Page 19 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Normally, Silas did his most diligent studying in the quiet of night by the warm light of a lantern. With the princess sharing his cramped dorm room, there was no chance of that. She scattered his thoughts, jittered his nerves.

They were both up at dawn. He wasn’t sure she’d slept at all, and he couldn’t convince himself to fall back asleep with her watching.

The day before, she’d boldly declared, I’m not afraid of you, and he’d thought maybe she was finally willing to see him in a realistic way. But she’d sat all night with a dagger in her hands. Come morning, she’d stashed it beneath her blanket, but not quickly enough he didn’t see.

So as he dragged himself from bed and dressed, he had to fight the fangs trying to manifest in his mouth.

“Today, we find Henry,” Eliza announced in the hallway, as if he could have forgotten.

Stiffly, he said, “You came after my language skills with such vigor, Highness. Where would you like me to put them to use?”

Only to discover that her grand plan amounted to asking everyone if they’d seen Henry.

When she first marched down the hill into Izili proper and knocked on a door, he thought it was a place of significance, that she had reason to believe the person inside had information on Henry. Perhaps they were a ship’s captain or other dockworker.

But it was a beleaguered housewife who answered, her hair bound up in messy loops, a young boy’s hand clenched tightly in hers to keep him from escaping into the street.

“Ask if she knows Henry,” Eliza prompted, bouncing on her toes.

Silas would have preferred turning invisible. Or at least turning into a snake and slinking away. But Eliza gestured urgently to the woman, who was growing more exasperated with each passing second.

“Have you seen a Loegrian boy?” he finally ground out.

“About this tall”—Eliza held her hand above her own head but below Silas’s—“with shoulder-length brown hair, sort of tan skin, tanner than mine, anyway, um, dreamy eyes, and, what else—”

Silas’s eyes were far from dreamy at her prattling. He was certain they were red.

He drew in a sharp breath and released it. “Brown hair. And he’d look as out of place as she does.”

The woman glanced between the two of them before shaking her head, and Silas apologized for the interruption.

“Do the eyes again!” shouted her son, pointing up at him.

Observant little thing.

“Do you one better,” said Silas with a grin.

He transformed into a snake and slid across the boy’s bare feet, which sent the child into giggling shrieks. The woman cracked a smile and might have said something had her child not run back into the house, shouting about magic. The door swung closed as she darted after him.

Silas slithered down the steps, forcing the princess to tiptoe behind. Half of him was tempted to remain transformed all day. With a bit of focus, he could still speak as an animal—one of many benefits of being an Affiliate rather than a true adder.

But, in the end, he turned human again, adjusting his clothes, which somehow always wound up skewed after a transformation.

“He really . . . liked that,” Eliza said in wonder. “He wasn’t afraid. Neither was the mother.”

“Incredible, isn’t it,” Silas said coldly, “how some people don’t need to sleep with daggers just because they’re around someone different?”

She had the grace to blush, and her gaze sank beneath his.

“I just didn’t want to get hurt,” she finally said.

“Ironic, coming from the one holding the blade.”

“It’s not as if I used it!”

“Am I meant to thank you for not stabbing me in my sleep?”

“No.” She jabbed a finger toward him, looking up with sudden fire.

“No, you don’t get to act like this is unfair.

You have fangs and venom, which is no different from a dagger.

I haven’t stabbed you, and you haven’t bitten me, so let’s keep it that way.

Help me find Henry, and we can both get away from the sharp threats—deal? ”

For a moment, she almost seemed Pravish, impassioned and unapologetic.

And maybe she wasn’t entirely wrong.

At the very least, she was a step above the last person who’d pulled a blade on him and actually used it.

Slowly, he slid his hands in his pockets, and he nodded at the house they’d left behind. “Tell me your plan isn’t going door-to-door all day interrogating random citizens. Tell me you’re smarter than that.”

Pink colored her cheeks, but she planted her hands on her hips. “Oh, how silly of me—I ought to have directed us to the single group of people most likely to have seen a lost Loegrian. Remind me, do they live by the palace? Or perhaps by the hole in the Izili wall?”

Though he tried to restrain it, the corner of his lips twitched. Apta or not, he couldn’t help but appreciate the way she responded to challenge. Honest and direct and full of fire.

“They might run a few inns,” he drawled. “Maybe an alehouse—birahan. The usual places travelers congregate.”

She opened her mouth again, then snapped it shut, clearly hating that he was right.

In the end, she mumbled something about finding a birahan, and Silas’s good humor faded as he resigned himself to a long morning.

It turned out to be exactly that as they searched out public gathering space after public gathering space, interrogating innkeepers and bartenders alike about a wandering Loegrian no one had seen.

No one, except, Silas was still convinced, the fish circling the sea floor.

To that end, he steered their search closer and closer to the docks.

“What are we doing here?” Eliza asked suspiciously, glaring at the moored ships. “I already got information about the shipwreck.”

“I’m being thorough,” said Silas.

He found the dockmaster, who confirmed the shipwreck, though the man’s greedy eyes kept darting toward Eliza in a way Silas didn’t trust.

“Was the captain recovered?” Silas asked. “Have any of the crew come back to join another ship?”

“No one, no one.” The man didn’t look at him, only at Eliza. “All gone. Very sad.”

He was heartbroken, obviously. Silas resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

The princess, however, looked heartbroken for real. She’d wrapped her arms around her middle, like she needed help holding everything inside. For as often as the dockmaster was trying to catch her eye, she was avoiding looking at anything, just staring into the depths of a wall.

“We’ll be going then,” Silas said, though his original plan had been to obtain this exact information and confront the princess with it. It was hard to think about confronting her when she’d become smaller than usual, ready to fold up and disappear entirely.

The dockmaster suddenly burst into Loegrian. “Your Princess! Family so sad. I help you home. Big help, I—big help to you! I can.”

Eliza’s arms dropped, as did her jaw. She stared in horror, not at the dockmaster, but at Silas.

“I never told him,” she said.

“Princess—” The dockmaster tried to grab her, even as she shrank back.

Silas stepped in the way, baring fangs. The man had enough sense to halt. Reaching back blindly, Silas caught Eliza’s arm, steering them both from the dock house. He didn’t stop moving until they were a few streets away without pursuit.

“At least we solved one mystery,” he drawled at last. “Your arrest by the kuveti. They must be looking for a princess.”

Eliza pulled away, pacing. “My father must have sent guards after me. Or a . . . an offer of reward. Why couldn’t he—just once, why couldn’t he—”

Her voice muffled as she pressed her hands to her face.

“It would have been before your sister took the throne.” Silas knew firsthand that Aria wanted Eliza to come home by choice, not by force.

Eliza came to an abrupt halt, lowering her fingers to rest against her chin. “Before my sister . . . what?”

“She’s queen now. I was told by the dean.”

“I missed the coronation,” Eliza whispered as if dazed.

For the first time, Silas felt a sliver of pity for the princess. She’d done this to herself, of course, but he knew what it was like to be far from home, to receive news late, if at all, to miss things he could never make up.

He’d missed Maggie’s seventeenth birthday, when she came of courting age. Rather than having Silas there to intercept undesirable suitors, she’d been left entirely to their father’s agenda, which was how she’d almost wound up in a disastrous marriage.

Now he’d miss every future milestone too.

In a moment of decision, Silas said, “We’re going to the Sarazan tabernacle.”

“The what?” Eliza frowned.

“When we first met, you wanted me to get a translation from the innkeeper about Sarazan. I’ll show you what he was talking about.”

She could have yelled at him for not explaining that the first time. He expected her to.

Instead, a hesitant smile budded on her face. Her eyes sparkled in the sunlight, a light brown speckled with copper that Silas hadn’t noticed before.

They were pretty.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He cleared his throat, looking away. “Don’t thank me yet. Prepare for a hike.”