The children.

  They were inside.

  They were trapped.

  Serilda started to rush forward, ignoring the stinging in her eyes, but a hand grabbed her shoulder, holding her back.

  “Do not be a fool,” came the voice of the Erlking, preternaturally calm. “You cannot save them. I told you, Lady Serilda. You should have done as I asked.”

  “No!” she gasped, horrified. “I have! I’ve done everything you asked!”

  “Have you?” The question was met with a low chuckle. “Or have you been trying to sell me a lie?” He spun her around to face him, his gaze bitter in its coldness. “This is what happens to those who betray me.”

  His face faded away, replaced with a cascade of images, too grotesque to process. Papa’s body facedown in a field while scavenger birds picked at his insides. Anna and her two younger siblings locked in a cage while goblins jeered and stabbed them with sticks. Nickel and Fricz fed to the hellhounds, ripped to shreds by their merciless teeth. Leyna and her mother together as a flock of nachtkrapp came at them again and again—their sharp beaks targeting their vulnerable eyes, their kind hearts, the hands that tried desperately to hold on to each other. Gild pinned like a moth to an enormous spinning wheel that whirred and whirred and whirred …

  A feral roar reached her across the plain of nightmares.

  The claws on her shoulder were torn away. The shriek was silenced.

  Serilda tried to climb back to consciousness, but the nightmares clung to her, threatening to drag her back. Somewhere beyond the darkness, she could hear a fight. The drude’s angry hisses. The strikes and grunts of a battle.

  His voice—You will not touch her again!

  She didn’t think it was possible, but Serilda managed to pry her eyes open. They immediately shut again, flinching away from the faint candlelight. But in that moment she’d seen him. A figure armed with a sword, an actual sword. Except, instead of flashing silver and steel, it appeared to be made of gold.

  She squinted her eyes open again, lifting one arm to block her view of the candle.

  She was just in time to see Gild driving the weapon clean through the drude’s belly.

  A gargling sound. The stench of entrails.

  Another beat of wings, another deafening cry.

  She gasped. “Gild!”

  The second drude dove for his head, claws dragging along his scalp.

  Gild roared and yanked the sword out of the first drude’s body. In one ferocious swing, he turned and cut off one of the second attacker’s wings.

  The sound it made was agony and horror as it collapsed to the ground. Sitting back on its haunches, its one wing flapping uselessly, it hissed at Gild with its sharp pointed tongue.

  Fury twisted Gild’s face as he lunged, stabbing it in the chest, where a heart might have been.

  The drude’s hiss turned into choking. Black liquid spilled from its mouth as it slumped forward onto the blade.

  Panting hard, Gild yanked the sword away, letting the drude crumple in a heap beside its peer. Two grisly piles of bruise-purple skin and leathery wings.

  He stood for a long while, gripping the hilt, his eyes darting madly around the room. He was shaking.

  “Gild?” Serilda whispered, her voice hoarse from screaming.

  He spun toward her, wide-eyed. “What is wrong with you?” he yelled.

  She jolted. His anger helped her shed some of the lingering paralysis from the nightmares. “What?”

  “One battle with a drude wasn’t enough?” He held his hand toward her. “Come on. There will be more coming. We have to go.”

  “You have a sword?” she said, a little dazed, as he pulled her to her feet. To her surprise and a bit of disappointment, he yanked his hand away from her the moment she was standing.

  “Yes, but I’m out of practice. We got lucky. Those things can torture me every bit as easy as they can torture you.”

  He stuck his head out into the hall, making sure it was empty, before waving for Serilda to follow him. She started to, but they hadn’t rounded the corner before her legs gave way and she collapsed against the wall.

  Gild wheeled back to her.

  “Sorry,” she stammered. “I’m just … I can’t stop shaking.”

  Sympathy flashed across his features. Stepping closer, he took her elbow, infinitely more gentle than he’d been moments before. “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re hurt … and scared.”

  She hadn’t been thinking about her shoulder, but once he mentioned it, she could suddenly feel the sting where the drude’s talons had dug into her.

  “So are you,” she said, watching as a slim trail of blood made its way down Gild’s temple from the wounds in his scalp. “Hurt.”

  He winced. “It’s not so bad. Let’s keep moving. I’ll help you walk.”

  He carelessly tossed the sword off into a corner so he could support her around the waist, one hand gripping hers tight as they passed the stained-glass windows and headed back down the stairs. He led her into the great hall and set her down in front of the fireplace. The rubinrot wyvern peered down at them from its place above the mantel, eyes glittering with the light of a hundred candle flames. Its lifelike appearance made Serilda uneasy, but Gild seemed hardly to notice it, and so she tried not to be bothered, either.

  Kneeling, Gild reached for her forehead, as if he intended to check for a fever. But then he froze and reeled his hand backward, tucking it close to his chest instead. A flicker of anguish passed over his face, but was gone in an instant, replaced with concern.

  “How long did it have you before I got there?”

  Serilda started to sit up straighter, and again Gild’s fingers flexed toward her. The movement was brief before he was pressing both of his palms into his knees instead. She looked down at his hands, noting the way his fingers were clawed, his knuckles going white.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It happened so fast. What time is it?”

  “Maybe … two hours after sunset?”

  “Not long then, I don’t think.”

  He exhaled a long breath, some of the worry clearing from his brow. “Good. They can torture you for hours, until your heart stops. When you can’t handle any more terror, and you just sort of … give up.” He met Serilda’s eyes. “What were you thinking, going back there?”

  “How do you know I’ve been there before?”

  He reacted as if this was a ridiculous question. “After the Hunger Moon! When you were running for your life. Then you show up on the equinox, when the king didn’t even summon you, and head straight back to that room of horrors?”

  Despite his lecture, Serilda felt her heart expand. “It was you. With the candelabra. You attacked the drude last time, too.”

  “Of course it was me! Who did you think it was?”

  She had thought … had even hoped. But she hadn’t been sure.

  Ignoring his frustration, she asked, “How did you find me? How did you know I was there?”

  Gild rocked back on his heels, withdrawing inch by inch. “I was in the gatehouse when I saw you creeping across the courtyard.” He shook his head, and he looked pained when he added, “I thought maybe you were looking for me.”

  “I was!”

  He scowled. Unconvinced, and rightfully so.

  “I was going to,” Serilda amended. “I just thought this would be my best chance to see what’s in that room.”

  “Why do you care what’s in that room? Drudes are in that room!”

  “I thought the castle would be empty! Everyone was supposed to be at the feast!”

  He barked a laugh. “Drudes don’t go to parties.”

  “And now I know that,” she snapped, then tried to temper her irritation. If she could only make him understand. “There’s something in there. A … a tapestry.”

  His expression became more bewildered. “There are hundreds of tapestries in this castle.”

  “This one is different. On my side of the veil, it isn’t destroyed like everything else. And when I went in tonight … there was a cage. Did you see it?” She leaned forward. “What would the Erlking be keeping that needs a cage?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “More drudes?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t. You could have been killed. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

  Something in his tone gave her pause. Something bordering on panic.

  “Of course I care,” she said, quieter now. “But I also feel there’s something … important. You said you can go anywhere in this castle. Don’t you ever go in there?”

  “No,” he said. “Because, again—and I cannot stress this enough—that is where the drudes are. And it is a terrible idea to cross paths with a drude. I avoid them whenever I can, and you should, too.”

  She crossed her arms and pouted. She wanted to tell him she would, but the frustration from not having any questions answered, no mysteries solved, was nagging at her. “What if they’re protecting something? Something the Erlking doesn’t want anyone to find?”

  Gild opened his mouth, readying another glib retort, but then he hesitated. Frowning, he closed his mouth again, considering her. Then he sighed, his gaze falling to Serilda’s hands. He shifted forward and she thought he was going to reach for her hands, take them into his. Instead, he settled his palms on the lounge cushions on either side of her knees.

  Careful not to touch her.

  “The Erlking has his secrets,” he said, “but whatever is in that room, it isn’t worth risking your life. Please. Please don’t try to go there again.”

  Her shoulders fell. “I … I won’t go there again…”

  Relief stole across his features.

  “… unprepared.”

  He tensed. “Serilda—no. You can’t—”

  “Where did you get a sword anyway?”

  Gild glowered at the change of subject, then huffed and pushed himself to standing. “The armory. Erlkönig keeps enough sharp, deadly things to arm an entire militia.”

  “I’ve never seen a golden sword before.”

  Gild started to drag a hand through his hair, then paused and pulled it away, looking down at the smear of blood on his fingers.

  “Here.” Standing beside him, her legs no longer threatening to collapse, she lifted the corner of her cloak and reached for his brow. Gild flinched away.

  “Hold still. It won’t hurt.”

  His gaze flashed to hers, as if insulted. But he didn’t move again as she dabbed at the blood, already drying on his brow.

  “Gold is a terrible choice for a weapon,” he said as she worked, his voice strangely distant, his gaze glued to her face. “It’s a very soft metal. Dulls easily. But a lot of magic creatures are averse to gold, including drudes.”

  “There,” she said, letting the edge of her cloak fall. “That’s a bit better, though we’ll need water to wash off the rest.”

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “Your shoulder?”

  “It will be all right.” She glanced down to see the tears that the drude’s talons had left in the fabric. “I’m more worried about my cloak. It’s my favorite. And I’m not the best at patchwork.”

  His smile was hesitant. Then, as if suddenly realizing how close they were, he took a step back.

  Serilda felt a prickle of hurt. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been so eager to hold her hand, to embrace her while she cried, even to give her that frantic kiss.

  What had changed?

  “I didn’t just come here to see that room,” she said. “I did come to find you. As soon as I heard about the Feast of Death, and that the king and his court would not be in the castle, I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted to see you again. Without being locked up with a pile of straw for once.”

  He looked almost hopeful when she said this, even as he wrung his hands and took yet another step away from her. “Believe it or not, this is an important night for me.”

  “Oh?”

  He smiled, the first real smile she’d seen on him all night. That impish, dimpled look again. “In fact, maybe you’d like to help.”

  Chapter 32

  “You spend all year making these?” said Serilda, crouched over the crate full of small golden trinkets. She picked up a figurine shaped like a horse, crafted entirely of braided gold wire, similar to the golden strands she’d seen him spin from straw.

  “That, and saving your life,” said Gild, leaning against the parapet. “I like to keep busy.”

  She sent him a good-natured glare. Standing, she peered over the wall’s edge, down at the rocks far below and the lake reflecting a path of moonlight.

  “What do you suppose the Erlking wants the gold for?” she asked. “Somehow I doubt his motives are as benevolent as yours.”

  Gild scoffed. “Indeed. I suspect a few of these pieces will go toward paying off the feast he’s enjoying right now.”

  He did not try to hide his resentment.

  “And yet,” added Serilda, “what need does he have for riches?”

  Gild shook his head, staring down at the rocks, though it was too dark to see the pieces they’d already tossed down for the divers and fishermen of Adalheid to find.

  “I don’t know. He was storing it in the undercroft beneath the keep. I popped in every once in a while to see if it had been moved, but he didn’t seem to be doing anything with it. Then, after the Crow Moon, I went in one day and it was gone. All of it.” He shrugged. “Maybe he was worried I was going to try to steal it. I may have been planning as much.” His eyes twinkled with a hint of mischief, but it was quickly doused. “But I don’t know where he’s moved it to. Or what he wants it for. You’re right, though. I’ve never known him to take an interest in human riches before. Or really, anything other than hounds and weapons and the occasional feast. And servants. He enjoys being waited on.”

  “Are all the servants ghosts?”

  “No. He also has the kobolds, the goblins, the nachtkrapp…”

  She pressed her lips together, wondering if she should tell Gild that the nachtkrapp had been watching her ever since the start of the new year.

  Not that it mattered now. She wouldn’t be trying to run away again.

  “Are you one of his servants?” she asked instead.

  He glanced at her, eyes glittering. “Of course not. I’m the poltergeist.”

  She rolled her eyes. He seemed far too proud of his role as the resident troublemaker. “Do you know what they call you in Adalheid?”

  His grin brightened. “The Gilded Ghost.”

  “Exactly. Did you come up with it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember when I had the idea to start leaving gifts for them. I did it at first to amuse myself, and wasn’t entirely sure anyone would ever find them here on the back side of the castle. Not many people like to venture close to a haunted castle, after all. But when someone discovered a few of the presents, they all started coming back for more. It’s my favorite time of the year, after Eostrig’s Day, when I can stand up here and watch them searching for the gold below. It’s the only time people are close enough for me to hear them, and I remember, a long time ago, hearing them talking about their … benefactor. Vergoldetgeist. I figured they had to mean me. And I hope … I mean, I want them to know the ghosts in this castle aren’t cruel.”

  “They know,” she said, taking his arm. “It’s largely because of your gifts that Adalheid has flourished all these years. They’re very appreciative, I assure you.”

  Gild smiled, but it was suddenly tight as he extricated his arm. Taking the horse figurine, he paced farther down the wall.

  Serilda’s heart sank. “What’s wrong?”

  His expression was all innocence as he turned back to her. “Nothing’s wrong.” He reeled back his arm and threw the horse toward the lake.

  Serilda leaned over the wall, but it was too dark to see much. She heard a quiet plink-plink as the horse hit the rocks, followed by a splash.

  “I like to spread them out,” he said. “Some in the water, some on the rocks … makes it kind of a game, you know? Everyone likes games.”

  Serilda wanted to mention that the townsfolk probably liked the gold more than the game, but she didn’t want to ruin his fun. And it was sort of fun, she realized, as she took a golden butterfly and a golden fish and tossed them out onto the rocks below. While they “worked,” Serilda told Gild more about Leyna and Lorraine and Frieda, the librarian. Then she told him about Madam Sauer and the schoolhouse and her five favorite children in the world.

  She did not tell him about her father. She didn’t trust herself not to start crying.

  Gild seemed as eager to hear her stories—real stories for once—as he’d been to hear the tale of the stolen princess, and Serilda realized he was starved for news of the outside world. For human connection, not just physically, but emotionally, too.

  It didn’t take long before the crate was empty, but they made no move to leave, content to stand side by side looking out at the calm waters.

  “Do you have any friends here?” she asked tentatively. “Surely you must get along with some of the other ghosts?”

  He shifted away, idly pressing a finger to the wound on his head. “I suppose. Most are nice enough. But it’s complicated when they’re not…” He searched for the right word. “When they aren’t exactly their own masters?”

  Serilda turned to face him. “Because they’re servants to the Erlking and the dark ones?”

  He nodded. “It isn’t just that they’re servants, though. When he takes a spirit for his court, he takes control of them. He can make them do whatever he wants. There’s enough of them now that most of them are more or less left alone, unless someone’s unlucky enough to be one of the king’s favorites. Sometimes I think Manfred would rather stab his other eye than take one more order. But what choice does he have?”

  “Manfred? That’s the coachman, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “He’s sort of become the king’s best man, to his endless chagrin, I think, though I’ve never heard him say as much. Capable to a fault.”