Page 50 of Sonnets and Serpents
“We’re searching again tomorrow,” she snapped, “and we’re finding him. Then you’ll see what’s real.”
But the search the next day ended just as all the others had.
With nothing.
Eliza held it together as long as she could, but the storm drowned her at last.
She sat in the earthquake dorm, curled on a cushion with a blanket over her shoulders, swallowed by shadows. Silas had already settled into bed and put out the lantern.
Eliza ordered herself to sleep. To stop thinking. To stop feeling.
She ordered the tears to stop leaking from her eyes.
Then, when it became clear she was no longer captain of her emotions, she pressed a hand to her mouth and simply tried to cry without sound, drawing her breaths with all the care of tracing lines on parchment. She didn’t know why she bothered, since Silas had proven he could sleep through the end of the world.
But then the dark shape on the bed moved, and his quiet voice echoed in the room.
“You don’t have to cry silently.”
She jolted.
He sat up, highlighted in the soft moonlight from the window. “I can smell the tears,” he said, as if that explained it all. “Not exactly, I suppose. A snake’s sense of smell is different from—”
“I’m so sorry,” she interrupted harshly, “for disturbing your sleep. For invading your little university paradise and making your perfect life so wretched.”
He didn’t deserve her anger. Distantly, she knew that. Since being linked together, Silas had been more than reasonable. He’d provided meals, taught her Pravish, helped her search. He’d been the opposite of everything a shapeshifter was meant to be.
But everything was falling apart, and what could she do?
“You’re upset,” Silas finally said, and even though it was nothing but the truth, Eliza felt that same desire to lash out.
“I don’t need pity from a shapeshifter,” she spat. “And if you’re going to devour me in the end, then just get it over with. As long as I don’t have to hear you say another condescending word.”
Though she wiped her jaw, the tears kept dripping. An angry, desperate, despairing rain.
Maybe Silas really would devour her.
Maybe she deserved it.
Instead, he yawned. “Pity? If you’re sad, be sad. Why should I care?”
Eliza’s chest tightened. “How comforting.”
Still, there was something about his permission that loosened the floodgates, and after a moment, Eliza found her breath hitching in sobs. She sounded like a choking animal. He could have made fun of her, could have laughed or gloated, but he didn’t say anything at all, and slowly, the storm inside tempered. It didn’t disappear, but the worst of the waves had crashed and receded.
“There’s something wrong with me,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears.
She willed herself to stop talking, because this was not the sort of thing she wanted to admit to anyone but Aria. Even if Henryhad been with her, she couldn’t have told him; he would never look at her the same.
He could never love her if he knew just how unbalanced she was.
The bed creaked as Silas shifted, resting his arm on the bedpost. With all the casual confidence he used to address everything, he said, “Not possible. Morality as a judgment system only functions when applied to actions and behaviors. You candosomething wrong, but there can’tbesomething wrong with you. You aren’t a garden with weeds crowding the vegetables, a collection of right and wrong things. Rather, you’re a person, and any of your attributes are simply attributes, without right or wrong until you put them into application.”
Eliza puffed an incredulous laugh. She’d never met anyone who talked like Silas did.
She’d never met anyone like Silas.
“Well,you’rewrong,” she insisted, “because there’s definitely something wrong with me. And it’s not weeds. Weeds could be pulled out.”
