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

the corner, she saw him clicking glasses with Baird and Agrippa, piles of cards and coins littering the table, a half dozen pretty girls squeezed into the benches around them.

Stomach tightening, Lydia spun away and climbed the stairs to their room. Inside, she flung off her cloak and used the water in the basin to clean off the sticky clear liquid she’d gotten covered in while hacking at the vines, angry accusations rising and falling on her lips. That she’d been out searching those awful mounds for Malahi while he’d been carousing. That she’d been trying to save a corrupted tender while he’d been flirting with pretty girls. Over and over, she rehearsed exactly what she was going to say to him when he finally dragged his sorry ass up to the room, her script growing more elaborate and scathing with each revision.

Then she heard a thump in the hallway and a muttered oath, then male laughter. A second later, the handle of the door jiggled.

“Gertrude?” Not Killian’s voice, but Agrippa’s.

Concerned, she crossed to the door, unlatched it, and heaved it open. To find Killian slumped between Agrippa and Baird, all three of them grinning wildly.

“Are you drunk?” she demanded, crossing her arms.

Killian squinted at her, his eyes swollen and bruised, pieces of bloodstained cloth shoved up his broken nose. “No.”

Agrippa and Baird both laughed, dragging him in and tossing him on the bed. “In case he forgets,” the former said, “could you remind him that we leave tomorrow? Dawn seems a bit aggressive, all things considered, so let’s say midday.”

Leave?

Trusting Killian would have answers, she only nodded, shutting and locking the door behind them. Then she strode over to the bed and snapped, “You’d better have a good explanation for why you’re jaw-droppingly drunk, because from my standpoint, it appears one of your more shortsighted plans. And that’s saying something.”

Killian didn’t answer.

And when she leaned down to peer at him in the dim light, she realized he had already fallen asleep.

“I don’t think so,” she snapped. And going to retrieve the washbasin, she tossed the icy contents on his face.

Shouting in alarm, he fell off the side of the bed, then staggered to his feet, trying to extract his sword. But instead, he tripped and fell, landing hard on his ass. Glowering up at her, he said, “What was that for?”

“For being stupid,” she said, resting her hands on her hips. “And for falling asleep while I was talking to you. And because I was crawling inside those awful plant mounds while you were … carousing and having fun.”

“Oh, yes,” he snapped back, dragging himself upward onto the bed. “Because getting beaten half to death by a giant is such a delight. And I was doing things, too, so…” Then he frowned. “You were supposed to be in this room.”

“I was looking for any sign of Malahi.”

Killian scrubbed a hand through his hair. “She’s not in Deadground. Rufina has her in her fortress. A place called Helatha.”

“Right.” Lydia swallowed, and not wanting to feel as though what she’d endured was in vain, she said, “As we suspected, the mounds are causing the blight. But they aren’t just plants … the corrupted tenders are inside them. From what I can tell, they are stealing the life from the earth, and it’s turning them into sort of a plant-human hybrid.”

Killian stared at her. “Pardon?”

Hissing out a frustrated breath, she pushed a glass of water into his hand, then sat on the bed next to him, explaining what she’d seen. “I … I tried to cut her free,” she admitted. “She died. I left the rest of them alone.”

Murderer.

“Ideally, we’d dispatch the others.” He rubbed at his temples, seemingly unaware of the guilt twisting through her. “But with one of the tenders dead, they are bound to increase the guards around the remainder. I don’t want to do anything that jeopardizes us getting into Derin and finding Malahi.”

Relief flooded through her, because the thought of killing the rest had made her stomach twist. “Did you figure out how to manage that?”

“Yes, I got a job.” Flopping back down on the bed, he sighed. “As hired muscle for Agrippa and Baird’s business—they escort people through the Liratoras for a steep price. Apparently picking a fight with me was an audition of sorts.”

“But you can’t…,” she started to say, and only then realized that he was using his left arm. And a quick assessment of him using her mark revealed that his ribs were no longer fractured. “Who healed you?”

“A corrupted named Sly.” Groaning, Killian rolled across the bed to the half that wasn’t soaked with wash water. “Agrippa paid for it with some of his own life. Literally. Apparently the corrupted can act as a conduit and take life from one person to give to another. Agrippa’s not bad, once you get to know him. The girls around here sure like him.”

“He’s from Celendor.”

Killian turned his head. “What?”

“His heritage is mixed, but there is no mistaking that golden hue to his skin. Or his name,” she said. “And he’s also carrying the style of blade favored by the Empire’s legions, so I bet if you get his shirt off, you’ll find he’s got a legion number tattooed on his chest. That said, he’s fluent in Mudamorian and has no accent, so I’d say that however he got here, it was some time ago. Do you think it’s too risky to ask him?”

Killian didn’t answer, and when she looked up, she saw his eyes were closed. And a second later, he started to snore.

Sighing, she rose and pulled off his boots, tossing them aside. Unbuckling his sword belt, she leaned the weapon next to the bed and then pulled the blanket over him. Courtesy of his broken nose, he was snoring loudly now, and retrieving the lamp, she looked over his remaining injuries, it requiring all of her self-control not to erase them.

Instead, she brushed back his hair from his face, her heart tightening at the silky