Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust Page 0,26

feather—your brother, for example, or certain handsome soldiers I’ve seen in your company—then the deal is off. And I promise you that I will know if you’ve told anyone, and I will never speak to you again. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Parvaneh reached her arm out through the bars. “Shall we shake hands? Isn’t that what humans do to seal a promise?”

She didn’t mean it, of course—Soraya knew she was only teasing her. But still, the sly look in Parvaneh’s eyes made her want to play along, to show Parvaneh that she wouldn’t be rattled so easily. And so, holding her gaze, Soraya stepped forward and extended her gloved hand, close enough for Parvaneh to reach.

In a single movement too fast for Soraya to predict, Parvaneh’s hand shot through the bars and grasped Soraya’s, pulling her forward until she felt the metal of the bars against her shoulder. They stood face-to-face, both of them daring the other to be the first to back away. Her grip on Soraya’s hand was relentless.

This close, Soraya more clearly saw the patterns on Parvaneh’s face—the scalloped waves along her chin and jaw, the whorls on her cheeks, the stripes along her forehead, like a moth’s wings were laid out over her skin. Soraya had the strangest urge to trace those lines with one fingertip, to see if her skin would be as soft as a moth’s wing too. But then she flinched at the thought, remembering the last time she had touched a butterfly’s wing.

Parvaneh noticed the way Soraya had recoiled, and she responded with a slight shake of her head. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. She wasn’t looking Soraya in the eye, and Soraya realized that while she had been studying the patterns on Parvaneh’s face, Parvaneh had been studying the green lines on her own face.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Soraya whispered.

Parvaneh’s eyes sparkled, not with their usual mockery, but with something like hunger. “Of course not,” Parvaneh said. “You could kill me with a single touch. Why should you ever be afraid of anyone?” She peered closer, tilting her head. “No, it’s only yourself that you fear.” Parvaneh’s hand slid out of hers—taking Soraya’s glove with it. The unexpected feel of air on her bare skin always made Soraya’s heart race, but her panic quickly subsided into irritation when she saw the victorious smile on Parvaneh’s face as she dangled the glove out of Soraya’s reach.

“Give that back to me,” Soraya said.

Parvaneh shook her head. “You’ll have to return for it.”

And before Soraya could protest, Parvaneh had disappeared into the shadows again, taking a piece of Soraya with her.

8

A week after Nog Roz, Soraya met Sorush in the fire temple, as planned. The fire temple was not within the palace itself, but on a low hill behind the palace, so Soraya couldn’t take any tunnel or hidden passageway to reach it. Instead, she woke early, well before dawn, and made her way in the darkness before anyone else had risen.

She hadn’t returned to Parvaneh since receiving her impossible bargain. It was pointless—a dead end when the path had barely begun. She didn’t know where the simorgh’s feather was, and even if she did, she could never hand it over to a div.

She tried to put it out of her head, but every time she pulled on the new, unfamiliar pair of gloves that was slightly too large for her hands, she would remember the glow of Parvaneh’s eyes, and the price she had demanded. And she knew that even though she couldn’t move forward, she could no longer go back, either. She could never return to a time before she’d spoken to the div, a time before knowing that there was a way to remove her curse.

I could ask Sorush, she thought for the hundredth time as she climbed the hill to the fire temple. Sorush knew where the feather was, and so did the high priest, who even now was probably in the fire temple. It made her want to scream a little, knowing she was about to be alone with the only two people who could tell her what she needed to know, and yet she couldn’t ask either one of them without explaining why.

The sun was just rising as she reached the fire temple. Compared to the grandeur of the palace, the temple seemed misplaced in its simplicity: a round, domed roof over four stone columns forming a square, with an arch on each side. Soraya rarely came here, not only because