Page 5 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

The princess walked behind Silas with her head down. It was unnerving, like having an extra shadow that might attack him at any moment.

Everyone they passed on the street darted a curious glance her way. Some of the men’s gazes were appreciative, lingering. Loegrian clothing was formfitting, so her silk shirt and woolen trousers meant the princess’s curves could be clearly seen, but it was more than that. She was different.

Between the human trafficking and wanton violence, it was unwise to stand out in Pravusat. Even the king kept the ornamentations of his palace to a minimum.

When Silas had first started university, Izili had not been the capital of Pravusat.

Barely two months into Silas’s studies, the nephew of the former king had wrested the crown for himself, his revolution setting fire to the then-capital.

Once he’d burned his uncle’s city to the ground, the Nephew King built a palace in Izili, declaring the city the seat of his everlasting power.

Everlasting? Not likely. But he’d held power for two years now—long enough that people sometimes referred to him by name, King Orzan, rather than simply the Nephew King.

If he survived another two years, his reign would surpass that of his dead uncle’s, but the odds were not in his favor.

Silas had witnessed one attempted rebellion against the Nephew King already.

Pravusat was the land of revolution.

When the air was still, the Izili streets carried the dank smell of too many people and too little sky, but every so often, a fresh ocean breeze cleansed that scent with salt. Nature’s own little revolutions. As they approached the harbor, those breezes grew more frequent.

Eliza came to a halt on the street. She gestured to a voyager’s inn, the upper windows shuttered and the main floor windows thrown open to tantalize passersby with the wafting scent of roasted fish, sumac, and ale.

“This is where I’m staying,” she said. “I need to get my things.”

Of course she’d chosen a voyager’s inn. They were established for travelers arriving by ship and double the price of most other lodgings. By staying at one, she was practically waving a banner declaring herself a foreigner. No wonder the kuveti had been able to find her.

Silas clenched his jaw. He didn’t like that she’d nearly been arrested. The kuveti were the peacekeeping force in Pravusat, which ought to have been beneficial for a war-torn country. Unfortunately, their version of peacekeeping was less altruistic and more “peace as defined by the highest bidder.”

He had a terrible feeling about anyone bidding on Eliza. Either they wanted to ransom a princess, or they wanted to capture a seventeen-year-old foreigner no one would miss.

I just want to know she’s safe—that had been Aria’s exact request when they’d made their deal. But she’d also said, I want you to ensure my father’s soldiers don’t drag her back. She deserves to make her own choices.

The crown princess didn’t know the contradiction of her own request. There was only one safe haven in Izili, and that was the university.

Since Eliza wasn’t here to enroll, her quickest path to safety was across the ocean, back to Loegria.

For all that Silas hated the place, it was at least a safe country for those without magic.

“Aren’t you coming?” Eliza asked impatiently.

Had she brought a royal wardrobe she couldn’t carry by herself? Silas rolled his eyes, but he followed her into the bustling inn. Rather than making for the stairs to the upper floor, she marched straight to the innkeeper, who was distributing drinks from behind the bar.

She turned back to Silas. “Ask him what the Sarazan is,” she ordered.

Silas narrowed his eyes, glancing between the girl and the innkeeper.

The dark-skinned innkeeper lifted a mug in his direction, asking if they wanted ale or fish.

“No, thank you,” said Silas in Pravish.

Eliza folded her arms. “When I asked him about shipwrecks, he kept repeating the word Sarazan. I know it has something to do with Henry, so I need you to tell me what it is.”

Sarazan tabernacles were houses of refuge and healing, scattered throughout the desert. There was one on the other side of the cliffs, directly on the beach, that took in shipwrecked sailors if they washed up outside of the Izili harbor.

“Did you really think you could trick me into this?” Silas asked coldly.

“You’re here already! Just ask him.”

He turned and strode from the inn. Eliza darted after him, blocking his path forward on the street. Despite her small size—she was a full head shorter than he was—she was as quick as a scurrying mouse.

“Wait! You can’t just leave!”

“I offered to get you home,” he shot back. “Nothing more.” It was already more gracious than he wanted to be.

Eliza glared at him. “Of course it’s fine for you to be here but not me. I’m a fragile princess. I shouldn’t do things myself. I should cower at home and order guards around instead.”

“You ordered me.”

“I’m sorry I ordered!” She seized his arm again; he’d never met anyone so touchy. “My sister paid you to get me home, didn’t she? Please. Just do this one thing for me, and you can consider your service finished. I’ll write and tell Aria it’s all my doing!”

“I’m an academic, not a servant.” He shifted his arm, sliding it free of her grasp.

Eliza frowned. “Why did Aria choose you?” she finally asked.

He bristled at the implication—that he was somehow the one falling short in this encounter.

“An alliance of necessity, apta,” he said.

Her linguistic failings had provided the perfect moniker for her.

Foolish girl. That translation wasn’t totally satisfactory; in Loegrian, the etymology of fool had to do with being useless, or, more literally, a bellows emptied of air.

The Pravish counterpart of apta and aptal had a spontaneous connotation.

A person charging forward without thought.

Silas couldn’t afford to be that way. He had a plan, and he would be living off papayas until he could accomplish it—assuming Baris hadn’t already resold his basket because he’d taken too long to collect it. Silas had paid for a full basket in exchange for Baris throwing fruit at the kuveti.

“You have to help me,” Eliza insisted, the desperation clear in her voice.

Ironically, he was trying to do just that. He sighed.

“Oh, I see.” Her desperation transformed to derision. “You were happy to take the first command and the money that came with it because it didn’t require any real work on your part. Just a quick, ‘Go home, princess.’ A messenger bird could do the same and be half as annoying about it.”

Silas clenched his teeth, a surge of irritation bringing out a faint pattern of snake scales across his arms, thankfully hidden beneath his sleeves.

He drew in a deep breath, eyes focused on the overhead clouds until the itch on his skin retreated.

In Loegria, a surprise transformation would have condemned him as a shapeshifter and cost him his life, but in Pravusat, anyone passing on the street would have given him a respectful bow and a whispered, “Iyanal.” Snake-blessed.

There was no better home for a Snake Affiliate than Pravusat, where they revered snakes as symbols of good fortune and rebirth.

Respect for being an Animal Affiliate. The concept felt like an impossibility, even though he’d transformed repeatedly in Izili. Yet, when his magic rose within, his instinct was still to resist. To fear the repercussions.

The girl before him was responsible for that. Her family had created the laws of Loegria that inspired the fear that divided him inside and had driven him from home. He’d already saved her from the kuveti, which was more than she deserved.

More than she would ever do for someone like him.

“I’ve reconsidered,” he said, waiting for her response.

Just as her expression lifted and brightened, he added—

“Your sister’s exact request was to know that you were safe and to let you make your own choices.

Now that you’ve mentioned letters and messenger birds, I realize I’ve been trying too hard.

I’ll write Her Royal Highness a letter, informing her of your safety and your continued ability to make all your own reckless decisions, unhindered by me. Goodbye, Highness. Bikmayak kalamak.”

It wasn’t often he got to use one of his favorite Pravish idioms—My sword breaks here.

It meant the severing of a relationship.

Quite literally, it meant he expected to die before seeing her again, and thanks to his tone, the implied connotation was that dying was preferable to seeing her again.

It was a shame all that clever meaning fell on ignorant ears.

He skirted around her, heading back toward the market.

“Don’t you dare leave!” she called from behind him.

Watch me, he thought.

If she wanted attention, so be it.

Silas closed his eyes, embracing the warmth of magic that he’d rejected a moment before. When he opened his eyes, he sent out a pulse in the air, a ripple visible only to him. Then, to direct his magic, he whispered, “Buraya ne ka.” Come to me.

A moment later, he was rewarded with a faint hiss.

Just as Eliza was about to grab him, she pulled up short, turning. “What was that? Did you hear . . .”

Her eyes drifted down as two gray adders slithered across the rough paving stones toward her. She shrieked, then leapt onto the steps of the closest building, as if reptiles couldn’t climb.

“Relax,” said Silas cheerfully, his stride never wavering. “Snakes are a religious symbol here, and seeing two at once means a great fortune is headed your way. Congratulations on that—it seems you can continue to afford your expensive lodgings.”

As he kept walking, the snakes quickly divided him from the princess.

“Silas!” she shouted. “Silas, help!”

The shrill panic in her voice almost turned him back. He hesitated, then shook it off and kept his eyes forward. Adders were venomous, but these wouldn’t attack her while under his instruction. It was only a message.

A message that she wasn’t the royalty here. He was.

Eliza stared at Silas’s retreating back with slack-jawed horror quickly turning to fury.

He was the one who’d chased her down in the market. She’d spent days searching for anyone who could possibly help, days beating her head against the wall of an unknown language, and then he’d arrived like a Loegrian-speaking beacon of hope.

Only to laugh at her plight.

He mocked her powerlessness, told her to go running home. After all, she wasn’t a person, just a princess. What problems could she possibly have?

Eliza had encountered such an attitude before. Some of the servants at the castle liked to gossip about the royal family with pitying smiles—How quaint that royalty, with all its wealth and finery, thinks it knows anything about real trials.

As if Eliza didn’t know what it was like to hear her parents fight. As if she’d never been lost or lonely or forgotten.

As if she’d never been afraid.

The two snakes rested in tightly curled shapes at the bottom of the steps, flicking predatory tails, tasting the air with forked tongues, waiting for the moment to come uncoiled as a lightning strike.

Eliza tried to restrain her trembling, tried to hold as firm as the building behind her, but it was no use.

Her focus slid, calling to mind an old memory. A horse ride with her mother. A happy picnic—or what should have been a happy picnic. Instead, a viper. Eliza remembered her mother’s arms around her, remembered her own frantic scream.

And more than anything, she remembered her beloved white pony, Daisy, struggling to rise from the grass. Too slow. The viper’s fangs pierced the horse’s neck, pumping deadly poison.

The queen dragged Eliza onto her own mount, racing back to the castle, while Eliza screamed and sobbed for Daisy. The guards were dispatched, but they only brought word that it was too late. Daisy was gone.

Eliza knew what it was like to be afraid. She knew the sharp bite of loss.

She struggled to breathe. Slowly, she reached behind her, feeling for the door to the building.

Her hand found the doorknob, but it was locked, and no matter how she rattled it or pounded her hand against the door, no one answered.

People continued passing on the street, but no one moved to help her.

They only gave deferential nods to the snakes.

This country—and everyone in it—was poison.

If she tried to leap over the vipers, they would strike. All she could do was stand at their mercy. The snakes held frightfully still, eyes fixed on her, measuring her life with each little tongue flick.

She didn’t know how long she stood. Long enough for her knees to ache, for her vision to begin creeping black at the edges, presumably from a lack of air as she failed to control her strangled breathing.

Until, finally, the snakes slithered away, disappearing into the shadows.

Eliza sagged against the door, gasping in air, striking the angry tears from her cheeks. She glared out at the people on the street, but, of course, no one cared.

Truthfully, as much as she hated them for not helping, it was nothing compared to the fury she felt toward the boy who’d joked about good fortune and walked away. Silas had ignored her pleas for help, leaving her alone with her search and the snakes.

With one shaking hand, Eliza gripped the small dagger tucked into her belt, and she glared down the street where he’d disappeared.

Realms help him if they ever met again.