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

One of the wolves slammed against the side of the shack with impressive force, and Marcus pulled her against him. Held her as she dug her fingers into his shoulders, painfully exhausted but unwilling to sacrifice the moment before she had to. Then she said, “I was born on land. In my grandmother’s house with all my aunts present so that the first sounds I’d hear were the songs of our people…”

They set out at dawn the following morning, barely making it to the next shack before dusk only to repeat the trial the next day. And the next.

And the wolves never let up.

Each night, they’d take turns attacking the shacks, snarling and barking and howling, creating a deafening cacophony that would’ve been impossible to sleep through even if she hadn’t been in perpetual fear one of them would get inside. Every time exhaustion dragged her under, one of the wolves would shatter the silence, yanking her back into wakefulness, only to repeat the process over and over again, night after night. And like some sort of retribution delivered by the dead pack member she and Marcus were slowly consuming, the constant diet of meat took its toll on their guts, doubling both of them over with cramps that slowed them to a crawl if it didn’t send them diving behind barren trees or the nearest snowbank for some semblance of privacy.

It was the purest form of misery, both of them rendered unfocused and irritable. Teriana rather thought that if they were still capable of speaking to each other after this experience, that their relationship might well survive them being enemies on the opposite side of a battlefield.

Now another dawn was upon them. They’d agreed the night before that if it were even slightly cloudy today that they’d stay put and rest rather than risk the wolves coming after them before sunset. But from the gleam of light surrounding the door, Teriana already knew she was destined for disappointment.

Lifting the crossbeams and setting them aside, Marcus opened the door, the brightness of the sun even at this early hour causing Teriana to squint. There was a fresh layer of powder coating the land around them—only a few inches—but enough, she knew, to make the going even slower.

“You indicated,” she said, knowing her voice sounded like the rasp of sandpaper on wood, “that we’d be out of this pack’s territory and into another’s by now. You”—she coughed to clear her throat—“were wrong.”

Marcus slowly turned his head, his eyes squinting and bloodshot, the grey-blue irises devoid of their usual sharpness. “By all means”—he sounded worse than she did—“please feel free to contribute any helpful information you might have on Sibernese wolves.”

“At least I never pretended to be an expert.” She glowered at him, noting that his golden Cel skin was chapped red from the wind and dryness where it wasn’t covered with dirt, and worst of all, that the beard had grown. “You look like shit, by the way.”

He leaned close, their eyes locked, his clearly scrutinizing hers. “You know the color of the water where the river Savio hits the sea?”

The river running through the center of Celendrial was effectively a sewer. The color it turned the ocean was not pretty. “Yes. Why?”

Her sluggish brain answered her own question a heartbeat after she asked it, but Marcus still obliged her with an exaggerated cock of one eyebrow.

“Jackass,” Teriana muttered, but he was already turning to the heavy wooden icebox holding their diminishing store of meat, hoisting the satchel containing it and then starting toward the distant mile marker. She fell in next him, elbow to elbow, their feet making soft crunches in the pristine snow.

They didn’t speak, each step such an act of will that there was no energy left for anything else beyond the occasional upward glance at the next mile marker.

Step.

Step.

Step.

The muscles of her legs slowly unstiffened even as her stomach cramped. Teriana pressed a hand to her abdomen, feet tripping over themselves with her loss of focus. Only Marcus catching her elbow kept her from sprawling in the snow.

Step.

Step.

Step.

They passed a mile marker, and she glanced up to read the number. Four. Sixteen more to go. The muscles of her face tightened with the sudden urge to cry. Keep going.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Her lip began to bleed where it had split from the dryness, and she licked it, tasting iron and salt. Licked it again, though she knew doing so would only make it worse. It was like a compulsion, her tongue snaking across the wound every three steps, her mind latching onto the pattern in a manic, desperate sort of way. Stop it, she told herself. Just stop doing it.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Her tongue ran over her lip, and an angry shriek filled the air. Her mind took far too long to realize the sound was coming from her. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she dropped to her knees, pressing her forehead against the snow.

“Drink some water.”

Marcus was tugging on her shoulder, pushing a cup into her hand, the kettle sitting next to him in the snow. She couldn’t remember him taking it from her.

“We’re halfway there.”

“What?” Lifting her head, she tried to focus on the number carved into the post a few paces away, but it swam in and out of focus. “I don’t … When?” Her skull throbbed along with her abused lip, the pulse the same rhythm her steps had been. “I’m losing my mind.”

“Halfway there.” He lifted her hand so that the metal of her cup pressed against her lips. “You only need to repeat what you’ve already accomplished once today.”

I can’t.

“Drink.”

She swallowed the cold water, droplets running down her chin.

“Can you eat?”

She gagged in response, only her clenched teeth keeping the water from coming back up as she pressed her forehead back in the snow. “How do you keep going?”

“I’ve been marching most of my life.” He tugged the satchel of supplies she carried off her shoulders and onto