He held her and let her cry, solid as a rock in the surf. Serilda didn’t know for how long. It was an embrace that asked for nothing. He did not stroke her hair or ask what was wrong or try to tell her everything would be all right. He just … held her. His shirt was soaked through with her tears by the time she managed to still the tremors in her breaths.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling back and sniffling into her sleeve.
Gild’s arms loosened, but didn’t release her. “Please don’t be. I heard what happened in the courtyard. I saw the horse. I…” She met his gaze. His face was tight with emotion. “I’m sorry. This was a terrible night to be pulling pranks, and if he takes his anger out on you…”
Serilda rubbed the tears from her lashes. “The armory. That was you.”
He nodded. “I’d been planning it for weeks. Thought I was being so clever. I mean it was kind of clever. But he was already in a mood, and now … If he hurts you…”
Her breath hitched. His voice was thick with distress. The candlelight was catching on golden specks in his eyes.
And he was not flinching away from her. He held her gaze with no apparent disgust.
That alone made her heart skip.
And also … there was something different about him. She squinted, unable to place it. Her hands settled against his chest and Gild’s arms tightened around her waist again, drawing her closer. Until—
“Your hair,” she said, realizing what had changed. “You combed it.”
His body stilled, and a moment later, pink splotches appeared on his cheeks. He stepped back, his arms falling away. “Did not,” he said, self-consciously digging his fingers into his red hair. It still fell loose past his ears, but it was definitely tidier than before.
“Yes, you did. And you washed your face. You were filthy last time.”
“Fine. Maybe I did,” he spat. “I’m not a schellenrock. I have pride. It’s nothing to write a sonnet about.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably and looked past her toward the spinning wheel. “There’s a lot more straw this time. And a much shorter candlestick.”
She sagged. “It can’t be done,” she said, on the verge of crying again. “I tried to run away. My father and I went to another town. We tried to hide, so he wouldn’t be able to find me. I shouldn’t have done it. I should have known it wouldn’t work. And now, now I think he would take any excuse to kill me.”
“The Erlking doesn’t need excuses to kill someone.” Gild stepped closer again and took her face into his hands. His palms were rough and callused. His skin was cool to the touch, but gentle, as he tenderly brushed aside a strand of hair that was stuck to her damp cheeks. “He hasn’t killed you yet, which means he still wants to use your gift. You can take poison on that. We just have to spin the straw into gold. And it can be done.”
“Why doesn’t he just kill me?” she said. “If I were a ghost, wouldn’t I be trapped here forever?”
“I’m not sure, but … I don’t think the dead can use god-gifts. And supposedly, you were blessed by Hulda, weren’t you?”
She sniffed again. “That’s what he believes, yes.”
Gild nodded. Then he swallowed hard and slid his hands away from her waist to grasp her fingers. “I will help you, but I need something for payment.”
His words felt distant, almost foreign. Payment? What did payments matter? What did any of this matter? Her father might be dead.
She shut her eyes with a shudder.
No—she couldn’t think of that now. She had to believe that he was alive. That she only needed to survive this night and she would soon be with him again.
“Payment,” she said, trying to think, though her mind felt clouded. What could she offer as payment? He had already taken the necklace with the girl’s portrait—even now she could see a hint of its chain around his neck.
There was still the ring … but she did not want to give it to him.
Another idea occurred to her and she met his gaze again, hopeful. “If you spin this straw into gold, then I will spin you a story.”
Gild’s brow furrowed. “A story?” He shook his head. “No, that won’t work.”
“Why not? I’m a good storyteller.”
He eyed her, thoroughly unconvinced. “All I’ve wanted to do since the last time you were here is get that horrendous story you told out of my head. I don’t think I can stomach another one.”
“Ah, but that’s just it. Tonight I will tell you what is to become of the prince. Perhaps you will appreciate this ending better.”
He sighed. “Even if that did interest me, a story won’t fulfill the requirements. Magic requires something … valuable.”
She glared at him.
“Not that stories aren’t valuable,” he hastened to add. “But don’t you have anything else?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps you could offer your aid as a show of gentlemanly honor.”
“Much as I enjoy knowing that you think I might be a gentleman, I’m afraid I can’t. My magic won’t work without a payment of some sort. It isn’t my rule, but there it is. You’ll have to give me something.”
“But I have nothing else to offer.”
He held her gaze a long moment, as if willing her to speak the truth. The look made her bristle.
“I don’t.”
His shoulders sank. “I think you do.” He ran his thumb over the golden band on her finger. “Why not this?” he asked, not unkindly.
The caress made her skin tingle. Something coiled tight in the pit of her stomach. Something she couldn’t quite place, couldn’t quite name … but something she thought might be related to yearning.
But it was smothered beneath her sudden frustration.
“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “I’m sure you’re fond of me, but to ask for my hand in marriage? I’m quite flattered, but we barely—”
“Wha—marriage?” he blurted, jerking away from her in a way that was just a little insulting.
Serilda hadn’t meant it, of course, but she couldn’t help but scowl.
“I meant the ring,” he said, gesturing wildly.
Serilda was tempted to play ignorant, but she felt suddenly bone-weary, and the candlewick was burning too fast, and not a single piece of straw had been spun.
“Obviously,” she said dryly. “But you can’t have it.”
“Why not?” he said, challenging. “I somehow doubt it was your mother’s.”
Her fists clenched. “You don’t know anything about my mother.”
Gild started, surprised at her sudden anger. “I … sorry,” he stammered. “Was it your mother’s?”
She peered down at the ring, tempted to lie, if it would keep him from asking for it again. Every time she saw it, she remembered how she had felt so very alive that night, when she ushered the moss maidens into the cellar and dared to lie bald-faced to the Erlking himself. She had always wondered until that night if she could be as courageous as the heroes in her stories. Now she knew that she could, and this was proof of it. This was all the proof she had left.
But as she was staring at the ring, another thought occurred to her.
Her mother.
She might be here, somewhere in this castle. Was it possible that Gild did know something about her after all?
But before she could gather these thoughts into a question, Gild asked, “I don’t mean to pressure you, but tell me again what His Darkness will do to you if this straw has not been spun into gold by morning?”
She scowled.
Then, teeth gritted, she pried the ring from her finger and held it out to him. He snatched it away, quick as a magpie, and tucked it into his pocket. “I accept your payment.”
“I should imagine so.”
Again, magic pulsed around them, sealing their bargain.
Ignoring the chilly look she was shooting him, Gild rolled out his shoulders, popped the joints of his knuckles, and took his seat at the spinning wheel. He began without fanfare, setting immediately to work, as if he’d been born at a spinning wheel. As if it were as natural to him as breathing.
Serilda wanted to wallow in thoughts of her father, her mother, her necklace and ring. But she didn’t want Gild to snap at her like he had the last time. And so she removed her cloak and folded it into a pile in the corner, then rolled up her sleeves, and tried to make herself useful. She helped push the straw in his direction and form the raw mess into neat little bundles.
“The king called you a poltergeist,” she said once they had found a steady rhythm.
He nodded. “That’s me.”
“Then … last time. You were the one who set that hound free. Weren’t you?”
He grimaced. His foot faltered over the treadle, but he quickly found his pace again. “I didn’t set it free. I just … broke its chain. And maybe left the gate open.”
“And maybe almost got me killed.”
“Almost. But didn’t.”
She glared at him.
Gild sighed. “I did mean to apologize. It was bad timing, which seems to be common practice around you.”
She grimaced, wondering if Gild had overheard her conversation with the Erlking last time, when she’d told him that people in her village saw her as bad luck.
“But I didn’t realize we were expecting a mortal guest.” His hands shot up defensively. “I swear I didn’t mean any harm. Not to you, at least. The king, he just gets real protective of those hounds, and I thought it’d get under his skin.”
“You pull a lot of pranks on the king?”
“Have to do something to stay busy.”
She hummed. “But why does he call you the poltergeist?”
“What else should he call me?”
“I don’t know, but … a poltergeist is a ghost.”
He glanced at her, the corners of his mouth twitching. “You do know what sort of castle you’re in, don’t you?”
“A haunted one?”
His jaw clenched as he focused on the wheel again.
“Yes, but you don’t look like the other ghosts.” She scanned the top of his head, the tips of his shoulders. “They fade around the edges. Whereas you seem … entirely present.”
“I guess that’s true. I can do things they can’t, too. Like popping in and out of locked rooms, for example.”
“And weren’t you blessed by Hulda?” she added. “But that doesn’t make sense, if the dead can’t use god-gifts, like you said.”
He stopped working, his gaze turning thoughtful as the wheel slowed. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He pondered for a long moment, before shrugging and giving the wheel another turn. “I don’t have any answers. I suppose I was probably blessed by Hulda, but I don’t know that for sure, or why they would have bothered with me. And I know that I’m not like the other ghosts, but I’m also the only poltergeist here, so I always figured I’m just … a different sort of ghost.”
She frowned.
He glanced once at the candle, then squared his shoulders. His pace increased as he set to work again. Serilda looked at the candle, too. Her pulse skipped.
There was so little time left.
“If it pleases you,” Gild said, replacing a full bobbin with an empty one, “I’ll have that story now.”
Serilda frowned. “I thought you hated my stories.”
“I hated the story you told last time. It’s easily the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Then why would you want me to continue?”
“Just figured I’d be able to focus better if you weren’t constantly pestering me with questions.”
Her lips twisted to one side. She was tempted to throw one of those bobbins at his head.
“Besides,” he added, “you do have a talent for words. The ending was awful, but everything before that was…” He struggled a moment for the right word, then sighed. “I enjoyed everything before that. And I like listening to your voice.”
Warmth rushed into her cheeks at this almost compliment.
“Well. Lucky for you, that wasn’t the ending.”
Gild paused long enough to stretch his back and shoulders, then smiled at her. “Then I would love to hear more, if you’re willing to tell it.”
“Fine,” she said. “Only because you begged me.”
His eyes glinted almost impishly, but then he looked away and grabbed up another handful of straw.
Serilda thought back to the story she had told last time, and immediately felt the comforting pull of a fairy tale. Where terrible things sometimes happened, but good always defeated evil.
Before she’d even begun, she knew it was just the sort of escape her mind and heart needed at that moment. A part of her wondered whether Gild had realized this. But no—he couldn’t possibly know her so well already.
“Let’s see,” she started. “Where did we leave off…”
As the sun rose over the Aschen Wood, its golden beams descended over the spires of Gravenstone Castle. The veil’s mist evaporated. The haunted night gave way to birdsong and the steady drip of melting snow. As soon as the light beams struck the hellhounds that had attacked the young prince, they turned into clouds of ink-black smoke and vanished into the morning air. In the daylight, the castle, too, was gone.
The prince was badly wounded. Bleeding. Torn. But his heart hurt worst of all. Over and over again, he saw the Erlking driving the tip of his arrow into the princess’s small form. The murderer had taken her life, and now even her body was trapped beyond the veil, where he could not honor her with a royal burial, a proper rest. He did not even know if the Erlking would keep her as a ghost or let her travel to Veloren, where someday he might see her again.
Where Gravenstone Castle had just stood, now there were the crumbling ruins of a great shrine. Once, long ago, a temple had stood in this forest clearing. A sacred place once regarded as the very gates to Verloren.
The prince managed to get to his feet. He stumbled toward the ruins—great monoliths of slick black stone jutting toward the sky. He had heard of this place, though never seen it with his eyes. He supposed it should be no surprise that this unholy clearing in the midst of the forest was the place where the Erlking had chosen to build his castle, for there was such a sense of lifelessness and foreboding between these stone columns that no one with any sense would dare enter.
But the prince was beyond sense. He stumbled forward, suffocating beneath the weight of his loss.
But what he saw made him pause.
He was not alone before these black stones. The massive drawbridge over the swampy moat remained, connecting the forest to the ruins, though the wood was rotting and worn on this side of the veil. And there, in the middle of the bridge, lay a crumpled form. The huntress Perchta. Left behind in the realm of mortals.
The prince’s arrow had pierced her heart and blood soaked the bridge beneath her. Her skin was pale blue, the very color of the moonlight. Her hair white as fresh snow, now speckled with wine-red blood. Her eyes gazed up toward the brightening sky in something like wonder.
The prince stepped closer, cautious, his body crying in pain from his many terrible wounds.
She was not dead.
Perhaps dark ones, creatures of the underworld themselves, could not die.
But there was such little life left in her. She was no fierce huntress now, but a broken, betrayed thing. Tears made treks down her once-radiant face, and as the prince stepped closer, her eyes shifted to meet his.
She sneered, revealing jagged teeth. “You cannot think that you have defeated me. You are but a child.”
The prince steeled his heart against any pity he might have felt for the huntress. “I know I am nothing before you. But I also know that you are nothing before the god of death.”
Perchta’s expression became confused, but when the prince looked up, she shifted to follow his gaze.
There—in the center of those hallowed stones—a gateway appeared amid a thicket of brambles. It might have been alive once, but now it was a dead thing. An arch of brittle twigs and tangled thorns, dead branches and faded leaves. Beyond the opening, a narrow staircase descended through a gash in the ground, down into the depths of Verloren, over which Velos, the god of death, alone holds dominion.
And there the god stood. In one hand they held a lantern, the light of which never died. In the other they held a long chain. The chain that binds all things, living and dead.
Perchta saw the god and cried out. She tried to stand, but she was too weak and the arrow through her chest would not allow her to move.
As Velos approached, the prince stepped back, bowing his head with deference, but the god paid him no heed. It was rare that the god was able to reclaim one of the dark ones. Once, they belonged to death. Demons, some called them. Birthed in the poisoned rivers of Verloren, creatures born of the cruel deeds and haunting regrets of the dead. They were never meant for the land of mortals, but in the beforetimes, some escaped through the gate, and the god of death had mourned their loss ever since.
Now, as Perchta screamed with rage and even fear, Velos threw the chain around her and, defying all her struggles, dragged her back through the gateway.
No sooner had they descended than the brambles grew together, so thick one could not see through them. An entire hedge of unforgiving thorns disguised the opening amid those towering stones.
The prince collapsed to his knees. Though he was heartened to see the huntress taken away to Verloren, his heart was still broken from the loss of his sister, and his body so weak he thought he might collapse right there on the rotting bridge.
He thought of his mother and father, who would soon awaken. All the castle would wonder what had become of the prince and princess who had disappeared so suddenly in the night.
He wished with all his heart that he could go to them. That he could have been fast enough, strong enough, to rescue his sister and bring her back home to safety.
Just before he allowed his weary eyes to shut, he heard a heavy thumping, felt the vibrations on the bridge. With a groan, he forced himself to look up.
An old woman had emerged from the forest and was hobbling across the bridge.
No. Not just old. She was ancient, as ageless as the tallest oak, as wrinkled as old linens, as gray as the winter sky. Her back was hunched and she walked with a thick wooden cane that was as gnarled as her limbs.
Her vulpine eyes, though, were brilliant and wise.
She came to stand before the prince, inspecting him. He tried to stand, but he had no strength left.
“Who are you?” said the woman, in a tattered voice.
The prince gave his name, with as much pride as he could muster, despite his weariness.
“It was your arrow that pierced the heart of the great huntress.”
“Yes. I hoped to kill her.”
“Dark ones do not die. But we are grateful that she has finally been returned to Verloren.” The woman glanced behind her, and—