Page 69 of Sonnets and Serpents
Her father’s dismissal rang in her ears.Eliza’s romantic whims are such that she’ll find a new boy within the week.
That accusation permeated her dreams, along with a fear thatshewas to blame for Henry’s fate more than her father was. If she hadn’t spent all her time dancing through the palace, spouting love poems and ignoring duties, perhaps her father wouldn’t have dismissed her feelings. Perhaps her love could have saved Henry.
“My father shaped himself in the image of yours, so they can share the dictionary page,” Silas said, shifting the maps again. He set out a few weights to hold the map corners in place. “In fact, my father forced me to take that same challenge, all for the prestige of marrying a crown princess, no matter the impossibility of the test or my disinterest in the reward. I was the third challenger.”
Eliza stared at him, jaw gaping. Finally, she managed, “That’s why you’re in Pravusat.”
“I’m in Pravusat because this is my home.”
“So you didn’t want to marry Aria?” Most men did, although more for political than romantic reasons. Eliza didn’t envy her crown-carrying sister for that.
Silas snorted. “I have no interest in marrying anyone.”
Eliza rolled her eyes and muttered, “Sarazan kurta beni.”
Sarazan save me. She’d been waiting to use it on him ever since he’d drawled it at her in the desert after she had admitted to never courting Henry.
“Something to say,apta? It must be dramatic if you’re swearing by snakes now.” Without looking at her, Silas opened his journal on the table and began making notes, his eyes flickering between the journal pages and the maps.
Eliza tossed her hands dramatically to irk him. “Anyone, Silas? Really? You have no interest in marryinganyone? You’re saying if you met a gorgeous, book- and university-obsessed student right here on this campus, you’d walk away to be a grumpy old hermit?”
“Andyou’resaying I should look for my perfect match in a mirror?” He scratched something out and wrote beneath it.
“Well, you’re arrogant enough.”
He looked up with a flat glare, but his twitching lips betrayed him again, and Eliza grinned.
“Admit it!” She wagged her finger at him. “There’s a girl out there who could tempt you.”
The mirth faded from his expression, leaving behind an intensity boring straight through her. Her mouth went dry under the force of his gaze.
Until he finally looked away, pausing as if he’d forgotten what he meant to write. She was distracting him again. Well, she couldn’t help it; he was a constant distraction for her. Even now, she had to struggle to keep her eyes from tracing the curve of his wide shoulders, the long line of his throat, all the hundred distracting details of him.
“Doesn’t everyone ...” Eliza swallowed to clear the rasp from her voice. She looked down at the maps, and her thoughts tumbled free without control, gaining reckless speed. “Doesn’t everyone want to be in love? Doesn’t everyone yearn to hear someone else say, ‘You matter to me more than anything in life. More than myownlife. I would give everything for you—what’s mine to give and what isn’t. I would pull down the stars and leave the sky an empty black space. I would flatten the mountains and leave the earth an empty green plain. I would reshape the entire world for you.’”
Eliza’s longing to hear such passion was a fierce ache in her chest. It was as if the imaginary words had hooks in her heart, and either she would pull them to her, or they would pull the heart right from her body.
But Silas only scoffed. “I certainly don’t.”
He was unfathomable.
“Are you so cold-blooded that you don’t care about being cared about?”
“Cared about is one thing.” He waved his pen dismissively. “Obsessed overis another. It’s unsustainable, because in the end, you’re just a person, and so are they. You’ll inevitably disappoint and irritate each other, and then you’ll be bitter about all the star-stealing, mountain-flattening nonsense, because it was just wasted effort to make a world that really benefits no one. The stars serve a purpose, you know.”
Uncomfortably, Eliza thought ofThe Advent Moon, of a woman fawning over the image of a perfect husband while leaving the imperfect but real one behind.
She swallowed. “Fine, then. What do you imagine a real love would be? If it existed. If it wasn’t pulling down stars.”
To her surprise, Silas thought about it. He shifted one of his maps, but his eyes looked past it, and the way he tapped his pen without seeming to care that it was leaving tiny ink dots on his page told her he was deep in contemplation.
She found her heart beating faster, driven by a building curiosity. Maybe even a need.
“A simple thing,” he said at last, his voice quiet. “Someone saying, ‘I like you as you are. I want you to succeed. I won’t ever harm you, not on purpose. Don’t sacrifice the stars for me; watch them beside me.’ In Pravish, the way to propose marriage translates as ‘I want to be your equal.’ If love does exist, I think it must be like that.”
He glanced up, and sudden panic flashed across his face, like he’d said too much. In an instant, his scholarly focus was back, jotting notes, moving maps with purpose.
Without giving Eliza a chance to respond, he said, “You had a good intuition about the prison. It isn’t easy to avoid a snake in Pravusat, so a prison cell was one option. Another is the palace. And here’s a third—when we went to the kuveti, I sensed a snakeunderground, deeper than a burrow would have been. I suspect there are underground tunnels, maybe beneath the prison or maybe throughout the city. They would have to be constructed by Stone Casters, since regular delving this close to the ocean risks flooding.”
