Page 61 of Sonnets and Serpents
Now that they’d kissed, he wanted her as far away as possible.
Stiffly, she said, “I owe you an apology. My actions earlier were solely to get us both out of the Cast, but clearly I overstepped, so I’m sorry for kissing you.”
That got him to look at her, but she couldn’t read his expression, at least not until he smirked. “I don’t recall you ever kissing me. If memory serves, you headbutted me like a goat, and then, for some unfathomable reason, I kissed you. Regardless, we both failed to break the Cast, so we can put the momentary lapse of judgment behind us.”
Unfathomable reason. Lapse of judgment.Why had she expected any more of a snake?
Eliza forced a prim smile. “Consider the horrible event forgotten. Good night, Mr. Bennett.”
She slipped into the new room and slammed the door behind her.
Silas threw himself back into research, trying to puzzle out why the most promising experiments for magic stealing all failed and what could be done differently. Eliza must have been boiling mad, because her boredom usually overcame her attempts to ignore him. He kept waiting for her to burst out with a question she couldn’t help asking, but she never did. She kept her eyes on her sonnets, and, later, he heard her using broken Pravish to ask the librarians for information on the kuveti.
Come evening, they went to the dining hall, only for one of the servers to stop Silas before he could claim a plate.
Was everyone in the world mad at him?
“Silas Bennett? Iyl Yvette’s sent for you.”
After being unable to break the Cast with a kiss, he’d suspected there was something wrong with it, but when he’d tried to visit Yvette before going to the library that morning, she’d been off campus, so he’d been forced to leave a note.
“She specified I couldn’t eat first?” Silas asked.
The server gave an apologetic smile. “Very specific, Mr. Bennett.”
That worried him.
“Follow me,” he told Eliza, though it was hardly necessary. After all, they were chained together. Maybe for life.
But when they reached Iyl Yvette’s office, she wasn’t pacing or showing any signs of worry over a horribly skewed Cast. Quite the opposite—she was laughing with her husband, both of them bent over some kind of project on her desk.
“Silas the student!” Baris called out, straightening with a two-handed wave. “Nirhabaand happy birthday, you blessed snake!”
Silas blinked.
Eliza gasped, finally breaking her vow of silence. “It’s yourbirthday?”
“Is it?” he asked.
Yvette playfully slapped Baris’s shoulder. “I told you. Oblivious.” She leaned toward Eliza, despite the fact they were still a room apart, and confided, “My darlingerkekcan’t imagine the single-mindedness of my students. And no one’s more single-minded than this one.” She pointed at Silas.
He had the childish—snakish?—urge to stick his tongue out, but he resisted.
“What a waste!” Baris griped. “To be born under the fortune of the advent moon and not even remember!”
“That’s your holiday,” Silas pointed out, “not mine.”
Baris slapped his three-fingered hand to his heart. “He wounds me! He speaks Pravish like a son, yet he wounds me.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me it was yourbirthday!” said Eliza. She spoke Loegrian, but for the sake of everyone’s understanding, Silas chose to speak Pravish along with Baris and Yvette.
He shrugged. “I wasn’t secret-keeping,apta. I just don’t care to keep track.”
If anything, she looked even more aghast. “Do you even know how old you are?”
Just to irritate her, he made a show of frowning in thought.“Thirty-eight? Fifty-two? Once you’re old enough to attend school, the numbers don’t matter, do they?”
At least Baris laughed.
