Page 56 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

She hadn’t written any notes in the margins, but he was shocked to see his own name at the bottom of the page along with a painfully short message.

Silas, I hope you find love.

He snapped the book closed, almost catching his face in it, since he’d bent in ridiculously close. Without seeing them, he could still feel the words, carving an ache in his chest the way she’d carved poetry in a stone wall.

The irritation surged again. Of all the things she could say, of all the goodbyes she could leave him with, she’d chosen this. He clenched his jaw against the press of fangs.

I hope you find love.

As if he hadn’t found it already.

As if he could just move on to some other girl.

As if she could be so easily replaced.

Finding wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he didn’t know what to do with it.

The problem was that he was a complete wreck inside, and the one person he wanted to be with most was in the one place he couldn’t go.

Loegria was still a sword, eager and waiting to impale him again.

Even if laws were changing, mindsets wouldn’t.

Even if Eliza accepted him, her family wouldn’t. His family wouldn’t.

Yvette stood from her desk, and for a disoriented moment, Silas thought he’d lost track of hours and lecture hall had started.

“Come with me,” she said.

Welcoming the distraction, he grabbed his bag and followed, but she didn’t lead him anywhere on campus.

They crossed into Izili proper, and then out to the city wall.

The marketplace buzzed with chatter, angry voices rising more often in the particularly humid heat, vendors shouting at each other across the way.

Baris grinned to see his wife, and he made space for both of them in his stall. Silas hesitated, but Yvette was insistent, so he finally sat.

“Baris,” she said, whacking her husband lightly on the arm. “Silas needs to hear the story.”

An ambush. Silas glared at her, but she remained unruffled.

Baris didn’t hesitate. Allowing Yvette to take over the bartering, he scooted back on the blanket, angling to face Silas and cracking his knuckles like he was prepping for a fight rather than a story.

“This is the story,” he said grandly, “of how I lost my two fingers!”

Silas blinked, unsure what he’d expected. He squinted at his professor, but her secret motives couldn’t be discerned at a glance.

Baris snapped with his good hand. “Focus, now! Thrilling story! Perhaps as good as The Advent Moon. I was at a magnificent festival where everyone brought food to share, where we bellowed songs and made memories to last. My family brought papayas, and I was knife tossing. Like this, see.” He flicked his wrist back and forth, spinning an invisible knife.

“Toss and cut the papaya, very flashy, very fun. There was a beautiful girl, one I’d fancied for months, and she came to share our papayas. I thought, ‘I will impress her.’”

The direction of the story wasn’t hard to guess, and Silas winced. Baris laughed at his reaction. If anything, his voice boomed with more energy.

“One confident chop, one slip—that’s all it takes! One plus one makes me short two fingers, and there’s blood and bone in the papayas, and I have impressed a beautiful girl into throwing up over my brother’s feet.”

The image was almost vivid enough to gag. Silas grimaced instead. “I’m sorry.”

“So was I! Very sorry. Here is the snake’s tail.” Baris leaned in. “I sacrificed two fingers for her, and it was not Yvette. That beautiful girl was never my wife.”

He sat back, presenting his three-fingered hand as if displaying a trophy, and his proud grin was the most confusing part of the story. Yvette looked as satisfied as if she’d finished a lecture of her own. They certainly matched—both baffling.

Scale patterns rippled across Silas’s hands. He tried to rub them out of existence but only sharpened the pattern.

Yvette had to have guessed his feelings for Eliza. She’d been the one to tease him about it from the start. She’d practically pushed him into this situation. Now she was telling him to forget about the princess before he lost fingers reaching for something he wasn’t meant to have?

“Sometimes we sacrifice for nothing,” he grumbled. “Very comforting. Thank you, Baris.”

But Baris shook his head. “You miss the point entirely, Silas the student.”

Silas frowned, leaning forward despite himself.

“I should make you buy ten papayas to hear it. No, it is too valuable. Ten baskets.”

“You don’t even have ten baskets here.”

“Not anymore—I have been very successful in the heat. Fine, because of my success and good mood, and because of my love for my wife, I will give you this lesson for free.” Baris grinned. “The point is, if I would give two fingers for the girl I did not marry, imagine what I would give for Yvette.”

He captured Yvette in a long, drawn-out kiss.

Silas rubbed his hand over his face. Though the scales had faded from his skin, they threatened a return. He pulled the book of sonnets from his bag, tracing his thumb across the rippled pages, darkened and frayed by use.

Baris was right.

The lesson was worth at least ten baskets.

“I might give everything,” Silas whispered, “and then I would have nothing left.”

“Risk is inherent in every experiment,” said Yvette, speaking at last. She leaned back on the rug, pressing her shoulders into her husband’s chest, and he shifted to wrap one arm around her.

She brushed her hand over his bearded cheek, looking up with pure adoration. “But imagine what you might discover.”

“Easy for you to say, after your risk has paid off.” But Silas’s gripe didn’t have any real heart.

His heart was already somewhere else.

And it was time to trust it.