Page 42 of Sonnets and Serpents
The day before, she’d boldly declared,I’m not afraid of you, and he’d thought maybe she was finally willing to see him in a realistic way. But she’d sat all night with a dagger in her hands. Come morning, she’d stashed it beneath her blanket, but not quickly enough he didn’t see.
So as he dragged himself from bed and dressed, he had to fight the fangs trying to manifest in his mouth.
“Today, we find Henry,” Eliza announced in the hallway, as if he could have forgotten.
Stiffly, he said, “You came after my language skills with such vigor, Highness. Where would you like me to put them to use?”
Only to discover that her grand plan amounted toasking everyone if they’d seen Henry.
When she first marched down the hill into Izili proper and knocked on a door, he thought it was a place of significance, that she had reason to believe the person inside had information on Henry. Perhaps they were a ship’s captain or other dockworker.
But it was a beleaguered housewife who answered, her hair bound up in messy loops, a young boy’s hand clenched tightly in hers to keep him from escaping into the street.
“Ask if she knows Henry,” Eliza prompted, bouncing on her toes.
Silas would have preferred turning invisible. Or at least turning into a snake and slinking away. But Eliza gestured urgently to the woman, who was growing more exasperated with each passing second.
“Have you seen a Loegrian boy?” he finally ground out.
“About this tall”—Eliza held her hand above her own head but below Silas’s—“with shoulder-length brown hair, sort of tan skin, tanner than mine, anyway, um, dreamy eyes, and, what else—”
Silas’s eyes were far from dreamy at her prattling. He was certain they were red.
He drew in a sharp breath and released it. “Brown hair. And he’d look as out of place as she does.”
The woman glanced between the two of them before shaking her head, and Silas apologized for the interruption.
“Do the eyes again!” shouted her son, pointing up at him.
Observant little thing.
“Do you one better,” said Silas with a grin.
He transformed into a snake and slid across the boy’s bare feet, which sent the child into giggling shrieks. The woman cracked a smile and might have said something had her child not run back into the house, shouting about magic. The door swung closed as she darted after him.
Silas slithered down the steps, forcing the princess to tiptoebehind. Half of him was tempted to remain transformed all day. With a bit of focus, he could still speak as an animal—one of many benefits of being an Affiliate rather than a true adder.
But, in the end, he turned human again, adjusting his clothes, which somehow always wound up skewed after a transformation.
“He really ... liked that,” Eliza said in wonder. “He wasn’t afraid. Neither was the mother.”
“Incredible, isn’t it,” Silas said coldly, “how some people don’t need to sleep with daggers just because they’re around someone different?”
She had the grace to blush, and her gaze sank beneath his.
“I just didn’t want to get hurt,” she finally said.
“Ironic, coming from the one holding the blade.”
“It’s not as if I used it!”
“Am I meant tothank youfor not stabbing me in my sleep?”
“No.” She jabbed a finger toward him, looking up with sudden fire. “No,youdon’t get to act like this is unfair. You have fangs and venom, which is no different from a dagger. I haven’t stabbed you, and you haven’t bitten me, so let’s keep it that way. Help me find Henry, and we canbothget away from the sharp threats—deal?”
For a moment, she almost seemed Pravish, impassioned and unapologetic.
And maybe she wasn’t entirely wrong.
