Gilded Serpent by Danielle Jensen (top 10 novels txt) 📕

Then he started south, eyes on the first mile marker of the Via Mortis.

The road of death.

 61KILLIAN

He and Lydia sat atop the horses he’d taken from the stables—he was unwilling to risk his own to the blight—waiting for Sonia and Finn to arrive with supplies.

The silence sitting between them was the most uncomfortable he’d ever experienced, but he could think of nothing to say to break it. Part of him wanted to argue with Lydia that to come with him was folly, but another saw reason in her words that Malahi might need her help. Though in his heart, he knew the reason he’d agreed to it was because he was afraid to let her out of his sight again.

“What is your plan for finding her?” Lydia asked softly, wiping rain drops from her face.

“If it’s corrupted tenders who are creating the blight, it stands to reason that following it back to the source is our best chance of finding them. If we’re lucky, that’s where Malahi will be as well.”

“Do we know where the source is?”

He gave a slight shake of his head. “Somewhere in Derin. Royal Army scouts never pressed past the wall, but they did report that the blight flowed through the gates of the fortress, so that’s where we’ll go first.”

Already he felt sick about having to go there. To the location of his defeat and the place this war had begun.

“How long will it take us?”

“With you along, who knows.” His tone was harsher than he’d intended.

“Don’t hold back on my account.” Her voice was cool. “I’ll keep up.”

Mercifully, Sonia appeared, carrying supplies in a laundry bag under the guise of doing her washing in the stream. Finn soon approached from the opposite direction carrying the same. Killian had made a show of berating him for shirking his duties earlier, but it was still a ruse with more holes than a sieve given that it was pouring rain.

Dismounting, Killian took the bags and distributed the supplies between his saddlebags and Lydia’s. Then he turned back to his friends, unsheathing his sword and accepting the one Sonia carried in exchange. “I’ve left orders for my soldiers to march to Serlania tomorrow. Assuming they obey, you ride with them. If my orders are somehow overturned, you will leave anyway.”

Sonia nodded. He knew she wasn’t pleased, but he also knew she’d do it. Finn, however … “You’re to take my horses home for me, is that understood?” He glared at the boy. “And if anything happens to them…”

“You’ll hang me naked from my ankles in the middle of Serlania’s grand market and pay orphans to throw horse shit at me, I remember.” Finn glowered at him. “You’ll have to stay alive if you’re to carry through on that, you know.”

“Count on it.” Pulling Finn close, he said, “Good luck. May the Six ride at your side and keep you safe.”

Then he mounted his horse and dug in his heels, heading away from them at a gallop. A heartbeat later, he heard Lydia follow, her horse’s hooves splattering in the mud.

He kept the speed for as long as reasonable as they headed north, keen to get away from the eyes of Rowenes spies, though he suspected they’d soon be replaced with scouts of darker allegiances. The land north of here and east of the wall was broadly abandoned, the prevalence of blight and the creatures the Derin army had brought over the wall with them rendering hundreds of square leagues uninhabitable. But the rumor was that there was some traffic back and forth through the broken gate and burned-out fortress that had once guarded the wall.

How they were crossing back and forth through the towering peaks of the Liratora Mountains remained unconfirmed, but Killian had strong suspicions that Rufina was making use of xenthier much as did the Empire Lydia hailed from. Either way, he intended to find out.

They rode through the day without exchanging a word, both of them eating in the saddle, stopping only to water the horses at the small streams and ponds they encountered, the water running high.

It wasn’t until the sun began to set did Killian start looking for a place to make camp. And for something for dinner.

Retrieving his bow, he kept an arrow loosely nocked, eyeing the underbrush. Motion caught his attention, and in one swift movement, he shot the arrow. Dismounting, he led the horse over to the brush and retrieved the pheasant he’d killed, holding it up. “Hungry?”

They tethered the horses near a small stream, Killian stretching the tent canvas between trees to serve as a tarp. While Lydia gathered wood for a fire, he plucked and dressed the pheasant, making liberal use of the spices he’d had Finn include in the supplies. Starting a fire, he spit the bird over top and left it to cook while he retrieved water from the stream.

When he returned, Lydia was no longer wearing her healer’s robes, having changed into a plain woolen dress with a high collar. Sitting next to the fire, she used a comb to part her hair, then extracted her tiny knife.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, turning the pheasant before mixing water with cornmeal in a pan and setting it over the fire.

“Covering this.” She tapped the half-moon tattooed on her forehead. “Probably better if no one knows I’m a healer, no?”

She started cutting strands of hair, and after she nearly sliced her forehead open twice, Killian reached over to take the knife. “Let me do it. You keep an eye on dinner.”

Kneeling in front of her, he combed her hair down over her face, then began cutting it off just below her eyebrows. It felt like silk beneath his fingers, and her breath was warm against his throat. “There,” he muttered, eyeing the glossy fringe that now concealed her tattoo. Instead of softening her face, the style accentuated her sharp cheekbones and the straight line of her nose, the green of her eyes seeming deeper than it