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

He licked his lips, trying to moisten them, but his tongue was dry. “Yes.”

The color of her gaze brightened with relief. “Good. I need you to think. What do you know about the shelters in these mountains? About where they are.”

Shelters. He tried to focus his thoughts, tried to dig into his memories, to remember the things he’d read. But he kept being pulled back into the moment, his mind refusing to move beyond the cold. Beyond the sheer drop only a few steps from where he sat. “Don’t know.”

“You do. I know you do.” Her voice was soft. “And you don’t forget things. You just need to think.”

Marcus shook his head, then rested it back on his knees, wishing the world would stop swimming.

“Are they in the ravines? By the water?”

Lunacy. The ravines flooded every spring. Why was she making nonsense suggestions? Scowling, he lifted his head. “They’re in places with trees. For firewood.”

Her eyes glinted. “A tooth with trees, you say. We might be in luck, because the next one over has the first trees I’ve seen since we entered these gods-forsaken mountains. Now you need to get up. We’re going to go around this column of rock. There are sixteen spikes you need to cross to get to the opposite side, with a rope to hold on to for balance. It’s not much of a drop, only fifty feet or so.”

Far enough.

“On the far side is a plateau. That’s a big flat space.”

“I know what a plateau is,” he grumbled, flexing his fingers, trying to get sensation back in them. His legs had stiffened, and pain shot through them as he moved onto his knees, keeping as close to the rock wall as possible even as he refrained from looking back at the drop.

“I’ll go first. Come on.”

She tugged him up, leading him down the path, which grew narrower with each step until it dropped off entirely.

Open space before him. To his left. And the wind clawed at him, trying to drag him off his feet. To send him plummeting down and down.

Cringing, he pressed against the wall, closing his eyes, but that only made it worse. Made him swear he could hear the platform crumbling beneath him, the rock falling away. That he was falling.

Panic, fresh and bright and wild, surged through him. Froze him in place. Tightened the already-painful vise clamped around his chest.

So he snapped his eyes back open.

Teriana stood with one foot balanced on a spike, not even holding on to the rope.

She was going to fall.

He lunged, grabbing the front of her clothing and pulling her back from the edge, sending them both stumbling. She was shouting at him, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. All that mattered was his grip on the rope. His grip on her.

“Don’t do that! Let me go! You’re going to get us both killed!”

“I can’t let you fall.”

“Then quit knocking me around, you idiot.”

She pressed closer to him, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body. “I’ll go first. You follow.”

It was easy to nod. Much harder to force his fingers to relax their death grip on her clothing.

His heart hammering against the walls of his chest, Marcus watched her step back onto the spike, this time holding on to the rope with both hands. In a sideways motion, she moved from rung to rung, pausing with her feet on the seventh and eighth, gaze shifting to him.

You can do this.

He couldn’t.

You have to.

His breath was coming in rapid little pants, his whole body shaking.

Do it!

Gripping the rope, he stepped onto the spike, vertigo washing over him as he looked down, the sharp rocks below seeming to rise and fall like waves.

Keep moving.

He shifted onto the next spike, clenching his teeth as he waited for it to give. His arms felt too weak to hold him up if it did, and they shook in response to the thought.

Teriana was humming a song, the melody filling his ears.

He followed it.

Step.

Step.

Step.

His teeth were chattering. Clacking together with enough violence it felt like they might crack.

Step.

Step.

Step.

“Halfway there.” She resumed her humming, drawing him forward.

Step.

Step.

His foot slipped on the spike, ripping a gasp from his chest. He pulled tight on the rope, his forehead pressed against it as he sucked in air.

Keep going.

I can’t. But he took another step anyway.

It seemed a lifetime before they reached the other side of the ridge, and Teriana led him down the rocky incline onto the plateau. He kept his eyes on her heels, refusing to look beyond.

“We don’t have much time before dark,” she said between gusts of wind. “But if what you said is true, we only have to cross over this bridge and the shelter will be on the other side. We’ll be done for the day. All right?”

He was not all right. “Yes.”

“Okay.” She stopped.

He kept staring at her feet.

“This is the bridge.”

He did not want to look. Because he knew. Knew what was to come. But he had not come this far in life by being a coward, so slowly, Marcus lifted his head.

 65TERIANA

The bridge was made of three lengths of cable, one for walking and the other two for balance, forming a V shape that was held together every few feet by thinner pieces of cord. A fourth rope ran over her head, which she assumed was for baggage, although perhaps it was meant to be a secondary route across if the bridge itself came loose from its moorings.

It wasn’t a comforting thought.

The bridge had to be close to two hundred feet in length, hanging above the ravine and the icy rapids three hundred feet below, and with each gust of wind, it swung violently from side to side.

Teriana had spent her whole life in the rigging of the Quincense. Had climbed the mainmast in the middle of countless storms to untangle lines and repair sails. Climbing ropes into the heights was part of