Two of the bars were still bent from when Parvaneh had freed herself, and Soraya stepped through them, into the cell. “Parvaneh?” she called out. Even if Parvaneh were unconscious, Soraya thought, she might still be awake in this uncertain dreamscape. There was no response, though—or maybe Parvaneh didn’t want to respond.
The smoke closed in on Soraya from every direction, making her feel disoriented and slightly drowsy, even within a dream. She kept wandering with small, uncertain steps until she saw a shadowy outline on the ground near the far end of the cavern. She went toward it, and as she neared, the smoke began to clear slightly, as if it knew what she was looking for and wanted to oblige. And then Soraya saw her.
Parvaneh lay on her back, her wings hidden from view, her hands folded over her stomach, her eyes closed. Surrounded by tendrils of smoke, she looked like an apparition, or a mirage in the desert, the air shimmering around her. Soraya bent down beside her and looked at her face. She had always thought people were supposed to look peaceful when asleep, but Parvaneh’s forehead was lined with distress. Soraya reached with one uncertain hand to smooth the line away, but as with the brazier, she couldn’t make any change to her surroundings, nor even fully feel anything under her touch. She had thought she would be afraid to speak to Parvaneh again, but this silence, this sleep that was almost death, was far worse. Soraya would have endured the angriest of diatribes if it meant seeing those eyes open again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words swallowed up by the smoke. “I promise I’ll come for you. I won’t give up. I won’t let him win. I’ll show you how wrong you were about me.”
Before she willed herself awake again, she brushed her lips against Parvaneh’s forehead, a kiss neither of them could feel.
* * *
Soraya woke with her fists clenched at her sides, her whole body coiled and ready to act. She rose at once and checked the candle. It was only a little shorter than it had been when she’d gone to sleep, which meant she probably still had time before dusk. When Azad returned, she would have to think of a way to guide their conversation toward the simorgh’s feather again, but in the meantime, she finally had a place to search.
Her cloak was bundled up under the straw of her mattress, and she retrieved it now, even though she hoped that after Azad’s decree, no one would trouble her. Her caution was unnecessary—as soon as she stepped out into the main tunnel, she encountered a div who passed by her with a simple nod of the head. There were fewer divs passing through than she had seen before—probably because it was day—but each div that she passed as she made the climb up to Azad’s room paid her similar treatment. A strange thrill went through her on each of these occasions. Unlike their exaggerated deference to Azad, these gestures of recognition were small and subtle—a quick nod, a flash of a smile, a knowing look. We see you and know you, they said, and you are welcome here. After a short while, Soraya found herself returning the gestures, and the cloak dropped from her hands.
When she thought she was near Azad’s room, she began to slow and peer down tunnels, looking for an iron door. Most of the rooms and caverns didn’t have doors at all, and the ones that did were either made of wood or were simply curtains, so it was easy enough to find the one she was looking for. Unlike the door to his treasury, this one had no lock—his attachment to his humanity was his only secret—and so Soraya opened it and went inside.
She had thought that returning to this room, where she had nearly given in to her worst instincts, would be unbearable. But the room around her was nothing like the one from last night. She would have thought she was in the wrong place except for the cool breeze coming in through the window, the only one in all of Arzur, Azad had said. Because the breeze wasn’t the only visitor to the chamber—sunlight also streamed through the window, transforming the room entirely. It was the bright orange light of a slowly dying sun, which meant she didn’t have much time until dusk, and yet she stood enraptured at seeing and feeling the sunlight for the first time since she had been taken from Golvahar. She had never realized how easily hope died when there was no sunlight, how hard it was to believe that another day was worth fighting for when there was only night.
But that sun was also a measure of how much time she had left until Azad’s return, so she quickly recovered herself and started rummaging through the room as she had once done in her mother’s chambers, not long ago. She began with the chest where he had retrieved the rope last night, but it held only tools that were appropriate for living in a mountain—chisels, pickax heads, more rope.
She overturned all the rugs next, careful to replace them when she was finished, then went to the table where the map still lay. She could look at the wooden figures on the map more clearly now, white and red figures clashing at various points along the borders of Atashar. She dimly remembered seeing a similar map, with the same areas marked. Those marks are where the divs have attacked in the last few years, Sorush had explained to her. It’s almost as if they’re practicing for something. Soraya was tempted to knock the map off the table, but she restrained herself, instead carefully lifting a corner to look underneath.
There was a short hall off to the side of the room, which Soraya followed to a doorway at its end. Inside was a smaller chamber, roughly the same size as her own, and nearly as simple—a table, some candles, and a pallet that served as a bed, without even a blanket. This is where he sleeps, she thought. She couldn’t make herself go into the room. There was too much of him there.
Back in the main chamber, though, she had run out of places to search. She walked through the room carefully, checking for anything she may have missed, and stopped at the massive fireplace. Would he have—？
With a growing sense of dread, Soraya knelt down in front of the fireplace and began to sift through the ashes. Would he have destroyed his only chance of becoming human again? He had said he had no interest in living a human life, but his treasury of mementos from his reign said otherwise. Soraya’s fingertips were becoming gray, but she kept digging through the soot, until a flash of green caught her eye, reminding her too much of the last time she had dug this same feather out of the embers of a fire.
Soraya uncovered the remains of the simorgh’s feather, a few green barbs that became ash as soon as she touched them.
It was over, then. Their only chance at defeating the Shahmar—Soraya’s only chance at saving her family and Parvaneh—had crumbled into nothing.
Soraya remained kneeling by the fireplace, looking at the ashes that had once been the simorgh’s feather as if they would regenerate through whatever magic gave the feather its power. It seemed ridiculous that the feather had the power to heal anything except itself. But the yatu had warned her, his words more prophetic than she had known: in any fire other than the Royal Fire, he had said, the feather would simply burn.
She shut her eyes, letting the breeze cool her face, the back of her neck …
Her face and the back of her neck?
Soraya’s eyes snapped open, and she acknowledged that yes, she felt the breeze from two directions at once, both from the window behind her—and from the fireplace in front of her.