Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust Page A

sleeves, picked apart during moments of thwarted anger. “I can’t promise that I’ll be what you want me to be at the end of this,” she said quietly.
    He started to disagree, but then he stopped and looked at her, and he sighed. “You may be right,” he said. “I suppose I wanted to remember what it was like—to live in a palace, to be a part of a court, to feel like a hero again.”
    â€œAgain?”
    He ran a hand through his curls, his shoulders tensing, and Soraya felt like she was seeing him for the first time—not as a brave hero or her dashing rescuer, but as a young man with burdens of his own.
    â€œThis isn’t the first time I’ve moved up or down in society,” he said, bitterness lacing his words. “I told you, I think, that my father was a merchant. He was a very successful one, and he was often a guest in the palaces of satraps and the estates of the bozorgan.Sometimes he would take me with him, and I suppose I began to feel like I was one of them, like I belonged there. But then my father made some bad investments and fell out of favor. We were cast out. I lost everything I had, everything I believed I was.”
    â€œYour father,” she said, “is he…”
    â€œDead?” He looked her in the eye, not flinching from the word. “Yes. He died shortly after our disgrace. I lived on my own in the village we ran to until the divs came and slaughtered half the villagers.” He paused, his eyes flickering to the ground. “It seems wrong, but sometimes I still feel such anger toward him, for all the things he couldn’t be. For the ways he failed me.”
    His fists clenched at his sides, and Soraya saw the veins on his knuckles stand out as he fought down his anger. She wanted to trace them with her fingers, to feel the shape of someone else’s anger, someone else’s pain. She thought of the look they had shared after he had struck Ramin, the sense of connection between them. It was when they let each other see their harsh edges that they both felt real.
    Azad shook his head, breaking himself out of his reverie. “That first time I saw you on the roof, I felt like that young man again. I suppose I wanted to regain what I had lost through you. I’m sorry for that.” He reached forward, slowly enough not to startle her, and carefully—so carefully—brushed his knuckles against Soraya’s hair. “But I’d still like to help you, if you’d let me,” he said. “I like the person I am when I’m with you. And I’d like to help you be whoever you want to be.”
    He had touched her hair before, but this time felt different. She had hardly breathed last time, certain that he’d fade away or disappear under the weight of a single breath. But now, after what he had told her, after seeing the veins in his hands and hearing the harsh edge in his voice, Azad seemed … touchable. A bolt of heat went through her at the thought, like a spark suddenly ignited. That was how she felt—like she was transforming from smoke toflame under his gaze, his touch. She could have echoed his words and meant it: I like the person I am when I’m with you .
    She leaned away, letting her hair slowly unwind from his finger. “Tonight, then?”
    His lips curved into a smile that was both fond and a little sly. “Tonight,” he agreed.

 
9
    For what must have been the fifteenth time, Soraya drew her shawl more tightly around her face, hoping that the shawl and the steadily dimming light would make her appear little more than a shadow. She could have been any young woman sneaking off with a handsome soldier—or so she hoped.
    Her own personal handsome soldier was waiting for her outside the walls of the golestan, as they had arranged. As soon as she left behind those familiar walls, he was at her side, taking her arm.
    â€œAre you ready?” Azad whispered to