Soraya prayed that she was dreaming, that this was yet another nightmare. After all, she had never heard of a div being able to appear as human, or to resist the effects of esfand. But in her dreams, she always woke soon after the Shahmar appeared—just when the dream turned into a nightmare.
This time, the nightmare didn’t end.
Azad—the Shahmar—took a step toward her, and for the slightest moment, she forgot to be scared. She forgot that she no longer had poison to protect her. And then the memory of Azad’s hands on her face, his mouth on hers, came back to her, and she shuddered—not from repulsion or regret, but from a fear she had never known before.
For the first time in her life, she was completely defenseless.
The Shahmar lifted one clawed, scaled hand to hover over her cheek, and Soraya froze, years of habit forcing her to stay still when someone came too near. She looked for the eyes she had known before, but now they were yellow, the pupils vertical slits—the eyes of a serpent.
“Brave, ruthless Soraya,” he said, an oddly tender note in his deep voice. “I’m much fonder of you than I thought I’d be.” His hand fell away from her face, and she fought down the instinctive disappointment she felt, her traitorous skin still longing for touch, even from a monster. “I have other matters to attend to,” he continued, turning away from her. “Stay out of the way, and you’ll be safe.”
Before she could find her voice, he had stepped out of the fire temple. His wings spread out to their full span, each one the length of a human body, and carried him up into the air.
Soraya recovered at last and ran outside, looking up at the shape of the Shahmar soaring overhead. A shadow fell over the palace—he had paused in front of the sun, his wings blocking its light. She gazed up with a mixture of terror and awe, wondering how this fearsome creature had ever contained himself in the shape of a human, how he could have fooled her so utterly.…
Then the screaming began.
The screams seemed to surround her, a wave of terror crashing over her from every direction. And soon she knew why. From her vantage point on the hill, she could see the northwest quarter of the city. She saw the fissures running down the streets, splitting open to release a horde of divs in a kind of hellish earthquake. She saw people run screaming through the streets, trying not to be trampled underfoot or crushed by falling rubble from overturned buildings.
He promised he would show me the city during the day, Soraya remembered. But would there be anything left to see?
She had been frozen, numb with horror and shock, but now she ran. Soraya tore down the hill and around the side of the palace, going in the direction of the nearest screams—to the wedding party in the garden where the most important people in Atashar were all currently gathered like a herd of sheep. She had been so shocked by the revelation of Azad’s identity that she had forgotten the reason for the entire pretense. He made me put out the fire, she thought. Never mind that she had put it out willingly, that in fact she had convinced him to come with her—the truth was that he had been leading her to this moment step by step. He had been waiting for her to find the feather so that he could strike.
And now Soraya’s family—her entire country—was in danger because of her. Because of her one selfish action.
Even as she ran, her chest stinging from breathlessness, she wondered what use she would possibly be now that her only weapon was gone. She could do little more than warn people of a threat that was already upon them.
As if echoing her thoughts, a shadow fell over her, and she didn’t need to look up to know it was the Shahmar, circling the palace like a vulture over the dakhmeh. He was signaling the divs, she realized, purposefully making himself visible to let his accomplices know when to strike. But how had they been able to attack from below?
Soraya heard the answer to her question in her own voice—an innocent, thoughtless remark from nearly a month ago. There used to be tunnels underneath the entire city, she had told Azad. Either he had already known from the days of his reign, or she had handed him a way for the divs to infiltrate the city. He had planned everything so thoroughly, and it all depended on Soraya, on his certainty that she would make the wrong choice again and again. He had made a traitor of her, and she hadn’t even known it.
Soraya tore through the orchard that bordered the garden, then stopped to catch her breath and observe the damage she had caused.
At first glance, the garden seemed to have descended into chaos. Large pits spotted the garden where the openings to the water channels had been, and divs appeared from these enlarged tunnels as well as from the now-battered palace walls. Tables of food had been overturned, entire trees uprooted, and rugs trampled over. The panicked wedding guests were running in all directions, but none of them made it beyond the garden borders, because at every turn, a div was there to stop them.
Not even Soraya’s visits with Parvaneh had prepared her for seeing a div attack. None of these divs were pariks, with their mostly human forms. Instead, they were beastly in appearance, like the illustrations she had seen in books. They were as varied as they were terrifying, some with scales and fangs like the Shahmar, others with long tusks and bristling fur growing over their bodies. Though some were of human height, many towered over the guests like giants. A few had wings like the Shahmar, and they hovered overhead or scaled the walls of the palace, throwing down chunks of stone to block the paths of the panicked guests.
Soraya ran farther into the garden, trying not to notice the corpses—crushed and broken bodies of soldiers and palace guards, their skulls caved in and limbs snapped to reveal the white of bone, their torsos ripped open, staining the grass red with blood. People kept brushing past her in their attempts to run to safety, reminding her of what she had done—of the price she had willingly paid to be able to stand here in a crowd and be harmless.
She heard the sounds of battle and turned to see one of the remaining soldiers lunging at a furred, fanged div with his sword. His back was to her at first, but then she caught a flash of his profile and inhaled sharply in recognition. Ramin. His expression was fierce and focused, but the div easily blocked the sword with a large plank of wood torn from one of the banquet tables and used it to wrench the sword out of Ramin’s hands. Defenseless and unarmored, Ramin began to retreat, looking around him for a weapon, and his eyes caught Soraya’s. In that brief, surprised pause, the div struck, his claws raking against one side of Ramin’s waist. Soraya’s hands covered her mouth to hold back a scream as Ramin fell heavily to the ground, his life’s blood flowing out of him.
Soraya turned away, feeling no right to witness his last breaths. Hadn’t she fantasized about killing him only weeks ago? Wasn’t she responsible for his death now? He never would have fallen so easily in a true battle—none of the azatan would—but today the azatan were outnumbered, unarmored, and unprepared, while the divs moved with perfect certainty. Soraya remembered what Sorush had told her about the recent div raids, that the divs seemed to be practicing for something bigger.
The memory cut through her haze of guilt and fear, and Soraya began to notice something about the ensuing chaos—that it wasn’t chaos at all. She had learned enough about div raids to know that their main goal was destruction and carnage, but most of the dead among them now were soldiers and guards. None of the divs made any move to enter the palace, though a few were still crawling over the surface and the walls, and a group of them was barricading the entrance. She watched as one div with a horn and skin plates like those of a rhinoceros roughly grabbed an elderly man who was trying to sneak inside, but all the div did was add him to a group of people huddled together under the watchful guard of another div. In fact, all around the garden, the divs were herding the wedding guests into small groups, preventing them from escape but making no other move to harm them. And Soraya understood now why she had managed to escape their attention so far—she was neither running away nor fighting, and so they didn’t care what she did.
The div guarding a group of people near the palace steps moved to the side, and Soraya saw the agonized face of her mother, her composure fallen away. Soraya didn’t think—she ran toward her, seeking comfort or forgiveness or simply some reassurance that she hadn’t brought on the death of her entire family.
As she reached the palace steps, she tripped over her dress, landing on her hands and knees in front of her mother—a fitting position, she thought, to beg for forgiveness.
“Soraya? What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here!” Tahmineh’s voice was shrill with panic and utter dismay.
Soraya looked up at her mother—the purple silk of her gown was torn, the jewels in her hair were tangled in her elaborate braids, and her face was swollen from tears. Soraya had always wondered what her mother would look like undone, and now she wished she didn’t know. “I’m sorry, Maman,” she said, reaching up to her. “I’m so sorry.”
For the first time in her memory, Soraya touched her mother’s hands, taking them in her own as if that would explain everything.
Tahmineh didn’t flinch or pull her hands away from Soraya’s grasp—instead, she immediately gripped Soraya’s hands more tightly, like they were locking into place. She didn’t even seem to know anything was amiss until she looked down at the bare, smooth surface of Soraya’s hands and realized there was no poison under Soraya’s skin.
“No,” she said, the word escaping her like it was her last breath. She lifted her head and looked Soraya in the eye. “Soraya, what have you done?”
The words rang through Soraya’s head, an echo of the question she had been asking herself from the moment she had stepped back from her first kiss to see the creature from her nightmares.
Before she could answer, something wrenched her up from the ground, its grip tight around her upper arm. The div towered over her, long tusks emerging from his mouth. “I don’t remember you,” he growled at her.
“You can’t harm me,” Soraya said with more confidence than she felt. All she could think was that if she were still cursed, the div would be dead by now.
The div narrowed his eyes. “I can’t kill you. I can still—”
But before the div could explain in any further detail what he could do to Soraya, a shadow blocked the sun again, and all heads turned up to see a winged silhouette descending from the sky.
The Shahmar landed at the head of the palace steps, wings outstretched, framed by the ayvan behind him. He was still dressed in Azad’s clothing—the red tunic and trousers stretched over his scaled form in a mockery of humanity. The garden was hushed as he walked down the palace steps.
He stopped in front of the div that was still holding on to Soraya’s arm. “If you touch or threaten her again, I’ll tear out your tusks myself,” he said in a low, calm voice.
The div’s hand instantly fell away from Soraya’s arm.
The Shahmar turned to Soraya, holding her gaze. And then—to Soraya’s surprise—his eyes moved away from hers, to rest on something right behind her. When she turned her head, she saw her mother standing close to her, her face bloodless, returning the Shahmar’s gaze with cold recognition.
But before Soraya could begin to make sense of what she was seeing, the Shahmar turned away from them both and swept forward into the center of the crowd. Even the placement of the captive guests in small groups around the garden had been deliberate—the divs had formed an audience for the Shahmar, who now stood on the trampled rug where the bride and groom should have been sitting.
“You know who I am,” he bellowed in his deep, sonorous voice, his arms and wings both outspread to address the crowd. “Many of you have thought me dead, or merely a story to scare your children. But the legend of the Shahmar is real, and I have returned to take back my crown from the line that usurped mine all those years ago. The descendant of that line is among you now. Bring him forward.”
There was a flurry of movement among the crowd as everyone looked around them for the shah. Soraya let out a long, relieved exhale. If the Shahmar wanted to see her brother, that meant he wasn’t dead.
“Here, shahryar,” one of the divs called out. He was standing by the line of cypresses, and she saw that the humans the div was guarding were the injured remains of the king’s guard. They all rallied themselves now, but before a fight could ensue, a figure both familiar and strange stepped out from their midst and came forward. Soraya knew that handsome, boyish face, but it was now haggard and ashen. She knew his easy yet dignified gait as he walked out to the center of the garden, but now he seemed so small, so dull, especially as he drew closer to the imposing form of the Shahmar.
“Sorush, the young shah,” the Shahmar said, circling him. “You wear my crown. You live in my palace. You use my title.”
Sorush shook his head. “You lost your right to the throne. None of this belongs to you any longer.”
The Shahmar halted, looming over Sorush, but Sorush kept his gaze ahead of him, not even looking up to meet the Shahmar’s eye. “Is that so?” the Shahmar hissed. “And yet you were the one to welcome me to your home. You called me a friend and thanked me for saving your life.”
Only now did Sorush’s regal mask start to crack. He glanced up at the Shahmar, brow furrowed in confusion—and then his eyes widened in understanding. “Azad?”
The Shahmar put his hand to his chest and dipped his head in a mocking bow. “I owe this victory in part to you.” He pitched his voice louder, so all could hear. “Even now, an army of divs is storming your city. And they won’t stop, not until they’ve laid waste to your entire kingdom—or until I tell them to stop.”
He paused, and there was a low buzzing of murmurs all around the garden, people looking up and noticing the plumes of smoke overhead, wafting from the direction of the city. Sorush’s jaw tensed as he tried to remain impassive.
“You’ve noticed,” the Shahmar said, still addressing the crowd more than the shah, “that the divs listen to me. They obey my commands. Over the years of my exile, I have taught them what it means to band together under a king, to follow a vision—my vision. The simorgh will not come to your rescue this time, I promise you that. Only I can end this violence. I can return you to your lives of wealth and influence. But first—first you must accept me as your new shah.”
He knew when to speak and when to fall silent—to allow the full meaning of his words to sink deeply into the minds of every person present. And they weren’t just any people gathered here for the wedding of the shah. They were the bozorgan and satraps from all across the country, the people who chose the shah and those who governed the provinces in his name.
This was why the divs had been instructed not to seriously harm or kill anyone apart from soldiers—the Shahmar didn’t want to destroy Atashar. He wanted to rule it.
“Well, then?” the Shahmar said to Sorush. “Will you give up your crown to protect your people? Will you bend your knee to me in supplication?”
Sorush lifted his head to look his enemy in the eye. “The Creator will protect us,” he said, his voice quieter than the Shahmar’s, but no less powerful. “And you will fail.”
The Shahmar didn’t respond, staring down at Sorush with deadly stillness. And then, with one fluid movement of his graceful neck, he turned his head and looked directly at Soraya.
“No,” Soraya breathed. She didn’t think she’d spoken aloud, but then she felt her mother’s hands clasp around her arms.
The Shahmar began to walk slowly in her direction. “I understand now,” he said. “You refuse to surrender to me because you still believe that the simorgh’s protection will shield you.” The closer he came to Soraya, the more her mother’s grip tightened. He came to stand directly in front of her, shaking his head in disapproval. “So many lies in this family. Perhaps it’s time to bring everything to the surface.” He wrapped his scaled hand around Soraya’s wrist, and with one sharp tug, he tore her from her mother’s grip.
Soraya and her mother both cried out together, but the tusked div prevented Tahmineh from following, and the Shahmar effortlessly dragged Soraya to the center of the garden, directly across from her brother. Sorush didn’t look at her or show any reaction to his mother’s and sister’s cries, knowing the Shahmar would use any emotion against him.
But then Sorush’s eyes widened as he realized the Shahmar was touching Soraya’s bare skin—a subtle movement, but one the Shahmar noticed as well.
“Do you want to tell him, or shall I?” he said to Soraya, his hand still encircling her wrist.
Soraya looked up at the Shahmar, her eyes pleading—and for the first time, she noticed that there were patches of skin visible between the scales that covered his face. She saw the shape of Azad underneath the Shahmar, the boy he had once been before his corruption, the boy she had come to trust and had wanted to run away with. And at the sight of him, a lightning flash of rage pierced through the thick gray fog of her guilt.
“Don’t touch me,” she said through gritted teeth, wrenching her wrist out of his grip. It was the worst insult she could think of to say to him—that no touch at all was still better than his.
The Shahmar let out a low growl as he stared down at Soraya. He grabbed her wrist again and swung her around to face the encircling crowd.
“People of Atashar,” he called to his audience, “I’m sure you’ve heard tales of the shah’s mysterious sister. Perhaps you’ve wondered why she remains hidden, why she never appears with her family.”
Soraya tried to pull herself out of his grip again, but his claws were piercing her skin.
“Allow me, then”—he looked down at Soraya, the beginning of a smile on his thin lips—“to tell you the truth of the shahzadeh’s curse.”
The Shahmar pointed directly at Tahmineh, who was still in the grip of the div. “When her children were first born, your beloved queen mother—then, the shahbanu—took her infant daughter to the divs and asked them to grant her protection.”
Protection? Soraya froze, no longer struggling. She had told Azad that her mother was the cause of her curse, but not even she had known the reason for it. But if he knew the reason, then he’d known the truth all along, watching her stumble from the dungeon to the dakhmeh to the fire temple, looking for answers while her hands grew more and more stained with blood. But even as she hated him for it, she longed to know what he would say next.
“And the divs agreed,” he continued, “because the shahbanu had helped them once, and they owed her a debt. They laid a curse on the child and filled her veins with poison, so that she would be deadly to the touch.”
The crowd’s murmuring was louder now, like the furious roar of a wasp nest. How could the shah’s mother have committed such an atrocity? How could the shah have kept his sister’s curse a secret from the court all this time? What else was this family hiding?
But Soraya knew the worst was still to come.
The Shahmar spun her around again, holding her in place by her arms, so that she couldn’t look away from her brother’s grief-stricken face. “And so this girl decided to take her revenge on the family that had cursed her. She waited until the day of her brother’s wedding, and then she went to the fire temple, slew the guards, and put out the Royal Fire, because she had discovered that inside the fire was the one object that could free her from her curse—the simorgh’s feather.”
The Shahmar didn’t have to explain further. He put one hand under Soraya’s chin and held her face, so that all could see him touching her bare skin without consequence.
Soraya couldn’t even turn her head to look away from her brother’s broken gaze. “I’m sorry,” she tried to say, but the words were so mangled by the sob trapped in her throat that they were barely audible.
The Shahmar released her then, and she fell immediately to the ground, crushed under the weight of her guilt, her brother’s shame, and her mother’s secrets. She managed to lift her head and see the Shahmar approach her brother slowly, with the same elegance that she had so admired in him when she thought he was hers.
“Well?” he said. “Do you still believe your Creator will keep you safe? Do you think you can protect Atashar better than I can? Or will you kneel?” He turned to the crowd. “Will you kneel,” he called out, his arms outstretched, “to save your land from ruin?”
Soraya didn’t know who was the first to kneel. She didn’t know if it was done out of anger at her family or out of hopeless despair. But all around her, one by one, the most influential people in Atashar went to their knees and chose a new shah. She didn’t blame them; pride or loyalty would only lead to more destruction.
Soon, all the bozorgan were kneeling except for relations of the shah—aunts and uncles and cousins Soraya had never really known. Laleh and her wounded father, huddled together. Tahmineh. And Sorush.
From where she lay on the ground, Soraya watched her brother, waiting to see if he would look at her. But Sorush kept his eyes on his usurper as he slowly went down on one knee, then the other, before pressing his forehead to the ground in supplication.
The Shahmar had won.