Page 36 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Silas’s blood ran cold. He jolted into motion at last, running up the stairs and emerging into a narrow alley crossed with overhead laundry lines.

A black cobra sat poised among the cobblestones, hood flared and fangs exposed.

Ceyda had fallen to the ground before it.

Blood marked a puncture site just above her ankle.

“Don’t move,” he ordered her.

She curled her lip at him, and then she scrambled away.

Silas swore. Before the cobra could bite her a second time, he stepped forward, focusing on a command to halt the strike.

Unfortunately, a sharp yank on his bracelet interrupted his focus and made him stumble. He’d reached the end of his leash with Eliza.

The cobra struck, pumping venom into his leg.

Eliza had imagined so many reunions with Henry Wycliff.

She’d imagined finding him at an inn, watching his hazel eyes widen from across the room as they focused on her, then running to meet him halfway and throwing herself into his arms. She’d even imagined him trapped in a kuveti prison cell, imagined rescuing him from the dark.

She’d never imagined a reunion where she couldn’t speak to him. Where he lay unconscious in a dark cave, the victim of a sleeping curse.

Ceyda ran, and Eliza wanted to follow, wanted to wrestle answers from the girl and force her to undo the magic on Henry. But she hesitated, unwilling to leave Henry’s side.

She hesitated too long.

The yank on her bracelet finally gave her the push needed, and she staggered up the narrow staircase, only a few steps behind Iyal Kerem. She expected to find Silas with a trapped Ceyda. Silas was so good at everything, it didn’t cross her mind that he might fail. That he might get injured.

And never from a snakebite.

With a sharp gesture, Kerem banished the cobra, sending it slithering down the alley.

Silas stood with an ashen face, breathing raggedly.

Blood stained the cuff of his pants, dripping down into his ankle-high boot.

When Kerem told him to sit, he lowered himself slowly, favoring his injured leg.

The professor crouched beside him and rolled back his pant leg.

The twin-puncture wound was so much bloodier than the little pricks on Eliza’s arm. The skin around it was already beginning to discolor and swell.

She remembered Kerem’s comment about venom on skin. Tissue will rot, even with magic beneath. She thought of Henry, already unconscious. She didn’t know if he would wake up, if he would be all right.

Not you too, she willed Silas.

“You should have let it bite her the second time,” Kerem said, exasperated.

“I should have,” Silas agreed through clenched teeth.

Fishing in the bag by his side, the professor said, “I’m not prepared with a cobra antivenom, but I have something general for elapids. It will have to do.”

“Eliza?” Silas’s voice was low.

It took her a moment to shake off the daze, to meet Silas’s eyes, and then everything inside her shrank.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She’d felt the yank on the bracelet, and she knew this was her fault. There was no way Silas would have gotten himself bitten by a cobra, not without her limiting him.

He waved off the apology, pointing at the Artifact still clenched in her hands. “I want a look at that.”

Of course. Even bleeding on the ground, his first priority was research. Eliza was tempted to throw the box at him. Instead, she knelt by his side and handed it over.

Kerem unpacked supplies from his bag. He cleaned the wound with steady hands.

“Without a Fluid Caster’s help, I can’t spread the antivenom through your blood quickly, so it will be a slow battle until the cure wins out.

You should avoid fever, thanks to quick treatment, but the wound will continue to burn for several hours, and it will take longer to heal. ”

“Got it.” If anything, Silas focused even more intently on the box, turning it and tracing his fingers over the carved black symbols. Perhaps he was using it as a distraction from the pain.

Eliza couldn’t do anything about the wound, but she could help distract him. “Is that Cronese?”

“You remember.” Silas glanced up with the faint echo of a smile, which quickly turned to a grimace. He drew in a sharp, pained breath. “I’ll have to translate it with a dictionary. I recognize the symbols, but I don’t know their meaning. This is definitely new since my first glimpse.”

He showed her a deep crack in one edge where the box had split, as if someone had taken a hatchet to it.

Kerem finished wrapping Silas’s leg and knotted the bandage, eyeing the Artifact carefully.

“Blood,” he said, pointing to a set of symbols on one side. “And over there, bone.”

“I miss my journal,” Silas bemoaned, handing the Artifact off to his teacher. “Any others?”

Rotating it slowly, Kerem listed the rest. “Flesh. Soul. Bind. Unbind.”

“Shouldn’t the opposites negate?”

“One would assume.” Kerem frowned. “I can’t sense much from it. Perhaps because I’m not a Stone Caster.”

“Or it could be that big split in the side.” Silas adjusted himself on the ground, hissing air through his teeth. He shook his head. “Never as many answers as questions.”

Kerem smirked. “The first rule of discovery. And you stay off that leg. In fifteen minutes, I can do a second application of antivenom and change the dressing. Then you can walk, with help.”

“I don’t need a second dose.” Silas nodded toward the mouth of the alley, curtained by laundry drifting gently on the overhead lines. “I need you to go after Ceyda. If she keeps running on that leg, she’ll kill herself.”

“I doubt I can find her.” He didn’t seem that enthused about making an effort.

“You can try!” protested Eliza. She struggled and failed to find the right words, so she added in Loegrian, “Don’t you care that she’s your friend’s daughter?”

Silas was gracious enough to translate the question for her.

Kerem met her gaze evenly, his dark eyes shadowed behind his spectacles. “When you live in a country of turmoil, you lose friends. And their daughters. That’s the reality of it.”

“Then change the reality,” she shot back.

He looked away, giving a faint, melancholic smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Leaving a few supplies, he packed the rest and stood. Before he left, Silas touched his leg, pausing him.

“Who had access to my venom?” he asked quietly.

“Myself,” said Kerem. “Iyal Mazhar, for the dehydration project. Iyal Afshin, for all research approvals.”

“Not Iyal Havva?”

“Not to my knowledge. Unless someone broke into my office.”

Eliza remembered how easily Silas picked the lock on the door. Based on his frustrated expression, perhaps he was thinking of that too. He sighed.

“Fifteen minutes before you walk,” Kerem said sternly.

Then he disappeared through the laundry lines.