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

to her, holding armor identical to that the legionnaires wore, along with a hooded cloak. “Cassius will be aware of your presence by now. Put these on.”

Her skin turned to ice, but she managed a nod, accepting his help buckling the breastplate rather than revealing her shaking hands. The cloak went over top, the laces down the front hiding the metal protecting her torso, the hood shadowing her face. It was uncomfortable and hot, but better than the alternative.

Between Austornic and Pullo, they managed to get her on the back of a horse that looked about a hundred years old and required her to thump her heels against its sides half a dozen times before it deigned to start moving. The boys mounted easily, the young legatus trotting his mount to where Marcus stood glowering in his chariot. “They are yours to command, sir.”

Marcus gave a slight nod before barking out orders that Teriana barely registered, her stomach hollowing at the tone of his voice. That cold authority that she hadn’t realized she hated until today. This isn’t who you are, she wanted to scream.

Except maybe it was.

Everything they passed on the short trip to Celendrial was a blur, her horse walking in the correct direction by virtue of Austornic and Pullo keeping her between them, their eyes watchful. Her gaze never left Marcus’s back where he drove the chariot ahead of them, his red cloak fluttering on the wind, the gold dragon embroidered on it glittering in the sun. Half the boys marched ahead and half behind, the noise nearly drowning out the drumbeat.

Ahead, Celendrial appeared in all its filthy glory, sprawling far outside the walls of the inner city. At the sound of the marching men, people poured from their homes, lining the road to watch the parade pass. This was a poorer area of the city, populated primarily by the peregrini—the people from the Empire’s provinces—with only a few Cel faces mixed in among them. At first they cheered and shouted, throwing flower petals at the boys of the Fifty-First’s front ranks.

But then, seemingly in an instant, the tone shifted.

The cheers ceased, a hush rippling its way up the road toward the arches of Celendrial’s eastern gates. Unease prickled along Teriana’s skin, and she searched for what might have triggered the change in mood, because now the hush was being replaced with murmurs of anger.

Not at the boys forming the Fifty-First. But at the man driving the chariot in the midst of them, the flags marked with a 37 flying above him.

“Austornic,” she said, leaning closer to the boy. “What’s going on?”

Beneath his helmet, the young legatus’s jaw tightened. “The consul’s policies are not favored by the peregrini. There is a great deal of ill will toward him.”

Toward Cassius, and by extension, Marcus. Because it was the Thirty-Seventh that had put Lucius Cassius in control of the Empire. Which meant many would see him as complicit in everything Cassius had done since, regardless of the Thirty-Seventh having spent most of his term in the Dark Shores.

The parade ground to a halt at the gates, and a legionnaire with armor bearing a 27 trotted through the parting ranks to stop in front of Marcus’s chariot.

“The Thirty-Seventh legion requests the right of triumph for our victories across the Endless Seas.” Marcus’s voice carried across the crowds. “Will Celendrial open its gates?”

“Do you recognize the authority of the Senate?” the other man replied. “Do you swear your life and loyalty to the Empire?”

“I do.”

Teriana shivered, looking away even as the soldier declared, “The Thirty-Seventh is granted its triumph.”

Horns blared and drums thundered, their music filling Teriana’s ears as the men marched through the gate. She looked up as they passed beneath the dragon mounted atop of it, the gilded serpent that poisoned all it sank its teeth into, and she wasn’t certain whether she wanted to vomit or scream.

Instead, she whispered, “You haven’t won yet,” and then turned her eyes to the streets ahead. To the path that would take her face-to-face with her greatest enemy.

 96KILLIAN

“Welcome to Helatha, city of the damned,” Agrippa said, sitting on his heels on the ridge.

“You make it sound more exciting than it is,” Baird muttered, taking a seat on a rock, but Killian ignored him in favor of getting a look at Derin’s capital city.

And Rufina’s stronghold.

It was larger than he’d expected, unwalled and sprawling, the west side of it resting against a lake so large, he couldn’t see the far side of it. But the enormity wasn’t what made his stomach lurch.

It was the broken god circle at the center of it, only the black stone tower of the Seventh god remaining upright. The other six were leveled, long lines of rubble crisscrossing the city like fallen corpses.

As though sensing his thoughts, Agrippa said, “It’s forbidden to take the stones from the collapsed towers. They’re something of a monument to the Seventh’s supremacy here.”

“How long have they been like that?” Never in his life had Killian seen a god circle felled, and seeing the sacrilege toward the Six filled him with simmering anger. But also with fear, because if the Six held little power here, what did that mean for him?

“A thousand years, it’s said,” Baird answered. “This is an ancient place—older than I’ve ever seen. But for all they are broken, the stones the towers were made from never crumble, which many say is a sign the Six have power here, still.”

“Let us hope,” Killian muttered, wondering what it would feel like to fight without Tremon guiding his hand. How much weaker he’d be. How much slower. “That’s Rufina’s fortress, I take it?”

He pointed to the structure rising out of the lake. It was made of the same black stone as the Seventh’s tower, and though the sun was high in the sky, a shadow seemed to hang over it.

“The Pit,” Agrippa answered. “It’s as much a prison as a fortress. The dungeons beneath it are full of those who’ve crossed Rufina