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

the Twenty-Ninth’s primus and Hostus’s favored man for dirty work. He was Atlian by birth and nearly as big as Servius. “Give him up, and we’ll let you go unharmed.”

His mother lifted her chin, expression defiant. “I don’t know where he went.”

“How sweet,” Carmo crooned. “A mother protecting her son to the bitter end.” When she blanched, he laughed. “Yes, love. We know. And you should know that there isn’t anyone alive the Twenty-Ninth hates like your little prick of a son. He embarrassed us to achieve his own ends, and we’ve long awaited this opportunity to see him dead.”

Just tell him, Marcus silently willed her even though he knew that Carmo had no intention of leaving any of them alive.

But instead, his mother spit at Carmo’s feet. “If you know who he is, then you know I’ll die before giving him up. So get on with it.”

Silence.

“From my experience, mothers can be difficult to break,” Carmo finally said to his men. “There’s really only one way to do it, and that’s to make them choose between their children. Kill the pregnant one. Slowly.”

Tell him! If they came after him first, he could better ambush them in the dark.

A sob tore from his mother’s lips, then she said, “Don’t hurt her. Marcus is in the gardens.”

“Kill everyone but the pregnant one,” Carmo said. “We might have need of her yet.”

The man holding the knife to his mother’s throat started to smile, but the expression fell away as he looked down to see Marcus’s knife embedded in his chest. He staggered backward, clutching the hilt, but Marcus was already moving on his next target.

Sliding across the tiled floor, he caught hold of the man’s fallen knife, lifting it in time to deflect a downward blow from the third man. He kicked him in the kneecap, breaking his leg. The man hissed in pain, but that didn’t stop him from tackling Marcus against the tile.

They rolled, crashing into furniture, glassware shattering around them. Dimly, he heard his mother screaming. Knew that Carmo could be taking the opportunity to kill her. To kill Cordelia.

Panic flooded through him, and Marcus slammed his knee down on the man’s broken leg. He screamed, but instead of trying to pull away, the man took advantage of the position and twisted, his arm going around Marcus’s neck.

He gasped for breath, clawing at the man’s arm, kicking his broken leg. But even as he did, his eyes latched on Carmo, who had his sister on her knees, a knife to her stomach. Tiberius was trying to crawl on his bound wrists, pleading she be spared. Offering any amount of gold for her safety.

But Carmo only kicked him in the face before turning his gaze back to Marcus.

“Hostus wanted to do it himself. In his honor, I’m going to take my time. I’m going to make you watch while I kill every last one of these useless patrician sots. I’m going to—”

His mother flung herself at Carmo. Snarling, he backhanded her with his knife hand, sending her toppling into a table, but Cordelia took advantage, twisting in his grip and sinking her teeth into his wrist. Carmo cursed, slicing at her with his knife. Blood blossomed along her rib cage.

White-hot fury boiled up inside Marcus, and he slammed his head back, feeling the nose of the man holding him shatter. Snatching up a fallen knife, he shoved it between the man’s ribs and then flung himself at Carmo.

His shoulder took the primus in the stomach and sent him falling backward into a potted plant. Screams filled the air, but he ignored them, catching Carmo’s wrist to keep him from stabbing him in the throat.

They rolled, knocking into tables, a marble statue falling and missing Marcus’s face by a hairsbreadth. Catching hold of it, he slammed it against Carmo’s arm, hearing the crack. But the primus only grinned with bloodied teeth and knocked it out of Marcus’s grip. “While you stand behind lines, the rest of us have been fighting, boy. Pain is an old friend.”

He rested his broken arm against Marcus’s throat and leaned. “Go to sleep, Legatus. And when you wake, the fun will begin.”

His vision darkened, stars bursting across his eyes as he fought against the bigger man. Too many people depended on him for him to die. Too many lives were at stake. But Carmo was so much stronger.

Then pottery exploded, raining shards and dust down into Marcus’s face. And his sister’s voice, howling, “Kill him!”

Coughing, he kneed Carmo in the balls. The primus screamed and reared backward, and Marcus rolled out from under him. Grabbing the statue, he twisted and slammed it into Carmo’s face, hearing bones shatter.

Blubbering and screaming, Carmo fell on his back and tried to crawl away, but Marcus was on him. He struck him again with the statue. Then again, his fury blinding him from all sight. All sound. All reason.

He beat him with the heavy marble, blood splattering him in the face, Carmo’s skull shattering and then turning to pulp, but he couldn’t seem to stop. Then a hand caught his arm, wrenching backward. And a voice full of authority said, “Stand down.”

Jerking free, Marcus raised the weapon, ready to fight the new attacker.

Only to find Commandant Wex staring down at him.

“They’re dead,” his mentor said. “But Cassius has ordered your assassination. You need to get back to the Thirty-Seventh, and you need to leave tonight.”

 106LYDIA

“I believed Derin was only a level above the underworld,” Lydia murmured as she followed Baird through the city of Helatha. “But other than the towers, it seems little different than Mudamora.”

The streets were lined with homes and inns and businesses, the squares filled with vendors selling foods and fabrics and tools. People of what seemed like every nationality in the West went about their business, and besides a lack of men—probably mostly dead in the war—and the fallen towers of the god circle, Helatha felt normal.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” the giant answered. “Darkness flourishes here