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

wildness of the storm, his horse splattering through rivers of mud. But he kept the pace until the fortress appeared.

“Welcome to Faul.”

“Welcome to Sibal.”

“Welcome to Atlia.”

“Welcome to Bardeen, sir.” Marcus barely heard the words. Falling to his knees, he heaved up the contents of his stomach, the ground around him lurching and swaying.

“You all right, sir?” The legionnaire dropped to one knee, hand resting on Marcus’s shoulder. “You need a medic?”

“No.” Marcus wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s just been a long day.” Less than a day since he’d left Teriana in Celendrial.

It already felt like a lifetime.

“I need to get inland.” He climbed to his feet, though it was only the older man’s grip that kept him from falling over sideways. “Urgent business.”

“That’s a dangerous journey, sir. You’ll need an escort.”

Marcus shrugged the man off, knowing if he stopped even for a moment that he’d pass out. And that it would cost him everything.

Might cost her everything.

“Horse.” He coughed, his chest aching. “Now.”

 110KILLIAN

They’d dragged him down into the dungeons beneath Rufina’s palace, the air stinking of moisture and rot and waste, and thrown him into one of the cells with the chains on his ankles and wrists still firmly in place.

If they’d left him alone, he might have had a chance of extricating himself with the pick he’d hidden in the heel of his boot, but instead, the three soldiers remained, their eyes never moving from him despite the shrieks and cries of those locked in the surrounding cells.

Even then, he might have gotten free, except all three of them were corrupted.

Not that Killian didn’t intend to try. He had to.

He should’ve known that Lydia had given up too easily with the way she’d marched down the trail at Baird’s side, never once looking back. Should’ve known that she’d risk herself to save him. It was who she was.

And who she was, was Kitaryia Falorn.

Which was impossible. And yet … not.

While King Derrek Falorn’s body had been discovered in his rooms, drained of life by one of the corrupted, the bodies of his wife and daughter had never been found, the blood splatter found on the balcony suggesting the worst. And Killian’s own father had searched for them for months, for years, never finding a whisper of a rumor that either survived.

But they had. Or at least, Kitaryia had. On the far side of the world, hidden away in the heart of the Celendor Empire. Until chance or fate or some act of the gods had brought her back.

Grinding his teeth, Killian again assessed his options for escape, but he’d not gotten himself into this expecting to have to extricate himself right away. Or at all. But thanks to that traitor Agrippa, dying was not an option. Not with Malahi and Lydia both prisoners.

Think.

The moans of the other prisoners were abruptly drowned out by the sounds of running feet, and a second later, someone shouted, “Has Calorian escaped?”

“No,” one of the corrupted, a short man with a greasy mustache, answered. “He hasn’t moved since we tossed him in there.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” the corrupted snapped. “Come see for yourself.”

A soldier appeared in front of Killian’s cell, peering in at him. But instead of relief filling his gaze, the man swore. “Shit! It wasn’t him.”

“Wasn’t him that did what?”

“Someone’s taken the Rowenes girl. Her guards are dead. We’re searching the palace, but…”

Killian’s shoulders started to shake, and though he knew it was probably better to stay silent, no amount of control could contain the laughter that spilled from his lips. Especially as realization of who the culprits were dawned on their faces.

All of them were staring at him, then the mustached corrupted said, “Someone needs to tell the Queen.”

Taking hold of the bars, Killian leaned against them and smiled. “Which one of you lucky bastards will be the one to tell her that her own general just stole her prize out from under her very nose while all of you guarded the decoy?”

All of them gaped at him, their dismay palpable.

Stepping back, Killian laughed even as his focus turned entirely to Lydia. To what might happen if he didn’t get to her soon. “That’s what I thought.”

 111MARCUS

Bardeen was a pot that had already boiled over, and as he galloped down the muddy road to Hydrilla, passing patrol after patrol, Marcus saw endless signs of the violence that had come as a result. Violence that, once upon a time, he had predicted would come.

Bodies of Bardenese rebels left where they’d fallen and turned a grotesque purplish black, blood in pools around them. And Marcus knew that the only reason there wasn’t legion dead surrounding them was because the legions buried their own.

It took him close to a day to make the journey to Hydrilla, the fortress city that he and the Thirty-Seventh had defeated what felt like a lifetime ago. His eyes took in the familiar ramparts, the echoes of catapults and drums and screams filling his ears, and an old guilt bit at his stomach.

But it wasn’t to the fortress he went, but rather to the ground that had once held the camp the Thirty-Seventh had shared with the Twenty-Ninth. To the worn path leading to a bridge that had once stretched across a violent river of water. But now the ground beneath was nothing but rocks and mud, the river rerouted by a thick dike.

Sturdy walls made of Bardenese redwoods surrounded the spot where the river had flown over its falls, mounds of dirt still piled outside from the excavation. And at the base of the hole they’d dug was the xenthier that would take him back to Arinioquia.

That would take him back to the Thirty-Seventh.

He was so close.

Dismounting, he abandoned the exhausted horse, walking on wobbling knees toward the men posted outside the gate. They saluted, their eyebrows rising at the sight of the number on his chest.

“This stem has been mapped,” he said to them. “It leads across to the Dark Shores where