Page 4 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Who are you?” Eliza demanded. “And why were you chasing me?”

Her foot still crawled with the memory of snake, and she absently rubbed her ankle against the back of her opposite calf.

“Who you?” she demanded again, this time in Pravish, since he hadn’t responded to her Loegrian. She spoke Pravish haltingly, so perhaps he still wouldn’t understand, but she’d been practicing for a week.

He heaved a long-suffering sigh. When he responded, it was in the smooth silk of Pravish. She caught name, followed by Silas.

Up close, Silas was younger than her first impression of him, perhaps even her own age, but he was also more intimidating.

For one, he was unreasonably tall with a broad chest to match.

He could have thrown her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes without even noticing the weight.

His cold, dark eyes said it wouldn’t bother him to heave people around like potatoes.

He was light-skinned for a Pravish person, more honey-brown than brown, but even Loegria had a variety of skin tones, with people from the southern half darker than those from the north.

Eliza had the great misfortune of pale skin that turned splotchy red and freckled in the sun—courtesy of her mother, who hailed from Patriamere, a country of fair skin and fair hair.

At least she wasn’t blonde; she’d not seen anyone blonde in Pravusat, and though her brown hair was noticeably light, it wasn’t quite out of place.

Silas had hair the color of spilled ink, combed back on one side and dripping over his forehead on the other in long, straight strands that reached his eyebrow.

Her attention must have made him self-conscious, because he raked his fingers through that section, forcing it back, though a few strands rebelled, falling loose once more.

He was probably a thug. He looked like a thug.

Eliza itched to reach for the dagger tucked through her belt, but she didn’t really know how to use it, and she would have only one chance for a surprise if things turned ugly.

“Go away,” she said. She’d certainly learned that Pravish phrase after hearing it directed at her so often in the last week.

“No,” Silas replied.

Rats. There had been little hope that would work, but still.

In contrast to his dark hair, eyes, and expression, Silas wore a loose shirt of bright blue fabric, reaching partway down his thighs, belted with a sash of orange that also crossed one shoulder.

Eliza had seen the Pravish style scattered everywhere in combinations of pink and green, purple and yellow, red and orange.

Loegrian fashion was never so flamboyant in its colors, and Eliza found herself wishing she could trade her muted silks for a flowy rainbow.

It wasn’t only the Pravish fashion that was remarkably different.

Chatter echoed from the city streets nearby, where people strode along by themselves or in groups, all in a seemingly great hurry to get somewhere.

Since arriving, she’d seen no carriages or even solo horseback riders in the streets.

She had seen a few carts carrying people, but they were pulled by other people, not horses, and the roads were all pitted and in need of repair, just like the wall.

She wondered how Pravusat’s king spent his money if not in caring for his cities and people.

“Why you follow?” she demanded in Pravish, trying to make the question understandable even though she couldn’t conjugate it.

Silas drawled something too quick to deconstruct. She thought she heard the word money.

As she’d expected—he wanted payment for saving her.

“No money,” she snapped. “Go home!”

Wait, she thought. That isn’t right. Pravish added extra words she wouldn’t need in Loegrian. Go to home. How did she say that again? Gik ne seyahat.

Or was it seravat?

“Go home,” she repeated forcefully. Seravat sounded better. It was definitely the right word.

Silas snorted.

Eliza blushed. She turned to leave, and the thug didn’t stop her, yet she found she couldn’t go more than a few steps. She turned back, face flaming.

“You be . . . ashamed.” Is that “ashamed” or “gentle”? Utanmas. “Steal money, ashamed. Follow girl, ashamed.” She ended with an emphatic hmph! Then she turned again to leave.

“You’re too old for that,” he said.

It took her a moment to process that he’d spoken Loegrian. Her jaw dropped, and she whirled around.

Silas leaned against the alley wall and shrugged.

“In Pravish, the genc root—either gencal for boys or genca for girls—references children, ten years old at most. Genca, you said—so you’re claiming to be a seven-year-old girl?

As far as disguises go, Your Highness, shaving ten years off your age won’t fool anyone.

In addition, I’m not sure it’s possible to ‘steal money gently.’”

She gaped. The humidity made her mind feel as sticky as her clothing, and her thoughts scrambled to grasp what was happening. Her face burned more fiercely than before.

Finally, she asked, “What’s the word for ‘ashamed’?”

“Utamas,” he supplied, his smirk clearly expecting her to use it regarding herself.

“You should be utamas,” she snapped. “For being a thug and for pretending to be Pravish.”

“I pretended nothing.”

He had the audacity to say that while wearing Pravish fashion and speaking the language as smoothly as anyone she’d heard in Izili.

“You called me ‘Your Highness,’ so clearly you know who I am. Well, if you’re hoping to turn me in for a reward, you can forget it. King or not, my father’s not the rewarding type.”

Silas’s eyebrows rose, though his expression betrayed nothing else.

“Your sister sent me,” he finally said.

Eliza’s insides shrank. When she’d run away, she’d been too cowardly to give her sister one final hug. She’d simply left a note in the night.

Would Aria tell her to abandon her search and come home?

She knew what her father would say—that running away was the worst of her whims. That she’d accomplished nothing.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “Tell Aria not to worry.”

Aria had enough to worry about as it was. Ever since the Caster rebellion started, she and their father had grown more and more at odds, a struggle between current ruler and future ruler that Eliza had no part in.

Or maybe that was the excuse she told herself to ease the guilt of running away. Of abandoning her sister.

Only days earlier, Eliza had felt the curse lift. She no longer carried a deep chill in her bones, no longer spent restless nights awake or felt the constant exhaustion in her limbs. Having the curse broken should have thrilled her.

Instead, it terrified her.

She didn’t know if her sister was responsible or if some man of court had finally passed the king’s challenge.

If it was the latter, Eliza couldn’t even hope for a handsome gentleman her sister might be happy to marry—because Aria was already involved in a secret romance, one their father would never approve. She loved a Caster.

But there was something worse about the curse breaking, a truth Eliza could hardly bring herself to acknowledge.

The truth that something had changed about her since being cursed.

The truth that, long before the curse had broken, it had broken something inside her.

The truth that it was broken still.

She’d convinced herself that everything would return to normal once the curse was removed. But although the sleepless nights had vanished, she remained altered. Wounded. It was like someone had removed an arrow from her shoulder, but they’d only pulled the shaft and left the arrowhead buried.

Her one remaining hope was finding Henry. She couldn’t explain why, but she knew that if she could find him, she would be fixed. She would fall into his hazel eyes again, and everything would be like it once was.

With more conviction than before, Eliza squared her shoulders, and she looked up into Silas’s dark eyes. “You can tell Aria I’m staying, and you can go home. Seravat.”

“Seyahat,” he corrected.

Rats. She’d had it right the first time.

“I am home,” he added. “You’re the one out of place.” He held her gaze with a pointed look, and based on attire alone, his words held weight. But they didn’t change anything.

“I have to find someone,” Eliza insisted.

“Henry Wycliff.”

Hearing Henry’s name from someone else sharpened the ache, like removing the cover from a basket of feelings she’d tried to keep pressed down and unseen. Henry’s face rose in her memory, smiling and warm, his head cocked and his brown hair brushing his shoulders as he offered her a white snowdrop.

“I happen to know—” Silas began.

She gasped, struck by the sudden realization of what was happening. Her soggy, tired mind had finally caught up. She was speaking Loegrian with someone who also spoke Pravish.

“You can help me find Henry!” she burst out, grabbing his arm.

He stepped back, clearly unnerved by the contact, slithering out of her grasp. “I—”

“You speak Pravish! I’ve been searching .

. .” Fumbling, Eliza pulled the folded map from her pocket, where she kept it beside her book of sonnets.

“I have a map of the ship’s route, and I’ve been searching for the survivors, but even if I can phrase a question, I can’t understand answers. You can fix that!”

Silas stared at her. Something about his dark gaze made her skin crawl until she leaned back.

“Survivors?” he repeated.

She realized what she was shrinking from. Pity.

“There was a shipwreck,” she said with forced calm. “He’s missing. But if you translate for me, we can—”

“He’s gone, Highness.” Silas’s voice was surprisingly gentle for a thug.

Eliza clenched her trembling jaw. “You don’t know that, and I won’t accept it. That isn’t our ending.”

“You can’t just not accept truth.”

“It isn’t truth. It’s what some choose to believe, but I don’t.”

“Ignoring truth out of personal discomfort is the act of the foolish.”

“Then I’m foolish!” she snapped. “Aptal.”

Silas smirked. “You’re a man now? Apta is the feminine form.”

“The point is,” she said sharply, “foolish or not, I’m not going anywhere until I find Henry.”

The princess was worse than Silas had feared.

Brash, stubborn, and delusional. It was a shame about Henry—Silas was fairly certain he’d crossed paths with him at the Reeves estate, since Lord Reeves had always been close to Lord Wycliff—but it was life.

War, illness, shipwrecks. The unavoidable swallowed even the best of people.

He tried to keep his voice consoling. “Highness, wouldn’t you rather grieve at home? With your family?”

Part of him wondered if anyone at home grieved his absence.

Not his father, certainly. When the king had announced his challenge—break the crown princess’s curse and win her hand in marriage—Lord Bennett had volunteered Silas without even consulting him, and he’d made it clear the king’s wrath for failure would be nothing compared to his own.

If you can’t win this contest, he’d said, you’ll never hold my title. If you can’t win this, you’re not my son.

Silas’s father believed in motivation by threat, but Silas had grown tired of threats.

So here he was. Exiled and disinherited.

Trying to reason with the daughter of the very man who’d exiled him.

At the mention of grief, Eliza’s eyes hardened. She drew herself up in regal posture. “You will help me find Henry. That’s an order from your princess.”

More motivation by threat. For a moment, Silas was tempted to leave her to her well-deserved fate.

Instead, he drawled, “Or what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Or what?” He gestured at the alley, empty except for themselves. “If I disobey your royal order, you’ll what—call the guards? Lock me in prison? Banish me?”

He let the last example hang in the air until her cheeks colored. Then he said, “I suggest you shelve the arrogance, Highness. Power isn’t inherent, no matter what any monarchy claims. It’s enforced. You can’t force me into anything. Not here.”

When she ducked her head, picking at her shirt, he gave a satisfied nod.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to the harbor and help you arrange for a ship. That’s all the translation I can offer.”