disaster. But instead, he only asked, “So your mother told you the truth at last? Did she tell you everything?”
Soraya heard her mother’s voice saying, He told me he would wait until I had a daughter, and when that daughter came of age, he would steal her away and make her his bride. He had certainly stolen her away—but did he mean to keep the last part of his promise as well? She watched the flickering candlelight, unable to look directly at him, as she said, “Is that why I’m here? Because of some petty grudge you have against her?”
“No,” he said, taking a step toward her. “I didn’t bring you here because of the threat I made to your mother. That was only ever meant to scare her. If she hadn’t made you poisonous, I would never have given you another thought. I wouldn’t have known about you at all, except that a parik told me about you after I captured her. In exchange for her freedom, she told me that the shah’s sister was a girl with poison growing inside her, waiting to be unleashed. As I heard her story, I realized who you were—who your mother was—and I knew you were the key, the ally I needed to take Golvahar. And…” His voice softened into a low hum. “I couldn’t resist seeing you for myself.” He reached for her, brushing his gnarled fingers against her hair. “I felt as if I already knew you, as if you were already mine. Didn’t you feel the same?”
It was all too familiar. He was too familiar—the cadence of his voice, the intensity of his gaze, even the way he touched her hair. And worst of all, she had felt from the beginning as if she had known him, as if she had dreamed him into existence. As if you were already mine.
But if familiarity weakened her resolve, it also saved her. In some corner of her mind, a knowing voice whispered, He’s doing it again. And she knew at once that the voice was right. In either form, Azad or the Shahmar, he knew the exact words she wanted most to hear, the exact gestures that would stir up desires that she had long ago put to rest. Even now, he was playing on her as easily as if she were an instrument, hoping the chord he struck would be louder than the screams from the garden.
He must have seen something harden in her expression, because his eyes narrowed and his hand fell away.
“Did you think the same tricks would work on me again?” she said coldly. “What do you even want with me? Why did you lock me up here instead of killing me?”
He stared at her in silence for the space of a heartbeat, then another, like he was waiting or searching for something, and Soraya realized, He doesn’t know, either. He had meant it when he said he’d planned to kill her. But for all his planning and manipulating, Soraya must have managed to surprise him. That gave her hope—it meant there was still a part of her that he couldn’t possess or predict.
Finally he said, “You’re wrong about one thing, Soraya. There’s no lock on the door. You can step outside anytime you’d like.” He gestured to the door, and Soraya tried to find some hint of his intentions in those cold eyes. But whatever was beyond this room, she had to know, and so with a last suspicious look in his direction, she went to the door and pulled it open.
She blinked, thinking that she was still unconscious, that this was a cruel dream, because she could have sworn she was standing at the threshold of Golvahar’s secret passageways. But then she noticed the differences—mud-brown rock instead of tan brick, wider walls and a higher ceiling, and a lit torch in a sconce on the wall.
“Go on,” the Shahmar urged from behind her.
Soraya stepped out into the tunnel, unnerved to be in a setting that was familiar and yet foreign, and to know that the Shahmar was behind her at every step. There was only one path to take, so she followed the tunnel until it opened out into a larger one, at which point the Shahmar grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.
“Don’t leave my side,” he said. He led her out into the larger tunnel, still holding on to her arm, and soon Soraya realized why.
Divs roamed this tunnel—though Soraya didn’t