Page 49 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Henry tensed, pulling away from Eliza. Color stained his cheeks. “Just recently.”

He seemed bolstered by the fact that Gill didn’t run screaming in the other direction. Instead, the Caster gave a gentle smile and said, “You’ll be pleased to know Her Majesty has repealed the laws against Animal Affiliates. You’re safe to be yourself in Loegria now.”

Eliza’s heart swelled. She could always count on her sister’s compassion.

“My family will still hate me,” Henry whispered. “My father . . .” He trailed off, clearly thinking of how things had gone between Silas and Lord Bennett.

“Actually, as a member of the Upper Court, your father has spoken in defense of freedom for magic. Aria is relying on Lord Wycliff quite heavily to help champion all the changes she’s making.”

For a moment, Henry just stared, as if he had to repeat Gill’s words in his mind before he could make sense of them. Then he gave a small smile, meeting Eliza’s eyes once more.

As if steeling himself for a tournament, he said, “I’ll try.”

“Thank you.” Eliza sagged in relief. “Now will you finally tell me what your animal link is?”

It likely wouldn’t be as widespread as snakes, but she could still hope for a miracle.

“It’s better if I just show you.”

With that, the noble knight puffed into a tiny brown rat.

After learning Kerem was a murderer, the smartest action would have been to call for help and try to escape.

Instead, Silas willingly followed him out of the Yamakaz and away from all its guards and fortifications.

After everything that had gone wrong, he couldn’t help clinging to a sliver of hope that Kerem had a good explanation for what he’d done, that if Silas just listened, he’d find the misunderstanding.

He finally understood why Eliza had been so stubborn after the shipwreck. Better to cling to a fragile hope than to embrace a nightmare.

And he’d already lost everything else.

His former professor led him into a series of tunnels beneath campus. They pointed toward the ocean, and soon enough, Silas heard the distant crash of waves, echoing dully against the rock walls. The narrow tunnels opened into wide caverns, some of which must have led to caves in the cliffside.

They stopped in a low-ceilinged but expansive cavern.

Natural rock structures had clearly been used as tables, some still bearing abandoned cups or surrounded by chairs.

Notes had been scrawled in chalk across the rock walls.

As far as research rooms went, it was more atmospheric than anything on campus.

Kerem set his lantern on a table, correcting an overturned cup like a wayward student.

Silas thought of corrected essays, of afternoons in lecture hall, of the surge of pride he felt whenever Kerem noted his contributions in class.

Mentor and murderer—Silas could not reconcile the two identities in his mind.

It was like trying to understand his father all over again.

“It began with a dream,” said Kerem, his voice echoing surreally in the cavern.

Lantern light flickered across the rock walls.

“First, a dream of achievement. My grandfather raised me, and he believed in experimentation and potential. Everything was an achievement waiting to happen. I was ten years old when my magic activated, and he encouraged me in every exploration of it. He paid for my education. I saw an open world, with nothing barred to me.”

Silas’s eyes roamed the white letters across the walls, but his mind focused on Kerem’s voice.

“That dream dissolved, running like sand through the hands of Cronese slavers.”

One by one, Kerem shuttered three sides of the lantern, throwing the cavern into deep shadows. The remaining light illuminated only one cavern wall, jagged rock cut deeply by trickling water over the course of time.

“Eight years I spent being sold from one wealthy family to another, a snake on display, transforming for their entertainment or suffering the consequences in blood. I had only one dream left to me. A dream of escape.”

In the echoing shadows, Silas felt the walls pressing in.

“I thought once I achieved it,” Kerem said quietly, “I could go back to where I was before. But the world never turns backward. When I finally came home, I’d grown from child to adult, and it was home no longer.

My grandfather was gone. I had no family, no friendships, no path forward. Even my magic—forever damaged.

“Freedom, which should have been everything, was nothing.”

Silas pressed one hand to a dark wall, leaning his weight off his throbbing leg. A deeper pain pulsed beneath.

He knew what it was like to lose a home.

“Another ten years of struggle,” said Kerem, “advancements and accolades, a professorship and a name for myself. Yet I could never forget what had been taken. It was time for a new dream.”

He turned the lantern, throwing its focused light onto a different wall, white with chalk. Even at a distance, Silas could distinguish three sets of handwriting woven together.

“A Stone Caster, Fluid Caster, and Affiliate, all coordinating magic. A project with almost zero chance of success, but I had nothing to lose.”

Silas spoke at last, his voice hoarse. “Iyal Havva did.”

The wire frame of Kerem’s spectacles cut shadows like scars across his face.

“I predicted the Artifact creation would draw out a single bone, that he would survive the process, however painfully. Havva thought so as well, and he agreed to that sacrifice. We planned for it. I never imagined the true result.”

“Is that why you felt guilty and took his body home?” It would have been smarter to dump it in the ocean or pass it to the graveyard like the other magic users, though the thought made Silas ill.

A tic passed through Kerem’s jaw. “That was Mazhar’s sentimentality.

Since Havva was our collaborator, Mazhar insisted his death be known and his sacrifice respected, even if no one knew the truth.

I never should have agreed. It cost me the Artifact after I’d already begun experimenting with it.

A monumental setback, especially when I failed to capture the thief. ”

It was a wonder Ceyda had survived. If she had. Silas prayed Gill had been able to find and help her in the healing hall, that her presence there wasn’t simply one more lie.

“How did you recruit Havva and Mazhar? You just knocked on another professor’s door and asked him to offer up one of his bones for your secret project?”

Kerem shook his head, as if disappointed in Silas’s reasoning. “Initially, I carried a hatred of Cronith. Of the slavers who sold me, the people who purchased, the government that refused to outlaw a barbaric practice as long as it stayed limited to foreigners rather than its own citizens.

“But it was my own country that was most to blame. The shackles I wore that damaged my magic were not made in Cronith but in Pravusat. It was Pravusat’s black market that allowed them to be created and smuggled into dangerous hands.

It was Pravusat’s lawlessness that allowed me to be captured and sold in the first place, and it was Pravusat’s selfishness that turned a blind eye to the outcome. ”

Eliza’s voice echoed in Silas’s mind. What is wrong with this place? No one cares.

“I was not the only one enraged by Pravusat’s deficiencies.

” Kerem stepped up to the wall, touching one set of handwriting, then another.

“Mazhar was orphaned by senseless violence, the attacker released from justice on a bribe. Havva lost his wife when the Nephew King burned a city for a crown. We’d all suffered, and we all hungered. ”

“What was the dream?” Silas asked.

This time, he received a quick glance of approval, like he’d given the right answer in class. It made his heart ache more than his leg.

“A stable government.” Kerem unshuttered one side of the lantern, spilling new light. “An end to corruption.” He opened another side. “And the power to achieve it.” The final side.

The lantern glowed like a beacon in the dreary cavern.

With a hollow smile, Silas said, “I should have known it was a revolution. It’s Pravusat.”

Kerem smiled to match, as if they were sharing a joke. “To survive a viper’s den, you must be the bigger viper. There is no way to save this country from itself except by overwhelming power, and the greatest power resides in magic.”

“So you made an impossible Artifact—one that could steal and hoard magic—to set yourself up as king.”

“Dictator,” Kerem corrected. “Despot, perhaps. Let’s not be soft about the terms. I intend to pull this drunken country from the gutter, clean it by my own hands, and force it to remain upright.”

“No regard to freedom.”

“I know the price of freedom,” he said sharply. “And I know when it’s undeserved.”

Silas shook his head. “Maybe so. But I’ve never believed anything good comes from unchecked power.”

Loegria’s monarchy had ruled without challenge for centuries, yet held an entire country in oppressive tradition.

Shifting, Kerem leaned against the table, his shadow long and dark beside him. “Imagine this, then. Imagine yourself back in the moment your father drew his sword.”

Silas tensed.

“You’re helpless. Death is approaching. Except—” Kerem lifted a finger. “When he swings, you catch the blade.”

Silas swallowed. “I can’t do that.”

“A Stone Caster could. Bend the metal or blunt the edge, your choice. Imagine it, Silas. Imagine staring into your father’s eyes and knowing he can’t hurt you, because you hold a power he can’t match.”

Despite himself, the image hung in Silas’s mind, rewriting the past. He felt the cold press of harmless metal against his hand, saw the shock in his father’s dark eyes. His worst memory, transformed.

And the emotion seizing his chest was no longer terror. It was empowerment.

Before Silas could dispel the dream, Kerem pressed on.

“Now imagine how much more you could do. Fluid Casting, Stone Casting, a dozen Affiliate links—all at your fingertips. Imagine walking into the palace unhampered, knowing that whatever you said, they would have to listen. What message would you bring the monarchy?”

Silas gritted his teeth, reining in his mind even as it eagerly offered up a dozen lectures.

“You’re simplifying,” he ground out. Just because a problem could be solved by force didn’t make it the right solution.

Hypocrite, said his own mind. The first thing he’d done when meeting Eliza was threaten her with snakes. He’d made a show of power, even thought of himself as royalty, and relished the feeling that she could do nothing to stop him.

Silas winced.

Dictator. Despot.

He could understand what Kerem wanted to do and why. But there was still a disconnect in the how.

“Explain the graveyard pattern to me,” he said. “The bodies of magic users buried by the kuveti. Tell me honestly—when your Artifact harvests magic, it kills, doesn’t it?”

Kerem grimaced. “Unfortunately, yes.”

Silas remembered his first meeting with Ceyda, the way he’d felt his soul unstitched from his body. He’d been mere footsteps from death.

All thanks to his favorite professor.

“You blame Pravusat for letting slavers target the innocent,” he said. “Meanwhile, you’re dragging them off the street into open graves. How is it any different from what was done to you?”

He’d struck a nerve. Kerem straightened, shoulders tensing. He reached out to touch the lantern, like drawing renewed magic from a serpent.

“I wish the path were different,” he said at last. “But the deaths happening now will end, and they’ll accomplish an exponential saving.”

The calm voice of reasoning was one Silas had heard so many times from a podium. His hand twitched, as if unnerved to not be taking notes.

He wanted so badly to justify Kerem. But he couldn’t justify this.

“Pravusat is a disaster,” Silas admitted quietly. “But to me, it’s been a paradise. It’s saved me from something worse. You let your bias control your perspective, Iyal. You fixated on the rot instead of seeing everything worth saving.”

Had Silas done the same with Loegria?

“Without cutting out the rot,” said Kerem, “there will be nothing left worth saving.”

“And with the way you’re cutting, there will be nothing left at all.”

Kerem lowered his hand from the lantern, his expression mournful. “Advancement has never come without sacrifice; this is only more bitter than most. My best student is strong enough to see that. Tell me I haven’t lost him to idealism.”

Idealism. If so, it was Eliza’s influence.

And Silas could never regret that.

“I can’t be your research assistant on this,” he said, and despite his best effort to be firm, his voice cracked. Not because he wasn’t resolved, but because he hated everything about what was happening.

This was the worst day of his life.

“I’m truly sorry to hear it,” Kerem whispered. He turned his back on Silas and stepped away from the table.

On the far side of the cavern, where it narrowed and led to other caves, a large shadow moved. For an instant, lantern light reflected off one massive, yellow eye.

Silas hadn’t realized how distraught he was, how unstable in his magic, to not have sensed what was right in front of him.

A scaled nose as wide as his forearm poked into the cavern. Following it came a scaled, diamond-shaped head, which lifted to brush the ceiling. The serpent stared down at him through yellow eyes with black slit pupils. Its head alone was half his height.

Despite the horror of the situation, Silas couldn’t help a little thrill of wonder at the creature before him.

“Sarazan, I presume.” He licked his lips. “So I suppose there’s no point in saying, ‘Sarazan save me.’”