Page 59 of Sonnets and Serpents
“Yes, like love. Like caring about other people. Like fighting to help because you can, because it’sright.”
“Well, I’m sorry I’m not a knight,” he said coldly.
Eliza’s face paled, her freckles stark against her skin, and he wished he could take it back. For all his accusations that the princess was reckless, he was just as bad—lured by different bait. Her by love and him by ...
He didn’t know. Something made him lash out, strike first. The feeling of being cornered, perhaps. No snake in history managed that feeling well.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She gave a sharp nod. “Me too—because you’re right. This Cast is the problem. We are irreconcilable opposites, and as long as we’re stuck together, neither of us is going to get what we want.”
She stalked out of the alcove and rummaged in the alley, producing a small crate missing one of its boards. He thought she might pry another off and threaten to club him with it, but she marched the whole thing back to him, set it on the ground, and stepped up on it. For the first time, they were truly eye to eye. The better to yell at him, he supposed.
“Look, Highness—”
That was as far as he got. Eliza seized him by the face andyanked him forward. For just a moment, Silas flashed back to the last time he’d been kissed. A magic stealer with eyes of blue.
This time, it was a princess with eyes of brown.
Eliza kissed him as if committing to a leap from Izili’s cliffs. A quick smash of her lips into his, rough and unpleasant, and then a retreat as if she could not get away fast enough. Silas ran his tongue over his teeth, checking she hadn’t chipped one in the violence.
“There!” she said triumphantly. “I fixed my mistake, so you don’t have to worry about me as a setback anymore. Now ... we ...”
Her triumphant expression faltered as she looked down at her still-attached bracelet. Silas glanced at his, more out of reflex than anything. His mind was still processing what had just happened, and in annoyance, he was wondering if he’d donned some kind of invisible sign, inviting women to shock him with unwarned acts of intimacy.
Eliza’s shoulders drooped. “It didn’t work.”
Silas snorted. “Well, in the Cast’s defense, that was hardly a kiss.”
“Yvette just said I had to mean it!” she shot back. “I want the Cast gone. I meant that.”
“There’s meaning in the sense of emotional significance andthen there’s pure definition. I’m not sure if you were trying to kiss me or headbutt me. You must have confused the magic as well.”
Eliza’s face flared brilliant red. She folded her arms. “Fine. If you know so much, then you show me how it’s done.”
In that moment, she was suddenlyattractive. Not in any way related to love, but rather in the way an opponent on a debate floor became attractive when they opened themselves up to brutal counterargument. Silas loved to prove the opposition wrong, and he loved it more when they underestimated his ability and invited the attack.
Show me how it’s done. There was no better invitation, and Silas never failed a challenge.
With a smirk, he closed the short distance between them again and rested one hand along the princess’s jaw. Her stubborn expression softened, her arms loosening across her chest. He wrapped his other arm around her waist and pulled her close, the crate rattling as she stepped forward on it.
Silas brought his lips to hers. Not as a violent snake strike, but as a gentle, teasing movement, barely a touch before lifting. Her eyes slid closed. He shifted his hand away from her jaw, sinking his fingers into her soft hair, loose in its braiding, and then he kissed her again. A bit more pressure, a bit more intent, all of it calculated. His mind was caught up in the triumph of proving a point, and he was ready to pull back and say something like,There. That was a kiss.
But there was something he hadn’t counted on, something about the secluded shadow of the alcove, both of them tucked away from the noise of the city in a world of their own, something about the adrenaline still speeding his heart with the memory of a chase when he’d almost lost her, something about the way she fit perfectly in his arms. The world was alive in an uncalculated way.
And then Eliza pressed her palms to his chest, curling her fingers in his shirt, and despite the layers of clothing and muscle and bone between them, he felt a jolt in his heart as if she’d pressed her hand right to it.
Rather than stepping back, he held her tighter. His mouth moved against hers with a sudden desperation, like she was a breakthrough he’d been searching for. Distantly, his mind wondered what he was doing, but he didn’t care to hear the logic. All he could hear was the pounding of his heart, which had completely taken over after whatever she’d done to it.
Eliza pulled back first, and Silas felt cold at the loss, like a reptile deprived of the sun’s warmth.
Then he cleared his throat, trying to speak as confidently as if he’d followed his plan to the letter. “There. That was a kiss.”
“That was a kiss,” she repeated softly, her jaw slack and her eyes wide.
He’d thought her expressions easy to read, but that was an oversimplification, because although he could read the current shock, he couldn’t tell if it was because he’d outperformed her expectations or if the world had tilted for her the way it had for him.
He’d made a terrible mistake.
