Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust Page 0,37

lunged for him, maybe if she pretended to faint—

But before she could form a plan, something tackled the yatu, throwing him to the ground. The yatu hadn’t finished with Soraya’s ankles, and so she kicked the cord away, rolling to her side and pushing herself up onto her knees. And now she saw that it was Azad who had attacked the yatu—he had left behind his lantern, allowing him to sneak down the platform—and the two of them were both struggling for control of the knife in the yatu’s hand.

Soraya looked in horror at Azad, pinned to the ground by the yatu’s weight, the knife’s edge dangerously close to his throat. “Go!” Azad called to her.

But of course she couldn’t leave him here. Soraya tried not to lose her balance as she struggled to her feet, her bound hands shaking in her gloves … gloves that were slightly too large for her. Saying a silent thank-you to Parvaneh, Soraya bent down and stepped on the very edge of one glove, on the tiny pocket of air the glove left above her fingertips. And then she tore her hand from the glove with as much force as she could.

If she had been wearing her usual gloves, her plan might have failed, or she might have injured herself. But thanks to fate, or the Creator—or Parvaneh—the glove was just loose enough to let her pull her hand partly out of it. She pulled again—and again—until her right hand was free from both the glove and the bindings around her wrist. Quickly, she shook the cord off her other wrist.

While she had been working to free herself, Azad had continued struggling against the yatu. But once Soraya slipped free from her bindings, she looked up to see the yatu slam his knee into Azad’s stomach. Azad lost his grip on the yatu’s wrist as he cried out in pain.

That cry sparked something in Soraya, a shame that flooded through her whole body. Azad was going to die because of her—because he had agreed to her dangerous plan, because he had come running when she had cried out—and Soraya was powerless to stop it.

And once more, Parvaneh’s voice whispered in her mind: You could wield such power.

Those words were no longer a taunt but a suggestion—a solution. The yatu had a knife, but Soraya had her own weapon. The firelight glinted on the yatu’s raised knife, and Soraya’s shame ignited into rage.

He plunged the knife downward—just as Soraya wrapped her bare fingers around his wrist, pressing into his skin with bruising force.

I’m touching his skin. My skin is touching his skin. The yatu’s skin was cold, but still it was warm in a way that she had never felt before. Even though the circumstances were unpleasant, the simple sensation of it was so unfamiliar to her that Soraya briefly forgot who and where she was. She forgot what would happen next.

The yatu seemed shocked, as well. He had frozen, his eyes locked on Soraya’s hand, on the lines of poison under her skin. They both watched in surprise as the veins in the yatu’s wrist became that venomous shade of green Soraya knew so well, the poison spreading down his arm. The knife fell from his hand and clattered to the ground harmlessly beside Azad.

“What have you done?” he rasped, his body slumping to the ground, his wrist sliding out of Soraya’s grasp. The poison was now traveling up his neck, and when he tried to speak again, he started to gag.

I did this to him, she thought. I have the power to do this. All the times she had felt small and meaningless, all the times her family had lied to her or avoided her, all the times she had folded herself away, hiding like she was something shameful—all of that poison was in the yatu now, and she watched him choke on it, leaving her weightless. Bodiless. Free.

Soraya had never seen anything larger than a butterfly succumb to her poison. She didn’t know how long it would take for him to die, and she watched it happen with a kind of numb curiosity. He was laid out on the ground, convulsing, the last sparks of life twitching out of him. And then he stilled, the veins fading away, and Soraya knew he was dead.

“Soraya.”

He was dead, and she had killed him, and he was so much bigger than a butterfly.

“Soraya, what have you done?”

She thought it was the yatu who had spoken,