Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust Page 0,104

make him return to Golvahar before her.

“You know I would give you anything,” he said.

Except my family. Except Parvaneh. Except my freedom. “When we return to the palace, I want my old rooms back.”

He hesitated. “Soraya, I want to trust you.…”

“But you’ll need to board up the door to the passageways first. I understand. Do what you must. But I want something familiar. Something to remind me of my old life.” More gently, she added, “I’m sure you can understand that.”

He nodded. “Very well. I’ll prepare your room tonight, and you’ll begin your journey at dawn.”

He insisted on accompanying her back to her room in the mountain, and Soraya’s heart pounded with a mixture of fear and excitement. It had worked—she would wait until her candle was halfway burned before setting out for his room again, and this time, she would bring tools with her to free the simorgh.

But instead of turning toward her room, Azad gripped her arm and led her farther down the passage. “What are you doing?” Soraya said.

“When I announced that you could move freely through the mountain, I hadn’t yet known about your outings with the pariks. They’re very loyal—if they learn what you did to Parvaneh, they may come for you and take their revenge. I’d prefer to keep you secured more safely tonight.”

It was such a blatant lie that Soraya nearly told him about Parisa’s visit just to catch him in it. But she had made that mistake once before, and she kept her anger—and her tongue—in check as he led her to his treasury, the only room with a lock on the door.

“You can’t keep me here,” she said, attempting to pull out of his grip as they neared the door. “There’s no bed.”

“You’ve seen for yourself that there are plenty of rugs that you can pile up.”

“What about food?”

“You’ll be fine until morning. Sleep, and the time will pass quickly.”

He unlocked the door and dragged Soraya across the threshold.

“But what if I—”

He silenced her with a finger against her lips. “Think of this as a test of your loyalty to me. Because if this is another ploy, Soraya—if I discover that you’re deceiving me in any way—then there will be no more bargains or exchanges. I will slaughter your family in front of you as easily as I slaughtered mine.”

26

Soraya’s mother had told her once that it was almost a day’s journey from the city where she had spent her childhood to Golvahar. And so Soraya knew she had roughly from sunrise to sunset to figure out what she should do once she arrived at the palace.

Sometime before dawn, Azad had retrieved her from the treasury and brought her to the entryway of the mountain. As promised, a golden litter awaited her there, along with two smaller divs on horseback. Once Soraya was in the litter, and the litter securely attached to the horses, Azad took off, promising to greet Soraya at journey’s end.

And what would she do when she reached her destination? The simorgh was chained up inside the mountain. The pariks were hiding somewhere in the forest. Her family and Parvaneh were imprisoned. What had Soraya managed to accomplish during her time here? She cursed herself now for not simply plucking one of the simorgh’s feathers when she had the chance, but some part of her knew that nothing good would have come from such a theft. The feather had to be granted freely or not at all.

As they traveled through the scattered woodland of the mountain steppe, and the sun began to rise, Soraya saw city walls in the distance to the south. That was where her mother had been born, where she had returned one day after meeting a div in these same woods. She imagined what it would have been like to grow up there, in the shadow of Arzur, constantly under threat of a div raid. Her mother had lived so close to danger all her life—it was no wonder, then, that she had seen Soraya’s curse as a reasonable price to pay for her safety.

When they moved closer, Soraya noticed the large gaps in the mud-brick walls, where something had battered it down. She wondered if it was from a recent attack, or if the people there had simply given up repairing it over the years, knowing that the divs were so near.

They stopped when the sun was at its highest overhead. There was still enough grass for the horses to graze, and so