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

Austornic inhaled, his eyes distant as he considered. Thirteen years old, and already responsible for the lives of the thousands of boys in the Fifty-First. There was much about him that reminded her of Marcus: the methodical intelligence, the loyalty to his men. But whereas Marcus was tarnished by ruthlessness, this boy exuded a sort of kindness.

She wondered how long he’d keep it.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“You want to wait the year the Senate will likely take to decide the path is safe?” She injected as much scorn into the word as she could, casting a sideways glance at Valerius.

“Safety is relative,” Austornic replied. “If we stay, Cassius will give us to the Twenty-Ninth for the rest of our training. I think you understand why I might be of a mind to avoid that fate.”

Fresh fodder for a sadist. Teriana’s belly soured, because as was so often the case, these boys were facing a dearth of good options. “Let’s see if we can’t get you out of reach, then.”

Valerius shook his head. “Teriana—”

“I need you to get me a meeting,” she said before he could start telling her what she should or should not be doing.

“You want to meet with the Senate?”

“No.” Gods help her for asking this. “I want you to set up a meeting between me and Lucius Cassius.”

 108LYDIA

Lydia fought Rufina, kicking and screaming, down the corridors, but the corrupted queen only laughed and dragged her onward until they reached a cavernous room with a large throne at one end. But that wasn’t what captured Lydia’s gaze: it was the circular hole at the center of the space from which freezing air emanated.

Rufina hauled Lydia toward it, and she screamed, panic rising as the woman hung her over the opening, only her grip on Lydia’s hair keeping her from plummeting into the endless dark depths. An icy wind blew, making her skin burn, and as she stared down, Lydia swore she could see the Corrupter himself staring back at her.

Then Rufina hauled her upright, dropping Lydia on the floor. “Someday,” she whispered. “But for now, I’ve need of you.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

Then Rufina said, “The last time I saw Princess Kitaryia, she was little more than a babe in her mother’s arms, the pair leaping off the balcony of the Royal Palace into the ocean below. Even with my knife in her back, I knew your mother had survived the fall. The gods have always favored the Falorn family. And no bodies were ever found.”

Lydia didn’t answer, only met her cold stare with one of her own.

“I was certain one of Madoria’s had intervened and spirited the pair of you away, but Agrippa tells me that Camilla took you to the far side of the world. To the … Celendor Empire.” She said the name with relish. “Out of reach of both me and the gods. Is she alive?”

“No,” Lydia whispered, hate rising from the embers of her anger like curls of smoke. “She bled to death on the street.”

A soft chuckle exited Rufina’s lips. “If she’d stayed, a healer could have saved her. But neither gods nor their marks have power in Celendor, or so Agrippa tells me.”

Logically, Lydia had known that. But it still hurt that her mother had died to protect her. “He’s quite the source of information.”

“Isn’t he just,” Rufina murmured. “He opened my master’s eyes to a world of opportunity, for my master looks back at those who gaze into the darkness, whether they know his name or not.”

Cassius. Lydia’s blood chilled, but she kept the reaction from her face. “Like you did?”

“Even so.” Rufina sat on the ground in front of her, resting her chin on her knees, watching Lydia. “You want to know why, don’t you?”

“I already know why, Cyntha.” Lydia spit her name. “Because you were jealous and spiteful that my father chose my mother over you. And rather than getting over it like a rational person, you gave yourself to the Corrupter in order to have your vengeance.”

Rufina smiled. “You make me sound so petty.”

“Because you are.”

“No, I was just a woman who grew tired of being powerless. Tired of being used.” Tilting her head, Rufina added, “Hegeria marked me to save your father’s life, did you know that?” Then she laughed. “Of course you don’t. He quelled that story, disliking the thought of anyone’s fame eclipsing his own. But no one knowing it doesn’t make it less true.”

There was a part of Lydia that hated Rufina speaking about her father in such a way, but another part of her was loath to silence her, because this was her story as much as Rufina’s, and she rather thought the corrupted queen might be the only one who’d ever give her the whole truth.

“I was the warrior healer who guarded his back and pieced him together whenever he got in too deep, which was often. I was also in his bed for ten years, which is the only thing anyone remembers about Cyntha, if they remember anything at all.” She sighed. “And I loved him more than life itself, which was my true downfall.”

How much evil has been done in the name of love? Lydia wondered as she stared at Rufina’s flaming eyes. How many people have been hurt?

“For most of my life I was his in every possible way, and then one day, he decided it was time to take a wife. To give Mudamora a queen.” The flames around her irises softened into a faint red glow. “But it wasn’t to be me. He needed someone fit to produce heirs, and Hegeria’s mark is … parasitic. And all my pleas that I’d refrain from healing anyone until a child was born fell on deaf ears because he didn’t want to give up my capacity to heal him.”

Lydia could hear the remembered pain in Rufina’s voice, the hurt. Could all but feel the powerlessness she must have felt in that moment. And there was a part of her, deep down,