Another howl, then another, in rapid succession, sent her jerking upward again, her heart rattling in her chest. These had been loud. Much louder than before.

  The hunt was coming closer.

  Serilda once again forced herself to lie down, and this time she screwed her eyes shut so tight her whole face was pinched up. She knew that sleep was impossible now, but she had to pretend. She had heard too many stories of villagers being lured from their beds by the seduction of the hunt, only to be found shivering in their nightgowns at the edge of the forest the next dawn.

  Or, for the unlucky ones, never seen again at all. And historically, she and luck didn’t get along well. Best not to take her chances.

  She vowed to stay right where she was, motionless, barely breathing, until the ghostly parade had passed. Let them find some other hapless peasant to prey on. Her need for excitement was not yet that desperate.

  She curled herself into a ball, clutching the blanket in her fingertips, waiting for the night to be over. What a great story she would tell the children after this. Of course the hunt is real, for I’ve heard it with my own—

  “No—Meadowsweet! This way!”

  A girl’s voice, trembling and shrill.

  Serilda’s eyes snapped open again.

  The voice had been so clear. It had sounded as if it had come from right outside the window above her bed, which her father had nailed a board over at the start of winter to help keep out the cold.

  The voice came again, more frightened still: “Quick! They’re coming!”

  Something banged against the wall.

  “I’m trying,” another feminine voice whined. “It’s locked!”

  They were so close, as if Serilda could reach her hand through the wall and touch them.

  She realized with a start that whoever it was, they were trying to get into the cellar beneath the house.

  They were trying to hide.

  Whoever they were, they were being hunted.

  Serilda gave herself no time to think, or to wonder whether it might be a trick of the hunters to lure out fresh prey. To lure her from the safety of her bed.

  She tossed her feet out from the blankets and rushed to the door. In a blink, she had thrown her cloak on over her nightgown and stuffed her feet into her still-damp boots. She grabbed the lantern off its shelf and fumbled briefly with a matchstick before the wick flared to life.

  Serilda yanked open the door and was struck with a gust of wind, a flurry of snowflakes—and a squeal of surprise. She swiveled the lantern toward the cellar door. Two figures were crouched against the wall, their long arms entwined around each other, their immense eyes blinking at her.

  Serilda blinked back, equally stunned. For though she had known someone was out here, she had not expected to discover that they were actually something.

  These creatures were not human. At least, not entirely. Their eyes were enormous black pools, their faces as delicate as spindle flowers, their ears tall and pointed and a little fuzzy, like those of a fox. Their limbs were long and willowy branches and their skin shone tawny gold in the glow of the lantern—and there was a lot of skin to be seen. Despite being in the middle of winter, the collection of fur pelts they wore covered little more than what was necessary for the barest sense of modesty. Their hair was cut short and wild and, Serilda realized with a heady sense of awe, was not hair at all, but tufts of lichen and moss.

  “Moss maidens,” she breathed. For of all her many tales of the dark ones and the nature spirits and all manner of ghosts and ghouls, in all her eighteen years Serilda had only ever met plain, boring humans.

  One of the girls sprang to her feet, using her body to block the other from Serilda’s view.

  “We are not thieves,” she said, her tone sharp. “We ask for nothing but shelter.”

  Serilda flinched. She knew that humans bore a deep distrust for the forest folk. They were regarded as strange. Occasionally helpful at best, thieves and murderers at worst. To this day, the baker’s wife insisted that her oldest child was a changeling. (Changeling or not, that child was now a full-grown man, happily married with four offspring of his own.)

  Another howl echoed across the fields, sounding as if it came from every direction at once.

  Serilda shivered and looked around, but though the fields stretching away from the mill were brightly illuminated under the full moon, she could see no sign of the hunt.

  “Parsley, we must go,” said the smaller of the two, jumping to her feet and grasping the other’s arm. “They are near.”

  The other, Parsley, nodded fiercely, not taking her gaze from Serilda. “Into the river, then. Disguising our scent is our only hope.”

  They grasped hands and started to turn away.

  “Wait!” Serilda cried. “Wait.”

  Setting the lantern down beside the cellar door, she reached beneath the wooden plank where her father kept the key. Though her hands were growing numb from the cold, it took her only a moment to undo the lock and throw open the wide flat door. The maidens eyed her warily.

  “The river runs slow this time of year, the surface half frozen already. It won’t offer much protection. Get in here and pass me up an onion. I’ll rub it on the door, and hopefully it will disguise your scent well enough.”

  They stared at her, and for a long moment Serilda thought they would laugh at her ridiculous attempts to help them. They were forest folk. What need did they have for the pathetic efforts of humans?

  But then Parsley nodded. The smaller maiden—Meadowsweet, if she had heard right—climbed down into the pitch-black of the cellar and handed up an onion from one of the crates below. There was no word of gratitude—no word of anything.

  As soon as they were both inside, Serilda shut the door and fitted the lock back onto the bolt.

  Tearing the skin from the onion, she rubbed its flesh against the edges of the hatch. Her eyes began to sting and she tried not to worry about small details, like the pile of snow that had fallen from the cellar door when she’d thrown it open, or how the trail of the maidens would lead the hellhounds directly to her home.

  Trail … footsteps.

  Spinning around, she searched the field, afraid to see two paths of footprints in the snow, leading straight to her.

  But she couldn’t see anything.

  It all felt so surreal that if her eyes hadn’t been watering from the onion, she would have been sure she was in the middle of a vivid dream.

  She threw the onion away, as hard as she could. It landed in the river with a splash.

  Not a moment later, she heard the growls.

  Chapter 4

  They came upon her like death itself—yapping and snarling as they charged across the fields. They were twice as big as any hunting dog she’d ever seen, the tops of their ears nearly as high as her shoulders. But their bodies were skinny, with ribs threatening to burst through their bristled fur. Strings of thick saliva clung to pronounced fangs. Most disturbing of all was the burning glow that could be seen through their throats, nostrils, eyes—even areas where their mangy skin was stretched too thin across their bones. As if they did not have blood coursing through their bodies, but the very fires of Verloren.

  Serilda barely had time to scream before one of the beasts launched at her, its jaws snapping at her face. Humongous paws knocked into her shoulders. She fell into the snow, instinctively covering her face with her arms. The hound landed on all fours astride her, smelling of sulfur and rot.

  To her surprise, it did not clamp its teeth into her, but waited. Trembling, Serilda dared to peer up through the gap in her arms. The hound’s eyes blazed as it drew in a long sniff, the air kindling the glow behind its leathery nostrils. Something wet dripped onto her chin. Serilda gasped and tried to scrub it away, unable to stifle a whimper.

  “Leave it,” demanded a voice—quiet, yet sharp.

  The hound pulled away, leaving Serilda shaking and gasping for breath. As soon as she was sure she was free, she rolled over and scrambled back toward the cottage. She snatched up the shovel that lay against the wall and swung back around, her heart racing as she prepared to strike back at the beast.

  But she was no longer facing the hounds.

  She blinked up at the horse who had come to a halt mere steps from where she had just lain. A black warhorse, its muscles undulating, nostrils blowing great clouds of steam.

  Its rider was cast in moonlight, beautiful and terrible at once, with silver-tinted skin and eyes the color of thin ice over a deep lake and long black hair that hung loose around his shoulders. He wore fine leather armor, with two thin belts at his hips holding an assortment of knives and a curved horn. A quiver of arrows jutted over one shoulder. He had the air of a king, confident in his control of the beast beneath him. Sure in the respect he commanded from anyone who crossed his path.

  He was dangerous.

  He was glorious.

  He was not alone. There were at least two dozen other horses, each one black as coal, but for their lightning-white manes and tails. Each bore a rider—men and women, young and old, some dressed in fine robes, others in tattered rags.

  Some were ghosts. She could tell from the way their silhouettes blurred against the night sky.

  Others were dark ones, recognized by their unearthly beauty. Immortal demons who had long ago escaped from Verloren and their once master, the god of death.

  And they were all watching her. The hounds, too. They had heeled to the leader’s command and were now pacing hungrily at the back of the hunt, awaiting their next order.

  Serilda looked back up at the leader. She knew who he was, but she dared not think the name aloud in her thoughts, for fear she might be right.

  He peered into her, through her, with the exact same look one gives a flea-ridden mutt who has just stolen one’s supper. “In which direction have they gone?”

  Serilda shivered. His voice. Serene. Cutting. If he’d bothered to speak poetry to her, rather than a simple question, she would have been ensorcelled already.

  As it was, she found herself managing to shake away some of the spell his presence had cast, remembering the moss maidens who were, even now, mere feet away from her, hidden beneath the cellar door, and her father, hopefully still fast asleep inside the house.

  She was alone, trapped in the attention of this being who was more demon than man.

  Serilda tentatively set the shovel back down and asked, “In which direction have who gone, my lord?”

  For surely he was nobility, in whatever hierarchy the dark ones claimed.

  A king, her mind whispered, and she shushed it. It was simply too unthinkable.

  His pale eyes narrowed. The question hung in the bitter air between them for a long time, while Serilda’s shivers overtook her body. She was still in her nightgown beneath the cloak, and her toes were quickly going numb.

  The Erl—no, the hunter, she would call him. The hunter did not respond to her question, to her disappointment. For if he’d answered the moss maidens, she would have been able to lob a question back at him. What was he doing hunting the forest folk? What did he want with them? They were not beasts to be slain and beheaded, their skins to decorate a castle hall.

  At least, she certainly hoped that wasn’t his intention. The mere thought of it curdled her stomach.

  But the hunter said nothing, just held her gaze while his steed held perfectly, unnaturally still.

  Unable to stand any amount of silence for too long, and especially a silence while surrounded by phantoms and wraiths, Serilda let out a startled cry. “Oh, forgive me! Am I in your way? Please…” She stepped back and curtsied, waving them on. “Don’t mind me. I was only about to do my midnight harvesting, but I’ll wait for you to pass.”

  The hunter did not move. A few of the other steeds that had formed a crescent around them stamped their hoofs into the snow and let out impatient snorts.

  After another long silence, the hunter said, “You do not intend to join us?”

  Serilda swallowed. She could not tell if it was an invitation or a threat, but the thought of joining this ghastly troupe, of going along on the hunt, left a hollow terror in her chest.

  She tried to keep from stammering as she said, “I’ll be useless to you, my lord. Never learned any hunting skills, and can barely stay upright in a saddle. Best you go on and leave me to my work.”

  The hunter inclined his head, and for the first time, she sensed something new in his cold expression. Something like curiosity.

  To her surprise, he swung his leg over the horse and before Serilda could gasp, he had landed on the ground before her.

  Serilda was tall compared with most girls in the village, but the Erlki—the hunter dwarfed her by nearly a full head. His proportions were uncanny, long and slender as a water reed.

  Or a sword, perhaps, was a more appropriate comparison.

  She gulped hard as he took a step toward her.

  “Pray tell,” he said lowly, “what is your work, at such an hour, on such a night?”

  She blinked rapidly, and for a terrifying moment, no words would come. Not only could she not speak, but her mind was desolate. Where normally there were stories and tales and lies, now there was a void. A nothingness like she’d never experienced.

  So much for spinning straw into gold.

  The hunter craned his head toward her, taunting. Knowing he had caught her. And next he would ask her again where the moss maidens were. What could she do but tell him? What option did she have?

  Think. Think.

  “I believe you said you were … harvesting?” he prompted, with a hint of lightness to his tone that was deceptive in its gentle curiosity. This was a trick—a trap.

  Serilda managed to tear her gaze away from his, to a spot in the field where her own feet had trampled the snow when she’d rushed home earlier that evening. A few broken pieces of yellowed rye were poking up from the slush.

  “Straw!” she said—practically shouted, so that the hunter actually looked startled. “I’m harvesting straw, of course. What else, my lord?”

  His brows dipped in toward each other. “On New Year’s night? Under a Snow Moon?”

  “Why—surely. It’s the best time to do it. I mean … not that it’s the new year, exactly, but … the full moon. Otherwise it won’t have quite the right properties for the … the spinning.” She gulped, before adding, somewhat nervously, “Into … gold?”

  She finished this absurd statement with a cheeky smile that the hunter did not reciprocate. He kept his attention fixed on her, suspicious, yet still … interested, somehow.

  Serilda wrapped her arms around herself, as much as a shield against his shrewd gaze as the cold. She was starting to shiver in earnest now, her teeth newly chattering.

  Finally, the hunter spoke again, but whatever she had hoped or expected him to say, it was certainly not—

  “You bear the mark of Hulda.”

  Her heart skipped. “Hulda?”

  “God of labor.”

  She gaped at him. Of course she knew who Hulda was. There were only seven gods, after all—they weren’t difficult to keep track of. Hulda was the god mostly associated with good, honest work, as Madam Sauer would say. From farming to carpentry to, perhaps most of all, spinning.

  She had hoped that the darkness of the night would have hidden her strange eyes with their embedded golden wheels, but perhaps the hunter had the keen sight of an owl, a nocturnal hunter through and through.

  He had interpreted the mark as a spinning wheel. She opened her mouth, prepared, for once, to tell the truth. That she was not marked by the god of spinning, but rather, the god of lies. The mark he saw was the wheel of fate and fortune—or misfortune, as seemed to be the case more often than not.

  It was an easy mistake to make.

  But then she realized that being thus marked added some credibility to her lie of harvesting straw, so she forced herself to shrug, a little bashful at this supposed sorcery she contained.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice suddenly faint. “Hulda gave their blessing before I was born.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “My mother was a talented seamstress,” she lied. “She gifted a fine cloak to Hulda, and the god was so impressed that they told my mother her firstborn child would be gifted with the most miraculous of skills.”

  “Spinning straw into gold,” the hunter drawled, his voice thick with disbelief.

  Serilda nodded. “I try not to tell many people. Might make the other maidens jealous, or the men greedy. I trust you’ll keep the secret?”

  For the briefest moment, the hunter looked amused at this statement. Then he took a step closer, and the air around Serilda became still and so very, very cold. She felt touched by frost and realized for the first time that there was no cloud steaming the space before him when he breathed.

  Something sharp pressed into the base of her chin. Serilda gasped. Surely she should have sensed him drawing the weapon, but she had neither seen nor felt him move. Yet here he was, holding a hunting knife at her throat.

  “I will ask again,” he said, in a tone almost sweet, “where are the forest creatures?”

  Chapter 5

  Serilda held the hunter’s soulless gaze, feeling too brittle, too vulnerable.

  And yet her tongue—that idiotic, lying tongue—went right on talking. “My lord,” she said, with a tinge of sympathy, as if embarrassed to have to say this, for surely such a skilled hunter would not like appearing the simpleton, “the forest creatures live in the Aschen Wood, to the west of the Great Oak. And … a little to the north, I think. At least, that’s what the stories say.”

  For the first time, a flicker of anger passed over the hunter’s face. Anger—but also uncertainty. He couldn’t quite tell whether she was playing games with him or not.

  Even a great tyrant such as he couldn’t tell if she was lying.

  She lifted a hand and laid her fingers ever so delicately on his wrist.

  He twitched at the unexpected touch.