Witch Daughter

by Tanaz Bhathena

Genres: Historical Fantasy; Romantic Fantasy; Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

Synopsis

In her adult debut, award-winning author Tanaz Bhathena expertly weaves a tale of love and loss in ancient Persia with her take on the timeless tragedy of Tahmineh, a temptress, a witch, a victim, or, perhaps, a woman trying her hardest to protect her loved ones.

“A beautifully rendered mixture of magic and the Middle East."—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"A bold love story.”—Lauren Kate, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"An aching, timeless, and lush tale.”—Samantha Sotto Yambao, New York Times bestselling author

Rumors of witchcraft follow Princess Tahmineh like a storm cloud, making it impossible for her to secure herself a marriage or any kind of future. With her father, the king’s, health in question, it becomes shockingly clear how desperate her situation will soon become in his absence. If she doesn’t act now, she will quickly find herself destitute and desperate.
 
Tahmineh seeks out a prophecy, from which she learns she will fall in love with a warrior of great renown named Rostam and bear him a son. However, she is warned this match is a dangerous one for her. Heedless of the warnings, Tahmineh boldly orchestrates a meeting with Rostam and the two develop a close friendship and ultimately fall in love and marry. At the peak of her joy, Tahmineh gives birth to Sohrab, Rostam’s son.
 
All too soon, Tahmineh learns the tragic second part of the prophecy. Father and son will meet as enemies in battle and one will die at the hand of the other. What follows is a mother’s desperate attempt to undo the threads of fate and try to protect her son at all costs.

Release date: September 22, 2026

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

“DO YOU LIKE YOUR HAIR, Your Highness?”

The maid who’d asked the question was a slip of a girl, her body still in that awkward adolescent stage of transitioning from angles to curves, her limbs trembling with uncertainty.

I examined my reflection in the bronze mirror she held up, taking in the loose black curls artfully framing my face, the thick braid woven all the way to my hips. Delicate brass butterflies had been pinned across the length of my hair at regular intervals, metal wings fiery in the lamplight.

“Why, Binaifer.” I raised a hand to my chest in mock astonishment. “You’ve outdone yourself tonight. You’ve made me look beautiful.”

This was not a real surprise. For all her nervous energy, Binaifer was the cleverest among the palace maids when it came to arranging hair, knowing exactly what styles suited my angular face. Garbed in my favorite green silk dress, the corset embroidered with red roses and the sleeves embellished with pearls, tonight I looked more like a forest spirit than the witch I was reputed to be.

“You are beautiful, Your Highness!” Binaifer’s round face beamed. “Everyone says so!”

“Really? I thought they were calling me an old hag by now.”

Binaifer instantly began protesting this statement, brown eyes widening with alarm.

“Oh, don’t fret,” I said, gently squeezing her shoulder. “I am not fishing for more compliments.”

Certainly, by now, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, I no longer held illusions about who I was nor how I appeared to my father’s court. King Arshak’s only daughter: the princess no man wanted to marry. The princess many called demon-born behind her back.

Under my touch, Binaifer slowly began to relax. She would be easier to soothe if asleep. Then I could slip past the barrier between wakefulness and slumber and walk into her dreams, unseen, assuring her that she was safe with me.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness.” Binaifer’s smile held the slightest hint of a tremor. “I know you are not like the other ladies of the palace. If not for you, I would not be here today.”

“You must not say such things,” I chided gently. “You are loyal and good. Any lady would be lucky to have you attending her.”

Yet there was truth to Binaifer’s words. I had seen the way ladies at court treated their maids—their withering rebukes, their backhanded slaps for the smallest mistakes. Once, years ago, when I’d tried to defend a maid from being unfairly reprimanded by a courtier’s wife, the maid herself had turned me away. “No need for you to step in, Shahdoxt,” she’d said, her voice polite but firm. “My mistress is right. I should have known better.”

The maid did not say it aloud, but I understood what she meant: She did not wish to be saved by a witch.

With Binaifer, however, things were different. I’d first encountered her over a year ago outside the queen’s quarters: a small, scrawny thing being beaten within an inch of her life by my stepmother’s favorite lady-in-waiting, Banu Azad. Bruises bloomed across the young girl’s face and blood had begun to seep from her nostrils. I did not have to think twice. I stepped into the dimly lit corridor and shoved Banu Azad aside.

“Leave this girl alone,” I told the woman, my voice cold. “If you don’t, I will find out. And there will be consequences.”

What those consequences would be, I did not say. I did not need to. Banu Azad had erupted in outraged squeaks of protest, fear mingling with the hatred in her beady eyes. That day, I did not mind the rumors that constantly swirled around me—including the mistaken belief among the palace women that I could transform them into lizards or burn them to ash with the force of my gaze.

Leaving the queen’s lady to sputter unintelligibly, I had turned to a stunned Binaifer. “From now on, you work only for me, understand?” I had said. “I will speak to the king about it.” Neither Banu Azad nor my stepmother would dare kick up a fuss once I had Father’s approval—especially not over an ordinary maid.

“Y-yes. Yes, Your Highness!” the girl had sputtered in response.

No one dared touch Binaifer now. Not while she was under my protection.

Of course, my protection worked only because no one at court really knew what my powers were, their imaginations always conjuring worse things than what my own magic would ever be capable of.

Our world was divided into three realms: the celestial realm ruled by the yazata or angels, the human realm where we lived, and the underworld where the daeva or demons reigned. There were times, of course, when the inhabitants of these realms crossed paths. Most times in war, but a few times in love as well, the way my father and mother had. A human king and a pairika—an immortal witch from the underworld—their love resulting in the birth of a child who could cross over into the realm of human dreams.

My parents’ marriage did not last, my mother leaving the palace shortly after I was born for reasons no one really knew, my father remarrying a few years later. My stepmother hated me on sight, repeatedly trying to send me away. Father, however, protected me, brushing aside her protests about bad omens and my “vile daeva blood.”

“I do not abandon my children,” he’d said sternly.

King Arshak was a man of his word and he’d remained steadfast as the years passed, even as the whispers about me grew at court. Even as princes, knights, and noblemen refused my hand in marriage, unwilling to have a witch’s daughter for a wife.

But my father was growing old now. There was no saying how long his protection would last.

“You look perfect for the feast.” Binaifer’s voice distracted me from my thoughts. A wide smile revealed the gap between her front teeth. The sight jarred me for a moment, reminding me of another young face. Another smile.

Noshir.

My ribs tightened. No. I could not grieve my little brother’s death tonight. Tonight, I would need all my wits about me—as was usually the case with family celebrations. I rose to my feet and clipped a small dagger onto my leather belt, its gold sheath pebbled like the feathers of a bird. Father had gifted the dagger to me when I’d come of age at fifteen, and it never failed to comfort me during these gatherings—a reminder that I always had the king’s protection. That I could use it to protect myself, if needed.

Pinching color into my cheeks, I determinedly stepped outside. The corridors were bustling with servants, most of whom ignored my presence. But Binaifer’s ministrations seemed to have an impact, for a few of the queen’s maids stopped to stare as I approached and bowed. I smiled, hoping my nerves did not show.

At least tonight’s feast would not be in the palace’s stuffy banquet hall. It was the eve of Nowruz, the spring festival that marked the end of winter. Several bonfires had been set up in the lawn outside, along with a long wooden pavilion, its pillars festooned with red ribbons and garlands of roses and the gold and ochre saman wildflowers that bloomed fragrant across our pastures, giving our kingdom its name.

Tonight, people would sing songs, make wishes, and pray to Ahura Mazda, hoping to leave behind their illnesses and misfortunes in the previous year. Already, minstrels had begun playing a lively tune on flutes, while a group of children took turns leaping over one of the smaller bonfires.

“Let your redness be mine!” the children chanted. “And my paleness be yours!”

I paused to watch. I, too, had been like these children once. Had joyfully chanted these phrases while leaping over the fire, imagining that my arms were wings. This was in the years before Father had married my stepmother. The years when the court saw me as only the king’s daughter—or so I thought at the time.

As I stood there, a small boy raced past and nearly tripped over his own feet.

“Careful!” I cried out, righting him with a hand. My smile faded when I saw the downward curve of his rosy lips, the stark terror in those big brown eyes as they locked on mine.

“P-please!” he cried out. “Please don’t hurt me!”

The words of reassurance caught in my throat. I stepped back, watching him run back to his friends, who were shooting me horrified glances. Demon, they mouthed to each other. Witch.

Had the boy simply run away instead of saying anything, I might have been able to retreat to the palace and lock myself in my room. But now I had drawn the attention of the adults as well.

Laughing women in gowns of jeweled silk and almond blossoms in their hair. Boisterous men in embroidered tunics and large woolen cloaks wrapped around one shoulder. They all turned to look at me, growing hushed as I approached the great bonfire at the center of the festivities. A few feet away, a gray-haired woman snapped her fingers thrice: a sign to ward off the devil.

It was Binaifer’s former tormenter, Banu Azad.

“Shameless creature,” Banu Azad told the women standing next to her, even as she stared at me all the while. “Sullying this auspicious day with her presence. Walking around the palace as if she owns it! Her mother was the same. I still remember her, you know, with her strange, inhuman eyes.”

I was grateful that no one could witness the stuttering of my heart. Few here at the palace knew my mother well. Father certainly never spoke of her in public—not after she left us. His silence fueled the speculations further, rumors flying wild: “She had an affair with a palace guard!” Or “She stole gold from the king’s treasury and ran away with it!” Or “She was a witch! A daeva who revealed herself only after marriage!”

It wasn’t until my stepmother, Sussan, came to the palace that the final rumor settled into an accepted truth, casting a shadow over my future like a shroud. It did not help that the only consistent thing I had heard about my mother was mentions of her strange eyes: one as black as midnight, one as gold and glowing as the ingots mined in the Hindu Kush mountains. People said that I took after my mother in my looks, but I was grateful not to have inherited her eyes, my own irises an ordinary dark brown.

As it was, I drew too much attention at gatherings like these, the back of my neck prickling constantly with the sensation of being watched. My gaze flicked over to a group of young women whispering and giggling among themselves, no older than nineteen or twenty. Two of the women caught me looking and turned away, their pale cheeks growing pink. Laleh and Gul, they were called, a courtier’s daughters whose dreams I’d walked into a couple of years earlier, persuading them I wasn’t bad company. My magic had worked. The sisters, who hadn’t any firm opinions about me like the other women at court, had begun growing friendly, even accompanying me on walks along the river.

That was until my stepmother had intervened.

“Shahbanu Sussan said that being friends with you is not good for our reputation,” Laleh had confessed to me. “She said that people will call us witches, too, and it will be difficult to find us good men to marry. I’m sorry, Shahdoxt. But I wish to have children someday. So does my sister.”

Angry as I was, I could not blame them. It did not bode well for any young lady at court to have the queen as her enemy. I was the greatest example of that.

My jaw hardened at the memory. I turned away, looking once more into the bonfire’s dancing gold flames. As much as I hated being here, I could not leave the feast now. If I did, everyone at court would know I was uneasy or worse—afraid. A witch could do a myriad of outlandish things. But on no account could she show fear.

Warming myself by the flames, I breathed in the sweet scents of woodsmoke, cedar, and rue. Though winter had come to an end, the early-spring air still held a chill.

“Shahdoxt Tahmineh?” a voice called out. “Is that you?”

I turned, smiling with relief when I saw who it was. “Oh. Good evening, Zende Razm.”

Zende Razm smiled back. At thirty-five, he was the oldest of my male cousins and the only one who talked to me without rancor, refusing to engage in the whispers that so often erupted behind my back. For a time, I had been suspicious of his kindness, had wondered if by treating me well, he wished to ingratiate himself with the king and earn a higher position at court. Over the years, though, I’d realized that this was how Zende Razm treated everyone he encountered—royalty or not.

As unexpected, I thought now, as a dove in a nest of vultures.

“You look well,” I said warmly. Zende Razm looked handsome in his white tunic and deep lapis cloak, his dark hair and beard freshly groomed. His complexion appeared healthy as well, not as sallow as it had been a year ago when his wife had passed away. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than I was last year.” He released a sharp exhale and smiled. “You, my lady, look especially well tonight. Green suits you.”

“Thank you.” I laughed. “I’m glad I don’t look like a tree!”

He said nothing, his gaze turning intense in a way that unsettled me. I glanced around the lawn, now growing more crowded with people. Stars glittered in the sky above and the scents of roast meat and vegetables began filling the air as servants brought out platters of food and silver wine jars from the kitchen.

“Have you seen the shah?” I asked. The king and the queen should have made an appearance by now, the herald at the door announcing their arrival.

“Did you not hear?” A small frown pinched the smooth skin of his forehead. “Shah Arshak isn’t feeling well. He will not be attending the feast tonight.”

“What do you mean?” My skin prickled with dread. “What’s happened to him?” It was true that Father was growing old, but as king, he always made it a point to come to state banquets and the feasts surrounding Nowruz. Always.

“I doubt it’s serious,” Zende Razm replied, his voice soothing. “We had a long and strenuous day at court and he must simply be tired. Tahmineh, I’ve been meaning to ask you—”

His voice began fading from my ears, the panic that had been building ever since I’d arrived at the feast now surging under my ribs.

“I need to see him,” I cut in. “I’m sorry, Zende Razm, but can we talk later?”

I did not wait to hear his response. I swept back toward the palace—through the bustling kitchen and a maze of corridors, flames dancing in sconces across the frescoed stone walls. The lights grew dimmer the closer I got to the king’s chambers, scents of sandalwood and myrtle thickening the air outside his door. As I approached, a pair of spears crossed before me, the guards blocking my way.

“What is the meaning of this?” I demanded. While my relationship with my father’s court may have been cold at best, the servants had always been respectful of me, none ever preventing me from going where I wished. These guards, in particular, had known me since I was a little girl. “I am here to see the shah.”

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” one of the guards said, glancing nervously at his companion. “But the shah is asleep. The shahbanu ordered that he must not be disturbed by anyone.”

Anyone. As if I weren’t the king’s daughter, but common riffraff.

“Merwan Agha, Yazdan Agha,” I said softly, addressing the guards by their names. “You know I will not disturb Father if he’s sleeping. I just want to see him—to make sure he’s all right.”

Merwan hesitated. From visiting his dreams, I knew he had a daughter, whose health he worried about quite often. Yazdan’s kind face, however, had grown studiously blank, his gaze focused somewhere behind me.

“I believe they already told you, Shahdoxt.” The voice that spoke had the soft malevolence of a snake’s hiss. “The shah is asleep.”

I turned. Queen Sussan stood in the hallway, torchlight flickering across her delicate oval face. In her fifties now, Sussan appeared as lovely as she had been since the day my father brought her to the palace as a new bride—moon-touched, the minstrels called her, with her creamy, unwrinkled skin, coal-black hair untouched by silver, and deep brown eyes that kissed at the corners. Even her distaste for me did not detract from her beauty; if anything, it gave Sussan the appearance of regal discontent.

“Shahbanu,” I said, dropping into a curt bow. “I only wish to see my father and ensure his well-being.”

“Are you insinuating that I, his wife, do not ensure his well-being?” she asked, stepping closer. Her perfect rosebud lips shaped into a snarl. “Or are you planning to leech the life from him the way you did with my innocent son?”

I loved Noshir, I wanted to remind her. I would have never hurt him.

But it did not matter. I was the last person who had seen Noshir alive twelve years ago. The only person who’d seen him die. In Sussan’s books, this was enough reason to doubt me, her suspicions compounded by her distaste for my daeva blood.

“Please,” I said, doing my best to hold my temper in check. “Shahbanu. I’m worried for Father. I promise I won’t stay lo—”

The word cut off, my head snapping sideways. A second later, the burn on my cheek registered, air piercing my nostrils, sliding down my throat like shards of glass. The last time my stepmother had hit me was when I was seventeen—on the day Noshir had died. She’d slapped my face over and over, one hand fisted in my hair until Father had caught hold of her by the arms and wrenched us apart.

But Father wasn’t here now.

I turned away from the horrified guards and forced myself to face the smirking queen.

“You forget yourself, Tahmineh,” Sussan said. “You forget who I am.”

A queen who, without Father or a chosen heir, was the next most powerful person in the kingdom. One who could declare that I was not an ordinary woman but the sort who changed shape by moonlight and turned into a flying snake. The sort whose presence brought endless drought, pestilence, and long winters until banished or executed. It did not matter that I could do none of these things. It only mattered what people believed.

“You will not see the shah until I permit it.” A lovely smile brightened Sussan’s face. “Understand?”

“Yes.” I bit my cheek, swallowing back the taste of blood. “Your Majesty.”

Under her watchful gaze, I retreated from the royal corridor and past the throne room. Back through the kitchen, steaming with cauldrons of bubbling stews, and out onto the lawn. In the distance, minstrels were singing to a lively tune on lyres and flutes, while men leaped over the bonfires, women laughing and shouting encouragement for them to jump higher, higher.

A fiery red haze burned from my chest, all the way to my eyelids. I could no longer feel the cold, my face hottest at the cheekbone, where I was certain a bruise had begun to bloom. Overhead, a full moon had made an appearance, casting a luminous glow over the festivities. I couldn’t bear it. I slid away, skirting the perimeter of the palace, from which domed shadows loomed and melded in with the trees of the surrounding cedar woods.

CLOAKED IN DARKNESS, I FINALLY grew calm. The woods soothed me as they always did, wet mud and grass clinging to my silk slippers, the air rich with the smell of loam. Insects chirped in the trees overhead, while mice and other small animals rustled through the undergrowth. I might not have noticed the owl but for the slight shift in the air above: a soundless ghost on speckled wings.

A bulbul for love, an owl for death.

I’d never paid the old adage much heed in the past. But tonight, a delicate chill rose along my arms and nape. I quickened my pace, trees blurring past me, until I finally spotted the moon reflecting pale gold on the river.

I knelt in the grass by the bank, uncaring of the dew that soaked through my skirt. This river was where I’d last seen Noshir. The place where he had died. There was no trace of my brother here now. Not a dent in the earth nor a speck of blood on the rocks. I inhaled, deep and slow, the air smelling of sour musk and wet earth, of grass and water lilies.

Why did you die, Noshir? I thought. Why did you leave me here, all alone?

There was no answer, of course. There hadn’t been one for the past twelve years. But I’d not come here for Noshir tonight. I slid a hand into the water and closed my eyes.

“Zari?” I whispered. “Are you there?”

The water shifted, tiny fish within tickling my palm. For long moments, there was only silence. Then a splash. I opened my eyes and an arm rose from the river’s depths, pale blue and slender, followed by a wave of green, weedlike hair. A pair of eyes glowed in the dark, floating above the surface between two lily pads.

My heartbeat, dulled to a hollow thud, quickened at the sight of her webbed hands navigating the water, the scales on her skin gleaming with the iridescence of a fish. Her face was the only thing about her that appeared remotely human, though the older I’d grown, the more I’d started seeing myself in her. The line of her jaw, the tiny dimple creasing her right cheek, the slight tilt of her head whenever she was in deep thought.

“You came,” I said, relief surging through my veins as my mother waded close.

“You always seem surprised by this.” Her voice had the quality of wind rustling through the reeds, her smile a wide expanse of small, fishlike fangs between bruise-black lips. “Have I not proven myself to you yet, daughter?”

My pairika mother had first approached me here at the river, when I was seventeen years old and grieving in the months after Noshir’s death. I did not understand why she’d chosen that particular moment to reveal herself, nor why she’d made no effort to reach out to me before. Initially, I thought it might have been because of my father—that he might have somehow prevented her from seeing me. But Zari had denied such was the case. “It was my decision. One I’ve always regretted,” she had said. A strange sadness had filled the air even though her face had shown no change in expression.

The same emotion lingered between us now, mingling with a resentment that I’d never been able to bury, though it had never lessened my longing for a mother.

Back then, Zari had invited me to come see her whenever I felt like it, and for that first year, I did, going to see her twice every month. During that time, she asked me questions about my life at the palace and mostly listened as I told her my stories. I did not mind her silence initially; her emotions coloring the air around us told me more than words could have. Or so I thought until she began saying things like: “You should try being nicer to your stepmother.” Or: “Does all of this really matter, daughter? Why do you care what the courtiers think of you?”

I had been shocked at first and then upset. My mother, the one person who I’d thought would understand me better than anyone else, did not. She certainly didn’t act like the other mothers I knew, never fretting about things like unkempt hair, ripped clothing, or scraped knuckles. Never asking why my visits to her river had eventually declined—to the point that I now only came to see her when I couldn’t bear her absence.

A part of me wondered if I, too, was to blame for the distance between us. One time, when Zari had taken my hands in hers to comfort me, I had winced, startled by the feel of the wet, wrinkled skin. Perhaps she’d sensed my distaste, for she had not voluntarily touched me again after that, much to my relief—and my shame.

Yet while Zari knew everything about my life, she remained secretive about her own, rarely ever speaking of her pairika family and many sisters, speaking even less about the prophecy magic she possessed. She was reluctant about rev. . .