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

a living. But his time with Lydia had always been too focused on the pressing concerns of the present to ever dwell on stories of the past, and he half-wondered if he could claim to truly know her without hearing the stories that shaped her into the young woman he knew.

“Appius Valerius.” She sighed, withdrawing her hands from the fire and curling them in her lap. “Once, when I was thirteen or so, one of our servants spilled hot tea on my lap. It hurt, and I was angry at my dress being soiled, so I struck her across the face. I’d seen the other girls I knew do the same, as well as their mothers, so part of me thought nothing of doing the same. And part of me liked doing it. She’d hurt me, so I would hurt her back, but worse.”

Lydia was quiet, but he sensed she wasn’t through with her confession, so he remained silent.

“I’ve no notion of how he heard what I’d done, but my father left in the middle of the Senate’s session to return home. I’d never seen him so angry. I ran and hid in the library, but he hunted me down and dragged me out into the courtyard, where he had all the servants assembled, including the woman I’d struck. He forced me to stand in front of her, and I thought he was going to make me apologize, so I began in earnest, but he only shouted at me to be silent.”

Killian tensed, about to revise his assessment of this Appius Valerius if he’d had Lydia beaten, but then she said, “He told the woman that she could hit me as I had hit her, if she so wished. That she had his word there would be no consequences to her doing so.”

Picking up a stick, Killian poked at the fire, rolling over a branch to fuel the flames. “She wouldn’t do it, would she?”

“No.” Lydia exhaled. “She wouldn’t. I could see in her eyes that she wanted to, but it wasn’t enough to overcome her fear that to do so would mean a reckoning of tenfold severity. That, despite my father’s reputation, this was a trick that would create fodder to entertain our guests while we drank expensive wine and laughed.

“Eventually my father allowed her to go, dismissing the rest of the servants so that we were alone. Then he turned on me and said, ‘Lydia, to be good does not mean to be without flaw, for even the best of us are riddled with them. To be good is to recognize the darkness in one’s character and strive to remedy it. And if such a thing is not possible, to control it so that it does not harm others.’”

“A wise man,” Killian said. “If but there were more like him.”

Lydia shivered and she pulled a blanket up over her shoulders, prompting Killian to put another log on the fire. Then she spoke and he realized the shiver had nothing to do with the cold.

“A week later that woman quit her employment with my family to take a job serving drinks to sailors in a tap house for a fraction of the pay. And though the circumstance was my fault, I don’t think the reason she left was fear of being slapped in the face again. It was because in his attempts to make me understand the power of my position, he’d forced her to face the weakness of her own. And to live every day with that glaring reminder was more than she could bear.”

Lydia tilted her face up to the rising moon, its light turning her face silver. “My father is wise. And he is kind. And I love him dearly. But I think it would be a lie to call him good.” Then she curled up on her side, saddle pad under her cheek. “Good night, Killian.”

 62MARCUS

This had been a mistake.

Turn around. Go back. Travel the Via Hibernus instead.

These were the thoughts cycling through Marcus’s head as he and Teriana left the shack located at the foot of the Sibernese Teeth, following the marked trail into the maze of narrow ravines between the enormous vertical slabs of rock.

“This place is strange,” Teriana said, reaching out her arms so that the tips of her mittens brushed the walls to either side of them. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Strange was one word. Terrifying was another. “There is nothing else like it. In the East, at any rate.”

She turned around, her brow furrowed as she regarded him.

“What?” His tone was sharp though he hadn’t intended it to be.

Shaking her head, Teriana carried on through the ravine. She knew something was wrong, but he hoped she was attributing it to his concern over their lack of food stores or his general pessimism about their circumstances. He’d even take her believing he was being an ass for no reason at all over her guessing the truth.

You can’t do this, his fear whispered. You’ve never been able to do it.

This time I will, he told it. I’m not letting her starve to death because of you.

You’ll fail, it answered. Turn around. Turn around. Turn around.

No. Marcus gave a sharp shake of his head, shoving away the thoughts, focusing instead on their surroundings.

They’d been in the Teeth for less than an hour, and already he couldn’t have said with any certainty which way was south. The path through the ravines was full of switchbacks and places he was certain they were backtracking, and with the towering slabs of rock blocking any vantage of the sun, it would be easy to become turned about without the carved markings to guide them.

Even the wind seemed to switch directions, bouncing off the ravine walls and erasing their tracks, a constant haunting moan that rose to a shriek in certain places. The sound made Marcus’s skin crawl.

And it was cold. The sort of chill that bit through clothing, skin, and muscle, sinking its fangs deep into