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

was lit with a single lamp on the table, everything neat and tidy, courtesy of Amarin, who rose as Marcus entered. He swiftly removed Marcus’s armor, then set to polishing it while Marcus walked silently and barefoot to the rear.

In the dim light filtering through the canvas, he could make out Teriana’s form. She was lying on her side facing away from him, blanket pulled up to her shoulders. He couldn’t tell if she was asleep, the rain loud enough to drown out her breathing.

Creeping onto his bedroll, he sat, silently cursing when his knees cracked.

“I thought you weren’t coming back tonight.”

Shit.

“I changed my mind.” Lying on his back, he stared at the canvas above him, knowing there wasn’t a chance of him falling asleep.

Teriana was silent for long enough that he thought she must have succumbed to exhaustion, then she abruptly rolled over to face him, a wet braid smacking him across the chest. “Are we done? Because if we are, I just want to know so—” She broke off, her voice cracking with a stifled sob that made his chest ache. “So that I know.”

It didn’t feel over. Not with the way he was achingly aware of her presence. With the way he wanted to pull her into his arms. With the way he wanted to kiss her and tell her it didn’t matter what she’d done.

Except what if the next time her actions had real consequences? What if they resulted in his men being hurt or killed?

“I can’t do this if I can’t trust you,” he said softly. “And you shouldn’t do it if you can’t trust me.”

Teriana didn’t answer, and he felt sick, his stomach in ropes and his skin clammy, because he didn’t want it to be over. Didn’t want to lose her when he’d only just gotten her back.

Then her fingers interlaced with his, and she whispered, “Then maybe trust is where we need to start.”

 16LYDIA

Mudaire was where she was meant to be. And apparently what she was meant to be doing was reorganizing a library.

Dust puffed in Lydia’s face as she pulled out another mis-shelved volume and moved it to the correct section, the total lack of order making her head ache. There was a system, if not one she would have selected, but it appeared no one had been serving the function of librarian in quite some time. Which wasn’t entirely surprising given the war.

And the fact almost all the healers were now dead.

Logically, she knew this wasn’t the best use of her time, that she should find a suitable volume and start reading, but diving into the middle of things was not how she was in the habit of conducting research. And as it was, she’d yet to even find a volume with a subject that related to the blight. Oh, there were endless volumes on infection, but all focused on diseases of the natural variety, and this was decidedly supernatural. There were also volumes on the Marked, including a jaw-dropping 240 editions of Treatise of the Seven. They were in many different languages, seeming to tell the stories of the Marked from different nations, and they also dated back centuries. She flipped through the crumbling tomes, struggling to read the archaic Mudamorian, but as with the edition Teriana had given her, none told any stories of the corrupted.

Books moved to piles on the table, then onto their appropriate shelves, her mind slowly cataloging the extent of the collection. She felt herself drawn to the many texts written by other healers detailing how they used their marks to repair injuries and remedy illness. Finding one that discussed an outbreak of plague, she sat on one of the chairs and began to read.

What she learned was that Hegeria’s mark had its limits.

Symptoms and damage from illness could be remedied, but the sickness itself couldn’t be cured. The author likened it to poison: The illness must be purged through natural means, a healer able only to temper the symptoms and thus allow the patient’s body opportunity to expel the infection itself.

Similarly, natural defects that an individual was born with could not be remedied with a healer’s mark, though the author suggested another text that discussed how a mark might be used in conjunction with surgery to remedy such afflictions. Natural degeneration and aging were yet other things that marks could not reverse, and it occurred to Lydia that was likely why her eyesight had not improved when she’d been marked.

She read until her eyes grew heavy with exhaustion, yet while she found answers to many questions, none solved the dilemma of the blight.

“You are supposed to be in your room during the curfew hours, Lydia.”

Lydia lurched up from where she’d fallen asleep at the library table. Turning, she saw Quindor standing at the entrance, his arms crossed and brow furrowed.

“Grand Master,” she said, leaping to her feet and inclining her head. Then her eyes took in the mess she’d made, stacks of books filling the tables and sitting on the floor in front of shelves, and she internally cringed. “I was … The library has obviously not had the resources to see to organization in some time. I thought to remedy that.”

“It still does not have the resources,” he answered, the furrow in his brow deepening. “This is not a priority, Lydia. Your strength and your mark are required for hunting those infected with blight, not organizing shelves.”

Her jaw tightened, both her mind and her heart rejecting the idea that hunting people be the foremost of her mandates. “My goal was research,” she said. “To see if I might find something that would help us treat the infected rather than sentencing them to death.”

“One cannot heal the dead any more than one can breathe life into a stone.” He gave his head a sharp shake of annoyance. “Wasted time, and I have no choice but to allow you to waste more of it to clean up this mess. Which you will do during