Page 9 of Sonnets and Serpents
“Then I’m foolish!” she snapped. “Aptal.”
Silas smirked. “You’re a man now?Aptais the feminine form.”
“The point is,” she said sharply, “foolish or not, I’m not going anywhere until I find Henry.”
The princess was worse than Silas had feared. Brash, stubborn, and delusional. It was a shame about Henry—Silas was fairly certain he’d crossed paths with him at the Reeves estate, since Lord Reeves had always been close to Lord Wycliff—but it was life. War, illness, shipwrecks. The unavoidable swallowed even the best of people.
He tried to keep his voice consoling. “Highness, wouldn’t you rather grieve at home? With your family?”
Part of him wondered if anyone at home grievedhisabsence. Not his father, certainly. When the king had announced his challenge—break the crown princess’s curse and win her hand in marriage—Lord Bennett had volunteered Silas without even consulting him, and he’d made it clear the king’s wrath for failure would be nothing compared to his own.
If you can’t win this contest, he’d said,you’ll never hold my title. If you can’t win this, you’re not my son.
Silas’s father believed in motivation by threat, but Silas had grown tired of threats.
So here he was. Exiled and disinherited.
Trying to reason with the daughter of the very man who’d exiled him.
At the mention of grief, Eliza’s eyes hardened. She drew herself up in regal posture. “Youwillhelp me find Henry. That’s an order from your princess.”
More motivation by threat. For a moment, Silas was tempted to leave her to her well-deserved fate.
Instead, he drawled, “Or what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Or what?” He gestured at the alley, empty except for themselves. “If I disobey your royal order, you’ll what—call the guards? Lock me in prison?Banishme?”
He let the last example hang in the air until her cheeks colored. Then he said, “I suggest you shelve the arrogance, Highness. Power isn’t inherent, no matter what any monarchy claims. It’s enforced. You can’t force me into anything. Not here.”
When she ducked her head, picking at her shirt, he gave a satisfied nod.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to the harbor and help you arrange for a ship. That’s all the translation I can offer.”
The princess walked behind Silas with her head down. It was unnerving, like having an extra shadow that might attack him at any moment.
Everyone they passed on the street darted a curious glance her way. Some of the men’s gazes were appreciative, lingering. Loegrian clothing was formfitting, so her silk shirt and woolen trousers meant the princess’s curves could be clearly seen, but it was more than that. She wasdifferent.
Between the human trafficking and wanton violence, it was unwise to stand out in Pravusat. Even the king kept the ornamentations of his palace to a minimum.
When Silas had first started university, Izili had not been the capital of Pravusat. Barely two months into Silas’s studies, the nephew of the former king had wrested the crown for himself, his revolution setting fire to the then-capital. Once he’d burned his uncle’s city to the ground, the Nephew King built a palace in Izili, declaring the city the seat of his everlasting power.
Everlasting? Not likely. But he’d held power for two years now—long enough that people sometimes referred to him by name, King Orzan, rather than simply the Nephew King. If he survivedanother two years, his reign would surpass that of his dead uncle’s, but the odds were not in his favor. Silas had witnessed one attempted rebellion against the Nephew King already.
Pravusat was the land of revolution.
When the air was still, the Izili streets carried the dank smell of too many people and too little sky, but every so often, a fresh ocean breeze cleansed that scent with salt. Nature’s own little revolutions. As they approached the harbor, those breezes grew more frequent.
Eliza came to a halt on the street. She gestured to a voyager’s inn, the upper windows shuttered and the main floor windows thrown open to tantalize passersby with the wafting scent of roasted fish, sumac, and ale.
“This is where I’m staying,” she said. “I need to get my things.”
Ofcourseshe’d chosen a voyager’s inn. They were established for travelers arriving by ship and double the price of most other lodgings. By staying at one, she was practically waving a banner declaring herself a foreigner. No wonder the kuveti had been able to find her.
Silas clenched his jaw. He didn’t like that she’d nearly been arrested. The kuveti were the peacekeeping force in Pravusat, which ought to have been beneficial for a war-torn country. Unfortunately, their version of peacekeeping was less altruistic and more “peace as defined by the highest bidder.”
He had a terrible feeling about anyone bidding on Eliza. Either they wanted to ransom a princess, or they wanted to capture a seventeen-year-old foreigner no one would miss.
