Page 50 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

Henry was doing his best, but magic was a skill he’d never practiced.

Gill could only coach him on Affiliate abilities from secondhand experience, and Eliza didn’t have any insights to add.

Even if Henry had been an expert, trying to find one person in a sprawling city of thousands would take time, and time was a precious resource.

Rather than standing around uselessly, she had her own plan.

It was madness to think it would work, but she had to do something.

While Gill and Henry were distracted, she slipped from the healing hall and made her way back to the Yamakaz, winding through the stacks until she reached a wide planter with a tree sprouting right in the middle of the library.

It took her a moment to spot Tulip among the branches, and she’d never been so grateful to see a twelve-foot snake.

“Nirhaba, Tulip.” It was best to be as respectful as possible, since she was about to ask a python for favors. “I’m Eliza, if you remember.”

The python cinched herself around the branch, stretching out her neck to look Eliza in the eye. Eliza swallowed, then took one step closer. Tulip’s dark eyes appeared solid at first, but up close, she could distinguish the light-brown iris and the thin black pupil.

“We have the same eye color. Sort of.” She swallowed again, her mouth suddenly dry. “Tulip, I need your help. Silas is in danger. You love Silas, right?”

Tulip flicked her tongue, which Eliza chose to take as confirmation and not as her simply thinking of a meal.

“I have to find him. Can you . . . sense him? The way he can sense you?”

Another tongue flick. The snake didn’t move.

Eliza rubbed her arm, shifting. She was talking to a snake. What had she expected? With a sigh, she turned away. The library stood empty, haunting her with memories of sitting at a table beside Silas, throwing herself into his arms, peering over his shoulder at books, kissing him senseless.

She was not an Affiliate. She had no reason to believe she could communicate the way they could. But even with every evidence against her, she could believe in the impossible. That was her specialty.

Closing her eyes and drawing deep, even breaths, Eliza tried to remember exactly what Silas had said about talking to snakes.

It’s magic and sensory input, not rational thought and language.

Eliza gathered all her feelings about Silas.

She didn’t worry about putting them to words the way she would have with a human—I love him; I’m scared for him—but instead tried to hold him in all her senses.

The image of the last time she’d seen him, blurred through her tears.

The scent of almond-spice on his skin as he carried her to a library table, and the taste of his lips against hers.

The sound of his voice, not from memory but as she imagined it, broken after Kerem’s betrayal.

Most of all, her empty arms, longing to hold him. He was out there, facing danger, and she would claw through any obstacle to reach him.

Turning back to Tulip, she stretched one hand out, slowly, slowly, until her fingertips brushed scales.

The snake was softer than she’d imagined—not a sensation like touching fur, only the softness of a living thing, with muscles and skin that flexed beneath her touch.

Eliza pressed her hand to the python, and she willed Tulip to feel what couldn’t be said, the threat and the need and the urgency.

Then she opened her eyes and gave her command. “Find Silas.”

The snake held perfectly still, as if frozen by the contact. Her brown eyes never twitched. She didn’t appear to breathe.

“Find Silas.” Eliza repeated, begging with all her stubborn willpower and every hope. “Find Silas. Find. Silas.”

All at once, the snake unfurled, causing Eliza to jump. Tulip’s tail dangled from the branch, twisting over itself in the air, and she stretched out her neck until her head contacted Eliza’s shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Eliza whispered, almost a squeak, but she managed to hold still.

With an awful sensation, Tulip’s head slithered over her shoulder and down her back, then twisted around her torso, as if Eliza were a convenient tree. She was heavy. Enough to make the princess stagger. And as Tulip coiled, she constricted.

“Do not squeeze me to death, Tulip,” Eliza gasped out, wishing she could expand her ribs. “We are better friends than that.”

The snake continued her descent, and within moments, her tail dropped from Eliza’s waist, landing with the rest of the serpent on the floor.

Eliza gave in to an irrepressible shudder, flapping her hands and stomping her feet, though it did little to actually shake off the sensation of snake all over her body.

She was going to have nightmares for certain.

If this worked, it would be worth it.

Tulip slithered off, headed for the library entrance, and Eliza stumbled to follow.

Like a polite guest, the snake waited at the door until the princess opened it for her, then continued on her way, twisting around the corner of the Yamakaz, heading for the edge of campus.

Eliza glanced back at the healing hall, but Tulip was fast, and she refused to risk losing the snake’s guidance.

So she followed, praying for the impossible.

Until Tulip led her to a concealed trapdoor in the cliffside.

Eliza heaved it open and stared down into the dark bowels of a stone tunnel like the one beneath the prison house.

Without any hesitation, the python plunged down, a lattice of browns quickly blending into shadows.

“Wait!” Eliza tried to catch the snake’s tail and missed.

She couldn’t hope to navigate without a lantern. Besides that, she needed to tell Henry and Gill about the tunnel. But with every second, she was losing her guide.

Spitting a Pravish curse worthy of Silas, Eliza unwound her scarf and tied one end to the handle of the open trapdoor, draping the rest out across the ground, bright pink against a sandy landscape. A flag visible at a distance. It was the best she could do.

Then she scrambled down the stairs into the tunnel.

Sarazan seemed to smirk. The snake held perfectly still, poised in the lantern light as if giving Silas the opportunity to appreciate its power.

Behind its pale yellow eyes, the diamond-shaped head held two streaks of black, thinning into stripes down its sides.

Between them, the snake had a dark back and lighter underbelly, both in rippling shades of blue-gray.

It must have been completely invisible in the water: a sailor’s worst nightmare.

The serpent hadn’t yet opened its mouth, but based on head size alone, Silas expected its fangs to be more like curved swords than teeth. A bite would impale him clean through.

The wound on his leg seemed like a mosquito bite in comparison.

“I wish we’d met under different circumstances,” Silas said, mind racing as he tried to decide the best approach.

Leaning into his emotions would give him the strongest magical commands, but they were a swirl of grief and regret and anger.

That would agitate a snake, make it more aggressive, and he wasn’t trying to get either himself or Kerem killed.

Besides that, he didn’t know how loyal the snake already was to Kerem.

Revealing himself to be at odds with the professor might encourage the serpent to strike.

He tried to project calm. “I’m not a threat.”

The serpent shifted its head, knocking free a stream of pebbles and dust from the cavern ceiling as its scales scraped the rock. With deliberate precision, it lowered its jaw, revealing pointed fangs like rapiers.

Clearly, the calm had not communicated.

Out of the corner of his eye, Silas had been watching Kerem. The professor had retrieved a bone-white Artifact from a chest, this one bearing no sign of damage. Two Artifacts. Silas remembered the Stone Caster from the market, buried without bones in the graveyard, like Iyal Havva.

With the first Artifact stolen by Ceyda, Kerem would have been forced to craft a replacement. Ceyda had created a tidal wave that overturned a full-size merchant galley. What would Kerem be capable of?

Run. The instinct rattled his bones.

Sarazan struck. Its head lurched forward on a stretching neck, jaws closing over the spot Silas had been only a moment before. Gray mist puffed in the air.

As an adder, Silas shot toward the edge of the room.

Artifact glowing, Kerem pressed one hand to the wall, spreading a jagged crack like a bolt of lightning. Chunks of stone tumbled free, threatening to crush Silas. He transformed back, hissing as a large rock rebounded off his shoulder.

Sarazan coiled for another strike.

Silas lunged forward as the massive serpent crashed into the fallen rocks behind him. Its furious hiss echoed across the cavern.

His eyes darted to the closest tunnel, trying to gauge the distance.

With a calm exactness, Kerem directed Stone Casting again, collapsing that exit. His low voice carried across the room. “There’s no escape, Silas.”

That was narrow-minded thinking. There were at least five escapes left.

Until another rumble of Stone Casting left four.

The sea serpent twisted farther into the cavern, brushing up against the table holding the lantern and throwing part of the room into darkness as it blocked the would-be sun. Half its body still filled the tunnel it had emerged from.

Silas fixed his gaze there. Kerem couldn’t collapse that tunnel without risking damage to his pet.

Transforming again, Silas shot in that direction. Behind him, he heard Kerem curse.

Unlike its master, Sarazan gave a satisfied, echoing hiss, one that shivered against Silas’s mind in a single, clear impression.

Hunt.

It would have been wise to figure out what she was going to do once she found Silas, especially if he was with Kerem, but Eliza had to focus on the present. The sunlight behind her faded quickly, the tunnel growing darker until it was pure night.

She kept one hand on the wall, orienting herself. It was a good thing the tunnel had been made with magic because, as she hurried forward, the unnaturally smooth ground remained clear of obstacles, though she still walked with every muscle tense, anticipating a sudden drop or fall.

Tulip slithered ahead, a hiss of scales against stone. At one point, she turned left, and Eliza almost missed the turn, then stumbled when she found it but lost the wall. She hit her knees, giving a soft cry of pain.

Then she dragged herself upright and kept going.

“Tulip,” she panted, “slow down.”

But the snake paid her no mind. Eliza had been lucky to communicate once—assuming that was what had happened and these awful tunnels weren’t just the python’s preferred hunting grounds when she grew tired of library rats.

Rats. Eliza winced, thinking of Henry. Even if he found her trail and tried to follow her, he’d become prey in a country of predators. No wonder he’d been frustrated by the form of his magic. A wolf would have been useful. Or perhaps a dragon. Were there Dragon Affiliates?

With a spike of panic, Eliza realized she couldn’t hear the slithering.

“Tulip?”

Distantly, she heard a rumble, like one of the Stone Caster earthquakes at the dorm. Had something frightened the snake into changing directions?

Another rumble. Was she hearing earthquakes or ocean waves?

She increased her pace, then even more, until she was running in the dark. What if she stepped on Tulip? Better to be bitten by the python than to lose her completely. Her knees wobbled. Her hand on the wall grew clammy, sliding at a breakneck pace.

Then she saw the tunnel curving around her in the dimmest outline.

Eliza ran faster, and the glow increased until she could see faint rays of light streaming through a pile of fallen rock.

Half of the mouth of the tunnel had collapsed.

She strained her ears but could hear nothing beyond, so she clawed her way up the rocks, slipping and scraping her hands until she finally wriggled over the top, sending a few smaller rocks tumbling down ahead of her.

She’d reached a cavern, wide and recently vacated.

She based the “recently vacated” idea on the fact that the light was fading, bobbing through a tunnel on the other side of the cavern, like a lantern being carried away.

She almost shouted for Silas, then stopped herself. If it was him, she’d catch up in a moment. If it wasn’t . . .

Eliza swallowed hard, then carefully picked her way to the cavern floor, trying to disturb as few rocks as possible.

She crept toward the light.

Silas was faster than a regular snake, but enhancing his speed drained his magic, and it didn’t take long before he felt the strain.

He tried to head toward the ocean, basing his direction on the scent of salt in the air.

It wasn’t ideal to seek Sarazan’s hunting grounds, but if he could find the ocean, it meant an exit from the cave system.

The floor sloped down abruptly, dumping him into a new cavern. This one had a shallow pool of water filling its center, and his adder form glided across the water, but left a wet streak across the rock on the other side, easy to follow.

He transformed into a human, then immediately cursed at letting his panic take charge; human eyes were terrible in the dark.

Not to mention he’d done a string of transformations in a short period of time after already being wounded both physically and emotionally.

His magic felt like a cup with only a few swallows remaining.

Meanwhile, Kerem had an Artifact that offered him a deep well’s supply.

Silas’s only chance of survival was to stay ahead of pursuit.

He limped on in the dark.