Page 1 of Sonnets and Serpents
Princess Eliza’s first words to Lord Henry Wycliff were practiced. Not that she’d anticipated meetinghimat the ball for her seventeenth birthday, but all her life, she’d anticipated meetingsomeone. She’d read romantic adventures and poetic promises at every opportunity, waiting seventeen impatient years to come of courting age and finally lock eyes with true love.
When Henry approached from across the ballroom, bowed, and met her brown eyes with his stunning hazel ones, Eliza said, “Fate is surely kind, arranging for us to meet tonight.”
The specific greeting was essential. After all, if hewasher true love, then she would spend all her days reciting the story of their first meeting, and such a thing deserved an opening more profound than, “Enjoying the ball?” or “Pleasure to meet you.”
It was also a test, because Eliza had tried her romantic opening on other young men, and so far, she’d been met with blank stares, confused blinks, or stammers of small talk.
Henry grinned. He tossed his head, shifting his brown hair off his shoulders, and he shrugged, the casualness charming amidthe formality of court. He held himself as straight-backed as a hero, yet he wore his shirt untucked.
“Is it fate?” he asked with clear teasing. “I thought it was a party invitation.”
Trying to hold back her smile, Eliza adopted mock horror. “You dare diminish fate?”
“Not if it led me to you.”
All her words fled, and her cheeks flushed with a pleasant warmth. The ballroom seemed to widen around her, like her heart filling her chest. She bit her lip.
Finally, she said, “I like your confidence.”
In response, he ducked his head. “I’m only confident on tournament grounds, Highness. This is just hopeful.”
“What exactly are you hoping for?”
“A dance?” He offered his arm.
When Eliza took it, her heart began the dance before she did, and she prayed this was the beginning of much more than a turn around the ballroom.
Her hopes were quickly realized. Henry brought her flowers and whispered promises of courtship to come. When he competed in a tournament at the castle, he wore a token of her favor, and he even snuck into the castle early to see her. He left her with a tingling kiss on her cheek and a swoon in her step.
Eliza had found the dream she’d longed for. She’d found it in a knight with swirling hazel eyes and a smile that melted her soul. She’d found it in Henry Wycliff.
Until her father banished him.
Water crashed over the gunwale and swept across the deck, swirling anything not tied down. Eliza caught a mouthful of the salty spray just as she emerged from belowdecks.
“Keep that hatch closed!” one of the sailors bellowed at her.
Sputtering, she swiped the water from her eyes and scrambled onto the deck, securing the hatch behind her. The blackened sky snarled with thunder, and clouds crackled lightning threats. Wind howled against the sails, making the entire ship a symphony of creaking fabric, wood, and ropes.
With the approaching storm, Eliza and the handful of other passengers on the merchant galley had been ordered belowdecks, which she’d been happy to obey—until she realized how terrifying it was to be locked in a little room, tossed madly about in the gloomy darkness. She’d emptied her stomach into a bucket, then decided facing the storm head-on had to be better than this.
Now she wasn’t sure.
Tipping with the ship’s motion, she stumbled up the stairs to the quarterdeck, where she wrapped both arms around therailing and clung like a thistle to wool. Nearby, the helmsman strained at the wheel and shouted an order lost in thunder. Eliza had meant to help, but that seemed foolish now, surrounded as she was by full-grown men battling a storm. She had no strength to haul on a rope or reef a sail, no ability to direct in the dark. Everyone around her knew what they were doing while she was simply a bystander, far out of her depth.
Her stomach knotted, wondering if the same was true of her search for Henry.
Purple lightning split the world from sky to horizon, and a moment later, deafening thunder rattled her bones. Eliza whimpered, pressing her cheek to the railing and wishing she were back home, bundled beneath quilts, enjoying the pleasant crackle of flames in her hearth.
Another wave swirled around her ankles, trying to drag her away. She curled stubbornly into her position, and with a burst of defiance, she looked up at the storm. Rainwater dripped from her chin.
There was no going home. She would only go forward.
It seemed to take an eternity for the storm to blow itself out. By the time the sky lightened to a grumbling gray and the rain retreated, Eliza felt like all her strength had been washed away. She sank to the deck like a limp, tattered sail, every bit of her aching as she released her grip on the railing.
The helmsman cast her a glance. “Hoy! Still with us, girl? Should’ve stayed below.”
“I thought it would be better to see what was happening,” Eliza said weakly.
