Page 85 of Sonnets and Serpents
Reaching out, she smoothed his shoulder-length hair where it had splayed on the rug, tucking it against his neck. His clothing was still Loegrian, a buttoned shirt beneath a vest. He always wore his shirt untucked, so she couldn’t blame that on travel, but the dirt and grime was a different story. One sleeve was rolled above his elbow; the other had been cut with surgical precision in the same spot. Eliza remembered the sister at the Sarazan tabernacle talking about a wound, and she ran her fingers gently down his forearm, tracing a long mark that had already turned into a fading scar. The sisters must have accelerated the healing.
In a desperate hope, she leaned close to his ear and whispered, “Wake up, Henry. Please.”
But he slept on, and finally, she returned up the stairs to Silas.
“How is he?” Silas asked, glancing up from his study of the Artifact. He’d scooted himself to the alley’s edge, resting his back against one of the two buildings enclosing their space. A middle-aged laundress gathered hanging sheets into a basket near the alley’s entrance, shooting them both suspicious glances and ignoring Eliza’s wave.
Eliza sighed, seating herself next to him. “I don’t think he’s hurt, but he’s just ...”
“Tasumak, which is much better than shipwrecked. I can fix it, once I can actually walk. I’m no Stone Caster, of course, but every Cast has a means to unravel it, and some are consistent. Yvette made me memorize a list.”
A wave of relief washed away the tension that had knotted her insides since the moment they’d found Henry.
They’dfoundHenry. After all this time, all the effort ... they’d found him.
She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a strange tingle from head to toe. It was like her whole body was still trying to process this new reality.
“I’m sorry,” she told Silas again, glancing down at his bandaged leg. “If I’d followed you right away, you wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“I’m the one who poised a cobra to strike. In terms of fault, I carry more than you.” He ran one hand over the bracelet, and when he spoke again, his tone sounded strained. Perhaps a result of the pain in his leg. “Now that we’ve found your beloved Henry, Yvette can take care of the leash between us.”
Eliza didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded. She’d achieved her goal, but it still didn’t feel real.
It wouldn’t feel real until Henry was awake.
Silas set the Artifact down at last. It looked out of place—stark black symbols and clean white edges against the battered sandstone cobbling the ground. Without knowing it was a thing of magic, Eliza could have guessed.
“She said this was made from her father’s bones,” Silas murmured.
Eliza inched back from it. The polished white took on a different shade, unnerving to look at. “Do you think it is?”
“Why not? Magic works in blood, bone, flesh, and soul. Four words on the box.”
“Who would ...” Eliza couldn’t finish the thought.
Silas looked up at her, his bangs shadowing his dark eyes. “I didn’t kill Iyal Havva. I’ve never killed anyone.”
He said it with a quiet desperation, like he worried she believed differently, but it had been a long time since Eliza had thought of the boy at her side as a murderous shapeshifter. She knew him better now.
“I know.” She gave his hand a quick squeeze that left her fingers warm. To distract herself, and to tease him, she raised her eyebrows and added, “Just be careful when you become a professor. There’s a very real chance you might bore some poor student to death with a lecture about the influence of Stone Casters on Pravish architecture.”
He scoffed, clearly trying to appear more offended than his twitching lips allowed. “I’ll have you know I intend to be a greatly sought-after professor, with every lecture hall filled and a long wait list for my classes.”
“Oh dear, oh dear.” Eliza shook her head, clucking her tongue. “So many students, gone so young. May they rest in peace.”
“How dare you.”
“Iyal Gravestone, they’ll call you. Or Iyal Deathsgate. Iyal—”
He took a swipe at her, and she leaned away, giggling. But hehissed at his own movement, scrunching his face in pain and straightening again. A slow, deep breath lifted his chest.
“Are you—?”
He cut her guilty question short. “It’ll heal. That’s what wounds do.”
She couldn’t help glancing at the scar on his neck. A murder attempt from his own father—could such a wound really heal? Or was it a surface illusion with pain still aching beneath?
Eliza tried to find the words to tell him how strong he was, how much he inspired her, how sorry she was for misjudging him in their first days together. But in the end, she only said, “If you transform, would that heal it?”
