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

like. Sells them off when I’m through with them.” Retrieving the kettle, he rinsed the dirt out of the two cups and filled them. Then he dumped the rest of the water on the back of the hide and began rubbing it into the stiff skin. “Would you mind getting more snow? This is going to take a fair bit of water.”

Putting on the wool hat and mittens this time, Teriana ventured back outside, clenching her teeth as the air bit into her warmed skin. How people lived in this gods-forsaken place was beyond her. The unrelenting heat and rain of Arinoquia was paradise by comparison.

The snow crunched beneath her feet, and it wasn’t long until it felt as though she was walking barefoot, the thin leather soles affording little protection and snow falling inside her hacked-off boot, though her thoughts pulled her away from the discomfort.

It was strange to hear Marcus talk about his past. Because he didn’t. Not ever.

How did a child too sick to do anything but read books in his father’s library become the commander of a legion? That fateful day back in Arinoquia, Titus had told her it was genius, but that was only part of it. Willpower, for certain. Ambition. But those were only words, and what she found herself desperately wanting was the stories of those attributes in action, because it had been those events that had shaped him. She wanted to know him. Wanted to know all of him, because—

Snow crunched.

Teriana leapt upright, swinging the kettle in a wide arc, missing Marcus by an inch. Heart in her throat, she lowered her weapon. “You startled me.”

He opened his mouth, probably to reprimand her for not remaining alert, but then he shook his head and said, “You all right?”

“Aye. Was just … thinking.”

Squinting, he looked up at the position of the sun. “We’ve got about six hours until the sun starts to set. We need to eat, deal with this hide, collapse that tunnel, and prepare for whatever tonight delivers upon us.”

“Right.” She fell into step next to him, the kettle swinging in her grip. And before she knew what she was doing, Teriana asked, “How did you meet Felix?”

“At Campus Lescendor.”

Rolling her eyes, she said, “Obviously. I meant, how did you meet him when you were there?”

“Oh.”

She could feel him looking at her, but kept her eyes on the snow, waiting for his answer.

“We were delivered on the same day. His number is directly before mine, so we were always lined up together. Were bunkmates in the dormitories. Eight bunks per room, two boys per bunk, so sixteen boys.”

“Thanks for doing the math for me.”

He huffed out a laugh, then his face tightened. “I … I fought with him before we left camp. I was convinced it had been him who’d betrayed me, and the things I said…”

“When we get back, you can explain,” she said. “He’ll understand. He’ll forgive you.”

“Some things are unforgivable.”

“Maybe so. But you won’t know until you apologize, and you won’t be able to do that if you don’t get out of Sibern. So focus on that instead.”

His throat bobbed, and he gave a tight nod. And then, to her astonishment, he closed his hand around hers, holding it tightly as they walked. Something he’d never done before. That they’d never been able to do. She smiled at the snow, a soft ache stealing over her.

This is something stupid. This is a mistake. This is folly.

She was going to do it anyway.

Looking up at him, she asked, “Will you tell me about growing up in Lescendor?”

 46MARCUS

Marcus opened one eye, his gaze slowly focusing on the flickering glow of the fire in the stove, the sound of Teriana singing to herself outside the shack easing his concerns about her welfare.

She’d peppered him with questions about his years in training, and he’d found himself telling her things that he’d never told anyone—had never had cause to. They were the stories of the Thirty-Seventh, which meant all of his men knew them. Or had ones just like them, so only the more memorable moments ever came up in conversation over the campfire. And there was something very different between reminiscing with comrades about the tribulations that had bound them together and telling those same stories to someone who stood apart.

It was, to a certain extent, easy to talk about his time at Lescendor, because the lie of his identity came before arriving at its gates and the worst of what he’d done in his life had come after he’d left them. He told her of the many times Felix had concealed his illness, by either hiding him when he had an attack or by pretending to be him to prevent one—for the night of the battle for Galinha had been by no means the first instance. Of how Servius had come to know and the measures his big friend had taken to protect him.

She’d been fascinated with his rise to command, pressing him for details of how he’d recognized that the instructors were always watching, grading and measuring, determining which boys were leaders and which were followers. How the six thousand or so children of their year had immediately fractured into gangs—loners did not fare well at Lescendor—and how they’d warred against one another in the side halls and dark hours, always jockeying for control. How he’d learned to trade in the currency of Lescendor—rations and perquisites and favors—recruiting when he could, using fists when politics failed, creating a gang full of the boys he needed, all of them loyal to a fault.

He’d told her how with each passing year, the gangs grew larger in size and fewer in number. How in their third year, the teachers had split them out that way for war games, gang leaders forced to prove themselves as commanders, not just instigators of hallway brawls. How at that point, he’d started sneaking into the library at every possible moment to listen in on the lessons of the older