Page 30 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

While Eliza felt the storm inside threatening again, it was Silas who gave her focus. Rather than seeming discouraged by Yvette’s news, he seemed bolstered by it.

“Every eliminated possibility makes it easier to see the truth,” he said.

“What does that even mean?” Eliza asked.

“It means as soon as I finish my tasks for Kerem, we’re going to the map room.”

He led her to a new building on campus. This one had a single large dome, surrounded by peaks and steeples.

The statues adorning the walls were all engaged in performances of some kind.

Eliza would have loved to explore the interior, which had been decorated with maroon tapestries and velvet upholstery, encouraging a rich reverence, but Silas shot straight for the map room like an arrow, speaking only briefly to the archivist before pulling the maps he wanted from various shelves and spreading them over the central table.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Your beloved Henry,” he said. “And the box-holding girl he was last seen with.”

Eliza raised her eyebrows. “If I’d only known they’d be generous enough to mark their position on a map, I’d never have needed you at all.”

She caught his lips twitching, though he tried to conceal it.

Standing on tiptoe, she peered over his arm at the ivory-colored maps. One showed a detailed view of Izili with the largest streets and buildings labeled. The remaining two explored layouts for the palace and the kuveti prison house.

“Yvette said they weren’t in the prison,” she pointed out.

“In,” he repeated, as if that made any sense.

He shifted the maps so the palace rested on top, and Eliza almost barked a laugh. It could hardly be called a map at all. If anything, it was the outline of a building and nothing else.

“Did the king throw the cartographer out?” she asked.

“He doesn’t want anyone too familiar with the layout of his palace.”

“I’ve heard the Pravish kings are paranoid and unreasonable.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t give them too much credit. Kings everywhere are much the same.” Silas glanced at her in challenge, clearly expecting her to deny it.

“At least in Loegria,” she agreed.

Sorry, Father, she added silently, but it’s true.

Silas blinked, and for once, she enjoyed catching him off guard.

“My father set an impossible challenge,” she said.

“He forced Henry to take it, pretending it was an honor, and then banished him for failing. I could write Father’s name in the dictionary next to ‘unreasonable.’” Her voice softened.

“What’s worse is that the challenge’s reward was marrying Aria, and Father knew how I felt about Henry, but he still went forward. ”

Her father’s dismissal rang in her ears. Eliza’s romantic whims are such that she’ll find a new boy within the week.

That accusation permeated her dreams, along with a fear that she was to blame for Henry’s fate more than her father was.

If she hadn’t spent all her time dancing through the palace, spouting love poems and ignoring duties, perhaps her father wouldn’t have dismissed her feelings.

Perhaps her love could have saved Henry.

“My father shaped himself in the image of yours, so they can share the dictionary page,” Silas said, shifting the maps again.

He set out a few weights to hold the map corners in place.

“In fact, my father forced me to take that same challenge, all for the prestige of marrying a crown princess, no matter the impossibility of the test or my disinterest in the reward. I was the third challenger.”

Eliza stared at him, jaw gaping. Finally, she managed, “That’s why you’re in Pravusat.”

“I’m in Pravusat because this is my home.”

“So you didn’t want to marry Aria?” Most men did, although more for political than romantic reasons. Eliza didn’t envy her crown-carrying sister for that.

Silas snorted. “I have no interest in marrying anyone.”

Eliza rolled her eyes and muttered, “Sarazan kurta beni.”

Sarazan save me. She’d been waiting to use it on him ever since he’d drawled it at her in the desert after she had admitted to never courting Henry.

“Something to say, apta? It must be dramatic if you’re swearing by snakes now.” Without looking at her, Silas opened his journal on the table and began making notes, his eyes flickering between the journal pages and the maps.

Eliza tossed her hands dramatically to irk him. “Anyone, Silas? Really? You have no interest in marrying anyone? You’re saying if you met a gorgeous, book- and university-obsessed student right here on this campus, you’d walk away to be a grumpy old hermit?”

“And you’re saying I should look for my perfect match in a mirror?” He scratched something out and wrote beneath it.

“Well, you’re arrogant enough.”

He looked up with a flat glare, but his twitching lips betrayed him again, and Eliza grinned.

“Admit it!” She wagged her finger at him. “There’s a girl out there who could tempt you.”

The mirth faded from his expression, leaving behind an intensity boring straight through her. Her mouth went dry under the force of his gaze.

Until he finally looked away, pausing as if he’d forgotten what he meant to write.

She was distracting him again. Well, she couldn’t help it; he was a constant distraction for her.

Even now, she had to struggle to keep her eyes from tracing the curve of his wide shoulders, the long line of his throat, all the hundred distracting details of him.

“Doesn’t everyone . . .” Eliza swallowed to clear the rasp from her voice.

She looked down at the maps, and her thoughts tumbled free without control, gaining reckless speed.

“Doesn’t everyone want to be in love? Doesn’t everyone yearn to hear someone else say, ‘You matter to me more than anything in life. More than my own life. I would give everything for you—what’s mine to give and what isn’t.

I would pull down the stars and leave the sky an empty black space.

I would flatten the mountains and leave the earth an empty green plain.

I would reshape the entire world for you. ’”

Eliza’s longing to hear such passion was a fierce ache in her chest. It was as if the imaginary words had hooks in her heart, and either she would pull them to her, or they would pull the heart right from her body.

But Silas only scoffed. “I certainly don’t.”

He was unfathomable.

“Are you so cold-blooded that you don’t care about being cared about?”

“Cared about is one thing.” He waved his pen dismissively.

“Obsessed over is another. It’s unsustainable, because in the end, you’re just a person, and so are they.

You’ll inevitably disappoint and irritate each other, and then you’ll be bitter about all the star-stealing, mountain-flattening nonsense, because it was just wasted effort to make a world that really benefits no one. The stars serve a purpose, you know.”

Uncomfortably, Eliza thought of The Advent Moon, of a woman fawning over the image of a perfect husband while leaving the imperfect but real one behind.

She swallowed. “Fine, then. What do you imagine a real love would be? If it existed. If it wasn’t pulling down stars.”

To her surprise, Silas thought about it. He shifted one of his maps, but his eyes looked past it, and the way he tapped his pen without seeming to care that it was leaving tiny ink dots on his page told her he was deep in contemplation.

She found her heart beating faster, driven by a building curiosity. Maybe even a need.

“A simple thing,” he said at last, his voice quiet.

“Someone saying, ‘I like you as you are. I want you to succeed. I won’t ever harm you, not on purpose. Don’t sacrifice the stars for me; watch them beside me.

’ In Pravish, the way to propose marriage translates as ‘I want to be your equal.’ If love does exist, I think it must be like that. ”

He glanced up, and sudden panic flashed across his face, like he’d said too much. In an instant, his scholarly focus was back, jotting notes, moving maps with purpose.

Without giving Eliza a chance to respond, he said, “You had a good intuition about the prison. It isn’t easy to avoid a snake in Pravusat, so a prison cell was one option.

Another is the palace. And here’s a third—when we went to the kuveti, I sensed a snake underground, deeper than a burrow would have been.

I suspect there are underground tunnels, maybe beneath the prison or maybe throughout the city.

They would have to be constructed by Stone Casters, since regular delving this close to the ocean risks flooding. ”

Eliza nodded woodenly, her mind still replaying his words about love.

Once out, he couldn’t take them back, which he’d seemed to realize.

Silas the love-hater had at least one romantic bone in his body, and the expression of it was more poignant than any poem Eliza had ever read, more real in its rawness and honesty.

Don’t sacrifice the stars for me; watch them beside me.

Silas waved the archivist over and asked about tunnels beneath the university.

The man talked about caves at the foot of the cliffs but denied any tunnels, though he was quick to point out other architectural marvels at the university, starting with the Yamakaz and making special mention of the music hall “right here in this building.”

“If you haven’t seen it, you simply must,” he said.

Even distracted as she was, Eliza brightened at the thought of music. Then she forced herself to focus on the task at hand.

But Silas had already moved his weights and rolled the maps. “I know you want to see the music hall. I’m done here anyway, and we can’t manage anything else tonight.”

“It’s not important,” Eliza protested. “We can’t afford to be distracted by . . . whims.”

Silas blinked like she’d said something foolish. “You’d rather go back to the dorm and sit in the dark? Neither one will find tunnels, but at least music is said to spark ideas.”

How did he manage to make anything sound reasonable?

“A quick peek,” Eliza said, breaking into a grin.

Silas had been to the music hall before. It was an impressive, domed room, built without pillars to allow the most rhapsodic sound possible. The one performance he’d watched had been enchanting, but Silas didn’t have time to sit through three hours of music when he could be studying instead.

Music echoed from the chamber, the distinct twang of strings belonging to the Pravish kiyum—a small harp with a backing board that rested on the musician’s lap.

Eliza rushed through the doors, and Silas had to jog so he didn’t get yanked along behind.

Once inside, the music swelled in volume, filling the domed room. Six students sat onstage, without instructor or audience. Merely a practice session. All the same, Eliza flew to the stage as if drawn by the most wondrous thing she’d ever heard.

One of the boys saw her and broke into a grin. His playing grew obviously flamboyant, full of unnecessary trills and showy gestures as he dragged his right hand rapidly down the strings and plucked with his left. Silas rolled his eyes.

When the music faded, Eliza applauded. “That was beautiful!”

“Would you like to try?” the boy offered, gesturing at his kiyum.

Eliza was in his seat almost before he could vacate it.

The boy fitted tortoiseshell picks to her pointer fingers, then showed her how to brace her thumb and middle finger around them while holding her other fingers out of the way.

Eliza listened, concentration knitting her brow, imitating each gesture he made.

He kept his hands around hers while demonstrating how to pluck the seventy-plus strings, and then he stepped back, leaving Eliza to pluck notes on her own.

She drew slow but strong notes that rang out over the stage, and the other musicians exchanged approving smiles.

“You’re a natural!” said the boy. He tapped his chest. “Born with kiyum strings in the heart.”

Eliza grinned. In Loegrian, she said, “I always loved the harp, but this is even better. Listen to the tones!”

It took Silas a moment to realize she was speaking directly to him. He managed a nod, a pleasant warmth spreading through his chest at her individualized attention.

She felt her way up and down the notes, falling into a rhythm that even Silas could hear. Soon enough, it transformed into a familiar song, a Loegrian children’s rhyme.

Then Eliza started singing.

Silas blinked. He’d known the royal family was musically inclined—at least the queen was.

He’d often heard his father complain about yet another musical exhibition at court.

But Silas had spent more time in school than at court events, and if he’d ever attended an exhibition where Eliza had performed, he’d no doubt snuck a book in and read through it.

But he was focused now, listening to music pour like a waterfall from a girl who sparkled in the spray of it. The music itself was simple, yet her passion was the opposite, filled with depth and complexity.

She had all the other musicians beaming, and by the time she reluctantly returned the kiyum to its owner, he’d obviously assumed she was a new student in the music department.

“We’ll see you in class,” he said. “I look forward to it!”

Eliza blushed, ducking her head.

When she and Silas exited the building onto campus, the evening air had softened the sun’s heat, and the university buildings carried the warm glow of sunset. From the corner of his eye, Silas noticed Eliza’s fingers moving in front of her, still plucking notes.

“You should attend the university,” he told her. “Study music. Clearly you have a talent for it.”

She shook her head, scuffing her shoe against the ground. “Oh, I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I just—I don’t belong here.”

He raised an eyebrow, glancing back at the arts building growing smaller on the path behind them, the dome of the music hall its most prominent feature. “You certainly belonged in there.”

“Princesses don’t attend university,” she insisted.

“Oh, well, if it isn’t what princesses do, then I see the problem. After all, princesses don’t run away from home, travel across oceans, hide in foreign countries—”

“You are insufferable!” Eliza pushed him on the shoulder, laughing. Then she sobered. “It isn’t what I want, Silas. It isn’t my plan.”

His shoulder tingled from the brief contact. Distracting. It took him a moment to find his words. “Plans can change, Eliza.”

She stared at him until he realized he’d addressed her by name rather than by title.

Gripping his bag, he looked away. “Just think about it.”

After a moment’s pause, she whispered, “All right. I will.”