Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust Page 0,50

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