Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust Page 0,87
instead she only said, Are you still with me? before dissolving into a flurry of moths that surrounded her and then fell one by one, dead to the ground, as soon as they touched her.
With a weary groan, Soraya rose from her makeshift bed and tried to run a hand through the tangled mess of her hair. She went to the table, toward the smell of food, but her eyes passed over the dishes laid out for her, distracted by the sight of something more familiar.
Draped over the table was one of her gowns from her wardrobe at Golvahar. It was one of the finest she had, delicate purple silk brocade etched with gold roses. She had never worn it, but she took it up in her hands and breathed in the slightly stuffy scent of her wardrobe as if it were the fragrance of roses from her garden. Home.
On the floor was a pair of matching slippers. Beside the gown was an array of jewelry that also came from her collection, as well as a glass bottle of rose water and a folded note leaning against it.
There will be a banquet in your honor tonight. Ready yourself and I will send someone to accompany you.
She crumpled the note, the sound of it reminding her of crushed wings, and sat down to eat. I won’t dress for him, she told herself as she folded a piece of lavash over quince jam. But it would be nice to have a change of clothes, especially clothes from home, she thought after one bite. And until I find the feather, I still need to play along with his games.
By the time she finished eating, she decided to compromise. She would wear the dress as a welcome change, as well as the slippers since hers were nearly worn, but not the jewelry, which felt too ornamental. After another internal debate, she uncorked the bottle and scented her hair and wrists with rose water. She wore it not to please Azad or anyone else, but because when she closed her eyes and took a breath, she could almost fool herself that she was standing in the golestan. Since she had no sense of time, she kept a nervous eye on the door as she changed out of her old dress and into the gown.
After she finished dressing, she didn’t have to wait long until the door to her room opened unceremoniously, without even the courtesy of a knock. Soraya stood tall, ready to reprimand Azad for being so uncivil, but it wasn’t Azad who had opened her door. It was a div with sharp quills all along his skin. In a flat voice, he said, “The Shahmar sent me to fetch you.”
Soraya followed the div out into the long pathway. Whenever other divs glanced at her with curiosity as they passed by, Soraya huddled closer to the div beside her.
“Here,” the div said at last. They emerged from the tunnels into another enormous cavern, much like Azad’s makeshift throne room. Soraya braced herself, but this time, she didn’t see anything like the div training grounds or the pit from Duzakh. What she saw felt like … home.
Long trestle tables holding plates of food were set out throughout the cavern, and Soraya inhaled the smell of lamb and buttered rice, along with mint and saffron and wine—the kind of meal she would expect at Golvahar. A bonfire burned at the center of the cavern, filling it with light, and rugs were scattered over the ground around it. Azad had promised her a banquet and he had given her one, exactly as she would have imagined it, except that every guest here was a div.
They were seated on the rugs, eating their food, or milling about the banquet tables with goblets of wine in their hands. Soraya recognized those goblets—as well as the tables and plates holding the food—from the palace, and the sight of them enraged her. As soon as she had found her clothes laid out for her, she had known that Azad was trying to give her pieces of home to make her more comfortable here, to confuse her into a sense of belonging. But that was only half of his plan. Because he had brought her a dress that she had never had occasion to wear before. He had issued her an invitation she would never have received. And now she was the guest of honor at a banquet that she would never