Page 8 of Sonnets and Serpents
Only days earlier, Eliza had felt the curse lift. She no longer carried a deep chill in her bones, no longer spent restless nights awake or felt the constant exhaustion in her limbs. Having the curse broken should have thrilled her.
Instead, it terrified her.
She didn’t know if her sister was responsible or if some man of court had finally passed the king’s challenge. If it was the latter, Eliza couldn’t even hope for a handsome gentleman her sister might be happy to marry—because Aria was already involved in a secret romance, one their father would never approve. She loved a Caster.
But there was something worse about the curse breaking, a truth Eliza could hardly bring herself to acknowledge.
The truth that something hadchangedabout her since being cursed.
The truth that, long before the curse had broken, it had broken somethinginsideher.
The truth that it was broken still.
She’d convinced herself that everything would return to normal once the curse was removed. But although the sleepless nights had vanished, she remained altered. Wounded. It was like someone had removed an arrow from her shoulder, but they’d only pulled the shaft and left the arrowhead buried.
Her one remaining hope was finding Henry. She couldn’t explain why, but sheknewthat if she could find him, she would be fixed. She would fall into his hazel eyes again, and everything would be like it once was.
With more conviction than before, Eliza squared her shoulders, and she looked up into Silas’s dark eyes. “You can tell Aria I’m staying, and you can go home.Seravat.”
“Seyahat,” he corrected.
Rats. She’d had it right the first time.
“I am home,” he added. “You’re the one out of place.” He heldher gaze with a pointed look, and based on attire alone, his words held weight. But they didn’t change anything.
“I have to find someone,” Eliza insisted.
“Henry Wycliff.”
Hearing Henry’s name from someone else sharpened the ache, like removing the cover from a basket of feelings she’d tried to keep pressed down and unseen. Henry’s face rose in her memory, smiling and warm, his head cocked and his brown hair brushing his shoulders as he offered her a white snowdrop.
“I happen to know—” Silas began.
She gasped, struck by the sudden realization of what washappening. Her soggy, tired mind had finally caught up. She was speaking Loegrian with someone who also spoke Pravish.
“Youcan help me find Henry!” she burst out, grabbing his arm.
He stepped back, clearly unnerved by the contact, slithering out of her grasp. “I—”
“You speak Pravish! I’ve been searching ...” Fumbling, Eliza pulled the folded map from her pocket, where she kept it beside her book of sonnets. “I have a map of the ship’s route, and I’ve been searching for the survivors, but even if I can phrase a question, I can’t understand answers. You can fix that!”
Silas stared at her. Something about his dark gaze made her skin crawl until she leaned back.
“Survivors?” he repeated.
She realized what she was shrinking from.Pity.
“There was a shipwreck,” she said with forced calm. “He’s missing. But if you translate for me, we can—”
“He’s gone, Highness.” Silas’s voice was surprisingly gentle for a thug.
Eliza clenched her trembling jaw. “You don’t know that, and I won’t accept it. That isn’t our ending.”
“You can’t justnot accepttruth.”
“It isn’t truth. It’s what some choose to believe, but I don’t.”
“Ignoring truth out of personal discomfort is the act of the foolish.”
