The yatu seemed shocked, as well. He had frozen, his eyes locked on Soraya’s hand, on the lines of poison under her skin. They both watched in surprise as the veins in the yatu’s wrist became that venomous shade of green Soraya knew so well, the poison spreading down his arm. The knife fell from his hand and clattered to the ground harmlessly beside Azad.
“What have you done?” he rasped, his body slumping to the ground, his wrist sliding out of Soraya’s grasp. The poison was now traveling up his neck, and when he tried to speak again, he started to gag.
I did this to him, she thought. I have the power to do this. All the times she had felt small and meaningless, all the times her family had lied to her or avoided her, all the times she had folded herself away, hiding like she was something shameful—all of that poison was in the yatu now, and she watched him choke on it, leaving her weightless. Bodiless. Free.
Soraya had never seen anything larger than a butterfly succumb to her poison. She didn’t know how long it would take for him to die, and she watched it happen with a kind of numb curiosity. He was laid out on the ground, convulsing, the last sparks of life twitching out of him. And then he stilled, the veins fading away, and Soraya knew he was dead.
“Soraya.”
He was dead, and she had killed him, and he was so much bigger than a butterfly.
“Soraya, what have you done?”
She thought it was the yatu who had spoken, repeating his final words, but then she realized it had been Azad’s voice. He pushed himself off the ground and went to examine the body, putting his fingers to the yatu’s throat.
After a brief but painful silence, Azad said, “He’s dead.” He looked at Soraya, mouth slightly parted, eyes wide and round with awe. “You killed him.”
I did it to save you, she wanted to say. I had no other choice. But even as she scrambled for righteousness, she knew she was lying to herself. She might have found something heavy to knock the yatu unconscious. She might have only threatened him with death without actually touching him. She might have thought of something else, except she hadn’t thought at all. She had killed the yatu because she was angry with him for what he had said to her all those years ago, because he hadn’t given her the answers she wanted … and because it was easy. Because a little part of her had always wondered how easy it would be, and then she had had the perfect excuse to find out.
Soraya gagged, putting her hands—one gloved, one bare—over her face, trying to block out the sight of the yatu’s open, glassy eyes. But she couldn’t block him out—he was part of her now. That corpse on the ground was hers. She was responsible for it. “I’m sorry,” she said, but the words changed nothing. When she lowered her hands, the body would still be there, and she would still be a murderer.
Azad took hold of her wrists over her sleeves, careful to avoid her skin, and pulled her hands away from her face. “Don’t be,” he said firmly, letting the words echo through her mind, her memory—to the day they’d first met, when he had defended her against Ramin. “You saved us both.”
His gaze was as sure and unflinching as his words. Shadows swam over his face, his skin tinted orange in the dim light. Perhaps, if she let him, he could burn the guilt out of her with words, with a look, with a single touch. She started to lean toward him, not even realizing what she was doing until she stopped herself. But still, she felt an undeniable pull toward him, a thread that wound around them, tying them together. Whatever happened now, this moment belonged to the two of them alone, joining them together like a macabre wedding.
Azad’s brow furrowed. “Are you hurt?” he asked her.
A laugh escaped her, the sound of it loud and hideously inappropriate in this place of death. “No one can hurt me,” she said, a frantic note in her voice. She continued in a calmer tone. “It’s over now. The story ends here, Azad.”
“What do you mean?” he demanded, his hands tightening on her wrists. “What did the yatu tell you? You can’t tell me it’s over without any explanation.”
He was right. He had endangered himself for her, rushed to save her, comforted her when she was at her worst. It wasn’t fair to shut him out now—not until he knew the truth and understood why it had all been for nothing.
“In order to lift my curse, I need the simorgh’s feather. That was why I came to the yatu. He used to be the high priest, until he was arrested for treason. I asked him how to find it.”
Azad watched her, rapt. “And did he tell you?”
Soraya told him what the yatu had told her about the feather and the fire, how together they gave the shah the simorgh’s protection. “Do you understand now? I would have to betray my family.”
She waited to see some sign of resignation on his face, but instead he was shaking his head, a stubborn glint in his eye. “Soraya, no. You can’t stop now. Maybe the yatu was lying. Maybe if we go to the fire temple, we’ll find some way to borrow the feather without endangering anyone.”
“No,” she said at once. She pulled away from him and looked at the corpse, reminding herself how easy it was for her to lose her self-control. “I don’t trust myself to do that.”
“I won’t give up,” Azad said. “Together, we’ll find a way.”
He reached for her again, but she backed away, looking at him in disbelief. “I don’t understand you. I’m a murderer, Azad. You saw me kill someone. Why would you even want to help me anymore?”
Azad shook his head slowly as he came toward her. “You saved me, Soraya,” he said. “How is what you did any different from what soldiers do on the battlefield? No one would blame you for killing a yatu. You said yourself he was already wanted for treason.”
His words sounded reasonable enough, but Soraya knew that what was true for anyone else could never be true for her. If her family found out she had killed, they would see her differently—not as a sleeping serpent, its poison dormant, but as one that was awake and poised to strike. Soraya thought of the Shahmar with a shiver.
“It’s different,” she said.
“How?”
“Because I touched him to see what would happen!” she cried out, her arms wrapping around her waist. “I wanted to see for myself what I was capable of. It wasn’t the duty of a warrior. It was…” She shook her head, a bitter taste in her mouth. “It was a show of power.”
She watched for Azad’s reaction, waiting for his disgust for her to show on his face. She saw the movement of his throat as he swallowed, saw his fingers curl slightly at his side—but otherwise he was unreadable.
Her eyes kept flitting between Azad and the lifeless figure of the corpse, each painful in different ways, and so she turned her back on them both, arms tightening around her waist, her back hunching over. But it was too late to make herself small. The damage had already been done.
Gentle hands settled on her shoulders, and as if they had released her from some enchantment, Soraya’s shoulders went slack, and her eyes fluttered closed. From behind her, Azad spoke, his voice so low and quiet that it might have been coming from her own mind. “Listen to me, Soraya,” the voice said, wrapping around her. “Whatever your reasons, and no matter what anyone else might say, I’m glad you did it. I think you’re … extraordinary.”