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

Lydia tightly as she eased one booted foot back along the slick wood. Then under his hands, he felt her tense. “Hurry!” she gasped. “The trunk is breaking. I can see the split.”

Crack.

Killian twisted, managing two steps before the tree snapped. Flipping Lydia over his shoulder, he jumped.

His boots hit the slick boulder in the middle of the river, and he nearly slid off the far side, Lydia screaming as he struggled to keep his balance, eyes on the deadfall flowing around them. An island of safety, though if the water rose any higher, they’d be swept away.

Setting Lydia down in front of him, he kept an arm wrapped around her, but she moved so she stood between him and the Anuk. Protecting him when it should’ve been the other way around.

As if sensing his thoughts, she shouted over the noise. “Don’t even think it, Killian! You do anything foolish and I’ll push you in the river myself!”

Most of the debris had passed, but now brown water roared around them, surging over the rock and soaking his boots. The battle resumed, arrows flying back and forth, both sides taking casualties. No one could help them.

And the river was rising.

Think! he screamed at himself as the water rose above the boulder, now ankle deep. You got her into this, now get her out.

Prickles raced up his skin, and looking upstream, he saw a large tree floating rapidly toward them. Twisting, he looked downstream at the ravine the river flowed into, his eyes fixing on the jagged rocks protruding from the walls.

“Give me your belt!” he shouted.

“Pardon?”

Reaching down, he pulled Lydia’s belt loose, then formed a loop with it. And as the tree shot past, he said, “Jump!”

Together, they leapt into the muddy water, catching hold of the tree and hurtling downstream. Debris slammed into his legs, tangling in his ankles, but Killian kept his eyes fixed on the ravine walls, Lydia’s belt in his hand.

“Hold on to me!” he shouted, then tossed the loop high, the leather catching around an outcropping.

His arm nearly jerked out of its socket as the belt pulled taut. Lydia shrieked, losing her grip around his neck. He caught her robes, swearing as they slid up over her head, but then her hand latched on his sword belt.

“Hold on!” He discarded the garment in the flow, wincing as a tree struck him, nearly tearing them loose. He had to get them up.

Catching hold of Lydia’s belt with his other hand, Killian heaved, dragging them both upward. Hand over hand, he pulled them higher, Lydia clinging to his sword belt, which was sliding dangerously low on his hips.

Lightning crackled and thunder boomed, more water falling from the sky, and he silently cursed Gespurn even as he prayed for respite. His toes found a crack in the cliff wall, and he wedged his foot in deep. Then twisting the belt around his wrist, he let go with his other hand and reached down for Lydia. “Grab hold of me!”

Beneath him, she was still mostly submerged, gasping in pain every time a piece of deadfall struck her, her arms trembling as she fought to keep her grip on his belt.

“Lydia!”

She looked up, eyes full of pain. And determination.

Gods, but he loved her.

Letting go of his belt, she reached up, her hand closing over his wrist.

He heaved, lifting her out of the water, his body trembling until she managed to clamber up him, her bare legs wrapped around his waist, arms around his neck.

“Hold on!”

Reaching up, he caught hold of the outcropping, pulling them higher. Finding toeholds that would support his weight.

And there he stayed.

Twenty paces away, the battle still raged on, the Anuk trying to get across, Sonia and the Royal Army repelling their every advance. But none of that mattered.

She was alive. She was here.

Letting go with one hand, he wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close. Feeling her cheek against his, her hand cold where it pressed against his neck. “I won’t let you fall.”

“I know.” Her breath was warm against his ear. “And you never will.”

Though they were still on the brink of death, Killian felt something akin to regret as he heard Sonia’s voice from above, a rope falling for them to climb, hands grabbing hold of him and Lydia, hauling them to safety.

 57LYDIA

Her return to Killian’s camp was a blur.

After Sonia and the Rowenes soldiers had pulled them up, they’d parted ways. Lydia hadn’t wanted to leave him, not when she’d just come so close to losing him. But Killian needed to resume command of his forces, and her assistance with the injured was required, for there were many.

And even more dead.

Dressed only in boots and a rain-soaked shift, her robes lost to the river, she’d gratefully accepted a cloak from one of the soldiers and then set to work stabilizing the worst of the injured so they could be transported back to camp. A strange form of detachment fell over her as she worked, her eyes for the injury but not the suffering, life slipping from her fingertips to stop bleeding and bolster stuttering hearts even as the cloud of swirling life shed by the dead, the dying, and even the living flowed toward her like iron to a lodestone.

As awful a place as it was to work, stepping over severed limbs and pools of blood and still corpses, there was also something right about using the life sacrificed by the fallen in order to save their faltering comrades, and she saw now that her fears of this circumstance had been misguided. This was where she was meant to be. What she was meant to do.

It was what would come next that terrified her.

Rising, she wiped her hands on her ruined shift, then nodded at the waiting soldiers to lift the man on the ground before her, the gaping wound in his guts sealed over, though he’d require more attention if he were to live. A wave of dizziness passed over her, and