The next morning—the morning of the wedding—Soraya’s mother arrived along with her breakfast. Tahmineh was already dressed for the wedding in a gown of purple silk, her hair braided with jewels, and next to her, Soraya felt haggard and unkempt. She’d slept for maybe an hour at most, and those brief snatches of sleep had come with terrible dreams. In a way, she was glad she wasn’t attending the ceremony.
Her mother took one worried look at her and carried the tray of food to the low table in the room. “I thought it would be nice to sit together this morning,” she said as she and Soraya settled on cushions across from each other at the table. “I know I haven’t had as much time to spend with you this year because of the wedding, and I’m very sorry for that. But after today, I’ll make up for it.”
Soraya put a date in her mouth so she wouldn’t have to respond. It wasn’t true, of course. Even after the wedding, Tahmineh would want to help Laleh settle into her new role as shahbanu, and in a few months, they would all move on from Golvahar without her.
Perhaps Tahmineh expected Soraya to be sullen today; she continued talking, filling her in on court gossip without expecting Soraya to say much in return. This suited Soraya; all she could think about was Parvaneh’s claim that Tahmineh was responsible for her curse, and she was afraid that if she spoke, the question would come tumbling out.
Soraya was fairly sure that Tahmineh had lied about the details of the curse, but she had never imagined that Tahmineh had wanted her daughter cursed. There was no logical reason for it. Soraya was a constant threat to their dynasty. She would be much more valuable to her family if she could appear at court or marry well or simply not be a terrible secret they needed to hide. Parvaneh’s accusation didn’t make sense.
Go ask her why, Parvaneh had commanded, as if doing so would be as simple as posing the question. But Soraya knew that a question like that would be the same as an accusation, and to accuse her mother—to accuse the shah’s mother—of associating with divs and meddling in forbidden magic was disrespectful at best and borderline treasonous at worst.
And what if Parvaneh is wrong? Soraya thought. What if she ruined her relationship with her mother for nothing? Already, she felt a gulf far wider than the table between her and Tahmineh—a gulf large enough to fit the dungeon and the dakhmeh, the yatu’s body lying at the bottom of it. What if there was a loneliness even deeper than the one she felt now?
When Tahmineh finally stood to leave, Soraya couldn’t help feeling relieved. “I need to check in on the bride and make sure she’ll be ready,” Tahmineh said. She tried to sound as if it were an obligation, but Soraya heard the pride and excitement in her mother’s voice. This was the kind of relationship she wanted to have with a daughter—why, then, would she have condemned her own to the shadows?
At the doorway, Tahmineh turned back to Soraya and said in a lowered voice, “I know how disappointed you were about the div, but I know it wouldn’t have helped you. You can’t trust anything they say.”
“I know, Maman,” Soraya said.
Tahmineh smiled. “I’m glad you understand. And even if you don’t, trust me now and you’ll understand one day.”
Soraya nodded, but once her mother was gone and the door was shut, she felt a scream building inside her chest. How can I trust you, she’d wanted to say, when I don’t know what the truth is anymore? And yet, her mother was right—Parvaneh had destroyed her with a single word, a single suggestion. Soraya would never fully believe Parvaneh, but she would never be able to stop wondering, either.
Before she even realized what she was doing, Soraya went to the hidden door by her bed and stepped into the passageways. She had to do something to either confirm this suspicion or forever dismiss it. Since she couldn’t bring herself to ask her mother directly, she would have to go digging through her rooms for evidence instead. Her mother would be with Laleh now, and then they would all go out to the garden for the ceremony—her rooms would be empty, and so Soraya could sneak in and out unnoticed.
Only when she arrived at her mother’s antechamber did she hesitate. The room was empty, but her mother’s jasmine scent was in the air, and as always, Soraya felt like an intruder.
But she had come there with no other intention but to disturb this room’s peace, and so she began her search, beginning with the antechamber. She gingerly turned over cushions and peered inside empty vases, still feeling as if she were contaminating everything in the room.
There weren’t many places to hide anything here, so she moved on to the bedchamber. As her search went on, she grew less careful, less reverent. She looked under beds and chairs and even rugs, inside drawers and jewelry boxes and the wardrobe, pushing aside her mother’s gowns with a roughness that felt strangely satisfying. She looked everywhere, without even knowing what she was looking for.
She was searching for some sign that her mother knew what had happened to her, but apart from a written confession, she couldn’t imagine what that sign would be. And perhaps that was the reason she had chosen to snoop through her mother’s things: not to prove Parvaneh right, but to prove her wrong.
And only when she realized this did she find something.
In her search, Soraya had taken down a tapestry hanging against the wall across from her mother’s bed. As she went to replace it, she noticed that one of the stones on the wall was different than the others—it was scored, like someone had chipped at it. She went to her knees and examined it more closely. It was loose, and so Soraya removed it, still telling herself that it was simply a loose stone her mother had covered with the tapestry because it marred the beauty of her room.
She was halfway convinced of this until she found something inside the wall—something her mother had clearly wanted to hide. Whatever it is might not be hers, Soraya told herself. It might have been here for hundreds of years before us. Soraya reached into the wall and pulled out what appeared to be a bundle of rags—bloodstained rags.
Soraya unwrapped the bundle and laid it out flat on the ground. And then she let out a moan and covered her face with her hands.
It was a blanket, and yes, it was stained with blood. But beneath the blood, dust, and grime, she saw the fading pattern on the soft, thinning cotton: a pattern of stars.
She breathed in, and the smell of esfand seemed to be all around her as she heard Parvaneh’s voice saying, She brought you to the pariks wrapped in a blanket of stars and asked for this curse.
The pieces began to join together in Soraya’s mind. The pained, guilty look Tahmineh always wore when she saw her daughter. Her insistence that Soraya not see the div in the dungeon, and her panicked insistence at knowing what Parvaneh had told her. Her dismissal of all of Soraya’s questions when she was a child. The ways of divs are mysterious and unjust, she had always said, to cover up any cracks in her story.
Soraya heard her own breathing, sharp and quick, as she tried to read a different message in the pattern of stars. But they spelled out only one truth, over and over again: She did this to me. She knew all along.
Soraya still didn’t understand why her mother would bring such suffering onto her daughter, but she couldn’t deny this blanket, still stained with blood from a div’s heart.
Why me and not Sorush? She couldn’t help asking the question that had plagued her since childhood. Why was she cursed, but not her twin? Why did she have to hide in the shadows so that he could grow in the light? Why had she chosen not to take the feather for his sake, when her family had never once done anything for hers?
She heard Parvaneh saying, Are they truly your family if they’ve failed to accept you as their own? If they cast you out and treat you with disdain?
She heard Azad’s gentle voice promising, Our story isn’t over yet, Soraya.
She heard their voices so clearly, but when she tried to think of her mother, her father, her brother, or the people of Atashar—all she heard was silence.
In the stars of the bloodstained blanket, she saw her choice laid out in front of her. She could choose to cut these ties that had never done anything but strangle her so that she could be free to live the life she had always wanted. All she needed was a feather to drain this poison that her mother had given her.
With shaking hands, Soraya folded the blanket under her arm and left the room, not bothering to replace the tapestry on the wall. Her blood pounded a relentless rhythm throughout her whole body as she made her way back to her room, the path ahead of her clearer than it ever had been. She felt like she’d been struck by lightning, and now there was a fire crackling all through her. If she waited too long to take the feather, then the fire would go out, and she would become nothing but ashes before she could lift her curse. It had to be today, before she could talk herself out of it. Everyone would be in the garden, including the priests, which meant that the fire temple would be unguarded.
In her room, Soraya hid the blanket deep under her bed, then rummaged through her gardening tools for the urn she used to water the roses. She filled it with water from the pool in the golestan and went out through the garden door—and nearly tripped over Azad’s outstretched legs.
Some of the water in the urn sloshed as she recovered her balance. Azad had been sitting with his back against the garden wall, and he leaped to his feet at the sight of Soraya. “I’ve been waiting here all morning, hoping to see you,” he said. “I wanted to check on you after last night.”
“I’m fine,” she said flatly, and kept walking.
He followed, of course, and she knew it wouldn’t take him long to realize what she was carrying and where she was going. “Shouldn’t you be in the gardens for the wedding?” she said.
“I don’t care about the wedding. Soraya, what are you doing? Did something happen?”
He took hold of her arm, forcing her to stop if she didn’t want to spill more water. She looked up at him, wondering how much to tell him. He might find her plan abhorrent—treasonous, even—but he had seen the worst of her last night, and he had stayed by her side. And in any case, he would know soon enough.
She looked around them to make sure no one was listening. The air was pungent with meat and herbs, flowers, and spices, but this part of the grounds was empty today—everyone was either inside the palace or in the gardens. “I’m going to the fire temple,” she said. “I’m going to free myself.”
He held her gaze, and then he shook his head slowly and said, “Whenever I think I finally know you, you surprise me. But Soraya, are you sure this is what you want? Your family—”
“My family did this to me,” she snapped, clutching the handles of the urn so hard her knuckles hurt. “My mother had me cursed and lied to me about it for years. So tell me, what do I owe my family? My loyalty? My affection? When have they ever given me either of those? They sacrificed my life and my freedom—I’m only taking back what they stole from me.”
For the first time in their acquaintance, Azad looked scared of her. His hand dropped from her arm and he took a step back, his mouth falling open in shock. But then he spoke, and she understood that she wasn’t the cause of his growing horror. “Your mother did this to you?” he said. “Did she tell you why?”
“No,” Soraya replied. “I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t want to speak to her. All she’s ever done is lie to me.”
“I understand,” Azad said, stepping closer to her again. “Trust me, I know that anger. I’ve felt it before. But are you sure you want to do this? Are you ready for the consequences?”
“Yes,” she said at once, but truthfully, she hadn’t thought much of the consequences. She wanted to strike now, without worrying about what came after. The yatu had been sentenced to death for attempting to put out the fire. Soraya knew she would receive no less severe a punishment—unless she escaped, as he had. “Yes,” she said again. “I want this. And then I want to leave Golvahar and never come back.” She shifted the urn’s weight to rest in the crook of one arm, and then shyly, uncertainly, she put her gloved hand on Azad’s chest, fingers curling over his heart. “Would you come with me?” she asked him in a whisper.
She didn’t know what she was asking—for him to come to the temple with her, or to run away with her, or to stay by her side for as long as she wanted him. All of them, she supposed. The idea of freeing herself from her curse only to lose Azad seemed cosmically unjust when he was the one person she wanted to touch most of all.
He took a hesitant breath, but Soraya knew he would agree. She knew he must feel the same bond that she felt, that unspoken promise from the dakhmeh. She had become a murderer to save his life—and in return, he had agreed that there was nothing she could do that would drive him away. They would rise or fall together.
“Soraya.” He put his hand over hers, and she felt the heat of his skin through the fabric of her gloves. “I dreamed of you for so long. I would do anything to be with you. Even this.”
“I know I’m asking much of you, to sacrifice your position so soon after you earned it.”
He shook his head. “I’ve already learned how suddenly that can be taken away. I lost my family and my social standing a long time ago. I have nothing else to lose now—except for you.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her gloved fingers, a promise of things to come.
She wanted to linger, but she took back her hand and said, “It has to be now, while the priests are occupied and the temple is unguarded.”
They went together to the low hill behind the palace. Azad offered to take the urn from her, but she refused; she wanted something to hold on to. They did encounter a few palace attendants on their way, but they were all so preoccupied with the wedding that they hurried past Soraya and Azad without a glance, never noticing the way Soraya’s hands were trembling, or the dark green lines spread out over her skin.
They ascended the stairs cut into the hill, and when they reached the top, they came face-to-face with the only other two people in Golvahar not attending the wedding.
Soraya had been right that the priests would be in the garden, but she hadn’t considered that there would be guards watching over the fire in their stead.
Azad, however, didn’t seem surprised at all. “I’ll handle this,” he murmured to Soraya, and he went forward with a wave to approach the two guards. Soraya exhaled in relief, thankful once again for Azad’s special status among the azatan. He was better than any key.
She watched Azad greet the two men, putting his hand on the shoulder of the guard on the right as he continued speaking. And then she saw him reach for something at his side, something tucked away in the folds of his tunic—something that glinted sharply in the white spring sun.
Azad struck so quickly, so smoothly, that when the guard on the right let out a cry of surprise and clutched at his side, staggering to his knees, the other guard didn’t realize what had happened. He hadn’t seen the edge of Azad’s dagger find its way in the gap between the first guard’s armor plates, digging into his flesh. But Soraya had—and she was frozen in horror even as she knew what would happen next.
The second guard knelt down to inspect the first, and before he could see the blood seeping through the injured man’s fingers and know that he’d been stabbed, Azad struck again—this time for the throat.
The second guard fell to the ground instantly, and while his life bled out of him, Azad finished the first guard with another slash to the throat. By the time he returned to Soraya’s side, both men were dead.
Azad put a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched violently and rounded on him. “What did you do? I thought you were going to talk to them and get us inside the temple, not slaughter them!”
“And then what would have happened?” Azad shot back. There was a smear of blood on his cheek, but he was otherwise unaffected—there was only conviction in his eyes, cold and determined. “Do you think they would have let us simply walk away once they found out what we had done? I asked if you were ready for the consequences, Soraya. And some part of you knows I’m right, or else you wouldn’t have stood there and let me do it.”
Whatever argument she wanted to make died on her tongue. He was right, of course—she had seen him take the dagger from his tunic, and she had said nothing, done nothing. She had let it happen as if it were unavoidable, because she knew that if she stopped him, they would fail before even entering the temple. No, it wasn’t that he had killed them that bothered her—it was that he had done it so well.
She nodded to him in concession, and without speaking again of the dead men on the ground, they continued into the fire temple.
Soraya saw the flicker of the Royal Fire in its silver urn behind the iron grate, and she felt the flame inside of her, too, burning her from the inside out. This is a mistake, the fire was warning her, but if she turned back now, those two guards would have died for nothing. It was too late for regrets.
Azad remained outside the temple entrance, both keeping guard and giving Soraya some privacy, as Soraya walked up to the grate and slid it open. The smell of esfand and sandalwood was almost overpowering as she stepped onto the pedestal and felt the heat of the fire on her face. She looked into the heart of it, searching for some sign of the simorgh’s feather embedded in the flames, a mother’s protection for her son.
The thought made her bristle, and her anger from this morning flared up again, replacing the dread that had begun to creep over her when she saw the fire. All these years, she had tried to be a good daughter, a good sister. She’d made it so easy for her family to forget and ignore her existence, folding herself away without complaint. Even as she had tried to find a way to lift this curse, she had told herself that she had been doing it in part for her family, so she would no longer be a shadow over them. But she could no longer lie to herself. If she put out the Royal Fire, it would be an act of pure selfishness, designed to benefit herself and no one else.
And just this once, she wanted to be selfish.
She raised the urn full of water over the fire and poured. The water hit the fire with the hiss of a serpent, and steam immediately billowed around her. When it cleared, the fire was gone, leaving only ashes. The urn fell from Soraya’s shaking hands and shattered on the ground. Before she could think too hard about what she had done, Soraya dug her hands into the ashes, her gloves becoming streaked with soot.
And there, buried under the ashes, was a flash of color. Soraya brushed aside the rest of the ash and uncovered the simorgh’s feather, mostly green but tipped with vibrant orange. It was unburned and unstained, as if it had just been plucked from the simorgh herself.
Soraya removed her gloves and gently lifted the feather, holding it across her palms like it might crumble into ash—as punishment, perhaps, for this ultimate betrayal.
But no, she wouldn’t think of that. She couldn’t think of it now, when she was so close to freedom.
Soraya remembered the yatu’s instructions. Hardly breathing, she pressed the pad of her finger against the sharp tip of the feather, hard enough for a bead of blood to appear, like a single pomegranate seed.
At first, she felt no different, and she wondered if this entire ordeal had been for nothing. But then a shudder ran through her, and her heart began to beat so fast—faster than the usual rapid pulse of fear or exertion—that she couldn’t catch her breath. Colors blurred around her, and she felt like she was blurring, too, her body losing its solidity, her insides draining away. It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t comforting, either, and she wondered if anything would be left of her once the poison was gone. Light-headed, she held up her hands and watched as the dark green lines running down her wrists faded to a faint blue-green tinge under her skin.
As her veins finished fading, her heart gave a last lurch and returned to normal, a steady beat in her chest that echoed through her ears. Her vision steadied, her blood stilled, and she knew it was over. The poison was gone.
A strange, muffled sound between a sob and a laugh bubbled out of her. She could feel the poison missing, but to her surprise, the absence felt cold, like a draft blowing through an open window, like the chill of regret. Soraya shook the thought away. She wouldn’t regret this decision, not once she told Azad or tried touching something. She tucked the feather into her sash in case she needed it again. When she was sure its effects were permanent, she would find a way to send it back.
Stumbling down from the pedestal in her haste, Soraya ran to Azad, who turned at the sound of her footsteps.
“Your face,” he said, his eyes wide. He took a step into the temple. “Your veins…”
“I think it worked,” she said, fighting to keep calm, to think rationally. “But I have to test it first, I have to touch something and see if—”
But before she could finish speaking, Azad had taken her face in his hands and crushed his mouth to hers.
Oh, Soraya thought. Oh.
It was the first touch she had ever known, and it consumed her. There were too many new sensations—his lips on hers, his hands on her face, his heart beating against hers, the heat rushing through her veins—and so she couldn’t focus on just one. It would have been like trying to feel a single raindrop during a storm. Instead, she gave herself up to it—to him—and stopped thinking at all, letting long-dormant instincts take over. Her hands did what they had itched to do from the beginning, and wound around Azad’s beautiful neck, pulling him flush against her. And all the while she was thinking, He’s still alive. I’m touching him but he’s still alive.
There was a sudden flash of pain like a pinprick on her bottom lip, and she let out an involuntary muffled cry—whether from pain or pleasure, she didn’t know. Her skin felt raw and sensitive, like it had been scoured clean, and so the line between pain and pleasure didn’t exist anymore. There was only touch, so overwhelming that it was almost unbearable.
But Azad must have thought he hurt her, because he drew her away from him, untangling himself from her hungry grasp. Soraya tried to catch her breath, and her eyes slowly fluttered open as she looked up at—
No.
The blood drained from Soraya’s face as she looked up, up, at a figure a head taller than Azad, a creature that wasn’t Azad but was horrifyingly familiar.
Her first thought was that she had done this to him. She had transferred her curse to him somehow. But the hideous scaled monster standing before her wasn’t at all surprised by his transformation. That neck that she had always admired was covered in patches of coarse green and brown scales. The hands that had just been on her skin were now longer, with spindly fingers tipped by sharp, curved nails like the claws of a lizard. His hair was gone, his head ridged and scaled like the rest of him. From his back emerged two large, leathery wings. And his face—his face was smiling, sharp, curved fangs showing between thin lips.
Soraya’s knees buckled, but she fought to remain standing, not wanting to be on her knees in front of this creature from her nightmares. “What are you?” she said, her voice escaping in a gasp.
He tilted his head, the curve of his neck painfully familiar to her. “I’m hurt, Soraya,” he said in a mocking tone. It was the same voice, the same cadence, but deeper now, like she was hearing Azad calling up from the bottom of a well. “I would have thought you’d know exactly who I am.”
Yes, she knew who he was. She knew even before she had asked. She knew when she had looked up and seen him in place of the young man she had expected.
But he still told her anyway.
“I’m your favorite story,” said the Shahmar.