“I’m hoping that maybe we can be friends. And if a friend ever needed an embrace or to hold my hand for a while or … just to sit and be together, I wouldn’t mind.”
Gild was silent for a long time, staring at their interlaced fingers like he was worried she would pull away.
She didn’t pull away. She didn’t disappear.
Finally, he brought his other hand forward as well, so that her one hand was clasped tight between both of his. Leaning closer, he lightly rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed.
After a moment’s hesitation, Serilda snaked her free arm up around his shoulders. He shifted his body closer, then lowered his head, their temples grazing. Her breath caught, as she half expected his lips to find hers. But instead, he nestled his face into the crook of her neck. A second later and his arms had both come around her, pulling her body to his.
Serilda inhaled deeply, searching for a scent that she would forever tie to this moment. She could still remember dancing with Thomas Lindbeck, two years ago to this very night, and how he had carried the grassy scent of his family’s farm with him. Her father always smelled of wood smoke and flour from the mill.
But if Gild had carried a scent in life, it was gone now.
Still. His arms were strong. The tickle of his hair against her cheek and his linen collar on her throat were real enough.
They stayed that way for what felt like ages and no time at all. Maybe she had taken his hand thinking she was doing him some sort of favor, but once her body melted into his embrace, she realized how much she’d needed this, too. The sense that this boy wanted to be holding her as much as she wanted to be holding him.
For a time she thought she could feel his heartbeat drumming against her, until she realized that it was her own beating for them both. It was this thought that stirred her out of her cocoon. As soon as she started to move, Gild pulled away, and she was startled to see red around his eyes. He’d been so still, she hadn’t realized he’d been crying.
Serilda pressed her palm against his chest. “You don’t have a heartbeat.”
“Maybe I don’t have a heart,” he said, and she could tell he meant it as a joke, and so she allowed herself to smile. At the boy who craved an embrace as much as she did. Who was, literally, weeping at the sensation of being held.
“I doubt that.”
He started to smile, as if she’d given him a compliment. But the look was short-lived as the haunting cry of the Erlking’s hunting horn intruded on their sanctuary. They both tensed, their arms tightening around each other.
“What does that mean?” asked Serilda, checking the sky, but it was still dark, no signs yet of dawn. “Are they coming back?”
“Not yet, but soon,” he said. “The hunt is over, and it’s time to feed the hounds.”
Serilda grimaced, recalling Leyna’s description of how the hunters would throw the captured animals’ carcasses onto the effigy of the god of death and let the hounds tear it apart.
“Do you … want to watch?” asked Gild.
She made a face. “Not even a tiny bit.”
He chuckled. “Me either. Would you …” He hesitated. “Would you like to see my tower?”
He looked so endearingly nervous, his cheeks flushing in a way that highlighted the wash of freckles, that Serilda couldn’t temper her grin. “If there’s time?”
“We aren’t far.”
Chapter 33
In the mortal realm, the upper room of the southwest tower had been barren and dusty. But on this side of the veil, Gild had created a haven for himself, with layers of rugs and furs on the floor and some blankets and pillows no doubt pilfered from other rooms in the castle. A stack of books, a candlestick, and on one side of the room, a spinning wheel.
Serilda crossed to the windows and peered out toward Adalheid. She caught a glimpse of the hounds fighting over the meat that had been hung from the effigy’s body and quickly tore her gaze away.
Her attention landed on the Erlking instead, as if his presence had an unavoidable magnetism. He stood apart from the crowd, standing on the very edge of the nearest dock. He was staring out at the water, his sharp features glowing beneath the light of the torches on the bridge. Unreadable, as always.
His presence, even across the lake, was a threat. A shadow. A reminder that she was his prisoner.
Once His Darkness has you, he does not like to let you go.
Serilda shivered and turned away.
She picked up one of the books. It was a small volume of poetry, though she was unfamiliar with the poet. It had been read so many times, the pages were falling out of the binding.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Her head snapped up. Gild was leaning against the far wall. There was a tension in his stance, one bare foot flat against the wall in a forced mimicry of nonchalance.
It took a second for the question to sink in, and once it did, Serilda guffawed. “What makes you ask that?”
He nodded at the book. “It’s mostly love poetry. Painful to slog through at times, all overwrought metaphors and flowery prose, everything having to do with pining and yearning and longing …” He rolled his eyes, reminding Serilda a little bit of young Fricz.
“Why do you have it then, if you despise it so much?”
“There is limited reading material in this castle,” he said. “And I notice you didn’t answer the question.”
“I thought we’d established that there is no one in M?rchenfeld who would ever be interested in me.”
“So you’ve said, and … I have questions about that, too. But not being loved doesn’t preclude someone from loving. It might have been unrequited.”
She grinned. “Despite your apparent disdain for this poetry, I think you’re a romantic.”
“Romantic?” He balked. “Unrequited love sounds awful.”
“Absolutely horrid,” agreed Serilda with another laugh. “But only a romantic would think so.” She sent him a cheeky grin, and his frown returned.
“You’re still avoiding the question.”
She sighed, peering up toward the ceiling rafter. “No, I’ve never been in love.” Thinking of Thomas Lindbeck, she added, “I thought I was once, but I was wrong. Satisfied?”
He shrugged, his gaze clouding. “I can’t remember anything about my life before, and somehow I still have regrets about it. I regret not knowing what it’s like to fall in love.”
“Do you think you might have been? Before?”
“There’s no way to know. Although, I feel like, if I had been, then surely I would remember that. Wouldn’t I?”
She didn’t respond, and after a while he was forced to look up at her. To see her sly grin.
“What?” he asked.
“Romantic.”
He scoffed, even as his face pinkened. “Just when I’m starting to think I enjoy talking to you.”
“I’m not mocking you. I would be a hypocrite if I was. All my favorite stories are about love, and I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what it would be like, and wishing …” She trailed off, her pulse sputtering as she realized what dangerous territory she was treading into, with the only boy who had ever looked at her with something close to desire.