Page 55 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

As crown princess, Eliza was now a part of the Upper Court, and Aria held twice as many meetings as their father ever had, so most days, Eliza found herself slowly going mad on a cushioned chair in the throne room, listening to people argue about the best ways to handle changing the laws around magic.

She spoke out in defense of Affiliates whenever she could, but it always left her thinking how Silas would have said it so much better.

When she wasn’t in meetings, she was planning the quickly approaching wedding for her sister.

Just as Aria didn’t care about the details of her birthday celebrations, she’d left her wedding in the hands of their mother, and Eliza stepped in to make sure the dowager queen didn’t get too carried away in her own preferences.

It gave Eliza something to do other than play a harp to an empty room, pretending it was an echoing university music hall.

Family meals had been scarce before she left home, but they were nonexistent now.

She saw her family members one at a time or not at all, as if they lived on separate islands instead of within the same castle.

And with her father’s reclusiveness, she’d begun to think his island had floated away, until, one day, she rounded a tall shelf in the library and ran directly into the former king.

“Father,” Eliza squeaked out. “I didn’t expect . . .”

He and Aria were so alike: tall and dark-haired, skin a half shade darker than Eliza and the queen’s, and a presence that made it seem they could accomplish anything. But where Aria carried an abundance of compassion, their father had always been severe.

Eliza braced herself for a lecture or a silent, curt nod.

Instead, her father’s voice emerged in a softer tone than she’d ever heard it. “What book are you looking for?”

At first, she sputtered. Then she managed, “Something on Loegria’s founding. I’m trying—for Aria’s wedding, you know. She . . . she likes history.”

He scanned the shelves, and in the end, he took down a book she wouldn’t have been able to reach without the footstool. He extended it like a peace offering.

All Eliza could do was stare.

“I heard the knight returned with you,” Father said at last, his voice a little stronger, a little more like his old self. “If you’d like, I could make arrangements with Lord Wycliff.”

Offering her a book was one thing, but a wedding? The old Eliza would have been thrilled, would have been so swept up in the joy of it as to swoon against the bookshelves.

Now, she swallowed.

“I brought Henry home,” she whispered, “but I don’t want to marry him.”

Guilt flared within, and before he could criticize her, she rushed to say it first. “I’m a subject of whims, just as you said.”

Her father looked away.

After a moment, he opened the book in his hands, searching the pages. His eyes remained down as he spoke. “I taught you that an unyielding path is the only strength. Your sister believes a greater strength is knowing when to change.”

He handed her the book, opened to a chapter entitled “Arthur and Louise: The First Royal Wedding of Loegria.”

“Follow Aria’s example,” he said gruffly. “Not mine.”

The condemnation that had followed Eliza for months evaporated, and she wondered why she’d put so much weight on her father’s words to begin with. If only she’d thought of her whims as paths to change. Paths that she could choose.

Suddenly, she realized where she’d gone wrong since being home.

Eliza wrapped her father in a hug, the poor book crushed between them. Silas would have suffered a rage transformation to see the literary mistreatment.

Her father patted her back and stepped away. He left the room immediately, without even a goodbye, but she saw tears in his eyes. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who’d shed a skin in the past months.

Using meetings and frantic planning, Eliza had tried to distract herself from her time in Pravusat, tried to forget. She’d never considered what to do as a result of it.

She remembered Yvette’s voice. I’m asking you to sail with your eyes open.

Her mistake was trying to fit back into her old life without any accommodations for who she’d become.

And, truthfully, there was something she wanted to do.

Clutching the book, she made her way to her mother in the music room. The dowager queen looked right at home surrounded by instruments, a tea tray, and servants taking her directions for wedding plans.

Which made it awkward for everyone when Eliza blurted out, “Mother, I want to attend university.”

After a moment of clear alarm, her mother finished giving instructions on feast details and then dismissed the servants. Once they were alone, she spoke with obvious care. “Eliza, we were lucky the first time that no one took advantage of a princess far from home. If you tried to return—”

“Not in Izili.” Eliza blushed. “We have our own university. I know you teach there sometimes.”

“As an amusement, darling. A way to keep busy. If it’s musical learning you’d like, I am willing to teach you anything I haven’t already, and if it’s anything else, we can bring the tutors here, just as we always do.”

“That’s all learning was for me before.” Eliza huffed. “A way to keep busy while I waited for marriage. I don’t want that anymore. I want real learning, and I want new experiences too. I want to interact not just with tutors but with other students.”

“What happened to my romantic little girl who cared only that she’d come of courting age?” Her mother didn’t sound chiding, only baffled.

Eliza gave a breathy laugh. “Ironically, she fell in love.”

It was more complicated than she’d expected, more bittersweet, and she was going to do something with her life because of it.

“I’m going,” she said stubbornly. “I’ve already decided.”

Silas climbed the stairs in the Yamakaz, but he didn’t make it to Afshin’s office.

Instead, he froze on the third-floor landing, his eyes fixed down the walkway on Iyal Kerem’s office. The door still carried his name.

When he finally tore his gaze away and resumed walking, it was not up the next flight of stairs. It was down the hallway in the opposite direction, to Yvette’s office.

She was at her desk, bent over a piece of stonework, and she smiled when she saw him. “Iyal Silas, I presume. Congratulations on the teaching position.”

“I was afraid you were the professor who’d resigned.” It was a more abrupt greeting than he’d meant to give.

Yvette huffed as if offended by the thought. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, the beads clacking. “Why should I surrender doing what I love just because others tried to force me from it? I’ll be at this university until I die. Even if it burns to the ground, I’ll raise it back up.”

With a wry smile, Silas thought Afshin had better watch his back. There was clearly someone else interested in the position of dean.

He meant to say academic things—specifically about how his magic had changed since his death scare, how, in reclaiming it from the Artifact, he’d somehow pulled other abilities with it.

How he could Fluid Cast now, an ability he’d tested that morning by heating the water in his washbasin.

He meant to ask Yvette’s help with experiments.

Instead, he said, “Eliza’s gone.”

“I’m aware. Unlike you, she knows how to say goodbye to friends before leaving the country.”

She’d said goodbye to Yvette but not to him. Even knowing he’d been asleep, his irritation refused to bow to logic.

“Are you going to hold that over my head indefinitely?” he grumbled.

“Depends if you’re remedying the mistake now.”

It took him a moment to understand, and then he tensed, gripping the strap of his bag more tightly. “This isn’t a goodbye. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Hmm,” she said, with the air of someone deliberately not saying something.

He swallowed. “Can I read in here?”

He expected her to ask why he couldn’t go to the library or his dorm—or even his own office, which he would have been given as soon as he spoke to Afshin. But all she did was wave him toward the cushions and resume her own work.

It was senseless not to read in the library, but the books weighing down his bag felt too private for that.

Silas sat cross-legged on a cushion, and he opened Kerem’s research journal. The information was all familiar, presented with Kerem’s subdued enthusiasm, sickening now to read.

On one page, he’d made a note about Silas’s insight, then added, He reminds me of myself—ambitious but realistic, wounded, and hungry for justice. There are countless achievements in his future, I’m certain.

Silas wanted to tell himself he was nothing like Kerem, but that was a lie; Kerem had captured the truth exactly.

Ambitious but realistic. Both unable to let go of wounds from the past. Silas may not have leapt into Kerem’s plan, but he’d heard it out, been tempted by the Artifact and all its potential to fix things.

If he and Kerem were the same base form, the question was how to avoid evolving in the direction his professor had, how to avoid succumbing to bitterness and cynicism.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a worn red book peeking from his bag. He set Kerem’s journal aside and replaced it with Eliza’s.

And journal was an accurate descriptor, no matter how the book had started.

She’d written notes in the margins of more than a dozen sonnets.

Her writing was as flowery as expected, both in word choice and in flourishes at the end of her lines.

Most of the notes contained Pravish vocabulary, but while Silas would have written something like, arakl: magic, she refused to be simple.

Arakl means magic, or something like it. It seems to be multipurpose, used on both Affiliates and Casters, because Pravish refuses clarity whenever possible.

He snorted.

He read two dozen sassy dictionary entries before he reached her favorite sonnet, marked by a pressed flower.

Love, my sword.