Gilded Serpent Danielle Jensen (i can read with my eyes shut .TXT) 📖

moved to Quintus. “You will fall to command or it will be me you answer to, understood?”

Blood ran from Quintus’s nose, was smeared across his cheeks and chin, but Teriana could have sworn he blanched.

“Everyone in the Thirty-Seventh is waiting for you to desert, Quintus,” Felix said softly. “No one wants you at their back. Except for her.” He jabbed a finger in Teriana’s direction and she jumped. “No one trusts you. Except for her.”

Silence.

“Prove yourself worthy of that trust,” Felix finally said. “Or see yourself drowned in the latrines as others have suggested.”

“Yes, sir.” Quintus’s voice was shaky. “Understood, sir.”

Felix moved to walk away, but Teriana caught his arm. “Felix.”

His jaw tightened as though drowning himself in the latrines might be preferable to listening to anything she might say. “Make it quick, Teriana. I’ve a thousand men waiting on the field for me and I’d not waste their time. Or my own.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For everything.”

He stared at the ground between them for a long moment, then lifted his face to meet her gaze. The grief in them hollowed out her stomach even as she wondered what Marcus had said to him.

“I’d cut my own throat before doing anything to hurt him, including hurting you,” he said. “He doesn’t seem to believe that, but I hope you do.”

Then he jerked his arm out of her grip and strode away through camp.

“I, for one,” Gibzen said from behind her, “am looking forward to some time away from this camp. I’m sure you are, too, Teriana.”

Whirling around, she stared at him, wondering if Felix wasn’t the only one Marcus intended to evict from his life. “What are you talking about?”

“We’ve found the stem,” Gibzen answered. “Get your gear ready. Legatus wants to head inland to see it within the hour.”

 27KILLIAN

Cresting a ridge, Killian pulled Seahawk to a stop to survey the dry, rocky plains before him.

And the fortress rising up from them like a mirage in the distance.

“Rotahn?”

Sonia had stopped her own mount next to him, one hand shading her eyes from the sun as she peered over the plain. Her clothes were travel-stained and her face shadowed with exhaustion, as were the faces of the five hundred men of the Royal Army that he’d brought with him. He’d pushed them and their mounts to the brink in order to reach the Rowenes stronghold as soon as possible.

Not out of eagerness to deal with the Anuk threat, but rather because the sooner he put an end to the raiding, the sooner he’d be able to rejoin the rest of the Royal Army in Mudaire.

Where Lydia was training at Hegeria’s temple.

“Is that it? It’s small.”

The disappointment in Finn’s voice was palpable as he stood up in the stirrups, the orphan, and former ruler of Mudaire’s sewers, seeming untouched by the days in the saddle and nights sleeping in the dirt.

Pointing toward the low, brown mountains, Killian said, “Most of the people in these parts live in camps in the hills at the base of those mountains. For dozens of leagues north to south, those hills are full of gold. Sometimes you find bits of it lying around on the ground.”

“Truly?” Finn’s eyes widened, as Killian had known they would. “For the taking?”

Killian snorted. “Hardly. It’s the King’s land. Get caught taking his gold, you lose a hand.”

Finn rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and Sonia reached over to give him a shove. “Don’t even think about it, Finn. You’re the squire to a lord now. You can’t be thieving.”

“I’ve never stolen anything in my life,” Finn protested. “Who spreads these rumors about me?”

Given Killian had needed to steal his own coin back from his squire in order to pay for supplies in the last town they’d passed through, Sonia was right to be concerned about Finn’s light fingers. Especially given the amount of wealth he was sure to come across in the Rowenes palace. “You’re not going to have time for digging around in the dirt, Finn. Not with Anuk raiders taking advantage of Mudamora’s distraction.”

Gesturing west again, he said, “Anukastre is on the far side of those mountains. During the dry season, they come through the passes and raid, and the Rowenes family has been known to reciprocate. The terrain is treacherous—narrow, rocky paths that are prone to slides—which keeps both in check. And in the rainy season, flash floods make travel through even more dangerous.”

“Doesn’t look like it ever rains here. Everything is dead.”

“Most of the time, it doesn’t. But when the midwinter storms come up from the southeast, they break against the mountains and dump rain like you’ve never seen. The ground can’t absorb it, so dry streambeds turn to raging rivers in a matter of minutes, and the front of the floods is more debris than water. They’re deadly.”

But until it started to rain, the Anuk would be a problem. The challenge was predicting which route they’d come through, because the distance was too great for every possible path through the mountains to be guarded. It was like trying to plug a leaking dam. Just when you thought you’d done it, another leak sprang up. “Hopefully our presence dissuades any further raids.”

“Sounds easy enough.” Finn thumped his heels against his horse’s sides. “Let’s go. I’m hungry.”

“Your stomach is a bottomless pit,” Sonia muttered, but she cantered after him, not liking the boy to be out of sight.

Turning his horse, Killian said to his men, “Another hour and you’ll have water, food, beds, and a night of leisure. Move out.”

Cheers rang through the air, the soldiers moving past him and onto the dusty road heading toward Rotahn.

But Killian didn’t follow. Instead, he remained facing north and east, nearly all of Mudamora resting between him and Mudaire. Between him and Lydia.

You don’t deserve to be with her, his guilt whispered. Your duty is to Mudamora, not to Lydia.

“Why not both?” he asked softly, imagining he could see across the distance. That he could see her.

You might ask Malahi how well you