Page 53 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

The first time Silas almost lost his magic, the process had been subtle and slow. Perhaps that was Ceyda’s inexperience with the Artifact, or perhaps it was a reflection of her personality. Maybe she was reluctant to kill even while longing to avenge her father.

When Kerem grabbed him by the throat, it was clear he intended to be efficient. Rather than feeling the threads of his magic quietly cut, Silas felt it ripped away all at once, like a sheet of parchment torn in two. Thanks to Gill’s arrival, he was able to pull free, but the damage was done.

Unable to stand, Silas collapsed. His head swam, and while he was vaguely aware of Gill fighting, of Eliza trapped, he couldn’t seem to grasp the details. It was as if everything had happened a long time ago, and he was trying to look back while something dragged him away.

I’m dying, he realized with an academic detachment. An experience he’d never be able to write about, never be able to share the results from. Useless.

He tried to fight the sensation, but it was like fighting an enemy without a form. There was nothing to kick, nothing to bite.

Only an inevitability slowly devouring.

By the time the rats chewed Eliza free, she’d lost sight of Gill and Kerem as their fight moved down the tunnel. But she’d seen a glimpse of Silas. A glimpse that chilled her more than any ice.

Henry had wrapped his arms around her to keep her warm. Her skin was reddened where it had been in contact with the ice, but the numbness had receded, replaced by a painful prickle in every limb.

As soon as she could finally pull her last foot free, she wriggled away from Henry, half stumbling and half crawling to where Silas had collapsed. She pulled his head into her lap, running her frozen fingers over his cheeks.

He gave no response to her cold touch. His eyes were closed, and for a terrifying moment, she thought he wasn’t breathing, before she saw the shallowest dip of his chest.

“Is he—” Henry started.

“He’s alive,” Eliza said sharply, determined to keep him that way through sheer willpower.

A shadow moved nearby, and she curled protectively over Silas before realizing it was Tulip.

The python moved in tight shapes, flicking her tail.

She coiled her head and neck atop Silas’s chest, tongue darting in and out rapidly, beady eyes fixed on Eliza as if demanding to know how she’d allowed this to happen.

Earlier, Tulip’s contact had rejuvenated Silas, yet he didn’t stir. Aside from the wound on his leg, he wasn’t bleeding. Kerem had done something else to him. The problem was magical.

“We have to stop Kerem,” said Eliza.

Henry nodded. “You stay here. I’ll help Gill.”

“No,” she said fiercely. “I’ll help Gill. You get in close enough to transform Kerem.”

She remembered her brief moments as a snake—the disorientation, the lack of control. As long as Kerem held the Artifact, he was powerful, but he wasn’t invincible.

Silently, she thanked Silas for all his lectures about magic. They resonated with her now, reaffirming her plan.

“He’s already an Affiliate,” Henry protested.

“But he’s not your link. He could turn you into a snake and you’d be under his command, but you can do the same to him as a rat. You just have to bite him.”

She very much wanted to see Kerem as a helpless, cornered rat. Then she could use the Artifact to fix whatever he’d done to Silas.

With reluctance, she shimmied away from Silas, resting his head on the ground. Leaving him to Tulip’s care, she ran in the direction Gill and Kerem had disappeared, her legs needling painfully with each step.

“Eliza, wait!”

But she couldn’t afford to. Every second mattered.

In the next cavern over, Gill and Kerem circled each other, dimly lit, neither one able to get the upper hand.

Each time Kerem attempted Fluid Casting, Gill canceled it, and vice versa.

Gill had the longer reach of a sword, but Kerem kept transforming into different animals to dodge the strikes, and if Gill got too close, he risked being turned into an animal himself. Then it would all be over.

Eliza was suddenly grateful she’d drained all the Stone Casting from the Artifact; otherwise Kerem could have brought down the cavern in a quake or trapped Gill in the floor as he’d done to Silas.

Instead of representing deadly potential, the rock surrounding her gave her courage, carved as it was with familiar words, the poetry grounding in a new, literal way.

She strode across declarations of love and faith, and her heart beat to their rhythm.

Without magic or dagger or defense, she would manage something—because even if Silas could not be hers, she would still save him. That was the very essence of love.

Love, my crown.

Love, my armor.

Love, my sword.

Without magic or blade, she still had words.

“He trusted you!” Eliza shouted in Pravish, stopping just out of reach of the circling combatants.

Kerem’s dark eyes found hers with a special hatred, the kind reserved for a pest that had already been dealt with but came crawling back.

His gaze darted to the ground, and she didn’t understand why until a flurry of squeaks caught up to her, rats spilling past her legs to leap and gnaw at Kerem as he fought.

At first, she felt a surge of hope that Henry would be one of them, that the battle would already be finished.

But the Artifact in Kerem’s hand maintained a steady glow, and each rat that touched his skin fell to the ground, twitching.

Eliza’s heart lurched until she realized Henry had to be safe, or else the remaining rats would flee.

Instead, they circled, making lunges but held at bay by the threat of Fluid Casting stopping their hearts.

Eliza had to do something.

She jumped atop a jutting portion of rock, making herself as noticeable and distracting as possible. Then she laid into Kerem with all the fire she possessed, determined to keep his attention.

“I knew there was something wrong about you from the moment we met. I knew you were a predator, but Silas believed in you. He looked up to you. He loved you!”

Gill lunged, and Kerem dove aside. His face dripped sweat, and he’d lost his spectacles. He clutched the Artifact to his stomach, his fingers digging like claws into its bone surface.

A few daring rats nipped at his ankles, but though the bites landed, the rats still fell dead.

He was an Affiliate with decades of experience controlling his emotions. What could Eliza say to break his focus?

“How could you?” she demanded, raising her voice. “You called it a shock that his father tried to kill him. You said you’d never do the same!”

Kerem’s eyes cut sharply to hers, and for a moment, the hatred was gone. The snarl on his face now held a mixture of frustration and pain.

Gill took his opening in a surging attack. Kerem dodged, but too slowly, and the sword point tore through his side, spilling blood. He cried out, but he managed to grab Gill by the throat, his other hand on the glowing Artifact.

Eliza remembered Silas being held in the same position. Remembered his scream. She leapt to the cavern floor, running forward but already knowing she was too late.

Gill clamped his hand down on Kerem’s arm, and they both recoiled as if struck by lightning. While Gill spat blood, Kerem clutched his side.

Then he transformed into a familiar black-patterned adder, launching a strike.

Eliza halted, sick to her stomach at witnessing the stolen magic.

Could she still save Silas if his magic had already been taken?

Gill’s sword swung a fraction too late, only skimming the gray scales. Either he was thrown off by Silas’s magic in the wrong hands or he was hesitant to kill.

Regardless, Kerem’s bite landed, and in a puff of mist, Gill transformed into a snake. As Kerem turned human once more, the new snake lay curled and cowering at his feet.

Eliza swallowed. She stood only a few feet from Kerem.

With a weary sigh, he touched his side, stopping the blood. Perhaps, in that moment of delay, she could have run if she tried.

Instead, she seized her final chance to distract him.

“You’re using his magic?” Her heart cracked in her chest, pain in every beat. “Silas would have given the world for you, but to you, he’s just a source of venom. Just another power in an Artifact.”

Kerem’s eyes flashed, and he took a menacing step forward, but Eliza beat him to it. The storm inside had never been stronger, and she steered full-speed ahead, crashing into him with all the rage she held. He stumbled with a grunt, but even so, he caught her by the throat. Quick as a snake.

His eyes narrowed in a smug victory.

Then they widened. “You’re not an Affiliate? But the rats . . .”

“The only rat I see here is you,” she snarled, clawing her nails into his arm. “How could you, Kerem? How could you be like a father to Silas and then kill your son?”

He flinched from her words, his fingers slackening.

After all she’d done to encourage Silas to trust Yvette, to trust her, to let go of the hurt caused by his father and not see betrayal around every corner . . . Kerem had ruined it all.

She hated him. For what he’d done to Silas, she hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone.

“How could you?” she whispered again, wishing she had stronger words, piercing words, words she could plunge like daggers through his chest and into his cold-blooded heart to make him realize exactly what he’d done.

But, sometimes, words fell short.

For a moment, Kerem’s gaze held hers, his dark eyes unreadable.

Then he winced.

Looking down, he seemed to spot the little brown rat clamped around his ankle in the same moment Eliza did. The glow of the Artifact died, the box tumbling from his hand.

In a puff of brown mist, Kerem was a rat.

And Henry was a breathless, triumphant knight.

“Kneel,” he ordered, cowing the rat at his feet. It trembled against the ground.

Gill transformed back, and Eliza crouched to stare down a black-eyed rat. “My first day in your office, you said, ‘Magic is a powerful weapon, not a shield against all ills.’ You forgot your own lesson, Iyal.”

Snatching up the Artifact, she ran back to Silas.

Tulip hissed a warning at her approach, perking up to strike, but then the python settled.

Dropping to her knees, Eliza grabbed Silas’s hand and pressed the box between his palm and chest, willing it to return his magic, to give him healing or strength or whatever he needed.

What little color had been in his face was gone, leaving him pallid as death.

Please, she willed, and then she was whispering it aloud, “Please. Please.”

Please come back. I won’t ask for anything else. Just come back.

Warmth pierced the darkness. Just a pinhole of it, hardly enough to discern.

He’d almost lost all sense of self, but he felt the warmth. And with it, he heard a whisper.

Please come back.

It wasn’t clear how he heard it without ears. Even less clear how he grasped it without fingers, but he did, drawing in the warmth, holding to the whisper.

Until, slowly, Silas remembered himself, and his world faded back into focus.

A world that hung above him in the form of a familiar, reckless princess.

“Apta,” he whispered, reaching for her face. Tears spilled down Eliza’s cheeks even as she burst into a smile, clutching his hand with her own.

When he tried to lift himself, he realized there was a weight on his chest, holding him down. A disgruntled python hissed out her opinion of his death scare.

“It’s not like I enjoyed it either,” he griped, his voice barely a croak. He ached all the way down to his soul, but that soul seemed to be more or less intact again.

Tulip hunched herself into a tight S shape, and in so doing, she displaced something else from his chest.

The bone-box Artifact.

It fell to the ground with a clatter, displaying one side cracked all the way through, the edges blackened as if burned.

Silas wasn’t sure what to make of that. Prodding at the awareness of his magic felt different, like entering a familiar room where the furniture had been rearranged and new paintings hung.

But he was alive.

Full of the triumph of that, he shifted his hand from Eliza’s cheek to the back of her neck, drawing her down. She didn’t resist, kissing him with a tenderness that taught his heart to beat again. Her tears left his face damp.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I’m uncertain of a few details, but I know you saved me. Again.”

Even after all he’d done to hurt her.

She answered with a prim little smile. “Well, I had to do something. You’re an academic, not a fighter.”

He tried to laugh, but between the python on his chest and the exhaustion sweeping in, it emerged as a strange cough. Hesitantly, he asked, “Kerem?”

“He’s a rat.”

“I wasn’t asking for a personality assessment, apta. I meant—”

“Oh, no, he’s currently a rat. Henry has him under control.”

Silas’s lips twitched. “Well done, Henry.”

He was quickly losing his hold on consciousness, but before he could fully sink, he brushed his knuckles across Eliza’s cheek, wiping the last of her tears.

She caught his hand and kissed his palm, whispering something he didn’t catch.

He didn’t like the cadence of it; it sounded too sad for the wake of a victory. Almost . . . resigned.

Before he could investigate, a nonthreatening darkness pressed in, closing his eyes.