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

not just because she’d been awake for close to a day and had healed dozens of soldiers, but because of the conversation she and Killian needed to have. Staring at the carpet on the ground, she mentally composed a speech explaining that King Serrick and the Royal Army had been reduced to walking corpses. That Cyntha and Rufina were one and the same. But the part where her mind stuttered was finding a way to tell him that Malahi was alive and Rufina’s prisoner, as well as her belief that the Queen was being forced to use her mark to dark ends.

Her eyes burned, and deciding that Finn had been distracted and wasn’t coming, Lydia lay down and pulled one of the furs over her cold legs.

The bedding smelled like Killian. Like soap and horses and leather, and she buried her face in the pillow, inhaling deeply, desire and misery fighting each other for supremacy in her core.

It can’t be, she silently reminded herself. Malahi is alive. He’s still betrothed to her. Still sworn to her for life.

Sleep began to steal over her, the world fading away, but then the loud thud of boots along with sharp clangs of metal things being dropped jerked her awake.

“Finn!” Killian’s voice, muffled through the door, but clearly him. “I need you to clean the blood off of all of this before it rusts. And please tell me I have at least one clean shirt in the disaster that I know is on the other side of this door.”

Said door flung open, and Lydia clambered to her feet, watching as Killian strode in, his face concealed by the padding he wore under his armor as he tore it off and tossed it into the hallway, then pulled the door shut. Turning, his eyes latched on her, and he froze.

Before he could speak, she blurted out, “Finn told me to wait in here. I’m still waiting for someone to bring me clothes.”

“Right.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “He didn’t mention it when I came in.”

Her face burned hot. “I can leave.”

“Don’t leave!” His cheeks flushed slightly pink. “I mean, it’s fine that you’re here. I just didn’t…” He glanced down at his bare chest. “I needed a clean shirt.”

“You don’t have any,” she informed him, struggling to keep her own eyes on his face. A thousand times she’d imagined seeing him like this, but what visions her imagination had conjured were pale comparisons to the reality, his body all hard muscle and taut, dusky skin, the weight of his weapons pulling his trousers low enough to reveal his hipbones. “You don’t have clean anything. This room is a disaster.”

He laughed, scrubbing a hand through his wet hair, the dark locks falling back to rest against his cheeks, which looked as though they hadn’t seen a razor in close to a week. “Normally Finn is better at flirting with the kitchen girls to get them to do the work for him. He must be losing his touch.”

Silence stretched, the few paces that were all that stood between them so thick with tension Lydia felt she could hardly breathe, much less speak.

Tell him! her conscience screamed at her. Get it over with!

Yet before she could work up the courage to open her lips, Killian said, “I thought you were dead. We received word from Serrick that Hegeria’s tower had been overrun by blighters and that all inside had been killed.”

“It was. And they were.” She swallowed, grief for her fellow healers that had fallen rising in her chest. “That message didn’t come from Serrick. He’s dead and risen as a blighter. The whole Royal Army has been turned. It was Rufina. She and Cyntha are one and the same—using her mark to take lives gives her back her youth, but the effect fades. She’s been controlling Serrick this whole time, and when I discovered how to cure those infected by the blight before they turned, she made her move.”

“Gods…,” he whispered. “How did you get out?”

“High Lady Falorn rescued me when the blighter army attacked Hegeria’s temple. We were able to make it to a Maarin ship waiting out at sea, and they brought us south via xenthier. Dareena, Gwen, and Lena are heading to Serlania to rally an army.”

He closed his eyes, giving a slight shake of his head before opening them. “I’m in Dareena’s debt.”

“It was my life. If anyone owes her, it’s me.” Although High Lady Falorn didn’t seem the sort to hold debts.

“It should’ve been me.” In three quick steps, he was in front of her, only inches separating them. “I shouldn’t have left you there, knowing the dangers. At the very least I should’ve been there.”

“We both know that wasn’t possible. And I don’t regret choosing to go.” Though she knew she shouldn’t, Lydia reached up, curling her hand around the back of his neck. His skin was hot beneath her fingers, his hair soft where it brushed the back of her wrist. “But you should know that I felt your absence keenly.”

“Is that why you’re here?” His voice was rough, low enough that if she hadn’t been so close to him, she wouldn’t have heard.

She was here because Malahi was alive and needed to be rescued. Here because an army of possessed corpses would soon march south to make war on the living. But as his hand curved around her waist, warm through the thin linen of his shirt, none of that seemed to matter. “Yes.”

And then his mouth descended on hers, words ceasing to matter.

She’d dreamed of this. Gods, but she’d dreamed of it. Of the softness of his lips and the taste of his tongue and the feel of his body against her hands, but again her mind had failed her. Not in its reckoning of her desire, which flowed hot and wild through her veins, but in how intensely she would feel the rightness of his touch. As though his hands had been made to curve around