Page 13 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Her stomach growled loudly at the rising aromas before her.

The majority of her plate held some kind of pastry, oblong like a boat and filled with a dark mixture of mashed beans and vegetables.

Besides that, she had a collection of olives and a pile of what seemed to be wheat.

Not milled, but simply dumped on her plate.

When she poked the yellowish-brown substance with her spoon, she found it too soft and fluffy to be raw wheat, though it was still a collection of grains.

“Rice,” said Silas. She glanced up to find him halfway through his own grain. “Loegria and Patriamere share an island without any rice fields. On this continent, rice is the most common agricultural resource.”

Eliza’s lips curved into a faint smile. “Agriculture. Economics. Magic. Is there anything you didn’t study?”

“Sailing. Otherwise, I’d sail you back to Loegria myself.”

She regretted her smile. It was wasted on him.

“You’re the most disagreeable person I’ve ever met,” she said, “and that’s a fact.”

She jammed a spoonful of rice into her mouth, then instantly forgot about her dining companion. The rice was the strangest thing she’d ever eaten, a bizarre texture on her tongue as the individual grains came apart. It was lightly flavored. A bit sticky. People lived off this?

Silas stared at her, a shadow in his dark eyes. She braced herself for a lecture about not appreciating rice, but what he said was, “I can’t be the most disagreeable person you’ve ever met. You don’t even consider me a person.”

Goose bumps pebbled Eliza’s skin, a chill from within. In the staring contest with a shapeshifter, she looked away first.

They finished their meal in silence.

Dusk fell as they exited the dining hall, and Eliza followed Silas toward the dormitories. He passed all the largest buildings until he reached one at the edge of campus. Eliza wasn’t surprised that he chose to live as far as possible from everyone else.

The building had a squat, sturdy look to it, with thick foundations and pillars, as if constructed to withstand storms. Unlike the other buildings, it was only a single story, and inside, the dim hallway divided into four doors.

Either the other rooms were unoccupied, or the occupants were all engaged in silent meditation.

Silas turned a key in the first door on the right, then pushed it open to reveal the room he was staying in. It would have been meager accommodations for a single person. For two . . .

Well, for starters, there was only one bed.

Silas sat on it, eyeing Eliza as if waiting for her protest that she was a princess, she was a lady, she needed privileges.

She did not give him the satisfaction. Instead, she hovered in the doorway, eyeing the door across the hall and the one just down the way, trying to judge which was closest. Surely the room that shared a wall made the most sense.

She strode down the hallway to the door.

“What are you doing?” Silas called after her.

Locked. She should have anticipated that. So much for her grand idea. With a sigh, she released the knob and returned to Silas’s room. “How do I get a key for the next room over?”

Silas raised an eyebrow. He’d lit a lantern in her absence, and it glowed on the floor beside his bed.

“Simple. Petition a professor to put you up on a research budget for three months, then produce groundbreaking research that revolutionizes your entire field of study and proves you impressive enough to stand next to career professionals with decades of experience.”

Frowning, Eliza cocked her head, but he said nothing more.

He unlaced his boots and kicked them into a corner, then spread the materials from his bag—a few books, a thin journal, a collection of writing supplies—across the low desk that rested practically on the floor.

It had no chair, only a wide, flat cushion.

“Why is your desk on the ground?” Eliza asked. She’d seen normal tables and chairs in the university library.

“So it doesn’t topple when the Stone Casters are in the yard.”

He certainly enjoyed being cryptic.

Taking the cushion, Eliza dragged it over to the wall opposite the bed, as far from Silas as she could get. She sat with her back pressed to the smooth wall and closed her eyes.

After visiting Yvette, she’d felt renewed, but now the heaviness was settling in again.

She’d had mood swings in the past, fits of temper or excitement that came normally from growing up, or so her mother said.

But her volatile emotions in the wake of the curse were different.

These swung from highs to lows without warning and with unfair strength.

Truthfully, Eliza felt exhausted from fighting the storm inside.

In trying to escape it, she made her most impulsive decisions—crossing an ocean, buying a language Cast, trapping Silas.

It was like her only choices were either drowning or climbing to the crow’s nest, but every time she reached that peak height, she inevitably leapt from it without even meaning to. Then she was just drowning again.

Would this be the cycle for the rest of her life?

Something flopped down on top of her, startling her into a yelp. She opened her eyes to find a cotton blanket across her legs and a pillow beside her. Silas had stripped the bed, leaving only the mattress for himself.

He didn’t say anything, just settled on his side with his back to the wall.

“Your surname is Bennett?” she asked. Yvette had said his full name when she’d chastised him, and it had remained on Eliza’s mind. Silas Bennett.

Silas grunted. “What of it?”

There was a Bennett family in the Loegrian court.

Lord Bennett was a viscount from the southern end of the kingdom, and while Eliza couldn’t remember ever meeting him directly, she’d kept track of the eligible men of court, and someone had told her Lord Bennett had an unmarried male heir.

Unfortunately, that was all they could say; they’d never met the son.

It seemed no one had. When she’d tried to investigate, she’d found the mysterious Heir Bennett had no friends at court. He was a ghost.

Was it only that he’d been abroad in Pravusat?

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

Why was she trying to find commonalities with a shapeshifter? Besides, Silas carried too much animosity against ruling classes to be a member of the nobility himself.

Silas extinguished the lantern on the floor, ending the chance for conversation and plunging the room into darkness.

In the corner of her vision, a pair of red viper eyes lurked.

Stop that, she ordered herself.

She pulled the blanket around her shoulders like a hug, snuggling into the only embrace available.

When she shifted, her book of sonnets pressed painfully into her hip, and she worked it free of her pocket, curling it into her chest along with one corner of the blanket.

Her clothes were not meant for relaxation or sleeping; they were too fitted.

But even if she’d had her nightgown, she would not have worn it. She hadn’t even taken her shoes off.

Straining her ears, she could make out Silas’s breathing, already steady and rhythmic. Maybe he was exhausted from the day.

Maybe he was faking sleep in order to lull her into a sense of security.

With trembling hands, Eliza drew the dagger from her belt, still in its sheath. She held it with the book of sonnets. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could make out every shape in the room, shadows wreathed in darker shadows.

The lump on the bed.

No matter how much she trembled next to the memory of those red eyes, she wasn’t about to stab a person in their sleep.

Silas’s voice rang an accusation in her mind. You don’t even consider me a person.

The minutes passed in agony as her mind chased itself in circles. All she could do was listen to Silas’s breathing and wait for dawn, ready to defend herself if he broke the farce.