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

“We were warned of you by one who came before,” the lone woman with them said in accented Cel. Which was impossible. How could they know the language? “We know of your Empire. Of what it does to everything it touches. He wore the same mark as you.” She tapped the right side of her chest.

“Help us,” Teriana pleaded. “Please! You don’t understand!”

But the woman only shook her head and said to the tiger, “Kill them.”

The massive cat picked its way down, eyes fixed on him and Teriana.

There was nowhere to go.

If they managed to climb up, they’d be met by fangs. And below was a potentially deadly unknown.

Certain death. Or the chance at life.

Catching hold of Teriana’s arm, Marcus twisted, and together, they slid down the rubble toward the glowing crystal.

 37TERIANA

The air rushed from her chest.

And all around her was white. White, endless white, and for a heartbeat Teriana believed she was trapped in the xenthier’s magic. Trapped between two places. Neither here nor there. Bodiless.

Then the cold hit her. Piercing and bitter and cruel, her sweaty skin screaming under the onslaught.

“Get up!” Marcus shouted, his hands under her arms, hauling her upright, dragging her backward through the rubble that had come through with them. Away from the xenthier stem, which jutted, glittering and black, from the snow.

Where are we?

Then the tiger was in front of her, stumbling to keep its footing. It snarled, head swinging from side to side.

Its gaze fixed on her.

Marcus shoved her behind him, blade in one hand. The animal’s muscles bunched, and Teriana lifted her knife, fingers already numb from the cold. Her heart thundered in her chest, pulse roaring in her ears.

Run! her instincts screamed. Instead, Teriana bit down on her terror. “Come and get us, you bastard.”

The tiger snarled, but rather than lunging at Marcus, it staggered, skin shifting and moving as though it were made of liquid, the snarl changing to a scream.

A human scream.

It was a gods-damned shifter.

The tiger’s form solidified, but it swayed back and forth. Disoriented.

“Don’t like the cold?” Marcus started forward, but Teriana caught hold of his arm.

“He’s god marked,” she said. “By Lern. He can change into any shape he wants.”

Except something wasn’t right.

The tiger took one step back, then another before spinning around to paw at the xenthier tip. It batted at it with increasing violence, until its body once again turned liquid, flowing in a way Teriana’s eyes couldn’t comprehend—as though she watched through a piece of glass that distorted everything. She blinked once only to find a naked man where the tiger had stood. He struck the xenthier, screaming curses in a language she didn’t know.

Then he froze. Sensing he was no longer the hunter, the shifter slowly turned, eyes landing on Marcus’s blade, which was shaking, his hand reddened by the cold.

Gods, it was freezing.

“What is this place?” the shifter demanded in accented Arinoquian. “Where have you brought me? What have you done to me?”

Marcus laughed, and there was an edge to it that made Teriana stiffen. That made her look at him instead of the shifter. “Welcome to the East, you bloody bastard. Let’s see how well you fight without your gods to swing the odds.”

The shifter took a step backward.

Then a howl split the air.

All three of them froze.

“What was that?” Teriana demanded, turning in a circle, but all around them was snow. A barren landscape of nothing.

“Sibernese wolves.” There was fear in Marcus’s voice. “They’re nocturnal. But if they’re hungry enough, they’ll come before dusk.”

And the sun was little more than a glow on the horizon.

As though some of his mark’s instincts remained, the shifter turned, peering into the distance. Then he raised a hand and pointed.

In the dying light, Teriana could make out motion. Something—many somethings—racing in their direction.

“Run!”

They struggled through the snow, feet breaking through the crust, which sent them tripping. And there was no escape, the land empty of anything but leafless brush.

Howls filled her ears. Teriana stumbled and fell, and Marcus hauled her up, terror chasing away the burning sting of the cold.

“There!”

Her eyes tracked the direction Marcus pointed, where a small shack had appeared in the distance.

The howls grew closer, and Teriana cast a backward glance over her shoulder.

Racing toward her were wolves with fur as black as night, eyes glittering in the fading sun, wide paws ghosting across the snow despite the creatures being bigger than any wolf she’d ever seen.

“Keep running!”

There was no chance of them outpacing the wolves.

Or at least, not all three of them.

The shifter was taller, his longer legs pulling him ahead.

“I’m not dying so you can live!” Marcus shouted, then threw himself forward. His gladius sliced through the tendon above the man’s heel, blood spraying across the snow.

The shifter shrieked and fell, tried to rise, then fell again.

Teriana slowed, but Marcus clambered to his feet and caught her arm. “His turn to be hunted. It will buy us time.”

She staggered, the icy air burning her lungs, but the sight of the shifter crawling on hands and knees made her jerk out of Marcus’s grip.

“Teriana!”

Ignoring him, she raced back to the man. “May the Six find your soul,” she whispered, then sliced her knife across his throat.

“Run!”

She jerked upright, and a sob tore from her lips. The wolves were only a hundred paces away and closing fast.

Adrenaline fired through her veins, and she flung herself toward the shack. Over and over she fell, barely feeling the sharp pieces of snow scoring her bare hands as she regained her feet.

She heard the pack fall upon the dying shifter. Heard them tear into him with excited yelps and whines. Heard the moment when they decided he wasn’t going anywhere but that their other prey was escaping.

“We’re almost there! We’re almost there!” Marcus shouted, pushing her ahead of him.

The wolves’ paws made soft thuds against the snow as they continued their pursuit.

The shack was twenty paces away.

Pants from half a dozen muzzles filled the air.

Ten paces.

She felt them gaining on her.

Five