Page 22 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Eliza held it together as long as she could, but the storm drowned her at last.

She sat in the earthquake dorm, curled on a cushion with a blanket over her shoulders, swallowed by shadows. Silas had already settled into bed and put out the lantern.

Eliza ordered herself to sleep. To stop thinking. To stop feeling.

She ordered the tears to stop leaking from her eyes.

Then, when it became clear she was no longer captain of her emotions, she pressed a hand to her mouth and simply tried to cry without sound, drawing her breaths with all the care of tracing lines on parchment.

She didn’t know why she bothered, since Silas had proven he could sleep through the end of the world.

But then the dark shape on the bed moved, and his quiet voice echoed in the room.

“You don’t have to cry silently.”

She jolted.

He sat up, highlighted in the soft moonlight from the window. “I can smell the tears,” he said, as if that explained it all. “Not exactly, I suppose. A snake’s sense of smell is different from—”

“I’m so sorry,” she interrupted harshly, “for disturbing your sleep. For invading your little university paradise and making your perfect life so wretched.”

He didn’t deserve her anger. Distantly, she knew that. Since being linked together, Silas had been more than reasonable. He’d provided meals, taught her Pravish, helped her search. He’d been the opposite of everything a shapeshifter was meant to be.

But everything was falling apart, and what could she do?

“You’re upset,” Silas finally said, and even though it was nothing but the truth, Eliza felt that same desire to lash out.

“I don’t need pity from a shapeshifter,” she spat. “And if you’re going to devour me in the end, then just get it over with. As long as I don’t have to hear you say another condescending word.”

Though she wiped her jaw, the tears kept dripping. An angry, desperate, despairing rain.

Maybe Silas really would devour her.

Maybe she deserved it.

Instead, he yawned. “Pity? If you’re sad, be sad. Why should I care?”

Eliza’s chest tightened. “How comforting.”

Still, there was something about his permission that loosened the floodgates, and after a moment, Eliza found her breath hitching in sobs.

She sounded like a choking animal. He could have made fun of her, could have laughed or gloated, but he didn’t say anything at all, and slowly, the storm inside tempered.

It didn’t disappear, but the worst of the waves had crashed and receded.

“There’s something wrong with me,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears.

She willed herself to stop talking, because this was not the sort of thing she wanted to admit to anyone but Aria. Even if Henry had been with her, she couldn’t have told him; he would never look at her the same.

He could never love her if he knew just how unbalanced she was.

The bed creaked as Silas shifted, resting his arm on the bedpost. With all the casual confidence he used to address everything, he said, “Not possible. Morality as a judgment system only functions when applied to actions and behaviors. You can do something wrong, but there can’t be something wrong with you.

You aren’t a garden with weeds crowding the vegetables, a collection of right and wrong things.

Rather, you’re a person, and any of your attributes are simply attributes, without right or wrong until you put them into application. ”

Eliza puffed an incredulous laugh. She’d never met anyone who talked like Silas did.

She’d never met anyone like Silas.

“Well, you’re wrong,” she insisted, “because there’s definitely something wrong with me. And it’s not weeds. Weeds could be pulled out.”

“Do you believe crying is wrong?”

“No.” Eliza sighed. She pulled the pillow to her chest and wrapped her arms around it. “Just . . . crying when I have nothing to . . . to cry about.”

“Define ‘nothing,’” he said.

She groaned. “You’re awful. I can’t put this into words!

I can’t . . . I . . .” But when she looked up at him and found him watching her with dark, steady eyes, the angle of his cheekbone highlighted in moonlight, the words just spilled out.

“I was cursed by a Fluid Caster, and after it was broken, I thought I’d be normal again.

Thought I’d be myself again. But everything’s felt different since.

Like I’m myself, but I’m some . . . slanted version.

Like sometimes I’m the best version of myself, and other times, I’m the worst. But I don’t get to choose which one I’ll be. ”

No, that wasn’t quite right. If she was really the best version of herself, she wouldn’t make the mistakes she did. She wouldn’t chase every reckless impulse without realizing just how reckless it was. Running away from home. Spending all her money on magic she didn’t understand.

She swallowed hard. “It’s like . . . it’s like I’m captaining a ship through a storm, all by myself.

I’m managing the helm and the rigging and the sails, all at once, and sometimes I’m awed by how well I’m doing.

I know my course couldn’t possibly be wrong.

Then . . . then there’s a lightning flash, and I can see clearly, and I realize—I don’t even have a ship!

Or my ship’s already been destroyed, and all I have is this wreckage, floating all around, and I’m swimming desperately; I’m grabbing pieces to drag and hold it all together.

And the worst part is, I realize there were other people—people all around me—and while I’m flailing, trying to control what’s already sinking, I’m hurting them. I’m drowning them.”

“In this scenario, you’re drowning me?” Silas asked, and she could practically hear his smirk.

Absently, Eliza rubbed the bracelet on her wrist. She muttered, “Maybe. The point is—”

“The point is there’s still nothing wrong with you.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I’m an advocate of facts. Look.

” Silas slid off the edge of the bed and crouched in front of her, holding her gaze even when she shifted.

“Stone Casting applied to a person uses bones, the way this Cast of ours connects to a jawbone and a wrist bone. Bones are a solid anchor, hard to alter unless you break one, and even if you do, healing is straightforward. Fluid Casting applied to a person uses blood, and blood, as you might expect, is a much more fluid anchor. It’s easy to alter, and it’s easy to break in a way without straightforward healing.

After you’ve suffered a blood curse, it’s natural to see side effects. Sometimes severe ones.”

Natural, he said. Something about that brought tears back to Eliza’s eyes. It didn’t make sense; he was still saying she was broken. Something inside her was broken.

But he didn’t seem to think it was her fault.

“I know a little about your curse,” he went on.

“At least, the little I picked up while talking to your sister. It was meant to end the king’s line.

A curse Cast with the intention of rewriting an entire country into something new.

The fact that you outlived such powerful magic says something about you, and it isn’t in the direction of weeds that need pulling.

Quite the opposite. It says something about your stubbornness, your willpower, your passion for life, and your reckless disregard for any obstacle in your way. ”

He smiled hesitantly, tilting his head in a way that cast shadows from his unruly bangs across the bridge of his nose. “Apta.”

Reckless girl. For the first time, Eliza found she liked the moniker. It sounded like a compliment.

“Tomorrow, we can go to the library,” Silas said, his voice gaining enthusiasm.

It almost made her laugh with what a Silas solution that was.

“I’ll show you the compilations from Nikolai Sidorov and Ahmet Khatib on their Fluid Casting research as it relates to lasting effects from blood curses. It’s fascinating.”

“I’ll prepare to be fascinated,” Eliza said dryly.

He had the self-awareness to chuckle, and he held his hands up. After a moment, he spoke again, softer. “I know this isn’t research for you. It’s real. So deal with it in whatever real way you need. Just . . . don’t feel like you need to hide. No one should ever have to hide who they are.”

Her throat tightened, but she managed a nod.

“Perhaps the effects will fade in time,” he added, “or perhaps you’ll just get better at navigating them.

You’ll sail more confidently, so to speak.

But every life change is overwhelming when it’s fresh.

Trust me, I know something about that.” His shoulders tensed, and he hesitated before he said, “The first time I transformed into a snake happened without warning, and it changed everything for me.”

She’d always been told shapeshifters were demonic creatures with no conscience. But the way he described it sounded like he’d been cursed.

Her eyes flickered to his scar. Her first response upon hearing the story behind it had been to think how monstrous a creature Silas must have been for his father to need to kill him. Now she had a sinking feeling that she’d ignorantly switched the roles of man and monster.

Silas cleared his throat, looking away. “The point is, I learned to navigate. So will you.”

“Why don’t you hate me?” Eliza whispered. It wasn’t what she’d meant to ask, but she couldn’t take it back.

Silas’s gaze returned to hers. He raised his eyebrows. “Why don’t you hate me?”

Maybe she should have.

She remembered his red eyes, fierce and terrifying, remembered the moment he’d transformed into a venomous snake.

But she could also see his eyes now, tender and focused on hers.

He looked like a boy a little older than she was, crouching in front of her with his hair shadowing his forehead, his arms resting loosely on his knees.

Her eyes darted to the yellow band on his wrist. She’d done that to him, not the other way around.

In her flailing, she’d pulled someone else under. But maybe she could still do something to fix that.

Eliza swallowed. She hugged the pillow tighter, and she wiped the most recent tears from her cheeks. With her foot, she felt around on the floor until her toes knocked against the sheathed dagger beside the cushion.

Silas tensed, but before he could retreat, she gave the dagger a decisive kick, sending it spinning across the floor. It disappeared beneath the bed.

For a long moment, Silas stared after it. Then he said, “I can’t do the same with my fangs, sorry.”

Eliza puffed a laugh. She shook her head, because it didn’t matter. She was choosing to trust.

“What’s the word?” she asked. “The one for you. Not shapeshifter. It’s . . .”

“Affiliate,” he said. “Animal Affiliate.”

“Affiliate,” she repeated, like she was practicing Pravish again. She managed a faint smile.

In return, Silas gave her a smirk and settled back onto the bed.

They didn’t speak again, but Eliza’s tears dried, giving way to a calming sleep.