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

Clenching her teeth, she allowed him to pull her upright and rest her back against the wall.

“They take forever to catch, so eat the whole thing,” he said, handing her a crackling mouse. Then pulling one off the branch for himself, he winked at her and bit its head off.

“That,” she whispered, “is horrible.”

“It’s not,” he said, the mouse’s skull making awful crunching sounds as he chewed. “Though I’m partial to the tail.”

He bit off the crispy appendage, and Teriana gagged. “Stop.”

But for all it was disgusting in theory, the smell of cooked meat had her body singing a different tune. Holding the mouse up to her mouth, she bit into its side, wincing as its ribs cracked. Then drops of grease rolled over her tongue and she found herself taking a second bite. Then a third. “Give me another.”

They ate until the mice were gone, and then Marcus leaned against the wall next to her. “You’re incredible, you know.”

“Says the man who prepared mice for me for dinner.” She rested her head against his shoulder, exhausted and sore, but no longer hungry.

“Are you going to tell me how you did it?”

“I captured a giant hawk, and it flew us out of danger.”

He wrinkled his nose, then pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. “Deus ex machina. I’m disappointed.”

“Only because you missed the flight.” Closing her eyes, Teriana leaned into him, listening to the steady beat of his heart. The heart she’d fought so hard to keep beating. “Well,” she murmured. “It all started when you succumbed to a fit of dramatics and fatalism, and I decided that all decision-making needed to be taken out of your hands.…”

Marcus listened in silence as she explained how she’d done it, tensing when she got to the last bridge and the lines snapped. But when she was finished, he kissed her forehead and said, “We’re going to survive this.”

They were. She knew it.

If only making it out alive meant the end of their woe.

 72LYDIA

Their boots crunched in the deepening snow as they walked down the narrow trail, the towering Liratora Mountains no longer what captured her attention, but rather the towering wall that loomed to her left.

Killian had told her that it ran north and south to protect the only pass between Mudamora and Derin. The rows of jagged mountains did the rest. At least fifty feet high, the wall was made of grey blocks of stone, the seams tight and smooth enough that she doubted even Teriana could’ve scaled them without rope. The top held fortified guard posts every hundred feet or so, though the lack of motion or brazier smoke suggested that no one—friend or foe—kept watch. A suspicion that was confirmed as they reached the blackened fortress near the center of the pass.

The half-moon exterior wall of the fortress stood whole, but the gate leading into it was gone, the stone stained with soot from where it must have once stood. And running through it was a wide river of blight. Crouching behind dead brush, Killian stared at that gap, his jaw taut. Remembering, she thought. Remembering the last time he’d been here. When the wall had fallen and Rufina had invaded.

Remembering his defeat.

“You see any sign of life?” he asked softly, finally breaking the silence.

Lydia shook her head, having already used her mark to scan the surrounding territory. There was nothing alive. Even the forest around them was dead, leagues and leagues of barren trees as far as the eye could see. “But there could be someone beyond the wall or in the fortress and I wouldn’t be able to tell. Should we wait for darkness before we go in?”

“No.” Killian climbed to his feet. “Darkness is Derin’s advantage, not ours. We’ll go in now.”

Drawing his weapon, he motioned for her to follow, his gaze sweeping their surroundings as they crossed the clear cut between forest and the fortress wall. He held up a hand as he reached the opening, and she paused as he eased alongside the black flow, peering into the courtyard before venturing inward.

Lydia followed, the stench of blight filling her nose as she searched for any signs of life. But there was nothing but blackened stone, snow, and the endless howl of the wind. Her eyes skipped over the outbuildings, recognizing one as a smithy and another as a large stable, the ceilings of both collapsed. The fortress backed against the wall itself, the opening to the tunnel leading through looking like a gaping mouth, the bottom of the raised portcullis like teeth. And through it the blight flowed.

But Killian went neither through the tunnel nor into the fortress, instead going to the narrow steps that switchbacked their way to the top and taking them two at a time. Setting her pack against the wall, Lydia followed, eyes going east to Mudamora, all greys and whites. The main river of blight broke off into narrower branches that stretched as far as her eyes could see.

Reaching the top of the stairs, she took a moment to marvel at the thickness of the wall, wondering how long it had taken to build, then she went to the far edge to join Killian where he stood, hood back, the frigid wind tossing his hair. “The last time I stood here,” he said, “the Derin army filled this pass. An endless sea of blackness and flame.”

But now it was nothing but a carpet of white with a black stripe down the middle. The V-shaped pass sloped upward into Derin, the sides of the mountains that formed it holding nothing but snow, rocks, and a handful of spindly trees, all of them as dead as those on the Mudamorian side.

Was this what Derin looked like? she wondered. Barren and lifeless? “Are you so sure there is something out there?”

“Yes,” Killian said. “Look.”

She followed his pointed finger, narrowing her eyes against the glare. In the distance rose plumes of smoke.

They followed the black river