Page 81 of Sonnets and Serpents
Likely all the way to the graveyard,Eliza thought with a ghostly chill.
“Let’s find out,” Silas said quietly.
All of Silas’s senses were on alert as they crept through the dark. While facing so many unknowns, he welcomed the addition of Kerem’s abilities, but the professor’s words had hollowed out a pit of dread deep in Silas’s bones.
Iyal Mazhar arrested. A magical disturbance.
The pattern was undeniable. Using the kuveti, someone was targeting magic users. Had it started with Iyal Havva? For so long, Silas had considered the university a haven against Pravusat’s darkest dangers, but now two professors had been targeted.
Iyal Mazhar wasn’t one of Silas’s favorites—too short-tempered with his students, too reminiscent of Silas’s own father—but he was a brilliant mind who’d contributed greatly to his field, just like every professor at the university. Silas had worked on venom projects with him alongside Kerem, and the thought of the short, bearded Fluid Caster turning up as a boneless body made his insides slither down to his shoes.
The tunnel twisted gently. After a steep downward slope at the entrance, it had leveled out and remained flat, and thus far, it hadn’t branched. Silas wondered if it would empty directly at thegraveyard—a way for the kuveti to smuggle bodies they didn’t want seen.
Every forty feet or so, a new candle in an alcove lit the path. Silas paused beside one, extending his hand to the wall.
“Nirhaba,friend,” he said.
Behind him, Eliza jumped, grabbing his arm and looking around wildly, as if expecting to find a guard bearing down on them. Silas nodded toward the wall, and a thin snake wove through his fingers until it wrapped around his hand. Eliza sighed, releasing her death grip, and he wondered if it was the first time she’d ever been relieved it was just a snake.
Silas lifted the tiny snake to eye level. “Tell me what it’s like down here.”
The serpent flipped its tail back and forth across his pinky before releasing the squeakiest little hiss imaginable. A quick flicker of hazy images and impressions passed through Silas’s mind, and he parsed their meaning.
Humans come and go. Scare out the spiders. Loud stomps. Dragging. Body stink. Big, big, big.
“Fascinating.” Kerem leaned closer, lifting his spectacles. “It must survive on insects down here. Look at that—eyes so small they’re almost nonexistent. You’re accustomed to the darkness, little one.”
“We’re looking for two people.” Silas sent an impression of the ocean-eyed girl and Henry. He couldn’t hope for much, since Kerem was right about the snake’s dim vision.
But the snake flicked its tongue.Lighter feet. Pitter-patter. That way.
After releasing the snake, Silas looked up, his nervous eyes meeting Eliza’s.
“That way,” he rasped.
The trouble was, therewasno “that way.” The tunnel continued forward—north, as far as Silas could tell—but thesnake had indicated east. After searching for a moment, Silas found another catch in the wall, another secret door.
“Secrets within secrets,” Kerem said, his eyes alight with the thrill of discovery.
“If we find the girl we’re looking for,” Silas warned, “don’t let her ... touch you.”
Kiss you, he amended silently, but it was safe to assume that skin-to-skin contact was the catalyst and she’d only kissed him because it was more distracting and less aggressive than grabbing him by the throat.
Silas led the way into the branching passage. Eliza trailed behind, glancing over her shoulder as if afraid of being closed in.
The new space wasn’t an ongoing tunnel but rather a connected set of small hollows, like a storage space, or an oversized snake’s burrow. Candles burned in the corners, casting more light than the sparse guides in the main tunnel. There was no furniture aside from a few crates and a pair of thick rugs. A still form lay stretched out on one of the rugs, his back toward them.
“Henry!” shrieked Eliza.
She darted forward before Silas could stop her. He glanced around wildly, spotting a second person crouched in the farthest hollow, watching him from behind a crate. Silas recognized those panicked eyes. Blue as the ocean.
“Come out slowly,” he ordered, feeling the itch of scales across his cheeks.
Eliza fell to her knees beside Henry, turning him onto his back. From this distance, Silas couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but he could tell Eliza was crying.
The ocean-eyed girl rose slowly to her feet, still standing behind the crate as if it could protect her, even though it only came up to her knee. She held her hands up, palms out. They were empty.
Silas narrowed cold eyes on her. “Where’s your box?”
