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

“No, I won’t!” he shouted back. “Because you deserved it.”

Her body was shaking, her skin like ice, but Lydia didn’t care as she stormed down the trail after him. “Killian!”

But he only broke into a jog, keeping ahead of her.

“Killian!” She ran after him, her bag bouncing on her back, her boots making loud squelches with each step. She was going to make him pay for that. Once she caught him, she was going to make him listen to the rough side of her tongue until he was groveling, begging for her forgiveness.

Except he sped up into a run, easily keeping ahead of her as she sprinted after him.

“You are an immature child!” she shouted. “You will stop and listen like a grown man or I’ll … I’ll…” She had no idea what she’d do. And as she chased him through the winding trails heading north, her breath coming in great heaving gasps and her side cramping, Lydia eventually resigned herself to the fact she wouldn’t do anything at all.

Falling to a walk, she followed his footprints at a slow trudge, wishing the sun would move more quickly across the sky and force him to make camp. Her wet boots were rubbing her feet raw as fast as her mark could heal them, and she focused on the sting rather than the hurt in her chest.

Was this how it was going to go? She’d known there was no chance of them being together. But not once had she considered that their friendship would devolve into spitefulness and hate.

Then she rounded a large boulder and found Killian pacing back and forth across the path, his head snapping at the sight of her. “Thought maybe you’d given up and turned around.”

She kept walking past him. “Did you really?”

He huffed out a breath of annoyance, then muttered, “Hope springs eternal.”

The sun descended over the mountains, dark settling over the forest, but still he didn’t tell her to stop to make camp. And though Lydia knew she was being childish and prideful herself, she refused to ask him to.

Only when it grew so dark that both of them were tripping over roots did Killian stop. “This will do.”

From what she could make out, the spot was a wide clearing in the forest, the ground covered with dead grass and brush. Dropping her pack in the center, Lydia gathered firewood without comment while Killian set to clearing a spot for a fire. When she returned to drop a load next to him, he already had a small blaze of grass and twigs burning, but instead of stopping to warm herself, she started back out for another load.

They worked in taciturn silence, Killian cooking dinner and Lydia cleaning up the mess without either of them saying a word. Misery coated her insides as she watched him spread his bedroll next to the fire. “Go to sleep,” he muttered. “I’ll wake you when it’s your turn to watch.”

Unrolling her blankets, she took off her boots. But instead of lying down, she said softly, “Do you remember Emmy?” She’d no idea whether this was the right course, but she had to make Killian understand. For her sake.

And for his.

“Of course I do.” He was quiet for a moment. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes.” Pulling off her spectacles, she set them aside, rubbing at her eyes. “She was infected with blight, but not in the way you saw before you left Mudaire. It evolved, those who rose from the dead no longer mindless, bloodthirsty things, but rather nearly perfect replicas of themselves in life. Only someone with Hegeria’s mark can see the truth—that they are walking corpses animated by the Corrupter’s power. To everyone else, they both appear and act as themselves.”

Replacing her spectacles, she saw that Killian was watching her from across the fire.

“Most often, the infected were killed by soldiers when they were discovered, but Quindor kept Emmy in one of the rooms in the lower levels of Hegeria’s temple.”

Killian’s jaw tightened. “He kept a little girl in a cell?”

“Yes. And no.” Biting her bottom lip, Lydia considered her words. “She was kept in every comfort. Fed the best food. Given toys and new dresses. Quindor said he kept her alive to monitor how the infected were evolving, but I think it was that he held out hope she could be cured. That he could bring her back. He … he died trying to save her using the same method I used to pull the blight out of Lena. But one can’t bring back the dead.”

Killian said nothing, and part of her wanted to stop talking, because what she intended to say would hurt. But he needed to know.

“When I first returned to Mudaire, he took me down to see her. To prove to me that the blighters were dead and couldn’t be healed, but also so that I could witness what the Corrupter was attempting to accomplish. His strategy, so to speak.”

As she told him of Emmy and the cuff link, Killian’s back bowed and he buried his face in his hands. Struggling to maintain her composure as she watched him crumple beneath guilt and grief, she said, “The Corrupter was using the blighters to undermine faith in the Marked and, in doing so, undermine faith in the Six. What Quindor and the rest failed to see was that killing them wasn’t fighting this strategy but playing into it.”

Swallowing hard, she said, “The healers were sent out into the streets with groups of soldiers in order to identify the blighters. Once caught, they were killed, most often while their families and friends begged that they be spared. I identified blighters and watched families beg for their lives.”

“Gods,” Killian muttered, then scrubbed his hands through his hair. His cheeks were wet. “Did no one see Quindor was turning healers into executioners?”

“He believed we were at war with the Corrupter and that this was the only way