Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust Page 0,81

before—that there isn’t much difference between who you are now and the young man you once were. The young man I knew.” She glanced up at him shyly, thinking of the way he had been so hesitant in those early days, feeding her lies while making her think she was drawing them out of him. “I want to know more about him,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

He was watching her warily, eyes slightly narrowed, as if trying to determine whether she was leading him into a trap. But then he simply said, “Come with me,” and turned for the door.

She followed at once, remaining close to his side as he led her back out into the tunnels. It was too much to assume that he would take her to the feather at once, but if she could keep him on the topic of his lost humanity, she hoped he would mention the feather himself in time.

As he led her down the winding path through the mountain, he said, “I forgot to ask you something. Do you remember the div that was locked up in the dungeon at the palace?”

Soraya’s step faltered only slightly. “Of course I remember. You planted her there, didn’t you?”

“I did, but when I went back to retrieve her, she was missing. When did you see her last?”

She tried to push away the memory of Parvaneh’s hair shining in the moonlight, of her lips brushing the corner of Soraya’s mouth, as if Azad might somehow be able to read her thoughts. “The night we went to the dakhmeh,” she answered. “She must have escaped after I … after the fire went out.”

“Yes, I would have assumed the same, except for the esfand burning in the dungeon.”

Soraya kept pace with his stride and said nothing.

“And you’re sure you haven’t seen her since before the fire went out?”

Soraya nodded.

“How interesting,” Azad continued in a voice like silk. “Then either the pariks have found a way to resist the effects of esfand, or they have a human helping them.”

Soraya abruptly halted, forcing Azad to stop and look back at her. “Are you accusing me of something? Please let me know what it is you think I’ve been able to do while tucked away in the room you put me in, unable to leave without fear of losing my life.” The words came out harsher than she intended, but the only way she could think to avoid his suspicion was to face it directly.

He held her gaze, then shook his head and kept walking. When Soraya was at his side again, he said, “No, I suppose you couldn’t have done anything. But if you see her or if she comes to you, let me know at once.”

She didn’t respond, hoping he would take her silence as agreement.

“Turn left here,” he said after they had continued a little longer. They went down a different passage and stopped at a door in the wall. But unlike the door to her room, this one was pure metal, with no space between the edges of the door and the wall. The door also had a keyhole, which Azad used the tip of one claw to unlock.

The security of this room gave Soraya hope—perhaps he was going to take her to the feather now after all.

But when the two of them stepped inside, all thought of the feather briefly fled Soraya’s mind. Everywhere Soraya looked were relics of the past—vases and painted jars, goblets and gold-rimmed dishes, tapestries and piles of coins. And all of them bore the image of the same man—Azad, before his transformation.

She walked up to a tapestry hanging on the wall to study the image of a young man hunting. She recognized him from the profile that she had found so beautiful, her eyes tracing the curve of his neck up to his face. He was riding a horse, a bow pulled taut in his hands, with a fierce look in his eye—a hunter tracking his prey. She knew that look. She had seen it on that first day, when he had spotted her on the roof.

When she turned to face him again, he was watching her. And even though he was as monstrous as ever, he seemed pathetic to her then, standing in the middle of this shrine to his lost humanity.

“Look around you,” he said. “What do you see?”

“You.”

“What else?”

She walked around the cavern, eyes glancing over the hoard of useless treasure, at the image of Azad engraved