Page 34 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Ihave money!” Eliza shouted in Pravish. “Please, I can’t survive this prison!”

A little dramatic, but she’d panicked trying to remember endure, so survive was the best she had. She could play the wilting princess in the cage.

Silas had already slithered through the bars and was lurking somewhere in the shadows along the wall. She’d lost sight of his gray-and-black pattern almost immediately, and she shuddered on the guard’s behalf.

Booted footsteps echoed down the hallway, approaching.

Eliza decided she was better off not watching what was about to happen, so she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to imagine the moment she would see Henry again.

Though they’d only been apart a couple months, she had difficulty picturing him.

Rather, she could imagine his adorable smile, his sun-kissed brown hair, his swirling hazel eyes, but there was a distance in it.

As if he were someone she’d met long ago rather than the boy she intended to spend the rest of her life with.

She didn’t like that distance. If she wasn’t careful, she saw a silhouette in it, tall and broad-shouldered, looking an awful lot like Silas.

She’d almost kissed him. Or he’d almost kissed her. She wasn’t sure which, but it had happened without either of them trying to break the Cast, without any reason except—

She couldn’t finish that thought.

Inside, her heart pounded an accusation. Whims. Whims.

From beyond the cell, she heard a sharp grunt. Then a stumble and crash.

After a stretch of tense silence, she dared to peek, finding the guard sprawled across the floor, his limbs at awkward angles. At least she didn’t have to see his face, since it was turned toward the wall. Silas was himself again, one hand on his jaw and a grimace on his face like it ached.

She couldn’t believe he’d actually bitten someone. It felt strangely juvenile, probably because humans stopped employing biting as a reasonable disagreement solution by the time they could form sentences.

Apparently, she’d shifted from thinking him monstrous to thinking him childish.

Eliza’s lips twitched, picturing his scowl if she told him as much.

But she didn’t want to prod the subject if it was still sore.

The way he’d looked at her before—after she’d said it wasn’t right—would haunt her forever.

It was like she’d driven a dagger through his back.

She would do anything to avoid making him feel like that again.

Silas approached the cell and crouched to peer at the lock.

It was then, with a dreadful, sinking feeling, that Eliza remembered the guards had taken his lockpicks.

“On second thought,” she said weakly, her knuckles white as she clutched the bars, “you can just leave me here.”

“Would that I could, apta.” Silas rotated the wrist with his bracelet. Eliza regretted ever purchasing the infernal thing.

He made a valiant effort. The guard hadn’t carried keys, but Silas used the man’s dagger to prod at the lock, even as each passing second meant less time to find Henry. In the end, that was the tipping point, the thing that gave Eliza enough courage to face a nightmare.

“Just do it,” she said, struggling to breathe past the tightness in her chest. “Make me a . . . snake.”

She almost choked on the words.

Silas handed her the dagger through the bars. “Hold onto that. And don’t stab me.”

She tucked the leather sheath through her sash and tried to fill her head with thoughts of comforting sonnets, but it was hard to grasp any words past the fear. What if something went wrong and she never changed back? What if she was a snake for the rest of her life?

Tiny black dots fluttered at the edges of her vision as her breathing came faster and faster. She sat heavily, gripping the bars like her only anchor in a storm.

Silas knelt in front of her.

“Eliza, close your eyes.” His voice was soft and soothing. He reached through the cage dividing them, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Trust me.”

She squeezed her eyes closed, focusing on the sound of her name in his voice, replaying it like a favorite melody.

Silas’s hands moved from her shoulders, sliding down her arms. With a light touch, he rolled back her left sleeve, but before she could start panicking about fangs in that arm, his hands moved again, lifting to her face.

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then brushed his fingertips like feathers along her cheek.

A shiver traveled all the way down her spine.

While she was still tingling from it, his touch disappeared.

A moment later, pain stabbed through her arm, and she released a hiss of air through her teeth. It lasted only a moment before she opened her eyes—or maybe the magic had done that for her. Snakes didn’t have eyelids, did they?

The world was bigger than it should have been.

Far too big. The ground pressed up like jaws trying to close around her, but when she shrank from it, she could only curl in on herself, not stand.

She had no legs. Above her loomed the prison bars and a human Silas.

He looked strangely pale, even ill, his skin drained of its usual honey tones, his inky hair missing its rich depth.

With gentle hands, he reached through the bars to pick her up.

Eliza squirmed. She opened her jaws, then snapped them shut again because she didn’t want to bite him. She wanted to cry at how wrong everything felt—the shape of her own mouth, the way her body moved, the lack of any limbs to flail. She was herself, but she was all wrong, wrong, wrong.

Then the wrongness vanished, swirled away in a puff of mist. She was human again, kneeling next to Silas outside the cell. She choked on a sob.

Silas pulled her into his arms, rubbing his hands over her back, his touch firm but soothing along the curve of her spine. Eliza clung to him, burying her face in his chest, finding comfort in the steady rhythm of his heart. She realized he was murmuring words in her ear.

Her sonnet.

“Love, my sword,” Silas whispered. “A sharper blade will nowhere be found. Which severs lies, defends the truth, and holds me honor bound.”

Warmth fluttered through her chest, giddy little butterflies that banished the last vestiges of feeling like a snake. Eliza wriggled back in his arms, smiling up at him.

“Ne’erwhere,” she said, pleased to be able to correct him for once. “A sharper blade will ne’erwhere be found.”

“That’s not a word.”

“It’s poetry. It’s meant to create an impression.”

“Well, it clearly made the wrong impression on me.” With clear concern, he shifted his hands from her back to her left forearm, examining the spot where he’d bitten her. The twin wounds were smaller than she’d expected, red but not bleeding, barely pinpricks in her skin. “Are you all right?”

Eliza nodded slowly. She’d survived. And Silas had gone out of his way to make the experience as gentle as possible.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He lifted an eyebrow. “If you enjoy being a snake that much, I’ll transform you anytime.”

She shoved his chest, and he flashed a smug grin. Then he stood, lifting her along with him, his hands steady around hers.

“We don’t have much time,” he said, serious now. “Look for anything that could be a tunnel entrance—a trapdoor, a seam in a wall. Anything strange.”

Eliza nodded again, and together, they crept down the hallway.

They searched without speaking. It was easy at first, since the guard Silas had taken out was the only one posted in this wing of the prison, and the other cells were empty. Clearly the kuveti had put their captured princess in the “luxury” area.

But once they reached the fork where the guards had initially tried to separate them, the prison took on more life, and they had to creep past inhabited cells, trying not to alert anyone who might shout for a rescue.

Eliza couldn’t look inside the cells; she wanted to throw the doors open, regardless of consequence.

Silas took down another guard—a close call, since the woman spotted Eliza a moment before Silas bit her. Luckily, the guard spent that moment in slack-jawed shock rather than in raising the alarm.

They found no trapdoors or any other signs pointing to an underground entrance.

Eliza saw Silas’s lips moving as he murmured something soundless. Counting the minutes since the first guard went down?

If they never found the tunnel entrance, she would have to become a snake again.

Silas had warned her briefly of his exit plan involving Kerem—where the professor would be called in by the kuveti to provide antivenom, and the two of them would escape as snakes in his bag.

She hadn’t allowed herself to think of it.

They would find the tunnels. They had to.

A rat scurried past her heels, and she clamped down on a startled yelp. As she watched, the rat scampered into an empty cell, then squeezed through a hole in the wall and disappeared. Eliza squinted in the gloom, trying to better make out the space where it had vanished.

Hesitantly, she reached for Silas, but her fingers met air. She turned to find he’d slunk down the hallway, his head tilted as if listening to something.

A moment later, she heard it too. A familiar voice.

She crept with Silas to the corner.

In the next hallway over, standing beneath the greasy light of a dirty lantern, Iyal Kerem was arguing with a kuveti guard. It might have been a whispered argument to begin with, but Kerem’s voice had risen.

“I want straight answers regarding his state!” he said sharply.

The professor looked frazzled. His half-tied hair was coming loose, strands of it catching in his spectacles.

Eliza and Silas exchanged a look. Nervous sweat beaded on her forehead. Had the bitten guard been discovered so quickly? If so, why had there been no commotion?

“You’ll have to speak to Captain Galip,” the guard said, his voice muffled compared to Kerem’s.

“I’ve spoken to Galip, and he clearly intends to turn me in circles. I’m investigating the cells myself. If you don’t want me to find anything that contradicts your story, you’d best tell your captain quickly.”

Kerem strode forward.

Eliza ducked out of view, pulling Silas with her. A set of hurried footsteps marked the guard’s retreat, while a slower, purposeful set approached them until Kerem turned the corner.

“You’re early,” Silas whispered, barely a breath.

Kerem shook his head, expression grim. “I’m glad I located you quickly. Something’s happened. Let’s go.”

A shiver of despair trembled Eliza’s legs. After everything they’d gone through, they couldn’t surrender without finding anything!

Silas hesitated along with her, glancing deeper into the prison.

“Silas,” said Kerem.

Shoulders drooping, Silas nodded.

Another rat scampered past Eliza’s feet, disappearing into the empty cell. In a split-second decision, she caught Silas’s arm and pulled him after her, ignoring Kerem’s sharp whisper. He could choose to follow or not.

In the empty cell, she pointed out the rat-favored spot in the wall, and Silas felt along the stones before discovering a hidden catch. A door swung open on silent, oiled hinges.

Eliza bounced in place, hands clutched to her chest as she enjoyed a silent victory scream. Silas grinned along with her, then glanced back at Kerem.

“Go quickly,” Kerem whispered.

For a moment, she thought that meant he wasn’t coming, but when she and Silas slipped through the opening, Kerem followed, pulling the door closed behind them.

Eliza’s eyes struggled in the nonexistent light.

She reached out a hand, feeling blindly for the wall.

She hit Silas instead. Without hesitation, he caught her hand in his, twining their fingers and guiding her forward.

Her heart wiggled its way into her throat, putting an odd pressure on her breathing.

She stumbled a few times, but Silas walked with confidence, obviously possessing a better sense of direction in the dark.

He led them to where the passageway opened up, and an almost-spent candle burned in a shallow alcove in the wall.

Most of the curved ceiling and walls of the stone passageway remained shadowed.

“Did they find the guard?” Silas asked.

Kerem’s eyes flickered down, and Eliza quickly dropped Silas’s hand, though it left her fingers cold.

“Something else.” The professor’s voice was tight, and he swallowed before going on. “Iyal Mazhar. He missed our scheduled meeting yesterday. His neighbor saw him arrested by the kuveti—something about ‘a magical disturbance.’”

The cold spread as Eliza remembered the names in Silas’s journal, each arrested for the same thing.

The dead Stone Caster without bones.

Kerem gripped the strap of his bag, looking more frazzled by dim candlelight than he had in the prison. “I demanded answers of the guard captain, but there aren’t any to be had. They insist he was never arrested.”

Looking ill, Silas reached one hand down by his side, then halted, flexing his fingers. Reaching for his journal, Eliza realized. But they’d left everything at the university.

“Did you see him in the cells?” Kerem asked.

“No,” Silas whispered.

“Well . . . that’s a relief.” Despite the words, Kerem’s brow furrowed.

Silas opened his mouth, then closed it, clearly uncertain how to broach the topic of dead magic users. In his silence, Kerem surveyed the tunnels, adjusting his spectacles and squinting in the dim light.

“Iyl Yvette never mentioned these,” he murmured, almost to himself.

“She was the lead Stone Caster on the prison construction. Always bragged about the impenetrable spires on the roof, but she made no mention of underground tunnels.” He reached out and brushed one hand down the wall, rubbing his fingers together.

“These were clearly made by a skilled Stone Caster. I wonder how far they reach.”

Likely all the way to the graveyard, Eliza thought with a ghostly chill.

“Let’s find out,” Silas said quietly.