Page 92 of Sonnets and Serpents
“I was wrong,” she said, as if he’d been fishing for an apology.Her cheeks burned pink in the light from the hallway lantern. “I can’t help thinking if I’d found Henry on my own, back when I first arrived, I would have been awful. I would have said all the wrong things about magic andshapeshifters. Henry’s already doubting himself, and I would have made it so much worse. I thought I was perfect for him. I thought we were perfect together.”
Ironic that Silas had been thinking along the same lines since meeting the knight.
“No one’s perfect,” he said softly. “We’re all just people.”
Her expression bloomed into a wide, stunning smile, and she reached out to squeeze his arm. “I’m a better one, because of you.”
Her words filled his chest, laboring his breathing.
When she turned to leave, he caught her arm, and she looked back. He was drowning in her gaze, but he didn’t care about the pain in his lungs if it meant he could just stay in the water. If he could just capture this moment and make it so she would never leave. The scent of her filled the hallway and threatened to overcome his sense of reason.
But he couldn’t rid his mind of an echo:The way you’ve helped Henry.
That was where her affections centered. If she felt anything toward him, it was because he’d helped Henry.
Silas released her arm. He couldn’t bring himself to speak. What could he say? Certainly notyou’re welcome. He wasn’t feeling very welcoming about anything at the moment.
So without a word, he entered his room and closed the door, using it as a barrier to divide him from every confusing, aching emotion out there in the hallway.
Silas couldn’t sleep, so he spent the night writing. He filled pages in his journal with all his disjointed thoughts aboutCeyda and Iyal Havva, about an unknown experiment using his own venom, about Casting types and a bone box with Cronese writing, about the kuveti and the tunnels and the magic users “causing disturbances.”
He willed his mind to focus, to see the big picture he was missing, but his traitorous thoughts kept drifting through the wall to the girl sleeping in the room next to his.
Tasumak, the Stone Caster’s sleep, was used to accelerate a body’s natural healing process. Henry said his arm was hurting, and then Ceyda used the Artifact to put him to sleep. Rather than stealing his magic, she’d healed him. But why not wake him?
Unless she couldn’t because the Artifact was broken. Unless she wasn’t a Caster at all and her abilities had come from the bone box.
How had it broken?
And who had worked with her father to make it in the first place?
Silas tore out a page just to have something to crumple between his hands. He threw it across the room, satisfied with the way it bounced hard yet soundlessly against the wall. He should give up his university work after all, go pick papayas for Baris. Nice and simple, twist-twist and done.
Then he sighed, picked up his pen, and returned to work.
Eliza heard movement in the hallway, but it couldn’t be Silas. It was too early for him to be up. She cracked open her door and peeked out to see Henry with his back to her, stretching his arms and legs, perhaps going through a morning exercise.
Quickly, she ducked back into her room. She rebraided her hair and changed her clothes, almost strangling herself as she wrapped her scarf with shaking hands and wound up all tangled in the fabric. Should she even wear a scarf? Would Henry prefer to see her looking more Loegrian than Pravish? Secretly, she’d come to love the bright, flowing fashion.
Without permission, her mind summoned the memory of when Silas had purchased her clothing in the market, his low voice saying,You look beautiful.
He’d been teasing her, nothing more. And she had nothing else to wear, so debating was pointless.
She scrubbed her face with a bar of lemongrass soap and water from the basin on her dresser. It was a day old now, since she and Silas had to go to the outside well together to draw anything fresh, but it was better than nothing. At least there hadn’t beenany earthquakes to spill it all over her floor. She’d woken to that more than once.
When she was finished, she paused with her hand on the door. Her nerves unsettled her stomach. What could she say?
What if she said all the wrong things?
Even while her mind fretted, her body struck out on its own, turning the handle, marching her into the hallway with purpose, as if she knew what she was doing.
Henry turned, smiling when he saw her. That smile brought back a rush of memories—dancing with him on her birthday, pressing a flower he’d given her into her book of sonnets—and she smiled back, her insides aflutter. Even with the short beard and the travel-worn weariness, he was as handsome as ever.
He offered his arm. “Care for a morning walk?”
Eliza’s heart leapt to take the offer, but she hesitated, her arm halfway to his. The golden bracelet hung heavy on her wrist, and she thought of Silas, asleep and immobile in his room.
“It’s better if we speak here.” She gave a weak smile.
