“Is that a…?” she started, but words failed her. “What is that?”

  “A rubinrot wyvern,” came the answer from behind her. She jumped and spun around. She hadn’t realized the coachman had followed them. He stood serenely a few feet away, his hands clasped behind his back, seemingly unbothered by the blood that was even now dripping from his impaled eye socket. “Very rare. His Grim traveled to Lysreich to hunt it.”

  “Lysreich?” said Serilda, stunned. She pictured the map on the wall of the schoolhouse. Lysreich was across the sea, far to the west. “Does he often travel far to … hunt?”

  “When there is a worthy prize,” came the vague answer. He glanced toward the door where the king had gone. “I suggest you keep up. His mild temper can be deceiving.”

  “Right. Sorry.” Serilda hurried after the king. The next room might have been a parlor or game room, the massive fireplace that it shared with the great hall casting orange light across an assortment of richly upholstered chairs and lounges. But the king was not there.

  She moved ahead. Through another door—into a dining hall. And there was the king, standing at the head of the ridiculous table, his arms crossed and a glower in his cool eyes.

  “My goodness,” said Serilda, estimating that the table could likely seat a hundred guests along its never-ending length. “How old was the tree that gave its life to make that?”

  “Not as old as I am, I assure you.” The king sounded displeased, and Serilda felt chastised and, briefly, afraid. Not that she hadn’t felt a little concerned from the moment a ghost appeared on her doorstep, but there was a thinly veiled warning in the king’s voice that made her stand taller. She was forced to acknowledge a fact she’d been trying hard to ignore all night.

  The Erlking did not have a reputation for kindness.

  “Come closer,” he said.

  Trying to hide her nervousness, Serilda paced toward him. She glanced at the walls as she passed, which were hung with bright-colored tapestries. They continued the theme of the hunt, depicting images of hellhounds snarling around a frightened unicorn or a storm of hunters surging upon a winged lion.

  As she walked, the images grew in brutality. Death. Blood. Anguished pain on the faces of the prey—in stark contrast to the glee in the eyes of the hunters.

  Serilda shuddered and faced the king.

  He was watching her closely, though she could read no emotion from him. “I trust you understand why I sent for you.”

  Her heart skipped. “I imagine it’s because you found me so very charming.”

  “Do humans find you charming?”

  He spoke with honest curiosity, but Serilda couldn’t help feeling like it was an insult. “Some do. Children, mostly.”

  “Children have odious taste.”

  Serilda bit the inside of her cheek. “In some things, perhaps. But I’ve always appreciated their utter lack of bias.”

  The king stepped forward and, without warning, reached up to grasp her chin. He tilted her face upward. Her breath caught, staring into eyes the color of a clouded sky before a blizzard, with lashes as thick as pine needles. But while she might have been temporarily dazzled by his unnatural beauty, he was appraising her without any warmth in his expression. Only calculations, and the slightest shade of curiosity.

  He studied her long enough for her breaths to quicken in discomfort and a cold sweat to prickle at the back of her neck. His attention lingered on her eyes, intrigued, if hardly entranced. Most people tried to study her face in secretive glances, as much curious as horrified, but the king stared openly.

  Not disgusted, exactly, but …

  Well. She couldn’t tell what he felt.

  Finally, he released her and nodded toward the dining table. “My court often dines here after a long hunt,” he said. “I think of the dining hall as a sacred space, where bread is broken, wine is savored, toasts are made. It is for celebration and sustenance.” He paused, sweeping a hand toward the tapestries. “As such, it is one of my preferred rooms in which to display our greatest victories. Each is a treasure. A reminder that though the weeks are long, there is always a full moon to prepare for. Soon, we will ride again. I like to think that it keeps up morale.”

  He turned his back on Serilda and moved toward a long buffet against the wall. Pewter goblets were stacked on one end, plates and bowls on the other, ready for the next meal. On the wall, a plaque held a taxidermy bird, with long legs and a narrow beak. It reminded Serilda of a water crane or heron, except that its wings, spread wide as if preparing to take flight, were cast in shades of luminescent yellow and orange, each feather tipped with cobalt blue. At first, Serilda thought it might be a trick of the candlelight, but the more she stared, the more she became convinced that the feathers were glowing.

  “This is a hercinia,” said the king. “They live in the westernmost part of the Aschen Wood. It is one of the many forest creatures that is said to be under the protection of Pusch-Grohla and her maidens.”

  Serilda stilled at the mention of the moss maidens and their Shrub Grandmother.

  “I’m rather fond of this acquisition. Quite pretty, don’t you agree?”

  “Lovely,” said Serilda around a heavy tongue.

  “And yet, you see how it does not quite fit this wall.” He stepped back, eyeing the space with displeasure. “For some time now I have been waiting to find something just right to act as an ornament on either side of the bird. Imagine my delight when last full moon, my hounds picked up the scent of not one, but two moss maidens. Can you picture it? Their pretty faces, those foxlike ears, the crown of greenery. Here and here.” He gestured to the left and right of the bird’s wings. “Forever watching us feast upon the animals they strive so very hard to protect.” He glanced at Serilda. “I rather enjoy a bit of irony.”

  Her stomach was roiling, and it was all she could do not to show how such an idea disgusted her. The moss maidens were not animals. They were not beasts to be hunted, to be murdered. They were not decor.

  “Part of the brilliance of irony, I feel,” continued the king, “is that it so often makes fools of others, without them being any the wiser.” His tone sharpened. “I have had much time to think on our last meeting, and what a fool you must think I am.”

  Serilda’s eyes widened. “No. Never.”

  “You were so very convincing, with your tale of gold, of having been god-blessed. It was only when the moon had set that I thought—why would a human girl, who can succumb so easily to the frost, be gathering straw in the snow without so much as a pair of gloves with which to protect her fragile hands?” He took Serilda’s hands into his and her heart leaped into her throat. His voice froze over. “I don’t know what magic you wove that night, but I am not one to forgive mockery.” His grip tightened. She bit back a frightened whimper. One elegant eyebrow lifted, and she could tell the Erlking took some enjoyment in this. Watching her squirm. His prey, cornered. For a moment it looked like he might even smile. But it was not a smile, rather something cruel and victorious that curled back his lips. “But I believe in fair chances. And so—a test. You have until one hour before sunrise to complete it.”

  “A test?” she whispered. “What sort of test?”

  “Nothing you aren’t perfectly capable of,” he said. “That is … unless you were lying.”

  Her stomach dropped.

  “And if you were lying,” he continued, bending his head toward her, “then you also kept me from my prey that night, an offense that I find unforgivable. If such is the case, it will be your head that takes a place on my wall. Manfred”—he glanced at the coachman—“did she have family?”

  “A father, I presume,” he answered.

  “Good. I will take his head, too. I appreciate symmetry.”

  “Wait,” cried Serilda. “My lord—please, I—”

  “For your sake and his,” interrupted the Erlking, “I do hope you were telling the truth.” He lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. The iciness of his touch seared her skin. “If you’ll excuse me, I must see to the hunt.” He glanced at the coachman. “Take her to the dungeons.”

  Chapter 10

  Serilda had barely grasped the meaning of the king’s words before the coachman had taken hold of her elbow and was dragging her from the dining hall.

  “Wait! The dungeons?” she cried. “He can’t mean that!”

  “Can’t he? His Darkness does not favor mercy,” said the ghost, his grip never loosening. He dragged her down a narrow corridor, then paused at a doorway to a steep staircase. He peered at her. “Will you walk on your own, or must I drag you the entire way? I warn you, these stairs can be treacherous.”

  Serilda sagged, staring down the stairwell that spiraled fast from view. Her mind was spinning from everything the Erlking had said. Her head. Her father’s. A test. The dungeons.

  She swayed, and might have fallen if the ghost’s grip hadn’t tightened on her arm.

  “I can walk,” she whispered.

  “Very convincing,” said the coachman, though he did release her. Taking a torch from a bracket beside the door, he headed into the stairwell.

  Serilda hesitated, glancing back down the corridor. She felt confident she could retrace her steps back through the keep, and there was no one else in sight. Was there any hope of escaping?

  “Do not forget who this castle belongs to,” said the ghost. “If you run, he will only further relish the chase.”

  Swallowing hard, Serilda turned back. Dread settled like a stone in her stomach, but when the ghost started down the steps, she followed. She kept one hand on the wall for balance on the steep, narrow stairs, feeling dizzy as they descended.

  Down some more.

  And down again.

  They must be underground now, somewhere amid the ancient foundations of the castle. Perhaps even beneath the surface of the lake.

  They reached the bottom level and tromped through an open set of barred gates. Serilda shuddered to see a row of heavy wooden doors lining the wall to her right, each one reinforced with iron.

  Cell doors. Serilda craned her neck to peer through the slitted windows, catching glimpses of manacles and chains hung from the ceiling, though she could not see enough to know whether any prisoners were dangling from them. She tried not to wonder if that would be her fate. She heard no moans, no crying, not the sounds she would expect to hear from tortured and starving prisoners. Perhaps these cells were empty. Or perhaps the prisoners were long dead. The only “prisoners” she’d ever heard of the Erlking taking were the children he’d once gifted to Perchta, though they wouldn’t have been kept in the dungeons. Oh, and the lost souls that followed the hunt on its chaotic rides, though they were more often left for dead by the roadside, not spirited away to his castle.

  Never had she heard rumors of the Erlking keeping humans locked up in a dungeon.

  But then, perhaps there were no rumors because no one ever lived to tell them.

  “Stop it,” she whispered harshly to herself.

  The coachman glanced back at her.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “Not you.”

  A small critter caught her eye then, darting along the corridor wall before scurrying into a small hole in the mortar. A rat.

  Lovely.

  Then—something strange. A new scent collecting around her. Something sweet and familiar and entirely unexpected in the musty air.

  “Here.” The ghost paused and gestured to a cell door that had been left open.

  Serilda hesitated. This was it, then. She was to be a prisoner of the Erlking, locked in a dank, horrible cell. Left to starve and rot away into nothing. Or at least, trapped until morning, when she would have her head lopped off and hung up in the dining hall. She wondered if she would become a ghost herself, haunting these cold, dim corridors. Perhaps that was what the king wanted. Another servant for his dead retinue.

  She looked at the phantom with the chisel in his eye. Could she fight him? Push him into the cell and lock the door, then hide somewhere until she found a chance to escape?

  Returning her look, the ghost slowly smiled. “I’m already dead.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about killing you.”

  “You are a terrible liar.”

  She wrinkled her nose.

  “Go on. You’re wasting time.”

  “You’re all so impatient,” she grumbled, ducking past him. “Don’t you have an eternity ahead of you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And you have until one hour to dawn.”

  Serilda stepped through the cell door, bracing herself for the inevitable slam and locking of the grate. She’d pictured bloodstains on the walls and shackles on the ceiling and rats darting into the corners.

  Instead, she saw … straw.

  Not a tidy bale of it, but a messy pile, a full cartload’s worth. It was the source of the sweet aroma she’d noticed before, carrying the faint familiarity of harvest work in the fall, when all the town pitched in.

  In the back corner of the cell there stood a spinning wheel, surrounded by piles of empty wooden bobbins.

  It made sense, and yet—it didn’t.

  The Erlking had brought her here to spin straw into gold, because once again her tongue had created a ridiculous story, meant to do nothing more than entertain. Well, in this case, to distract.

  He was just giving her a chance to prove herself.

  A chance.

  A chance she would fail at.

  Hopelessness had just begun to needle at her when the cell door slammed shut. She spun around, jumping as the lock thundered into place.

  Through the grated window, the ghost peered at her with his good eye. “If it matters at all to you,” he said thoughtfully, “I actually hope you succeed.”

  Then he yanked shut the wooden sash over the grate, cutting her off from everything.

  Serilda stared at the door, listening to the retreat of his footsteps, dizzy with how quickly and completely her life had crumbled.

  She had told her father it would be all right.

  Kissed him goodbye, like it was nothing.

  “I should have held him longer,” she whispered to the solitude.

  Turning, she surveyed the cell. Her sleeping cot at home might have fit inside, twice side by side, and she could easily have touched the ceiling without standing on tiptoes. It was all made more cramped by the spinning wheel and bobbins stacked against the far wall.

  A single pewter candlestick had been left in the corner near the door, far enough from the straw that it wouldn’t pose a hazard. Far enough to make the spinning wheel’s shadow dance monstrously against the stone wall, which still showed chisel marks from when this cell had been cut into the island’s rock. The flame might have been laced with magic, for it burned brighter than any candle she’d ever seen. Serilda thought of the wastefulness—a magic candle left to burn only for her, so she might complete this absurd task. Even normal candles were a valuable commodity to be hoarded and preserved, to be used only when absolutely necessary.

  Her stomach gurgled, and only then did she realize she’d forgotten the apple her father had packed inside the carriage.

  At that thought, a stunted, panicky laugh fell from her lips. She was going to die here.

  She studied the straw, toeing a few pieces that had drifted from the pile. It was clean straw. Sweet-smelling and dry. She wondered if the Erlking had ordered it harvested earlier that night, under the Hunger Moon, because she’d told him that gathering straw touched by the full moon made it better for her work. It seemed unlikely. Any straw gathered recently would still be wet from the snow.

  Because, of course, the king did not believe her lies, and he was right. What he asked for could not be done. Or, at least, not by her. She had heard tales of magical ones who could do marvelous things. Of people who really had been blessed by Hulda. Who could spin not only gold, but also silver and silk and strands of perfect white pearls.

  But the only blessing she carried was from the god of lies, and now her cursed tongue had ruined her.

  How foolish she’d been to think for a moment that she had tricked the Erlking and gotten away with it. Of course he would realize that a simple village maiden could not possess such a gift. If she could spin straw into gold, her father would hardly still be toiling away at the gristmill. The schoolhouse would not need new thatching, and the fountain that stood crumbling in the middle of Märchenfeld’s square would have been repaired ages ago. If she could spin straw into gold, she would have ensured by now that her whole village prospered.

  But she did not have such magic. And the king knew it.

  A hand went to her throat as she worried over how he would do it—with a sword? An ax?—when her fingers brushed the slender chain of the necklace. She pulled it from beneath her dress collar and opened the locket, turning it so she could see the face of the girl inside. The child peered out at Serilda with her teasing eyes, as if there were a secret near to bursting inside of her.

  “There’s no hurt in trying, is there?” she whispered.

  The king had given her until one hour to sunrise. It was already after midnight. Here in the bowels of the castle, the only way to track the passing of time was by the candle burning in the corner. The persistent melting of wax.

  Too slow.

  Far too fast.

  No matter. She was hardly one to sit still for hours, suffocating in her own self-pity.

  “If Hulda can do it, why can’t I?” she said, grabbing a handful of straw from the pile. She approached the spinning wheel as if she were approaching a sleeping wyvern. Unclasping her traveling cloak, she folded it neatly and settled it in the corner. Then she hooked one ankle around the leg of the stool that had been provided and sat down.