Page 132 of Sonnets and Serpents
“Are you going to hold that over my head indefinitely?” he grumbled.
“Depends if you’re remedying the mistake now.”
It took him a moment to understand, and then he tensed, gripping the strap of his bag more tightly. “This isn’t a goodbye. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Hmm,” she said, with the air of someone deliberatelynotsaying something.
He swallowed. “Can I read in here?”
He expected her to ask why he couldn’t go to the library or hisdorm—or even his own office, which he would have been given as soon as he spoke to Afshin. But all she did was wave him toward the cushions and resume her own work.
It was senseless not to read in the library, but the books weighing down his bag felt too private for that.
Silas sat cross-legged on a cushion, and he opened Kerem’s research journal. The information was all familiar, presented with Kerem’s subdued enthusiasm, sickening now to read.
On one page, he’d made a note about Silas’s insight, then added,He reminds me of myself—ambitious but realistic, wounded, and hungry for justice. There are countless achievements in his future, I’m certain.
Silas wanted to tell himself he was nothing like Kerem, but that was a lie; Kerem had captured the truth exactly. Ambitious but realistic. Both unable to let go of wounds from the past. Silas may not have leapt into Kerem’s plan, but he’d heard it out, been tempted by the Artifact and all its potential to fix things.
If he and Kerem were the same base form, the question was how to avoid evolving in the direction his professor had, how to avoid succumbing to bitterness and cynicism.
From the corner of his eye, he saw a worn red book peeking from his bag. He set Kerem’s journal aside and replaced it with Eliza’s.
Andjournalwas an accurate descriptor, no matter how the book had started.
She’d written notes in the margins of more than a dozen sonnets. Her writing was as flowery as expected, both in word choice and in flourishes at the end of her lines. Most of the notes contained Pravish vocabulary, but while Silas would have written something like,arakl: magic, she refused to be simple.
Arakl means magic, or something like it. It seems to be multipurpose, used on both Affiliates and Casters, because Pravish refuses clarity whenever possible.
He snorted.
He read two dozen sassy dictionary entries before he reached her favorite sonnet, marked by a pressed flower.
Love, my sword.
She hadn’t written any notes in the margins, but he was shocked to see his own name at the bottom of the page along with a painfully short message.
Silas, I hope you find love.
He snapped the book closed, almost catching his face in it, since he’d bent in ridiculously close. Without seeing them, he could still feel the words, carving an ache in his chest the way she’d carved poetry in a stone wall.
The irritation surged again. Of all the things she could say, of all the goodbyes she could leave him with, she’d chosenthis. He clenched his jaw against the press of fangs.
I hope you find love.
As if he hadn’t found it already.
As if he could just move on to some other girl.
As if she could be so easily replaced.
Findingwasn’t the problem. The problem was that he didn’t know what todowith it. The problem was that he was a complete wreck inside, and the one person he wanted to be with most was in the one place he couldn’t go. Loegria was still a sword, eager and waiting to impale him again. Even if laws were changing, mindsets wouldn’t. Even if Eliza accepted him, her family wouldn’t.Hisfamily wouldn’t.
Yvette stood from her desk, and for a disoriented moment, Silas thought he’d lost track of hours and lecture hall had started.
“Come with me,” she said.
Welcoming the distraction, he grabbed his bag and followed, but she didn’t lead him anywhere on campus. They crossed into Izili proper, and then out to the city wall. The marketplacebuzzed with chatter, angry voices rising more often in the particularly humid heat, vendors shouting at each other across the way.
