The last word was an exhale, his breath warm on the curve of her neck. She wanted nothing more than to lean back against him, to let him hold her so close that she would forget everything outside the circle of his arms. She wanted his words to seep into her skin until she believed them. The longing was deeper than she’d ever felt before, a craving for something more than human touch. There was a dull ache in her heart as she opened her eyes.
“We’ll leave the body here for the vultures,” Azad said. He removed his hands from her shoulders, going to retrieve her other glove.
“No,” Soraya said with surprising firmness. “We have to put it on the platform.” Dead flesh belonged to the Destroyer, and would pollute the Creator’s soil until there was nothing left but bone. She had already broken too many rules tonight; it seemed vitally important to her to keep this one.
Azad looked like he wanted to argue, but he sighed and said, “Fine.” He threw the corpse over his shoulder and carried it to the platform, hoisting it up onto the rock. Soraya tried not to focus on the yatu’s feet dangling over the edge.
“Now let’s leave this place and put it out of our minds,” Azad said. He held Soraya’s glove out to her. “But our story isn’t over yet, Soraya. I promise you that.”
She was too exhausted to contradict him—especially when she wanted him to be right. “Take me home,” she said softly as she took back her glove. She slipped it on, put her gloved hand in his, and let him lead her out of the dakhmeh, back into the world of the living.
11
Soraya was barely aware of her surroundings as she followed Azad back through the empty city streets to the palace gates. Once again, both the guard at the city walls and the guards at the palace gates let them pass despite the late hour once they saw Azad’s uniform, and even through the haze of her guilt, Soraya couldn’t help thinking how easy it was for Azad to make his way through the world. With his new status and his air of confidence, he could go anywhere he wanted, while Soraya couldn’t even leave the palace without ending up with blood on her hands.
The yatu’s face still flashed through her mind, his eyes somehow both blank and accusing at the same time, the poison in his veins spreading up the strained muscles of his neck.
Something touched her shoulder, and she flinched before realizing it was only Azad, his hand dropping away at her reaction. He said something—asked her how she was, if she wanted him to stay with her—and she shook her head, hardly able to understand him over the roar of guilt in her head.
She wanted to cry, to have a measure of release, at least, but she felt withered and empty. The smell of death and dirt from the dakhmeh still lingered on her clothes and in her hair. It was trapped inside her lungs, along with powdered bone remains that also stained her gloves and dress. But Soraya knew that even if she bathed and changed, even if she burned these clothes, she would carry the dakhmeh with her for the rest of her life. That was why the living should never enter the dakhmeh—there was no way to truly leave it behind.
They parted ways outside the golestan. Soraya entered alone, using the key that she had slipped in her sash when she had left earlier this evening, but she couldn’t bring herself to continue on to her room. Her body didn’t want to move, and she wondered if she would still be standing in the dakhmeh over the yatu’s body if Azad hadn’t been there to lead her away. She had always thought guilt was an emotion, but now she understood that guilt was a sickness, a fever. It made her feel like all her muscles were being stretched beyond their limits, her body twisting itself around this new and terrible truth.
She was a murderer. She was a monster.
Soraya looked around at her garden. It was the furthest place she could imagine from the dakhmeh—teeming with life, the air fresh and clean with the scent of dew and roses. It was all life that she had nurtured herself, with her own hands. It was life that she couldn’t kill.
It was an elaborate and beautiful lie.
Without realizing what she was doing, Soraya shed her gloves, strode over to the nearest rose, and tore it from its stem, crumpling it in her hand. As long as she had this garden, she could convince herself that she was good, that she was not designed solely for wickedness, for killing. But tonight she had learned how easy it was to become something cruel and murderous, how much effort it took to be good. To be small. They were the same thing for her, weren’t they?
With a muffled cry, she lunged for the roses and began ripping them all from their stems, not even caring when the thorns pierced her skin. She moved through the entire garden in a frenzy of destruction, pulling the rosebushes apart and crumpling them underfoot until she had laid waste to it all. She knew she’d feel ashamed when she confronted the wreckage in the morning, but now—now—she felt nothing but the purest relief. She lost herself, and yet for the first time she was herself, more than she had ever been before.
She was breathless when it was done, her hands smeared with dirt and red streaks that were either blood or crushed petals, her dress ruined. The grass was littered with crumpled roses and broken stems. Anyone who saw the golestan now would think a storm had struck.
There was no sound but the rush of blood raging in her ears, but it all went silent as something gray and fluttering landed on a bare stem in front of her. Parvaneh, she thought, naming both the creature on the stem and the face that came instantly to her mind.
Even now, Parvaneh was waiting for her, still holding her stolen glove hostage. Come back for it, she had said, and Soraya felt the pull of those words as strongly as if there were a cord tied between her and Parvaneh, one monster linked to another. She was the only one here who could make Soraya still feel human. Not even Azad could offer her that. He was too innocent, his hands too clean.
Soraya reached out, one fingertip hovering over the moth’s wing. Would it matter anymore if she killed it? What was a moth or butterfly compared to a human being? But before she could make that choice, the moth fluttered away to safety, leaving Soraya feeling strangely bereft.
Come back for it.
Soraya slipped out the golestan door, heading toward the secret entrance in the stairway that she had shown Azad. She understood now that it wasn’t the golestan she needed tonight—not the comfort of her roses or even the assuring words of Azad.
What she needed tonight was another monster.
* * *
The cavern was almost completely dark, the brazier emitting only a few sparks of light. Soraya was glad. The darkness was effacing; it hid the streaks of powdered bone on her dress, the bleeding scrapes on her hands, and the poison under her skin. Here, she was nothing but a voice.
Or so she believed until she heard Parvaneh say, “You’ve had an eventful night, I see.”
Soraya squinted through the bars until she saw the inhuman sheen of Parvaneh’s eyes. “Of course you can see in the dark,” Soraya muttered.
Parvaneh walked up to the bars, more visible now that she was closer. “You came back. Does that mean you have the feather?”
A wave of anger burned through Soraya, warming her cold hands. “You knew from the beginning that the feather could lift my curse,” she said, her voice little more than a tired rasp.
Parvaneh’s face fell, her shoulders slumping. “So you found out,” she said, her voice dull with disappointment.