Page 46 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

The silence weighed against Eliza’s heart, making each beat slow and painful. After Kerem’s departure, Silas quietly went back to the table and packed his supplies into his bag, like everything happening was just as he’d expected.

Well, it wasn’t what she’d expected. She hated it. All of it.

“Why would Yvette do this?” she demanded.

Henry and Gill looked lost, since the conversation with Kerem had been in Pravish, but they must have read the tension in the silence, because they didn’t break it.

“Why?” Eliza demanded again, trying and failing to catch Silas’s eye. “She’s a good person!” Her voice cracked, and tears stung her eyes.

She thought of her first visit to Yvette’s office, all the gentle compassion in the woman’s stern face as she examined the bracelets and asked, Dear Eliza, what have you done?

She thought of the birthday celebration for Silas, the warm office transformed into a home.

Baris’s booming laugh next to Yvette’s sly smile.

Real love is difficult, Yvette had told her, because it requires the most vulnerability two people can ever give, and the most forgiveness.

How could she talk about vulnerability and forgiveness while knowing someone was dragging bodies through a tunnel on her orders?

Silas slung his bag over his shoulder. His face looked drawn and ill. Resigned. “People aren’t good or bad, apta. They aren’t simple. They’re just people.”

He stepped past her and gripped Gill’s shoulder. “I need a favor. A big one.”

“Anything,” said Gill without hesitation. He rested one hand loosely on the sword at his side, as if ready to go into battle on his friend’s behalf.

“There’s a girl in the healing hall who needs cobra venom out of her blood right away. She might already be beyond saving, but it’s my fault she’s there.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Gill promised.

Inside Eliza, the storm clouds billowed, and her breath came faster in her chest. Hadn’t she just escaped this?

She cast around desperately for something to anchor herself, something to do to outrun the threatening thunder, but she’d lost the quest to prove Yvette’s innocence.

There was nothing for her to do except be swept up in the storm.

Henry was looking at her with hesitation, one arm lifted like he might reach for her.

He already had a scar on that arm, already had a struggle of his own with his new magic. She couldn’t hurt him again.

So she directed the storm the only place she could—

At the one person who’d been able to withstand everything she’d ever thrown at him.

Silas looked at her with steady, dark eyes, and he didn’t retreat even when she marched forward and shoved both hands into his chest as hard as she could. He caught her wrists, stumbling on his bad side with a grunt.

He spoke with an infuriating evenness. “Gill, Henry, can you give us a minute? Henry, if you remember your way to the healing hall, you can point out Ceyda. We’ll catch up shortly.”

Henry looked like he wanted to speak, like he wanted to stay, but in the end, he led Gill out the door, leaving Silas and Eliza alone in the entry hall of the Yamakaz—as alone as they could be with groups of students whispering over homework at the corner tables.

“I bet you’re happy now,” she spat, yanking her hands away. “This is what always happens, right? People always betray, and they always turn out to be the worst versions of themselves.”

She was doing it, too, blasting him with lightning instead of offering comfort when he’d lost more than she had.

Not that he cared. He didn’t care about anything besides facts and experiments. He didn’t care about people.

Didn’t care about Yvette.

Didn’t care about her.

“What I am,” he said softly, “is heartbroken.”

She faltered, the next insult dying on her lips. The waves pressed in, threatening to drown her.

Silas gripped the strap of his bag as if to keep his hand from shaking.

“I didn’t want it to be Yvette, and I don’t have a good answer for why she’d do it.

Ambition? Arrogance? They’ve gotten the best of good academics before.

Maybe it’s an old-fashioned lust for power.

Maybe her own magic wasn’t enough, and she wanted more.

I don’t know, Eliza. I don’t have all the answers.

Right now, I feel like I don’t have any at all. ”

That made two of them. And in a single moment of clarity, all the answers and questions and storm clouds dropped away into meaninglessness, leaving behind nothing except a connection to Silas that went far deeper than the bracelet on her wrist.

“Silas Bennett without answers,” she whispered. “That just won’t do.”

His lips gave the smallest twitch. “It’s unnatural, we agree.”

“I’m sorry. For goading you, for Yvette, for everything.” She drew in a single quick breath for courage. “Everything except this.”

Eliza grabbed him by the collar and pulled his lips down to meet hers.

She expected him to tense or pull away, but he melted, wrapping his arms around her as if he’d been waiting for this.

Hoping for it, even. He met her hunger with his own in a way that shot electricity down every limb like lightning strikes.

But this was a storm she could navigate.

She slid one hand up the back of his neck, sinking her fingers into his soft hair. The fingertips of her other hand traced his collarbone.

Silas pulled back, and she panicked, thinking she’d driven him away. But all he did was slide the bag from his shoulder, dropping it with a thump, before he flashed a wicked grin and recaptured her lips. She gave a quick smile of her own before her lips were far too distracted for expressions.

Then she was moving. Startled, she flung her arms around Silas’s neck as he steered her backward to the nearest table. He lifted her onto its surface—staggering on his injured leg—just as a student reached for one of the chairs. The student hurried away, grumbling.

“Sorry,” Silas called after him, his tone completely unapologetic.

Eliza laughed. She tightened her arms behind his neck, drawing him back toward her, and his dark eyes held hers for a brief yet fathomless moment before he dipped his head to kiss her jawline, trailing up to her ear.

Her eyelids drifted closed as she savored every sensation of his lips against her skin.

He made her feel understood and cherished and seen.

He’d once told her that if real love existed, it would be a simple thing. Someone saying, I like you as you are.

From the start, he’d seen her. He’d never flinched from her darkest moods, and he’d never dampened her brightest ones. She was under no delusion that he’d liked her from the start, but he’d always known the real her.

And she dared to believe he liked her now.

Eliza turned her head, catching Silas’s lips again, and with everything inside her, she tried to kiss him in a way that said she felt the same.

Just as you are. From his academic obsessions to his dry humor, from his endearing fascination with language to his irritating opinions about romance.

He was bold and honest and wary, and she loved every part.

Even his magic, which was both dangerous and wonderful, which she’d seen both hurt and help.

He wouldn’t be Silas without it.

So she loved it.

Silas breathed in rhythm with her, as if their heartbeats had synchronized to that message—just as you are, just as you are—beating together in a way to never be undone. His kisses unraveled every understanding Eliza thought she’d had of the world.

Once, in a moment of annoyance, she’d thought him the antithesis of every romantic hero. While it was true that he would never go charging anywhere on a white stallion—indeed, it was unlikely a white stallion would even tolerate him as a rider—she hadn’t given him nearly enough credit.

Because no romantic hero ever imagined could kiss in a more passionate or tender way than Silas Bennett.

A sudden clang-clang-clang startled them apart.

Eliza looked down, watching a golden bracelet roll across the polished floor.

Silas lifted his hand from the table, turning his bare wrist as if he didn’t recognize it.

When he straightened, Eliza’s arms slid free of his shoulders, and her own bracelet followed, hitting the floor and ringing through the domed hall.

In the echo of it, she recalled Yvette’s words about the Cast. If you aren’t both in love with each other, then the kiss won’t strike the right chord for the Cast.

Her heart stuttered and then surged. She looked up at Silas with a radiant smile.

Only to find him staring down at the pair of bracelets in clear horror.

“Mr. Bennett?” said an apologetic librarian, speaking from several feet away. She kept one foot in the stacks while her head was in the entry hall. She said something about noise and “displays of affection.”

Eliza’s face heated beyond any sunburn. Without the Cast, she could no longer understand every word, but the meaning was clear.

“Sorry,” Silas said, his tone genuinely apologetic this time. “We were just leaving.”

He snatched up his discarded bag while Eliza grabbed the two bracelets. She couldn’t say why, since they were useless now, but it felt wrong to leave them on the library floor.

The outside air only added heat to her face, and the humidity stuck to her skin, making her as uncomfortable as possible. Silas walked with quick strides, and she realized he could actually leave her behind now, so she caught his arm, dragging him to a stop.

“Can we talk about what happened in there?”

He shrugged. “Getting thrown out of the library—that’s a first for me.”

She was too nervous to muster a smile. “No, I mean the kiss.”

Kiss was hardly adequate. There had been many kisses, more than enough to leave her head still spinning.

He looked away, and the avoidance constricted her stomach. She clenched her fingers more tightly in the fabric of his sleeve, as if to prevent him from running away, and words spilled from her one after another.

“You kissed me back. Why? Were you declaring love? Asking me to stay? Taking pity on me? Use your words, Silas Bennett, in whatever language you want, and tell me what this means.”

He raked his free hand through his hair, trying to pull away, but she held fast.

“Tell me!” she insisted, forcing him to look at her.

“It doesn’t mean anything!” he burst out. “It just . . . happened. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She released him, her arm falling slack to her side. With her other hand, she clutched the twin bracelets to her chest, as if to shield them. Perhaps to shield herself. Tears welled in her eyes.

She knew what it meant—the Cast breaking had been evidence enough. But if he couldn’t admit it, if he was determined to lie and to hide in his old avoidances that love didn’t exist or that a kiss meant nothing at all, then it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter if Silas loved her. He didn’t want to.

“Thank you,” she said softly, “for being clear. Because, for a moment there, I thought it meant I loved you. But I suppose it was just one of my romantic whims.”

She dropped the bracelets on the path at his feet, and then she ran. It was cowardly, but it felt good, knowing he couldn’t catch her if she didn’t let him, knowing he wouldn’t be dragged along on a tether. She was physically free of him.

If only the same could be said for her mind and heart.

Silas cursed himself in every language he knew. He kicked at one of the bracelets, wishing he could blame the Cast or the Caster behind it, wishing he could blame Yvette or Eliza. But his failings were all his own.

For a few precious minutes, he’d held the entire world in his arms, and at the first opportunity, he’d thrown it away. Eliza’s voice haunted him from memory.

Be better than that, Silas. Be braver.

But he didn’t know how.

The instant he’d seen the Cast broken, all his fears had come rushing in. So before Eliza could leave him, he’d left her. Before she could betray him, he’d betrayed her.

As a cornered snake, he’d spat venom.

And even if he wanted to transform back . . .

He didn’t know how.

He rubbed at the scar on his throat. His first impulse was to go to Yvette for advice, and that made everything worse. Clearly, Silas’s judgment when it came to people couldn’t be trusted.

He tried to convince himself to head toward the healing hall, but the command swirled in his mind without ever reaching his feet. Standing rooted, he imagined what would happen if he went. Gill would see right through him.

What have you done? his best friend would ask, like Silas was one of his younger brothers, guilty of mischief.

I kissed Eliza.

Surely that would go over well.

You? A royal?

Yes, yes, lay it on. I remember everything I said when you told me you were in love with a Loegrian princess.

Are you in love with a Loegrian princess?

Even in his mind, Silas couldn’t say a simple yes. The ground had vanished beneath him, and maybe he would never move forward again.

I don’t even know what love is, Gill.

Eliza wanted him to be braver than he was, but even if he tried, what then?

She could never stay away from Loegria indefinitely, and he could never go back.

They were at an impasse. Any confession—any attempt on his part to make his feelings clear—would only end with a parting even more brutal than this one. A betrayal.

He remembered her devastation after her fight with Henry. Silas had been a hypocrite, wanting to comfort her after her unanswered confession, thinking Henry a fool for walking away.

At least Henry had only retreated.

Silas had offered her the world, then said it meant nothing.

She really was better off with the knight.

Eliza ran without caring where she was going.

She left campus behind, taking the path out onto the Izili cliffs, but she didn’t turn left into the city or right toward the Sarazan tabernacle.

She raced out to the cliff edge, until she ran out of ground, until she slid to a halt, panting, her face streaked with sweat, seagulls crying above her and the ocean stretching out below.

It was beautiful. Blue and sparkling with a white haze of promise. Endless.

It was beautiful, and she hated it.

Dropping to the rocky ground, Eliza released a scream, pitiful and swallowed by the vast landscape before her. She bent forward. Inside, she clutched at driftwood and fought the currents, but the water was too strong this time. And she was tired.

It was time to surrender.

It was time to go home.

But for the moment, she sat back on her heels, and she let herself sob for every lost dream.