim her as their own. Would they rip her apart and rebuild her in their image? What would it mean to surrender? What would she become?