Page 11 of Sonnets and Serpents
More than she would ever do for someone like him.
“I’ve reconsidered,” he said, waiting for her response.
Just as her expression lifted and brightened, he added—
“Your sister’s exact request was to know that you were safe and to let you make your own choices. Now that you’ve mentioned letters and messenger birds, I realize I’ve been trying too hard. I’ll write Her Royal Highness a letter, informing her of your safety and your continued ability to make all your own reckless decisions, unhindered by me. Goodbye, Highness.Bikmayak kalamak.”
It wasn’t often he got to use one of his favorite Pravish idioms—My sword breaks here. It meant the severing of a relationship. Quite literally, it meant he expected to die before seeing heragain, and thanks to his tone, the implied connotation was that dying waspreferableto seeing her again. It was a shame all that clever meaning fell on ignorant ears.
He skirted around her, heading back toward the market.
“Don’t youdareleave!” she called from behind him.
Watch me,he thought.
If she wanted attention, so be it.
Silas closed his eyes, embracing the warmth of magic that he’d rejected a moment before. When he opened his eyes, he sent out a pulse in the air, a ripple visible only to him. Then, to direct his magic, he whispered, “Buraya ne ka.”Come to me.
A moment later, he was rewarded with a faint hiss.
Just as Eliza was about to grab him, she pulled up short, turning. “What was that? Did you hear ...”
Her eyes drifted down as two gray adders slithered across the rough paving stones toward her. She shrieked, then leapt onto the steps of the closest building, as if reptiles couldn’t climb.
“Relax,” said Silas cheerfully, his stride never wavering. “Snakes are a religious symbol here, and seeing two at once means a great fortune is headed your way. Congratulations on that—it seems you can continue to afford your expensive lodgings.”
As he kept walking, the snakes quickly divided him from the princess.
“Silas!” she shouted. “Silas, help!”
The shrill panic in her voice almost turned him back. He hesitated, then shook it off and kept his eyes forward. Adders were venomous, but these wouldn’t attack her while under his instruction. It was only a message.
A message that she wasn’t the royalty here.Hewas.
Eliza stared at Silas’s retreating back with slack-jawed horror quickly turning to fury.
Hewas the one who’d chased her down in the market. She’d spent days searching for anyone who could possibly help, days beating her head against the wall of an unknown language, and then he’d arrived like a Loegrian-speaking beacon of hope.
Only to laugh at her plight.
He mocked her powerlessness, told her to go running home. After all, she wasn’t aperson, just a princess. What problems could she possibly have?
Eliza had encountered such an attitude before. Some of the servants at the castle liked to gossip about the royal family with pitying smiles—How quaint thatroyalty,with all its wealth and finery,thinks it knows anything about real trials.
As if Eliza didn’t know what it was like to hear her parents fight. As if she’d never been lost or lonely or forgotten.
As if she’d never been afraid.
The two snakes rested in tightly curled shapes at the bottom of the steps, flicking predatory tails, tasting the air with forked tongues, waiting for the moment to come uncoiled as a lightning strike.
Eliza tried to restrain her trembling, tried to hold as firm as the building behind her, but it was no use.
Her focus slid, calling to mind an old memory. A horse ride with her mother. A happy picnic—or what should have been a happy picnic. Instead, a viper. Eliza remembered her mother’s arms around her, remembered her own frantic scream.
And more than anything, she remembered her beloved white pony, Daisy, struggling to rise from the grass. Too slow. The viper’s fangs pierced the horse’s neck, pumping deadly poison.
The queen dragged Eliza onto her own mount, racing back to the castle, while Eliza screamed and sobbed for Daisy. The guards were dispatched, but they only brought word that it was too late. Daisy was gone.
