Page 78 of Sonnets and Serpents
Ihave money!” Eliza shouted in Pravish. “Please, I can’t survive this prison!”
A little dramatic, but she’d panicked trying to rememberendure, sosurvivewas the best she had. She could play the wilting princess in the cage.
Silas had already slithered through the bars and was lurking somewhere in the shadows along the wall. She’d lost sight of his gray-and-black pattern almost immediately, and she shuddered on the guard’s behalf.
Booted footsteps echoed down the hallway, approaching.
Eliza decided she was better off not watching what was about to happen, so she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to imagine the moment she would see Henry again. Though they’d only been apart a couple months, she had difficulty picturing him. Rather, she could imagine his adorable smile, his sun-kissed brown hair, his swirling hazel eyes, but there was a distance in it. As if he were someone she’d met long ago rather than the boy she intended to spend the rest of her life with.
She didn’t like that distance. If she wasn’t careful, she saw asilhouette in it, tall and broad-shouldered, looking an awful lot like Silas.
She’d almost kissed him. Or he’d almost kissed her. She wasn’t sure which, but it had happened without either of them trying to break the Cast, without any reason except—
She couldn’t finish that thought.
Inside, her heart pounded an accusation.Whims. Whims.
From beyond the cell, she heard a sharp grunt. Then a stumble and crash.
After a stretch of tense silence, she dared to peek, finding the guard sprawled across the floor, his limbs at awkward angles. At least she didn’t have to see his face, since it was turned toward the wall. Silas was himself again, one hand on his jaw and a grimace on his face like it ached.
She couldn’t believe he’d actuallybittensomeone. It felt strangely juvenile, probably because humans stopped employing biting as a reasonable disagreement solution by the time they could form sentences.
Apparently, she’d shifted from thinking him monstrous to thinking him childish. Eliza’s lips twitched, picturing his scowl if she told him as much. But she didn’t want to prod the subject if it was still sore. The way he’d looked at her before—after she’d said it wasn’tright—would haunt her forever. It was like she’d driven a dagger through his back.
She would do anything to avoid making him feel like that again.
Silas approached the cell and crouched to peer at the lock.
It was then, with a dreadful, sinking feeling, that Eliza remembered the guards had taken his lockpicks.
“On second thought,” she said weakly, her knuckles white as she clutched the bars, “you can just leave me here.”
“Would that I could,apta.” Silas rotated the wrist with his bracelet. Eliza regretted ever purchasing the infernal thing.
He made a valiant effort. The guard hadn’t carried keys, but Silas used the man’s dagger to prod at the lock, even as each passing second meant less time to find Henry. In the end, that was the tipping point, the thing that gave Eliza enough courage to face a nightmare.
“Just do it,” she said, struggling to breathe past the tightness in her chest. “Make me a ... snake.”
She almost choked on the words.
Silas handed her the dagger through the bars. “Hold onto that. And don’t stabme.”
She tucked the leather sheath through her sash and tried to fill her head with thoughts of comforting sonnets, but it was hard to grasp any words past the fear. What if something went wrong and she never changed back? What if she was a snake for the rest of her life?
Tiny black dots fluttered at the edges of her vision as her breathing came faster and faster. She sat heavily, gripping the bars like her only anchor in a storm.
Silas knelt in front of her.
“Eliza, close your eyes.” His voice was soft and soothing. He reached through the cage dividing them, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Trust me.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, focusing on the sound of her name in his voice, replaying it like a favorite melody.
Silas’s hands moved from her shoulders, sliding down her arms. With a light touch, he rolled back her left sleeve, but before she could start panicking about fangs in that arm, his hands moved again, lifting to her face. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then brushed his fingertips like feathers along her cheek. A shiver traveled all the way down her spine.
While she was still tingling from it, his touch disappeared.
A moment later, pain stabbed through her arm, and she released a hiss of air through her teeth. It lasted only a momentbefore she opened her eyes—or maybe the magic had done that for her. Snakes didn’t have eyelids, did they?
