“Parisa?” she whispered.
The lights went out, and a dim, shadowy figure stood at the table. Parisa lit the candles with the flint beside it and, newly illuminated, faced Soraya with an accusing stare. “Where is Parvaneh?”
The name made her wince. “You shouldn’t be here,” Soraya said as she rose to her feet. “He might return.”
“It’s still day. He never returns until dusk. Where is Parvaneh?”
“Why do you even care what happens to her? You cast her out.”
The eerie orange glow of her eyes dimmed a little, her wings bristling behind her. “She’s still our sister,” she said with a note of irritation. “We keep track of her movements. She entered Arzur last night by the pariks’ passage, but she never returned.” Parisa took a step toward her. “Where is Parvaneh?” she said again, emphasizing each word.
Soraya had to look away from her insistent stare before she could answer. “I don’t know,” she said. “He captured her.” I betrayed her. “I don’t know where he took her—or if she’s even alive.”
“She’s alive,” Parisa said, and Soraya looked up at her with the first semblance of hope she’d felt since last night. “We would know if she had died, or if another parik had risen.”
Soraya let out a heavy sigh, relief bubbling through her—until Parisa stepped closer to Soraya and held out her hand, palm upward. “Here,” she said. “Take this and use it to find her.”
In the dim light, Parisa’s hand appeared empty, and Soraya had to squint before she saw the few dark tendrils of hair across her palm. Hair? She was confused until she remembered what her mother had told her—how she had burned a lock of Parisa’s hair to speak to her in a dream. Soraya’s chest tightened. “No,” she said in a rasp. “I can’t. You do it.”
Parisa shook her head. “It will only work with a human.”
Soraya started to reach for the lock of hair, but the memory of Parvaneh’s furious, glowing eyes burning at her through a sheet of that same hair made Soraya physically recoil from Parisa’s outstretched hand and sink back into herself the way she had always done. Her arms wrapped around her waist, her shoulders hunched over, her hair falling down around her face. Poison, she thought. I’ll always be poison.
“She won’t want to speak to me,” Soraya said. “I’m the reason she was captured.”
She peeked up through her hair, expecting Parisa’s eyes to go cold or angry, for her fist to close, but she mostly seemed impatient. “Yes, and Parvaneh is the reason we were captured, but that never stopped her from trying to find us again.” With her other hand, she took Soraya’s chin and lifted it, so they were eye to eye. “Even if she’s upset with you now, if you do right by her, she will forgive you.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be forgiven,” Soraya said, pulling away from Parisa’s hand. “Maybe I just want to be forgotten.”
And now Parisa’s frown deepened into a look of disgust. “Then what do you plan to do?” she asked, her voice stern. “Are you still going to bring us the simorgh’s feather?”
Soraya looked away. “Every mistake I’ve made has come from trying to find that damned feather at any cost. I’m finished planning.”
Parisa was silent at first, then shook her head slowly. “You should be angry.”
Soraya laughed harshly and shrank even further into herself. “Do you think that would do any good? I’ve been angry my entire life, and all it’s done is twist me into something as terrible and violent as he is.” Memories flashed through her mind—the yatu’s face draining of all life, her brother on his knees, Ramin’s agonized scream. And at the heart of it all was a little girl with green veins looking at an illustration in a book, seeing a prince with scales growing over his skin, and knowing that they were the same. You deserve each other.
Shame flooded her, and she buried her head in her hands, try ing to make the memories stop. Parisa took her hands and brought them down from her face. She held them tight, her gaze as sharp and knowing as that of the bird she resembled.
“You say you’ve been angry, that you’ve hurt others, that you’ve become something violent like him,” Parisa said. “Very well, then. Be angry. Be violent. But not for his sake. Not to do as he commands. Be angry for yourself. Use that rage to fight him.”
Soraya shook her head. “It’s too late. My mother was right to make me poisonous—I see that now. I can’t fight anyone like this.”
“Your mother fought him. She outsmarted him by bringing you to me and asking me for protection. If you truly are like her, as you told me you were, then you’ll find a way to outsmart him, too. Be clever. Be patient. Keep that anger close to you, nourish it like a flame, and when the time is right, fight him however you can. No one is untouchable, Soraya.”
Her hands slipped out of Soraya’s and she turned and went to the door, opening it before becoming an owl and flying into the darkness of the tunnels.
Soraya stood there alone awhile longer, looking down at her hands—open but not empty.
25
As the smell of burning hair filled the cavern, Soraya inhaled deeply, breathing in the smoke. She had spent several minutes staring down at the strands of hair that Parisa had left for her, but in the end, she knew that the only thing more unforgivable than betraying Parvaneh would be to give up without even trying to free her.
When the hair had finished burning, Soraya lay back on her straw mattress and tried to will herself to sleep. Eventually, her breathing slowed and her thoughts became hazy and disconnected as her dreaming mind took over. Parvaneh, she thought. I have to speak to Parvaneh.
She knew where her dream had taken her before she even opened her eyes again. The air around her was chill and slightly damp, and when she breathed, she smelled esfand.
Golvahar. She was in the dungeon of Golvahar. She kept her eyes shut tight, not yet ready to face the home she had betrayed, but they filled with tears anyway. Tears of relief or regret, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t even sure she had a right to call Golvahar home anymore.
She pushed self-pity aside, reminding herself that she had come here with a purpose, and that Parvaneh would find no comfort in being locked up in her former prison. Soraya opened her eyes and sat up from the cold, stony ground. She couldn’t see much—the entire cavern was swirling with misty gray smoke, so thick that it obscured her vision, though strangely enough, she had no trouble breathing.
When her eyes adjusted enough to see the shape of bars in the distance, she rose and went toward them. As she came up to them, though, her foot met something hard. When she looked down, she found a row of dim orange lights hidden deep under the layers of smoke. She bent down, hoping they were the braziers with the esfand. There were at least five of them, enough to ensure that Parvaneh would be completely weakened, if not fully unconscious. Her hand met the metal of the brazier, but to her surprise, it wasn’t hot, or even warm, to the touch. It was solid under her fingers, but it didn’t feel like anything at all, as if she were touching it in a dream—which, she supposed, she was. When she tried to lift or move it, it wouldn’t budge, and so she gave up on trying to put out the smoke and went on toward the bars, feeling for them with her hands.