Page 14 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

At some point during her vigil, Eliza had fallen asleep. When she woke, the first rays of dawn streamed through the dorm’s only window, and she scowled at the light before realizing that wasn’t what had woken her.

The ground was shaking.

Eliza gasped, pressing herself against the wall, heart hammering—or perhaps it was merely the earth shaking every part of her.

“Silas,” she rasped. “Silas!”

He was sprawled out on the bed, head pillowed on his arm, fingers dangling over the side of the mattress. And he was, apparently, immune to earthquakes.

Another rumble creaked the floorboards and jittered Eliza’s heart. She threw her pillow at the sleeping snake, and he finally lifted his head, squinting at her, his black hair tousled and hanging in his eyes.

“There’s an earthquake!” she cried out. “What do we do? Should we leave? Should we—”

He waved a dismissive hand, tucking the pillow under his head and settling again, even as the bed rocked along with the rest of the room.

Perhaps shapeshifters could not be killed by earthquakes, but Eliza was only human, and she could not help imagining the ceiling coming down, reducing her to one more piece of rubble beneath it.

The dresser had scooted a few inches away from the wall.

If it had been tall instead of wide, it would have toppled on her already.

Another tremor rocked the room, and she tipped, barely catching herself on her hands before her face met the floor. In a split second, she made a decision born of self-preservation. She crawled over to the edge of the bed and heaved herself onto it.

Unfortunately, she moved just as another tremor hit, so the ground bucked, and she lost her balance.

Falling directly onto Silas, her elbow jabbing his stomach.

“Ow!” He sat up, glaring at her. For a moment, a line of gray scales rippled across the edge of his cheekbones, and she held her breath, but they vanished, and then he was a grumpy human again. “What is the matter with you?”

It felt too pathetic to say, I’m scared. Instead, she returned his glare.

“You wouldn’t communicate, so I was forced to take matters into my own hands. Now, use your words, Silas Bennett, and tell me what’s happening!”

He rolled his eyes, as if she were more bothersome to him than the room-shaking tremors. Then he grumbled, “It’s Stone Caster training. They tear up the ground and put it back together. Give it an hour.”

“An hour?”

Eliza struggled to sit up, extracting her limbs from where they’d tangled with his. Meanwhile, he sighed and scooted to press his back against the wall, leaving her a paltry space.

“I’m sure it feels worse on the floor,” he admitted, which was more than she’d expected.

He wasn’t wrong. The mattress absorbed some vibration, and the presence of another person—even an enemy—brought a sense of security as well.

When the next tremor hit, Eliza abandoned her attempts to sit up straight and instead curled tightly into the abandoned bed space, still warm from his body heat.

By necessity, she was lying over his arm, and her knees bumped into his.

She darted a glance up to see if her proximity annoyed him.

But that wasn’t what she saw.

Up close, he was more handsome than she’d realized.

Perhaps that was because he was still groggy with sleep, blinking his dark lashes lethargically.

His ink-black hair fell in strands across his eyes, and his jawline carried a shadow of growing stubble against his honeyed skin, which accentuated his lips.

Eliza had never known disheveled to look so attractive on anyone.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she mumbled, cheeks flushing. “This doesn’t mean anything.”

He yawned. “You’re the type to assign meaning to things, apta, not me.”

When he lowered his head again, it knocked softly into hers on the shared pillow. She pulled hers back to the far edge.

The tremors still shook the bed, and no matter how stiffly Eliza held herself, they seemed determined to roll her directly into Silas.

Her arms bumped his chest, though she held them tightly against her own.

Her heart pounded with each rumble of the earth, but now it also pounded at the thought of the boy beside her, because she was close enough to smell the soap he must have bathed with—almond and spice—and to feel his warm breath coursing down her cheek.

Did he have to breathe so forcefully?

She peeked up at him through her lashes only to realize he had fallen asleep again. His eyes were closed, and that breathing rhythm was too deep, too even.

She stared, aghast, at the traitor. Earthquakes were one thing, but did he not even care he was sharing a bed with a girl? If he thought himself a regular person, this was surely evidence to the contrary.

She realized the hypocrisy of that thought, since she was the one who’d climbed into his bed uninvited, but it lingered with her all the same because she couldn’t believe he was not affected by her at all while she was hyperaware of his breath and his scent and his every tiny shift against the mattress and the way his lips looked impossibly soft for a monster.

Twice, she tried to leave the bed, but as long as the quakes continued, she could not convince herself.

At least she didn’t have to attempt conversation in this awkward spot—although, perhaps that would have been better.

Perhaps it would have distracted her, stopped her from letting her gaze sneak back repeatedly to his face, relaxed in sleep.

At last, the tremors ceased, and Eliza’s stress drained from her like a releasing flood. Her eyelids drooped. Her head rested heavy against the pillow, her entire body aware of how little sleep she’d managed during the night.

Yet that indignant part of her was still indignant.

“Silas?” she whispered, barely a breath.

He gave no response. No care. Sleeping as if she didn’t exist.

Eliza forced herself from the bed, sliding carefully to the floor, finding it cold and hard after the softness of the mattress. What was wrong with her? She could have stayed. If Silas didn’t care, she should at least take advantage of that apathy to prevent her own discomfort.

Then she thought of waking next to him, coming alert to find him staring at her with those dark eyes—or, worse, the red version—and she shivered.

After surveying the room, she pulled her cushion back to the desk, sitting with her legs tucked beneath her.

For a while, she read her sonnets, finding comfort in the familiar pages.

Then her mind returned to the task of finding Henry, and she remembered something Yvette had said about the Cast helping her learn Pravish.

If she could learn it on her own, she wouldn’t need Silas.

Eliza searched the desk, baffled when she could find plenty of parchment but neither quill nor inkpot. Silas wrote, didn’t he? A peek into his journal showed her pages of handwritten notes. So where was his—

Her attention caught on a reed-like object, rolled against a book.

It had a wooden shaft and a pointed, metal nib, like a miniature spear.

It was much heavier than a quill, and it felt awkward in her hand.

Too thick. But when she tried it against a sheet of parchment, ink flowed from the tip like magic.

It was magic, no doubt. This country was full of it, like the bracelet on her wrist.

Her father had been certain that magic left unchecked would overtake everything else—like the tremors from earlier, bringing down a building.

Except the building was still standing.

Focus! Eliza snapped her eyes back to the desk.

She grabbed a sheet of parchment and began writing in Pravish, ignoring the awkwardness of the not-quill.

She wrote the words she’d learned not to mix—seravat and seyahat, utamas and utanmas.

She wrote the new words she’d learned. Arakl for Cast or Casting.

Erkek for never-to-be-said-about-any-boy-ever.

And when she filled the first sheet of parchment, she reached for another.