Girl, Serpent, Thorn(7)

Tahmineh took control at once. She gave a small nod to Soraya, then turned to her attending ladies and dismissed them for the night. When they were gone, and the door was shut, she came toward Soraya with worried eyes, the line on her forehead beginning to appear. “Is something wrong?”

Soraya shook her head. “I have something to tell you—something that will make you happy.” She should have begun by asking her mother how she was, or some other pleasantry, but she couldn’t wait any longer. Without mentioning Laleh, she told her about the captured div, and that she wished to ask the div about her curse.

A moment passed in silence, and then another, and Soraya waited to see excitement replace the worry in her mother’s face. But instead, Tahmineh’s lips formed a thin line. Without saying a word, she turned and went to sit on the sofa, gesturing to the chair across from her. “Come sit, Soraya.”

Soraya obeyed, feeling suddenly cold. Sitting across the table from her mother, she felt like she was going to be interrogated.

And she was right—the first thing her mother said was, “How did you find out about the div?”

She began to lie and say that she had overheard it when the full implication of her mother’s question struck her. “You knew?” Soraya said, unable to keep the accusation out of her voice. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?” She hadn’t been surprised that Sorush hadn’t told her himself—they rarely saw each other, and he had all of Atashar on his shoulders, so she was probably his last concern. But her mother … Soraya would have expected to hear this news from Tahmineh before Laleh.

“I knew, but I didn’t think it concerned you,” Tahmineh answered.

“But the curse—”

“Divs are liars, Soraya. And they are dangerous. I’m not going to expose you to one of them.”

“A div can’t hurt me—especially in a dungeon.”

Tahmineh’s hands twisted the fabric of her skirt. “The danger is not always obvious. Divs can be manipulative. They can destroy you with a single word.”

“Maman, please—I’ll be so careful. Just let me talk to—”

“Soraya, this is not a discussion,” Tahmineh said, her voice growing louder. “It’s too dangerous, and you can’t trust anything the div says. I won’t allow it.”

Soraya’s cheeks went hot at her mother’s sharp tone. She knew her veins were mapping out her frustration on her face, and she couldn’t believe that her mother could sit and watch the poison spreading through her daughter and not allow her this slim chance to be free of it. Soraya shook her head, aware of the poison running through her veins, seeping from her skin, coating her tongue. “How can you say that to me when you—”

She stopped before she reached the one topic that always remained unspoken between them, but it was too late. Tahmineh’s hand stilled in her lap, and her face went ashen, as if she had truly been poisoned.

Soraya had never accused her mother of anything. She had never before said, This is my life because of you, because of a choice you made. After all, her mother had been barely more than a child herself when the div cursed her future child. Soraya had never demanded an apology for what had happened, and Tahmineh had never offered one, either. Instead there was the line on her forehead, the weight of words unspoken.

Soraya bowed her head, her anger cooling into guilt. She would have bitten out her tongue if she thought it could undo what she had almost said. Her fingers sought out the loose thread on her sleeve. There was still a part of her that wanted to tell her mother that she couldn’t accept her refusal, and that she had to speak to the div. There was a part of her that just wanted to scream.

But instead, she took a breath, like she was preparing to submerge underwater, and said, “I understand.”



* * *



Soraya woke with a ragged gasp in the middle of the night. She’d had another dream about the Shahmar.

The dreams were different each time, but they always ended the same. The Shahmar would appear to her and raise one gnarled, scaled finger to point at her hands. Soraya would look down and see the veins on her hands turn dark green, but this time she couldn’t stop them as they spread over her whole body in a final, irreversible transformation. A terrible pressure built inside of her, like something was about to burst out of her skin, but just when she couldn’t bear it anymore, she would wake, the Shahmar’s laughter still echoing in her ears.

The first story Soraya had ever heard was her own—the story of the div who had cursed her mother’s future child. The first story Soraya had read for herself in a book stolen from the palace library was the story of the Shahmar: the prince who had become so twisted by his crimes that he had transformed into a serpentine div.

Soraya had looked in horror at the illustration of green scales growing along the young man’s arms, and then her eyes had shifted to the green lines running down her wrist. She had slammed the book closed, promising herself that if she was very good and kept bad thoughts away, her curse would never warp her mind or transform her body any more than it already had.

There were other divs that may have been more frightening to a child—wrathful Aeshma with his bloody club, or corpse-like Nasu, who spread corruption wherever she went—but the Shahmar was the one she had revisited over and over again, horrified and yet unable to keep away. But soon she didn’t need to seek out the Shahmar, because he began to visit her dreams, standing over her and laughing as his past became her future.