She had suffered more than a few nips at her legs by the time Roland dropped her off at a crossroads a few miles east of Märchenfeld.

  After profusely thanking the farmer, Serilda set off on foot. It wasn’t long before the scenery became familiar. The Thorpe Farm, with its striking windmill turning over the snow-laden fields. Mother Garver’s quaint cottage, whitewashed and surrounded by tidy boxwoods.

  Rather than walking through town, she turned to the south, taking a shortcut through a series of pear and apple orchards, barren in the winter, their branches reaching scraggly fingers toward the sky. The cloud cover had burned off and the day was one of the warmest they’d had in months; but despite the sunshine and exercise, Serilda couldn’t shake the chill that had settled into her bones from the moment she’d awoken in those castle ruins. Or the way the hair on the back of her neck prickled every time she saw a flash of dark feathers in the tree boughs or heard an angry caw of a distant crow. She kept glancing around, expecting to see the nachtkrapp following her. Spying on her. Eyeing her tasty eyes and fast-beating heart.

  But all she saw were crows and jackdaws scavenging among the bare trees.

  It was nearly dusk by the time the mill came into view, down in the valley carved out by the winding river. Smoke curled above the chimney. The hazelnut tree’s snow-heavy branches bowed. Zelig, that beloved antique horse of theirs, poked his head curiously from the stable.

  Her father had even shoveled a path from the road to their doorway.

  Serilda beamed and started to run.

  “Papa!” she cried, when she thought she might be close enough for him to hear her.

  A moment later, the door slammed open, revealing a frantic father. He puffed up when he saw her, overcome with relief. She rushed into his arms.

  “You’re back,” he cried into her hair. “You came back.”

  Serilda laughed at him, pulling away so he could see her smile. “You sound as if you doubted it.”

  “I did,” he said with a warm but tired laugh. “I didn’t want to think it, but—but I thought—” His voice grew tight with emotion. “Well. You know what I thought. To be summoned by the Erlking—”

  “Oh, Papa.” She kissed his cheek. “The Erlking only keeps little children. What could he have wanted with an old spinster like me?”

  He stepped away, his face pinched, and the lightness in Serilda’s heart dampened. He was serious. He’d been terrified.

  And she had been, too. There were moments during the night when she’d been sure she would never see his face again. But even in those moments, she’d given little thought to what he must be going through, not knowing where she’d been taken or what was to become of her.

  Of course he’d thought she wouldn’t come home.

  “What did he do to your face?” he asked, brushing the hair away from her cheek.

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t the Erlking. It was…” Her hesitation was brief as she remembered the horror of the drude flying at her with its curved talons. But her father was already worried enough. “A branch. Caught me in the face, quite by surprise. But I’m all right now.” She pressed her hands into his. “Everything is all right.”

  He nodded shakily, eyes shining with unshed tears. Then, clearing his throat, he seemed to brush off his burdensome feelings. “It will be.”

  The words were weighted with meaning, and Serilda frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Come inside. I haven’t been able to eat all day, but we’ll have a right feast now you’re home.”

  Once they had seated themselves by the fire, two bowls of barley gruel topped with dried apricots in hand, Serilda told him all that had happened. She did her best not to embellish—a near-impossible feat. And perhaps, in her telling, the overnight journey had been fraught with a few more dangers (who was to say that a river nix hadn’t been watching the carriage from the icy waters as they passed?). And perhaps, in this version of the truth, the stuffed creatures decorating the Erlking’s castle had come to life, licking their lips and watching her with hungry eyes as she walked by. And perhaps the boy who had come to help her had been most chivalrous, and had not made her give up her necklace.

  Perhaps she left out the part where he took her hand and pressed it, almost devotedly, to his cheek.

  But as stories go, she recited the events of the night more or less as they had transpired, from the moment she had stepped inside the skeletal carriage to the long ride home being tormented by plump, feathered fiends.

  By the time she finished, their bowls were long empty and the fire was craving a new log. Serilda stood, setting her dish aside as she went to the stack of firewood against the wall. Her father said nothing as she used the end of a log to rearrange some of the coals, before settling it neatly on top of the smoldering flames. As soon as the fire began to catch, she sat back down and dared to look over at him.

  He was staring into the flames with distant, haunted eyes.

  “Papa?” she said. “Are you all right?”

  He pressed his lips tight together, and she saw his throat struggle with a hard gulp. “The Erlking believes you can do this incredible thing. Spin straw into gold,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “He will not be satisfied with one dungeon’s worth. He will want more.”

  She lowered her gaze. This same thought had occurred to her—of course it had. But every time, she stuffed it back down into whatever dark place it had come from.

  “He can hardly send for me every full moon until the end of time. I’m sure he will tire of me and move on to terrorizing someone else soon enough.”

  “Do not be flippant, Serilda. Time has no meaning to the dark ones. What if he does send for you again on the Crow Moon, and every full moon after that? And what if … what if this boy does not come to your aid the next time?”

  Serilda looked away. She knew how narrowly she had escaped death, and that her father had, too. (Which was another small detail she might have left out of her telling.) She felt safe for now, but that security was an illusion. The veil kept their world divided from that of the dark ones most of the time, but not when there was a full moon. Not during an equinox or a solstice.

  In four short weeks, the veil would once again release the wild hunt into their mortal realm.

  What if he summoned her again?

  “What I can’t understand,” she said slowly, “is what the Erlking could want with so much gold. He can steal anything he desires. I’m sure Queen Agnette herself would give him anything he asked for in return for merely being left alone. It doesn’t seem like he would be concerned with material wealth, and there was no sign of … of pretentiousness in the castle. The furnishings were sumptuous in their own way, but I sense that he has no one to impress, that he cares only for his own comforts…” She trailed off, her mind circling on itself. “Why would he care about a plain village girl who can spin straw into gold?”

  After a moment of pondering her own unanswerable questions, she glanced at her father.

  He was still gazing into the hearth, but despite the cottage’s comfortable heat, he looked strikingly pale.

  Almost ghostlike.

  “Papa!” Serilda launched herself from her chair and came to kneel beside him, taking his hands. He squeezed hers back, but could not look at her. “What’s the matter? You look ill.”

  His eyes shut, his brow wrinkling with what emotions she couldn’t name.

  “I’m all right,” he said—lied, Serilda was certain. His words were tense, his spirit subdued.

  “No, you are not. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  With a trembling breath, he opened his eyes again and met her gaze. A soft, worried smile touched his lips as he reached down to cup her face. “I won’t let him take you again,” he whispered. “I won’t let him—” He clenched his teeth, but Serilda couldn’t tell whether he was stifling a sob or a scream.

  “Papa?” She took his hands into hers, tears brimming in her eyes to see the fear so plainly on his face. “I’m here now. I came back unharmed.”

  “This time, perhaps,” he said. “But I could think of nothing but you being trapped by that monster, unable to come back to me. And I can’t do it again. I can’t spend another night like that, thinking I’ve lost you. Not you, too.” The sob escaped this time as he hunched forward.

  Not you, too.

  It was as close as he ever came to mentioning her mother. She might have left when Serilda was just a baby, but her spirit had never gone completely. Shadows always clung to her father, especially as Serilda’s birthday approached in the fall, around the time when her mother had vanished. She wondered if he even remembered telling her when she was little the story of how he’d made a wish to a god that he would marry the girl in the village he’d fallen in love with, and that they might have a healthy child together. Serilda may have been young when she’d heard the tale, but she remembered her father’s eyes dancing with firelight at the memory. He’d glowed on the inside to mention her mother, but the moment had been brief, snatched away by the pain of her loss.

  Serilda had known that he was probably making it up. After all, her father was many wonderful things. He was kind and generous. He thought always of others, putting everyone else’s needs before his own. He was hardworking and patient and always kept a promise.

  But he was not bold.

  He was not the sort of man to approach a wounded beast. And if ever he met a god, he would be just as likely to prostrate himself and sob for mercy than to claim a wish.

  And yet, Serilda had no other explanation for her peculiar eyes, and she’d always wondered if he’d made up the story as a means of comforting her. To show her that these strange wheels that marked her irises were not a sign of wickedness and misfortune, but of something special.

  The story might have changed in her own tellings of it. To her, the wheel of fortune was a symbol of bad luck, no matter anyone else’s interpretation. But she still warmed to remember her father’s voice, laced with tenderness. There was a girl in the village who I had fallen desperately in love with. And so, I made my wish. That we might be married. That we might have a child.

  As his hands trembled under Serilda’s fingers, she steeled herself, and dared to ask the question that had so often been at the tip of her tongue. That had stayed elusive for her entire life, but now tugged at her, demanding to be heard.

  Demanding to be asked.

  “Papa,” she whispered, as gently as she could. “What happened to my mother?”

  He flinched.

  “She didn’t just leave us. Did she?”

  He looked at Serilda. His face was flushed, his beard damp. He stared at her with haunted eyes.

  “Papa … was she … did the hunt take her?” She tightened her grasp on her father’s hands.

  His face crumpled and he turned away.

  It was enough of an answer.

  Serilda inhaled shakily, thinking of the story she told Leyna in payment for breakfast just that morning.

  My mother was taken by the Erlking. Lured away by the wild hunt.

  “She always had an adventurous spirit,” her father said, surprising her. He did not look at her. With a sniff, he pulled one hand from her grip and swiped at his nose. “She was like you in that way. Reckless. Not afraid of anything. She reminded me of a will-o’-the-wisp, glowing like starlight everywhere she went, always flitting about town, hardly ever stopping to catch a breath. At the festivals, she would dance and dance … and she never stopped laughing.” He glanced at Serilda with his watery eyes, and for a moment, she could see the love that still lingered there. “She was so lovely. Dark hair, like yours. Dimples when she smiled in a special way. She had a chip on her front tooth.” He chuckled, reminiscing. “Got it climbing trees when we were young. She was fearless. And I know she loved me, too. I never doubted it. But…”

  Serilda waited for him to go on. For a long time, there was only the crackle of logs in the fire.

  “Papa?” she nudged.

  He swallowed. “She didn’t want to stay here forever. She talked about traveling. She wanted to see Verene, she wanted to … to take a ship across the ocean. She wanted to see everything. And I think she knew—we both knew—that life wasn’t for me.” He sat back in the chair, his gaze lost in the flames. “I shouldn’t have made the wish. To marry that wild, beautiful girl, start a family with her. We were in love, and at the time I thought she would want it, too. But looking back now, I can see how I was trapping her here.”

  The wish. Serilda’s nerves tingled.

  It was true. The Endless Moon, the old god, the wounded beast. It had been real.

  She was well and truly cursed.

  “She tried to be happy. I know she did. Almost three years we lived in this house. She grew a garden, planted that hazelnut tree.” He gestured absently toward the front of the house. “She enjoyed working with me in the mill sometimes. Said anything was better than embroidery and”—a tentative smile touched his mouth as he glanced over at Serilda—“spinning. She loathed it as much as you do.”

  Serilda returned the smile, though her eyes were starting to water, too. It was a simple comment, but it felt like a special gift.

  Her father’s expression darkened then, though he didn’t take his eyes off Serilda. “But she wasn’t happy. She loved us—never doubt that, Serilda. She loved you. I know she would have done anything to stay, to watch you grow up. But when”—his voice grew hoarse and he squeezed her hands tighter—“when the hunt came calling…”

  He shut his eyes.

  He didn’t have to finish. Serilda had heard enough stories. All her life she’d heard the stories.

  Grown-ups and children alike leaving the safety of their homes in the middle of the night, dressed in nothing but their nightclothes, not bothering with shoes. Sometimes they were found. Sometimes they were still alive.

  Sometimes.

  Though their memories might be obscure, almost dreamlike, they were not usually the stuff of nightmares. They talked of a night racing after the hounds. Dancing in the woods. Drinking sweet nectar from a hunting horn beneath the moon’s silver light.

  “She went with them,” Serilda whispered.

  “I don’t think she could resist.”

  “Papa? Did she … did they ever find her?”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say her body, but he knew that’s what she meant. He shook his head. “Never.”

  She exhaled, not sure if this was the answer she’d wanted or not.

  “I knew what had happened the moment I woke up. You were so little then, you used to snuggle in between us during the night. Every morning I would sit up and spend a moment smiling at you and your mother, fast asleep, wrapped up in the blankets, my two most precious things. I would think how lucky I was. But then, the day after the Mourning Moon, she was gone. And I knew. I just knew.” He cleared his throat. “Maybe I should have told you all this a long time ago, but I didn’t want you thinking that she’d left by choice. They say it’s a siren song to those with restless souls, those who yearn for freedom. But if she’d been awake, if she’d been in her own mind, she would never have left you. You must believe that.”

  She nodded, but she wasn’t sure how long it would be before she fully grasped everything her father was telling her.

  “After that,” he continued, “it was easier to tell people that she’d gone. Taken her few valuables and disappeared. I didn’t want to tell the rest of town about the hunt, though with the timing, I’m sure there are those who guessed the truth. Still. With you and your … your eyes, there was enough suspicion already, and with all the stories of the hunt and the vile things the Erlking does, I didn’t want you growing up thinking about what might have become of her. It was easier, I thought, to imagine her off on an adventure somewhere. Happy, wherever she was.”

  Serilda’s thoughts churned with unanswered questions—one louder than them all.

  She had been behind the veil. She had seen the hunters, the dark ones, the ghosts that the king kept as his servants. Her heart thundered as she dug her fingers into her father’s wrist. “Papa. If she was never found … what if she’s still there?”

  His jaw tensed. “What?”

  “What if the Erlking kept her? There are ghosts all over that castle. She could be one of them, trapped behind the veil.”

  “No,” he said fiercely, rising to his feet. Serilda followed, her pulse rushing. “I know what you’re thinking, and I won’t allow it. I will not let that monster take you again. I won’t lose you, too!”

  She swallowed, torn. In the space of a few moments she felt an urge rise up in her. The need to return to that castle, to find out the truth of what had become of her mother.

  But that desire was dampened by the horror in her father’s eyes. His flushed face, his shaking fists.

  “What choice do we have?” she said. “If he calls for me, I must go. Otherwise he will kill us both.”

  “Which is why we must leave.”

  She inhaled sharply. “Leave?”

  “It’s all I thought about since you left last night. When I could keep myself from imagining your body left dead by the road, that is.”

  She shuddered. “Papa—”

  “We will go far away from the Aschen Wood,” he said. “Somewhere you will be left alone. We can go south, all the way to Verene if we must. The hunt mostly keeps to rural roads. Maybe they won’t venture into the city.”

  A humorless laugh escaped her. “And what would you do in the city, without the mill?”

  “I would find work. We both would.”

  She gaped, bewildered to see that he meant this. He meant to leave the mill, their home.

  “We have until the Crow Moon to make preparations,” he continued. “We will sell what we can and travel light. Lose ourselves in the city. When enough time has passed, we can see about going farther, into Ottelien, perhaps. As we get farther away, we will ask what tales people tell about the Alder King and the wild hunt, then we will know once we are no longer in his domain. Even he can only travel so far.”