Page 26 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Eliza kissed him as if committing to a leap from Izili’s cliffs. A quick smash of her lips into his, rough and unpleasant, and then a retreat as if she could not get away fast enough. Silas ran his tongue over his teeth, checking she hadn’t chipped one in the violence.

“There!” she said triumphantly. “I fixed my mistake, so you don’t have to worry about me as a setback anymore. Now . . . we . . .”

Her triumphant expression faltered as she looked down at her still-attached bracelet.

Silas glanced at his, more out of reflex than anything.

His mind was still processing what had just happened, and in annoyance, he was wondering if he’d donned some kind of invisible sign, inviting women to shock him with unwarned acts of intimacy.

Eliza’s shoulders drooped. “It didn’t work.”

Silas snorted. “Well, in the Cast’s defense, that was hardly a kiss.”

“Yvette just said I had to mean it!” she shot back. “I want the Cast gone. I meant that.”

“There’s meaning in the sense of emotional significance and then there’s pure definition. I’m not sure if you were trying to kiss me or headbutt me. You must have confused the magic as well.”

Eliza’s face flared brilliant red. She folded her arms. “Fine. If you know so much, then you show me how it’s done.”

In that moment, she was suddenly attractive.

Not in any way related to love, but rather in the way an opponent on a debate floor became attractive when they opened themselves up to brutal counterargument.

Silas loved to prove the opposition wrong, and he loved it more when they underestimated his ability and invited the attack.

Show me how it’s done. There was no better invitation, and Silas never failed a challenge.

With a smirk, he closed the short distance between them again and rested one hand along the princess’s jaw. Her stubborn expression softened, her arms loosening across her chest. He wrapped his other arm around her waist and pulled her close, the crate rattling as she stepped forward on it.

Silas brought his lips to hers. Not as a violent snake strike, but as a gentle, teasing movement, barely a touch before lifting.

Her eyes slid closed. He shifted his hand away from her jaw, sinking his fingers into her soft hair, loose in its braiding, and then he kissed her again.

A bit more pressure, a bit more intent, all of it calculated.

His mind was caught up in the triumph of proving a point, and he was ready to pull back and say something like, There. That was a kiss.

But there was something he hadn’t counted on, something about the secluded shadow of the alcove, both of them tucked away from the noise of the city in a world of their own, something about the adrenaline still speeding his heart with the memory of a chase when he’d almost lost her, something about the way she fit perfectly in his arms. The world was alive in an uncalculated way.

And then Eliza pressed her palms to his chest, curling her fingers in his shirt, and despite the layers of clothing and muscle and bone between them, he felt a jolt in his heart as if she’d pressed her hand right to it.

Rather than stepping back, he held her tighter.

His mouth moved against hers with a sudden desperation, like she was a breakthrough he’d been searching for.

Distantly, his mind wondered what he was doing, but he didn’t care to hear the logic.

All he could hear was the pounding of his heart, which had completely taken over after whatever she’d done to it.

Eliza pulled back first, and Silas felt cold at the loss, like a reptile deprived of the sun’s warmth.

Then he cleared his throat, trying to speak as confidently as if he’d followed his plan to the letter. “There. That was a kiss.”

“That was a kiss,” she repeated softly, her jaw slack and her eyes wide.

He’d thought her expressions easy to read, but that was an oversimplification, because although he could read the current shock, he couldn’t tell if it was because he’d outperformed her expectations or if the world had tilted for her the way it had for him.

He’d made a terrible mistake.

Swallowing, Silas looked down, glad at least to be rid of—

His bracelet was still attached.

The silence stretched until it was broken by the cry of an overhead gull, heading out to sea. Silas ran one hand through his hair, drawing it away from his forehead only to have it fall right back.

“Maybe Yvette was wrong,” Eliza said in a small voice.

“She wouldn’t be wrong about this,” Silas muttered. Had she left something out? He should have asked her for more details. Obviously, she wouldn’t have expected him to actually go through with a kiss.

He shouldn’t have. He’d carelessly redefined the terms without considering the consequences. Now, instead of being a princess he was stuck with, he’d made Eliza a princess he’d kissed.

Worse, a princess he’d enjoyed kissing.

What was he to make of that?

Trying to reorient himself, he looked out at the street and saw the slope of the city leading to the university. The white buildings called to him like a haven. Clear and focused and familiar.

Without looking back at the princess, he said, “Let’s go.”

Eliza had made a terrible mistake. She’d actually believed that rotten snake when he’d said a kiss could be without meaning.

But the way Silas had kissed her . . . Her lips still tingled from the pressure of his mouth, and she felt a little jittering dance across her scalp where his phantom fingers still teased her hair.

His kiss was not a fleeting, insignificant moment; it was a flaming brand that had left a mark she was certain would never fade.

No one could kiss like that and not mean it.

So what exactly had he meant?

She followed him numbly through the winding streets climbing steadily higher.

The lowering sun cast her shadow out wide, like a giant version of herself, stomping along beside her and demanding answers she couldn’t offer.

What had she been thinking? Nothing. She’d been impulsive, as always, steering a ship without any clear heading.

Her first kiss.

It was not the sun’s heat that made Eliza’s cheeks burn; it was her own recklessness.

For so many years, she’d imagined her first kiss, imagined the romance of it, the beginning of an epic love story that would last forever.

When she’d wished Henry good luck in his big tournament, he’d kissed her cheek, a brush so light it might have been a butterfly’s wing against her skin.

He’d whispered his intention to court her.

Eliza had nearly broken her cheeks from smiling.

She’d swooned all the way to her seat in the stands, and she’d imagined all the soaring moments to come, imagined romantic picnics and evenings beneath the stars, imagined teasing laughter and dizzying flirtation.

She’d imagined a first kiss—a real kiss—that would have shaken the palace walls.

But their love story had been halted by his banishment.

And now she’d given her first kiss away for what—spite? Goading? Because Silas drove her mad, and for a moment, all she’d wanted was to have the upper hand, to leave him speechless the way he always seemed to leave her. But he hadn’t been speechless. He’d been just as smug as ever.

There. That was a kiss. His low voice still echoed in her ears, and she could still taste him on her lips.

She’d kissed a snake!

She was insane!

Eliza shook her head fiercely, squeezing her eyes shut until she tripped over a raised stone in the path and had to limp quickly to catch up with Silas’s back.

He never glanced over his shoulder, so all she had was a view of the red sash crossing his vibrant blue shirt.

Sunlight tangled in his dark hair, fighting to shine through the black.

Anything would struggle to shine next to Silas.

He was the boldest presence she’d ever met.

And he really knew how to kiss.

Of course he did. He knew everything. He lived and breathed university, where he’d apparently developed a bond with every professor and read every book in the library and learned every language in the world and probably swallowed some forbidden Cast that gave him more knowledge than was right for any one person to hold.

It wasn’t right. Someone who didn’t believe in love shouldn’t be able to kiss like that. It wasn’t fair.

He shouldn’t be able to walk away without looking back.

When they reached the dorm, Silas didn’t go directly to his room. Instead, he picked the lock of the room next door and waved Eliza toward it.

“There’s enough length on our tether for privacy,” he said.

Eliza should have been thrilled. Instead, she was furious.

“When we were first bound together, I asked about my own room, and you had a smug answer about impressing faculty and research and whatever else. Why now?”

“Feeling generous,” he said flippantly, but the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes betrayed him. Something had changed, and there was only one thing it could be.

Now that they’d kissed, he wanted her as far away as possible.

Stiffly, she said, “I owe you an apology. My actions earlier were solely to get us both out of the Cast, but clearly I overstepped, so I’m sorry for kissing you.”

That got him to look at her, but she couldn’t read his expression, at least not until he smirked.

“I don’t recall you ever kissing me. If memory serves, you headbutted me like a goat, and then, for some unfathomable reason, I kissed you.

Regardless, we both failed to break the Cast, so we can put the momentary lapse of judgment behind us. ”

Unfathomable reason. Lapse of judgment. Why had she expected any more of a snake?

Eliza forced a prim smile. “Consider the horrible event forgotten. Good night, Mr. Bennett.”

She slipped into the new room and slammed the door behind her.