Page 47 of Sonnets and Serpents
She flared as red as the setting sun, and he turned away with a groan.
“Sarazan kurta beni,” he muttered.Sarazan save me. Of course he would appeal to a mythical snake.
“I don’t need your approval,” Eliza huffed. “And I plan to spend all the time in the world with Henry, as soon as I have him back.”
“This is why I can’t take declarations of love seriously. What exactly are you in love with? How good he looks while galloping on a horse? Yes, I see—the ultimate meaning of life.”
Eliza came to an abrupt halt, spraying sand. Fiercely, she glared at the boy beside her, who matched her dangerous expression with his own.
He was trying to embarrass her, make her feel ashamed about loving Henry, but he couldn’t. She may have been blown by whims in other things, but not in this. She loved Henry, and she was right to love Henry.
“I met Henry at the ball for my seventeenth birthday,” she said softly, “and we shared the final dance of the evening. He was kind, and he made me laugh. After that, he invented an excuse to see me again as soon as possible. He brought flowers. When he competed in the next castle tournament, it meant everything to him, but he still snuck away to see me beforehand. When I say I love Henry, it’s because I love his thoughtfulness and his easy humor and his genuine interest in me. I love the way he makes me feel and the way I feel like I could do anything to help him.”
Her tone grew challenging. “And, as a matter of fact, hedoeslook good while galloping on a horse.”
For once, Silas made no retort. He slid his hands in his pockets, and his gaze dropped from hers first. Satisfied, Eliza continued walking.
Wherever Henry was now, whoever he was with, she was going to find him. If she had to endure the presence of a cynicalshapeshifter a few more days to accomplish that, then she would.
After enduring a second day of Silas’s work and projects, the searched again.
Only to discovernothing.
Have faith, Eliza ordered herself.Hope. Endurance.Every motivating word and sonnet she could think of.
But no inn claimed any Loegrian guests, not even one who had stayed for a night and moved on. No alehouse could remember a foreigner of his description coming in to seek a meal. It seemed no one in Izili had seen Henry.
It seemed he’d walked off the face of the world.
She hated being out in the city, because it wasn’t just Henry in need. There were beggars in the street she couldn’t feed and thieving children dragged off by the kuveti to some unknown, terrible fate. Everyone turned a blind eye, just as they had when Eliza had been cornered by snakes. Aria’s heart would have shattered to see such a lack of compassion, and Eliza could at least take comfort knowing Loegria’s queen would never allow such things.
Eliza wrote her sister a letter, but it only made her feel worse.Because instead of saying,I’m with Henry, she could only say,I’m determined to find him.
And her determination felt less adequate each day.
She never got to claim her own belongings from the inn. Silas informed her that abandoned possessions in Pravish inns were bartered away. Because everything was rotten in this rotten country.
He suggested she buy new clothes in the market, but Eliza had neither money nor time for that.
With each search, she pushed their pace faster and faster and made more outlandish demands of who to interrogate. She ignored Silas’s protests. If he so much as breathed the wordsslow down, she glared daggers at him.
And she still slept with her real dagger, although she did sleep. The exhaustion was too severe not to.
On Silas’s days, if Kerem didn’t need his help, he spent most of his time in the library, doing research of his own. In the first week, he’d already filled half a journal with notes—though, based on his frustration, they weren’t very successful notes.
“What are you hoping to find?” Eliza finally asked.
“Hoping to prove,” he corrected, then said, “The unprovable.”
She almost made a quip about how he’d calledherquest impossible, but it died in her throat. Because she still hadn’t found Henry.
She was starting to fear—truly fear—that she never would.
The storm inside was growing, and Eliza was fighting desperately to hold her ship together. Silas suggested that Henry might have gone to another city in Pravusat or left the country entirely, and Eliza’s frustration snapped at him to mind his own business.
“You don’t care about Henry anyway,” she snarled.
He didn’t argue, just returned to his never-ending stacks of books.
