“Gild … if you’re here …”
A brush of skin against her palm. Fingers lacing with hers.
Her eyes flew open.
The sensation vanished.
No one was there.
She might have imagined it.
And then—
A scream.
Serilda whirled toward the nearest window and looked down at the castle’s exterior wall. She spotted the figure of a man running along the wall-walk, his chain-mail armor glinting silver. He was nearly to the tower when he jerked to a stop. For a moment he was still, his back arched and his face turned toward the sky.
Toward Serilda.
She pressed a hand against the window, her breath steaming the glass.
The man fell to his knees. Blood burbled up from his mouth.
Before he could fall face-first to the stone, he vanished.
And another scream came, from the opposite side of the tower. From the main courtyard.
A child’s scream. A child’s cry. And another man, pleading, No! Please!
Serilda backed away from the window, covering her ears. Afraid to look. Afraid of what she might see, and knowing that she could do nothing to stop it.
What had happened in this castle?
With a shuddering breath, she grabbed the ladder and scrambled down. On the fourth rung, the wood cracked and split. She yelped and jumped the rest of the way to the floor. Her legs were shaking as she ran down the steps.
She emerged onto the second level and nearly collided with a squat, wrinkled creature with long pointed ears and a once-white apron now covered in grime.
Serilda lurched backward, afraid that it might be another drude.
But no—it was only a kobold. Harmless goblins that often worked in castles and manor houses. Some considered them to be good luck.
But this kobold was staring at Serilda with fervid eyes, which gave her pause. Was she a ghost? Could she see Serilda?
The creature took a step closer, waving her arms. “Go!” she screeched. “They’re coming! Quick, to the king and queen! We must save the—”
Her words were cut off with a strangled gasp. The kobold reached her leathery fingers to her throat as brownish blood began to seep through them.
Serilda turned and fled the other way. It wasn’t long before she again found herself dizzy and turned around. Afraid she was going in circles. She stumbled past unfamiliar rooms, through open doorways. She ducked into the servants’ halls before emerging into a great ballroom or a library or a parlor, and every corner she turned, there were screams crowding in around her. The rush of panicked footsteps. The metallic stench of blood in the air.
Suddenly, Serilda stopped.
She had found the hallway with the rainbow wash of daylight. The seven stained-glass windows, the seven gods heedless of the girl before them.
She pressed a hand against the ache in her side.
“All right,” she said, panting. “I know where I am. I just have to … to find the stairs. And they were …”
She looked in both directions, trying to retrace her steps from the last time she’d been here. Had the stairway been to the left, or to the right?
She chose right, but as soon as she turned the corner, she knew her mistake.
No—this was the strange hall with the candelabras. The doors all closed, except that last one, with its unusual pale glow, the shadows shifting across the floor, the vivid tapestry she could barely see.
“Go back,” she whispered to herself, urging her feet to listen. She needed to get out of this castle.
But her feet didn’t listen. There was something about the room. The way the lights shimmered on the stonework.
Like it wanted to be discovered.
Like it was waiting for her.
“Serilda,” she murmured, “what are you doing?”
All the candelabras had been knocked over by that invisible force when she’d been here last. They still lay strewn across the hallway. Had it been a poltergeist? The poltergeist?
She grabbed the first candelabra that she passed, gripping it like a weapon.
Only once the edge of the tapestry came into view did she remember. Last time, this door had slammed shut.
It should not have been open now.
Her brow furrowed.
NO!
The cry attacked her from all directions. Serilda cowered, knuckles tight around the iron candelabra.
The roar came from everywhere. The windows, the walls—her own mind.
It was furious. Terrifying.
Get out!
She stepped back, but did not run. Her arms trembled under the candelabra’s weight. “Who are you? What’s in that room? If I could only see—”
The door dividing her from the tapestry slammed shut.
GET!
In unison, the rest of the doors along the hallway started to open, then slam, then open—BANG-BANG-BANG—one after another. An angry chorus, a thundering melody.
OUT!
“No!” she yelled back. “I need to see what’s in there!”
A screech drew her eyes toward the rafters. A drude was dangling from a chandelier, its talons clacking together, teeth bared as it prepared to lunge for her.
She froze. “All right,” she breathed. “You win. I’ll leave.”
It hissed.
Serilda backed out of the hallway, clutching her makeshift weapon. As soon as she reached the windows, she dropped the candelabra and ran.
Her path was surer this time. She didn’t stop at the throne room, didn’t stop for anything. She ignored the cacophony of screams and crashes and the permeating smell of blood. The occasional movement in the corner of her eye. A shadow figure reaching for her. Fingers grasping. The noise of footsteps racing in every direction.
Until the entry hall, with the massive carved doors shut tight against the drumming rainstorm. Her escape.
But she wasn’t alone.
She drew up short, shaking her head, pleading with this castle to leave her be, to let her go.
A woman was standing just inside the doors. Unlike the kobold and the man on the castle wall, this woman looked like a phantom, like a ghost in a fairy tale. She was not old, exactly. About the age of Serilda’s father, she guessed. But she had the sorrowful air of someone who had seen too much hardship in her years.
Serilda glanced around, searching for another exit. Surely there were other doors that led in and out of the keep.
She would have to find them.
But before she could back around the nearest corner, the woman turned her head. Her gaze fell on Serilda. Her cheeks were stained with tears.
And … Serilda recognized her. Hair tightly braided and a scabbard at her hip. Only, the last time she’d seen the woman, she had been riding atop a powerful steed. A scarf tied around her throat. She had smiled at Serilda.
I believe she speaks true.
Serilda blinked, startled. For a moment, the woman seemed to recognize her, too.
But then pain clouded the phantom’s expression. “I taught him as well as I could, but he wasn’t ready,” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “I failed him.”
Serilda pressed a hand to her chest. The suffering in the woman’s voice was tangible.