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

She lifted one shoulder. “When have you ever known me to walk on eggshells?”

With him? Never. And the last thing he wanted was for that to change. He valued her voice too much to ever want it silenced. “I don’t get set off as easily as I did when I was young. Though when it does happen, it’s worse.”

When he’d been small, anything had set him off. Everything. Climbing the stairs. Pulling a dusty book off a shelf. Being teased by the other children. He’d learned to fear it so badly that sometimes the idea that something might set him off was enough to send him spiraling into wheezing fits. “You do it to yourself!” he remembered his father shouting at him. “Quit fretting, and it won’t happen.”

As if that were so easy.

“When I was a child, exertion usually did it,” he said, feeling her eyes on him. “Climbing the Hill in Celendrial was too taxing for me.”

“It’s a big hill.”

He snorted. “Anyway, once exercise became part of my daily life, it started to take more to wind me and after a few months, it only rarely happened due to exertion. Up until that point, it was happening once, sometimes twice, a day. But it’s been ten years since that’s done it. Though this cold air won’t do me any favors.”

“Good to know.”

“Dust and smoke and horses and flowers make me sneeze.” His cheeks burned hot at the admission. “That can still do it, but the attacks aren’t so bad. Not like what you saw.”

“So what does it?” Her voice was soft, barely audible over the wind.

Marcus rubbed his chin, which was itchy with stubble, eyes fixed on the milepost because he couldn’t look at her while talking about this. “Stress, I suppose.”

Though that wasn’t precisely it. His life was one stressor after the next. If stress were all it took, he’d never get off the floor. “It’s when I feel … certain things. Negative things that make me panic.”

Things he felt helpless to combat. Things that sent him spiraling down, as though his own body were trying to strangle the emotions out.

“Like what?” Of course she wouldn’t leave it alone. “What’s the biggest instigator?”

He kicked the snow, thinking hard before he finally muttered, “Guilt.”

They alternated jogging and walking through the day, moving faster along stretches that had been blown clear by the wind and trudging through places where the snow had settled into dips in the ground. There’d been no sign the wolves were in pursuit, but then again, there wouldn’t be. They were nothing if not consummate hunters. Even still, he cast a backward glance over the plain, searching for signs of motion.

“There it is.”

Teriana was somewhat ahead of him when he turned back around, stopped with her hands resting on her knees, shoulders rising and falling as she panted. He joined her at the top of a slight incline, sighing at the sight of the ravine below. It was steep and icy, and a frozen stream snaked along the bottom, two logs resting across it functioning as a bridge. But on the far side was a shack almost identical to the one they’d left behind.

Casting a backward glance, Marcus calculated the amount of time they had. An hour, perhaps slightly more. “Let’s go. Take it easy, the last thing we need is for one of us to break any bones falling down a hill.”

Taking hold of her hand, he braced one leg and helped her slide down until her feet connected with an outcropping, trying to ignore the slight tremor in his leg.

Almost there.

He eased down to where Teriana stood, then gripped her wrists and lowered her to the next solid piece of footing, all the muscles in his body rebelling against the strain. She balanced him as he slid next to her, then motioned for him to follow. “This way.”

Together, they picked their way down the steep slope, clinging to rocks and the few scrubby bushes that poked through the snow until they stood at the bottom, which was shadowed from the sun. It was not quite cold enough for the stream to have frozen over, bits of ice floating on the rapidly flowing water. Picking his way onto the logs, Marcus knelt and dipped a cup into the water, trusting it would be clean to drink.

It was frigid enough to make his teeth ache, but bliss against his parched throat. Reaching down to refill it for Teriana, he lifted his head.

And locked eyes with a wolf.

It was smaller than the others had been, likely juvenile, but Marcus suspected it still weighed close to a hundred pounds. Like the others, it was inky black, but this animal’s face was frosted with white. Green eyes regarded Marcus intently, ears pricked forward with interest but no aggression. Either a loner or part of a different pack. “Teriana.”

“I see it.” Her voice was breathy. “I don’t see any others.”

Easing up, Marcus kept his attention on the wolf even as he scanned their surroundings for any sign of movement. There was nothing but the gurgle of the stream, but that could change in a heartbeat. They needed to get up that slope and into the shelter. “Move slowly,” he said. “I don’t think it will attack us on its own unless it feels threatened.”

Teriana climbed onto the bridge, knife gripped in one hand as she crossed the slippery wood, the wolf watching with interest as they stepped on the opposite bank.

Wind gusted into the ravine, blasting them in the back and ruffling the wolf’s fur. Its ears abruptly pinned, eyes looking past them as though searching for the source of a smell or noise.

Then in a flash of motion, it was running, climbing the steep slope that awaited them in great leaping bounds. Not a predator.

But the prey.

Marcus’s heart pounded a rapid drumbeat against his ribs, a primal sort of fear filling him. “The pack is coming. Run!”

Adrenaline