Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust Page 0,53

“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