Page 12 of Sonnets and Serpents
Eliza knew what it was like to be afraid. She knew the sharp bite of loss.
She struggled to breathe. Slowly, she reached behind her, feeling for the door to the building. Her hand found the doorknob, but it was locked, and no matter how she rattled it or pounded her hand against the door, no one answered. People continued passing on the street, but no one moved to help her. They only gave deferential nods to thesnakes.
This country—and everyone in it—waspoison.
If she tried to leap over the vipers, they would strike. All she could do was stand at their mercy. The snakes held frightfully still, eyes fixed on her, measuring her life with each little tongue flick.
She didn’t know how long she stood. Long enough for her knees to ache, for her vision to begin creeping black at the edges, presumably from a lack of air as she failed to control her strangled breathing.
Until, finally, the snakes slithered away, disappearing into the shadows.
Eliza sagged against the door, gasping in air, striking the angry tears from her cheeks. She glared out at the people on the street, but, of course, no one cared.
Truthfully, as much as she hated them for not helping, it was nothing compared to the fury she felt toward the boy who’d joked aboutgood fortuneand walked away. Silas had ignored her pleas for help, leaving her alone with her search and the snakes.
With one shaking hand, Eliza gripped the small dagger tucked into her belt, and she glared down the street where he’d disappeared.
Realms help him if they ever met again.
Eliza woke in the night to furious shouting. She kicked against the thin cotton blanket tangled around her legs. Her silk nightgown stuck to her skin, and once more, she longed for the cold winter back home.
Orange light flickered outside her window. Was there a fire?
She threw open the shutters, squinting down into the street.
There was no uncontained fire, only a collection of torches, held aloft in angry hands. Eliza recognized the stocky innkeeper, shirtless and shouting in Pravish. He stood in the circle of torchbearers.
At their center was a lone, short-haired man, perhaps in his thirties, grinning wildly at those surrounding him. His hands twitched at his sides, and Eliza gasped as she realized his fingers had been replaced by scaled talons, the type a large eagle might have.
The innkeeper took a threatening step forward, bellowing a clear accusation.
The man laughed.
Eliza finally saw past the man’s animal features to the bloodiedcorpse at his feet, and her stomach flipped. She clamped a hand to her mouth.
One of the women in the circle screamed something, charging forward along with the man beside her.
In a puff of golden mist, the shapeshifter disappeared, replaced by an enormous eagle, his wingspan at least as wide as Eliza was tall. His piercing shriek cracked the night air, and he swooped at his attackers, raking his talons through the woman’s arm and the man’s cheek, leaving them bleeding.
The world tilted in Eliza’s view. She stepped back from the window, struggling to breathe as her throat closed. From outside came the sound of more shouting and another scream. Torchlight flickered, shadows crawling across her wall.
She had never seen a real shapeshifter before. She’d heard the legends, the horrifying stories of children consumed in their cribs, replaced by a monster adopting human skin. When she was young, she’d laughed at those stories, the way she laughed when performers came to the palace and pretended to be the legendary Einar, brandishing a sword against a three-headed chimera.Storiesnever frightened Eliza.
Until her father told her sternly that shapeshifters were not a story. His mother had executed one when she’d been queen, and sometime during Eliza’s life, there would be another loose in the kingdom, and no one would see it coming until it was too late. Until it was already a monstrous killer on a rampage.
Then Eliza no longer found the legends funny.
I need to help, she thought. She fumbled for her sheathed dagger, which rested against her pile of clothes, but once she held it in her hands, she froze.
What could she do against a demon?
Slowly, she inched back to the window and peeked out. Stripes of blood painted the street, glistening in the orange light. Four people lay collapsed, but four others had capturedthe shapeshifter and wrestled him to the ground. He was a man again, spitting at his captors, howling and bucking as if possessed. Inhuman.
Eliza clutched her small dagger to her chest.
A group of veiled men arrived, identical to those who’d tried to arrest Eliza in the marketplace.Kuveti, she heard them called. She shrank against the edge of her window, unable to close the shutters lest that draw attention. In glimpses, she watched the kuveti knock the shapeshifter unconscious, bind him, and drag him away.
What kind of nightmarish place had she come to?
