Page 42 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

As the university guard filed into the room, surrounding the seating area, Henry leapt to his feet, battle-ready and clearly wishing he had a sword in his hand. Silas didn’t move, trying to absorb the transition from evaluation to what seemed to be an interrogation.

Yvette rose slowly, facing the guard marked with a silver rope at his shoulder. “Your reason for entering so dramatically, Captain?”

The captain grimaced, clearly unhappy with the task at hand. “Yvette Sahin, we will escort you to the dean’s office for questioning in connection with the death of Havva Polat.”

Silas’s heart stopped.

Eliza jumped up, stumbling as her foot caught on the cushion. “That’s ridiculous! Yvette would never—”

Silencing her with a raised hand, Yvette kept her attention on the guard. “My accuser?”

“Kerem Aytac, supporting a witness from Polat’s daughter.”

“He can’t face me himself? Unworthy to be called a snake.” She scoffed. “What evidence is set against me?”

The captain shifted uneasily. “I’m to escort you to Iyal Afshin. Further questions can be asked of him.”

Yvette’s expression had never looked stonier. Straightening, she composed her red scarf, smoothing the twin tails against her shirt, and then she marched from the room as if she were escorting the guards instead of the other way around.

Half the guards remained behind, beginning a search of the room, examining every paper on the desk and every book on the shelves.

Silas couldn’t move. His mind kept replaying the sharp bang of the door, as if he’d yet to process anything beyond the entrance of the guards.

“Silas, do something!” Eliza said sharply, kicking her shoe into his.

He scowled up at her. “What do you expect me to do, apta?”

“Tell the guards she’s innocent and this is nonsense!”

He wanted to.

But what if she wasn’t?

In the shadow of every bookshelf, Silas saw the image of his father drawing a sword. His mouth went dry, and his hands grew cold in his lap.

He looked away. “I don’t know anything about Yvette’s private life. For all I know—”

“For all you know, she’s secretly murdering colleagues? Have you lost your mind? She’s your friend! She remembered your birthday even when you didn’t.”

Provoked, Silas finally climbed to his feet, staring Eliza down from his superior height.

“And that means something? Do you know how many times I looked at my father and thought, ‘He loves me. He gave me a horse, or he boasted to Lord Brightwood about my early acceptance to Fairfax, or he took me on a trip, just the two of us.’ That didn’t stop him from cutting my throat the minute I grew fangs. ”

Behind Eliza, Henry grew deathly pale. Silas gave a silent curse.

But maybe he’d been wrong to try to spare the knight this truth. Maybe it was better to warn him about inevitable outcomes.

“That’s what this is about,” Eliza said softly, her coppery eyes full of pain. “Silas, not everyone is your father.”

“No one is,” he said coldly. “Everyone’s their own unique flavor of betrayal.”

Her expression hardened, and she stepped right up to him, forcing him to retreat a pace. “Everyone? Your best friend, who stood by you even as a shapeshifter in Loegria? Your sister, who you said you missed? Me?”

He wavered, then clenched his jaw. She never lowered her challenging gaze.

“After everything we’ve been through,” she said, “do you really think I’d betray you?”

Yes.

Even if her opinion of him had softened over time, he had always been a means to an end, and she had her end now. As soon as the bracelet was off, he would never see her again.

The flavor of that betrayal was particularly bitter.

Scales itched across his cheekbones, and he closed his eyes before they could turn red.

After all the years he’d spent fighting for control, learning to live with things pushed beneath the surface, Eliza swept in like a hurricane to undo it all.

She blew away all his certainties and washed the ground from under his feet.

“Looks like they found what they were searching for,” Henry’s voice cut in, grim and low.

Silas blinked, reorienting himself in the room to see the guards filing out. One guard held a leatherbound journal, similar to the one Silas carried in his own bag.

“Excuse me”—he stepped into the guard’s path—“what is that?”

The guard opened the cover, displaying the first page with its messy, uneven scrawl. It wasn’t Iyl Yvette’s handwriting.

In the top left corner was the name Havva Polat.

The guards left, and Silas remained in place, his insides twisted like a serpent around his spine.

As usual, Eliza broke the silence, hands on her hips and a stubborn frown on her face. “It’s possible they did a research project together. Or someone slipped into her office while she was at lecture, knowing the guards would arrive soon, and left that journal.”

“Eliza . . .” Silas whispered, rubbing his hand over his face. He sighed.

“Yvette has always helped you!”

“Like how she helped us know whether Henry was in prison.”

“Yes, exactly! She—”

“With her connections to the kuveti.”

Eliza stopped short, and he could see her mind working frantically to explain it.

His own mind was doing the same thing. Because this was Yvette—the woman who’d taught him everything about Pravusat and everything about Stone Casting.

The friend who’d always kept an open office door, no matter what he needed, from helping with an experiment to kindness on his birthday.

Could she really be a killer?

Silas wanted to say no.

Yvette knew about the venom experiments he did with Iyal Kerem.

When they’d found the tunnels, Kerem had recalled her hand in the prison construction.

Since Ceyda had known about the tunnels as well, perhaps her father had worked on the prison along with Yvette.

Perhaps they’d crafted the tunnels together, the beginning of a collaboration that turned much darker.

In every shadow, he saw a sword.

“I won’t believe it.” Eliza’s chin trembled, but her voice remained fierce. “We have to investigate.”

Silas turned away. “The university guard will conduct an investigation, overseen by Afshin. If she’s guilty, she’ll be removed from the faculty and turned over to the king. If she’s innocent, she’ll be released.”

“Since when is Silas Bennett content to let other people do the research?”

He threw his hands up, displaying a bracelet still attached. “What do you want from me, apta?”

“I want you to be better than this. Be braver. I want you to realize that not everyone betrays—or that, if they do, not all betrayals are the same. Some can be forgiven. Maybe Yvette built secret tunnels, and it was a bad decision someone is taking advantage of. Maybe she has kuveti connections she’s trying to sever.

Maybe she’s got secrets that don’t make her a murderer. ”

Silas flinched from her words, but inside, they resonated.

No conclusions, his academic side whispered. Just observations.

He didn’t know what the truth was, and that was key. He didn’t know. Not yet.

But he had the power to find out.

“I can’t go home,” Henry said quietly, breaking the silence. He looked at Eliza, and his furrowed brow spoke to both pain and apology. “Not yet, at least. Not until I figure out . . . who I am now. If there’s something to be done here, especially to help someone, I’d like to be part of it.”

An echo of his pain flashed through Eliza’s expression, and she gave a barely perceptible nod.

Then she cleared her throat. “Well, I believe Yvette is innocent, and I’m going to do something to prove it. Silas can be dragged along on a tether. If we need a real snake’s help, I’ll enlist Tulip.”

“Disi dokmek,” Silas muttered, then set his jaw. “If we want the truth, we need to figure out how the bone-box Artifact was made, and we need to find where Iyal Havva died.”