“Don’t you give me that look,” she spat. “You startled me.”
The bird cocked its head, and through the dust motes hanging in the air, Serilda saw that it was not a crow, but another nachtkrapp.
She stood taller, holding its hollow-eyed gaze. “Oh, hello,” she said warily. “Are you the same bird who visited me before? Or are you a descendant from the future?”
It said nothing. Beastly creature or not, it was still just a bird.
The loud creak of wood echoed distantly in the castle. A door opening, or timber rafters shifting under the weight of stone and time. She listened for footsteps, but there were no sounds but the quiet, soothing crash of waves on the lake. The flutter of wild birds in the corners of lofted ceilings. The scuttle of rodents along the walls.
With another glance at the nachtkrapp, Serilda moved toward the creaking sound, or what direction she thought it had come from. She crept through a long, narrow corridor and had just passed an open doorway when she heard it again. The slow groaning of heavy wood and un-oiled hinges.
She paused and looked through the doorway, to a straight staircase. Two unlit torches hung on the walls, and at the top, barely discernible in the darkness, a closed arched door.
Serilda made her way up the stairs, where centuries of footsteps had left subtle grooves in the stone. The door opened easily. Shimmering, rosy light spilled into the stairwell.
Serilda emerged into a vast hallway with seven narrow stained-glass windows lined up along the exterior wall. Their once vibrant colors were dulled beneath a layer of grime, but it was still easy to recognize the depictions of the old gods. Freydon harvesting golden stalks of wheat. Solvilde puffing air into a ship’s sails. Hulda seated at a spinning wheel. Tyrr preparing to shoot an arrow from a bow. Eostrig sowing seeds. Velos holding aloft a lantern to guide souls to Verloren. Of the seven windows, Velos’s was the only one that was broken, a few pieces of the god’s robes left shattered and barely clinging to the leading.
The seventh god waited at the end of the line. Serilda’s own patron deity—Wyrdith, the god of stories and fortune, lies and fate. Though they were often depicted with the wheel of fortune, here the artist had chosen to show them as the storyteller, holding a golden plume in one hand and a scroll of parchment in the other.
Serilda stared at the god, trying to feel some sort of affinity for the being who had supposedly granted her golden-wheeled eyes and a talent for deception. But she felt nothing for the god before her, surrounded in hues of emerald and rose, looking regal and wise as they peered up toward the sky, as if even a god might wait for divine inspiration.
It was not at all how she’d imagined her trickster godparent to look, and she couldn’t help feeling like the artist had gotten them all wrong.
She turned away. At the end of the procession of windows, the hall took a sharp turn. Plain leaded windows to one side, looking out over the misty lake. On the other, a row of standing iron candelabras, devoid of candles.
Between the candelabras stood a series of polished oak doors. All closed, except the last.
Serilda paused, staring at the pool of light spilling across the worn, tattered carpet. It was not rich daylight she was seeing, tinted cool gray from the overcast skies. It was not like the light coming in from the windows.
It was warm and flickering like candlelight, cut through with dancing shadows.
Serilda swiped away a cobweb that hung across the passage and moved toward the doorway. Her footsteps landed quietly on the carpet. She barely breathed.
When she was not ten steps from the room, she spied the edge of a tapestry. She couldn’t make out the design, but its saturated colors surprised her. Vivid, apparently unfaded, when everything around her was dim and cold and rotting away under time.
The light in the room darkened, but she was so focused on the tapestry, she barely noticed.
She took another step.
From somewhere below, deep in the heart of the castle, a scream.
Serilda froze. The noise was laced with agony.
The door to the room before her slammed shut.
She jumped back, just as a feral screech exploded through the hall. A blur of wings and talons flew at her. She screamed, one arm flailing. A claw slashed across her cheek. She threw her arm out, managing to strike one of the beast’s wings. It hissed and lurched backward.
Serilda crashed against the wall, both arms raised in an effort to protect herself. She peered up, expecting an enormous nachtkrapp to be preparing for a second attack, but the creature before her was not a night raven.
It was far worse.
The size of a toddler, but with the face of a devil. Horns spiraled forward from the sides of its head. Black leathery wings sprouted from its back. Its proportions were all wrong. Arms too short; legs too long; fingers tipped with spindly, pointed claws. Its skin was gray and purple; its eyes slitted like a cat. When it hissed at her, she saw that it had no teeth, but a serpent’s pointed tongue.
The creature was a nightmare, literally.
A drude.
Fear claimed her, crowding out any thoughts beyond horror, and some animalistic instinct to run. To get away.
Except her feet wouldn’t move. Her heart felt like it was the size of a melon, pressing against her ribs, squeezing the air from her lungs.
Her hand reached for her stinging cheek, wet with blood.
The drude shrieked and lunged for her, wings spread wide.
Serilda tried to strike out at it, but its talons latched on to her wrists, their sharp points puncturing like needles. Its wail invaded her, a scream so unearthly it felt as though it were piercing her soul. Her mind crystallized into nothing but fury and pain—then shattered.
Serilda was back in the castle’s dining hall, surrounded by disgusting tapestries. The Erlking was looming over her, his smile easy and proud. He gestured to the wall. She turned, her stomach in knots.
The hercinia bird was above the buffet, its glowing wings stretched out. But this time, it was alive. Screeching in pain. Its wings kept fluttering, trying to fly away, but they were mounted to a board, stuck through with thick iron nails.
And on the wall to either side, two disembodied heads had been placed on stone plaques. To the right—Gild, glowering at her with hate, his eyes flashing. This was her fault. He had tried to help her, and this was what had become of him.
And to the left—her father, his eyes open wide, his mouth twisting, trying desperately to form words.
She stepped closer to him, straining to hear him with tears on her cheeks.
Until a word finally came. A whisper as harsh as a scream.
Liar.
Distantly, a roar thundered through the dining hall.
No.
Not the dining hall.
From a corridor, upstairs.