Page 39 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Baring his soul left Silas feeling drained and empty. More than that, it left him aching for home.

He’d willingly dredged up the past, and now he was mired in it.

Remembering his years at Fairfax and his first visits to Gill’s house.

Remembering being mobbed with hugs by Gill’s younger twin brothers as soon as they found out he was an Affiliate too.

Corvin coaching him through his first Artifact creation.

Leon hissing about the professor who’d triggered Silas’s rage transformation and telling him he should go bite the idiot after all.

Gill sternly forbidding animal attacks from anyone under his watch.

Silas had never been ashamed of himself or his abilities at the Reeves estate. Only in his own house. Only in the presence of his father.

His father’s reaction to the truth was a story Silas didn’t share with Henry, because the knight needed hope, not more despair. He swallowed that story, and it weighed heavily on his throat in the form of a scar.

He needed something else to focus on.

“What can you tell me about Ceyda?” he asked.

Although Henry looked as drained as Silas felt, he nodded. “She was just a passenger on the ship. Kept to herself, didn’t speak to anyone. I was so caught up in my own situation, I didn’t take much notice of her, except that she was always holding a white box.

“Every day on the ship got worse. We were farther from home, and things kept becoming more real, things like, ‘I’ll never see my family again.’ When they finally made the call for land, I . . . lost it.”

“You transformed,” Silas said, sparing him from having to recount the details. “On a ship with a Loegrian crew and captain. I can imagine how they responded.”

“Torches and pitchforks.” Henry grimaced. “Or swords, rope, and crossbows, as it were. They would have killed me if not for Ceyda. She, uh . . . she made that box glow, and then an enormous wave overturned the ship.”

Eliza gasped. “She sank the ship?”

Creating an ocean wave big enough to sink a merchant galley would require an enormous Fluid Casting effort. Even Gill would struggle with the task.

“Was she unconscious after?” Silas asked.

“No, but I was. I think I hit my head on the mast when the ship went over. She got me out of the water and all the way to shore.” Henry’s voice quieted, nearly inaudible. “I don’t know why it was just me.”

There certainly should have been other survivors. Any of the seafaring crew would have been strong swimmers, with knowledge of how to respond to a shipwreck.

Unless someone made sure they didn’t survive.

Silas drummed his fingers on the bedpost, frowning to himself.

In his first encounter with Ceyda, she’d been frightened of him, retreating as soon as he showed resistance.

In their second encounter, she’d been much the same, sheltering behind crates, fleeing at the first opportunity.

Hardly the battle-hardened killer he would expect capable of taking down an entire ship’s crew.

Then there was the matter of Henry’s sleeping Cast and the tidal wave. Ceyda could not be both Fluid Caster and Stone Caster, not through her own abilities.

He glanced at the bone-box Artifact, sitting innocuously on his desk. Unbind. Bind. Unbinding magic from an original host and then binding it to the box to be used by someone else. It was unfathomable. It was groundbreaking.

Silas itched to experiment on it right away, to see if it was broken beyond use or if he could glean anything from its depths.

Later, he ordered himself sternly, refocusing on Henry’s story.

“I woke in a large tent with physicians, I assume. I couldn’t understand any of them. Ceyda was still there. She told me her name, but that was the extent of how much we could communicate. She seemed . . . scared. Looking over her shoulder, flinching. She was still protecting that box.”

“I assume the crack happened during the shipwreck?” Silas asked.

Perhaps when a normal person would be rendered unconscious for overtaxing their mind and magic, the Artifact failed instead.

But to his surprise, Henry shook his head. “No, it was intact.”

Silas squinted at the knight, trying to make sense of all the pieces. “Why didn’t she steal your magic? Why put you to sleep instead—and why for so long?”

“It couldn’t have been more than a day,” said Henry, although he rubbed self-consciously at his beard.

Looking at Eliza, Silas left that one open for her to address. She sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, playing with the ends of her scarf, and judging by her drooping eyelids, she was using the movement to stay awake. Silas felt a twinge of guilt.

“I’ve been in Pravusat for weeks,” she whispered. “Looking for you.”

Henry made a strangled sound. “No, I . . . it . . . it wasn’t like she discussed things with me. We couldn’t understand each other. I just knew she was scared, and I figured . . . she’d saved my life, the least I could do was try to help.”

Silas gave him a flat stare. “Not the best idea to trust a stranger who has a mysterious, magical box.”

“I’m a knight, and we vow to protect even . . . questionable people.”

He and Eliza were certainly perfect for each other. Silas’s chest tightened at the thought.

“I followed her into the city,” Henry went on, “and she led me to that underground hiding spot. I couldn’t sleep—my arm hurt. She brought that box over, and the next thing I knew, I couldn’t feel any pain. Then I woke to . . . Eliza.”

He glanced over, and Eliza gave a tired smile.

“Anything else you remember?” Silas asked.

Henry shook his head. “I’m sorry. She tried to speak to me, but I never learned any Pravish. I was planning on crossing the border into Thesland to find work there. My father traveled there when he was young, and I always loved the stories.”

“It’s beautiful, so I’ve heard.” Silas shrugged. Thesland was a small country of mountains and rivers, where people lived in roving groups rather than in cities. He’d met only a few Thesan students at university.

“I guess my plans are different now,” Henry murmured.

“Well, you don’t have to figure them out tonight. It’s late. We should all get some rest.”

Although it was dishonest to the university, Silas picked yet another lock—on the door across the hall—and offered the room to Henry. It wasn’t as if anyone else was using the earthquake dorm, and Silas hoped to pay the deficit once he had a real salary.

Henry thanked him and closed the door, but Eliza hovered in the hallway, rubbing her eyes.

“We’ve filled three out of the four rooms,” she joked. “I guess that means we need to add one more person to the group. Maybe Tulip’s looking for a place to stay.”

Silas stared at her with raised eyebrows, and he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or not. She always put him off-balance.

She ducked her head. “I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier.”

Had she? Silas cast his mind back but couldn’t recall an offense.

“It’s been a stressful day,” he finally said.

“Can you believe only this morning, we were in prison?”

He remembered the cell all too vividly, sitting in the dim light next to her, thinking of her as a warrior and leaning in for a kiss.

Just how much power did she have over him, and how had she gained it without him even realizing?

“I know I’ve already said thank you,” she went on, “but it can’t cover everything you’ve done for me. I guess I could say it again in Pravish.” She flashed a smile that quickly died. “What I mean is, I really . . . appreciate you.”

She glanced up at him through her lashes, then looked down again, and Silas hated the way this felt like a goodbye.

When he didn’t speak, she rushed to add more. “The way you’ve helped Henry is wonderful too. You’re a good person, Silas.”

“Funny,” he managed. “I seem to recall you saying I might kill all my students.”

It was a pitiful attempt to resurrect their banter from the alley, a moment when he’d felt like she knew him completely.

But that moment was gone.

“I was wrong,” she said, as if he’d been fishing for an apology.

Her cheeks burned pink in the light from the hallway lantern.

“I can’t help thinking if I’d found Henry on my own, back when I first arrived, I would have been awful.

I would have said all the wrong things about magic and shapeshifters.

Henry’s already doubting himself, and I would have made it so much worse.

I thought I was perfect for him. I thought we were perfect together. ”

Ironic that Silas had been thinking along the same lines since meeting the knight.

“No one’s perfect,” he said softly. “We’re all just people.”

Her expression bloomed into a wide, stunning smile, and she reached out to squeeze his arm. “I’m a better one, because of you.”

Her words filled his chest, laboring his breathing.

When she turned to leave, he caught her arm, and she looked back.

He was drowning in her gaze, but he didn’t care about the pain in his lungs if it meant he could just stay in the water.

If he could just capture this moment and make it so she would never leave.

The scent of her filled the hallway and threatened to overcome his sense of reason.

But he couldn’t rid his mind of an echo: The way you’ve helped Henry.

That was where her affections centered. If she felt anything toward him, it was because he’d helped Henry.

Silas released her arm. He couldn’t bring himself to speak. What could he say? Certainly not you’re welcome. He wasn’t feeling very welcoming about anything at the moment.

So without a word, he entered his room and closed the door, using it as a barrier to divide him from every confusing, aching emotion out there in the hallway.

Silas couldn’t sleep, so he spent the night writing.

He filled pages in his journal with all his disjointed thoughts about Ceyda and Iyal Havva, about an unknown experiment using his own venom, about Casting types and a bone box with Cronese writing, about the kuveti and the tunnels and the magic users “causing disturbances.”

He willed his mind to focus, to see the big picture he was missing, but his traitorous thoughts kept drifting through the wall to the girl sleeping in the room next to his.

Tasumak, the Stone Caster’s sleep, was used to accelerate a body’s natural healing process. Henry said his arm was hurting, and then Ceyda used the Artifact to put him to sleep. Rather than stealing his magic, she’d healed him. But why not wake him?

Unless she couldn’t because the Artifact was broken. Unless she wasn’t a Caster at all and her abilities had come from the bone box.

How had it broken?

And who had worked with her father to make it in the first place?

Silas tore out a page just to have something to crumple between his hands. He threw it across the room, satisfied with the way it bounced hard yet soundlessly against the wall. He should give up his university work after all, go pick papayas for Baris. Nice and simple, twist-twist and done.

Then he sighed, picked up his pen, and returned to work.