Page 105 of Sonnets and Serpents
Silas slung his bag over his shoulder. His face looked drawn and ill. Resigned. “People aren’t good or bad,apta. They aren’t simple. They’re just people.”
He stepped past her and gripped Gill’s shoulder. “I need a favor. A big one.”
“Anything,” said Gill without hesitation. He rested one hand loosely on the sword at his side, as if ready to go into battle on his friend’s behalf.
“There’s a girl in the healing hall who needs cobra venom out of her blood right away. She might already be beyond saving, but it’s my fault she’s there.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Gill promised.
Inside Eliza, the storm clouds billowed, and her breath came faster in her chest. Hadn’t shejustescaped this? She cast around desperately for something to anchor herself, something todoto outrun the threatening thunder, but she’d lost the quest to prove Yvette’s innocence. There was nothing for her to do except be swept up in the storm.
Henry was looking at her with hesitation, one arm lifted like he might reach for her.
He already had a scar on that arm, already had a struggle of his own with his new magic. She couldn’t hurt him again.
So she directed the storm the only place she could—
At the one person who’d been able to withstand everything she’d ever thrown at him.
Silas looked at her with steady, dark eyes, and he didn’t retreat even when she marched forward and shoved both hands into hischest as hard as she could. He caught her wrists, stumbling on his bad side with a grunt.
He spoke with an infuriating evenness. “Gill, Henry, can you give us a minute? Henry, if you remember your way to the healing hall, you can point out Ceyda. We’ll catch up shortly.”
Henry looked like he wanted to speak, like he wanted to stay, but in the end, he led Gill out the door, leaving Silas and Eliza alone in the entry hall of the Yamakaz—as alone as they could be with groups of students whispering over homework at the corner tables.
“I bet you’re happy now,” she spat, yanking her hands away. “This is what always happens, right? People always betray, and they always turn out to be the worst versions of themselves.”
She was doing it, too, blasting him with lightning instead of offering comfort when he’d lost more than she had.
Not that he cared. He didn’t care about anything besides facts and experiments. He didn’t care about people.
Didn’t care about Yvette.
Didn’t care abouther.
“What I am,” he said softly, “is heartbroken.”
She faltered, the next insult dying on her lips. The waves pressed in, threatening to drown her.
Silas gripped the strap of his bag as if to keep his hand from shaking. “I didn’t want it to be Yvette, and I don’t have a good answer for why she’d do it. Ambition? Arrogance? They’ve gotten the best of good academics before. Maybe it’s an old-fashioned lust for power. Maybe her own magic wasn’t enough, and she wanted more. I don’t know, Eliza. I don’t have all the answers. Right now, I feel like I don’t have any at all.”
That made two of them. And in a single moment of clarity, all the answers and questions and storm clouds dropped away into meaninglessness, leaving behind nothing except a connection to Silas that went far deeper than the bracelet on her wrist.
“Silas Bennett without answers,” she whispered. “That just won’t do.”
His lips gave the smallest twitch. “It’s unnatural, we agree.”
“I’m sorry. For goading you, for Yvette, for everything.” She drew in a single quick breath for courage. “Everything except this.”
Eliza grabbed him by the collar and pulled his lips down to meet hers. She expected him to tense or pull away, but he melted, wrapping his arms around her as if he’d been waiting for this.Hopingfor it, even. He met her hunger with his own in a way that shot electricity down every limb like lightning strikes.
But this was a storm she could navigate.
She slid one hand up the back of his neck, sinking her fingers into his soft hair. The fingertips of her other hand traced his collarbone.
Silas pulled back, and she panicked, thinking she’d driven him away. But all he did was slide the bag from his shoulder, dropping it with a thump, before he flashed a wicked grin and recaptured her lips. She gave a quick smile of her own before her lips were far too distracted for expressions.
Then she was moving. Startled, she flung her arms around Silas’s neck as he steered her backward to the nearest table. He lifted her onto its surface—staggering on his injured leg—just as a student reached for one of the chairs. The student hurried away, grumbling.
