Could he still see her from his side of the veil, like looking through a window? She knew that Gild could. After all, he had protected her from the drude that first morning. Perhaps all the inhabitants of this castle could watch her, when she saw nothing but disarray and abandonment. With Gild, the idea was comforting. With the others, not so much.
Knowing that in any minute the screams would begin, Serilda lifted her skirts and hurried along the path, dodging the overgrowth. The gardens might be forsaken, but they were full of life. Many of the plants had thrived and germinated, untended, and not all of them weeds. The air smelled of mint and sage, the aromas made more pungent by the wet earth, and she noticed many herbs running amok through the once-tidy beds. A variety of birds perched in the tree branches, whistling their morning songs, or hopped about on the ground, picking at worms and critters. In her hurry, Serilda startled a grass snake, which in turn startled her as it slithered fast into a patch of heather.
She was nearly to the castle steps when Serilda tripped. She lurched forward, landing hard on her hands and knees with a grunt. Rolling onto her backside, she looked down at her palm, which had landed on a musk thistle. Grumbling, she picked out the tiny spines, before rolling up her skirt to check her knees. Her left was barely bruised, but the right was bleeding from a shallow scrape.
“Not nice,” she snapped, kicking her heel at the rock that had tripped her, hidden beneath an overgrown weed. The rock, almost perfectly round, rolled away a couple of feet.
Serilda sat up straighter.
Not a rock.
A head. Or at least, the head of a statue.
She stood and approached the stone. After rolling it over with her toe to make sure there were no deadly insects hiding on it, she stooped and picked it up.
It was worn from the weather, the nose broken off, along with a few pieces of a headdress. Its features were feminine, with a full, stern mouth and delicate ears. Turning it over, Serilda saw more clearly from the back of the head that it was not a headdress she wore, but a crown, which time had chipped away to a circlet of uneven stubs.
Serilda looked around, searching for the statue’s body, and spotted a toppled figure behind a shrub that had yet to sprout leaves for the season. At first, it looked like just a mound of rock covered in moss, but on closer inspection, she saw it was two figures standing side by side. One in a gown. The other in a long tunic and fur-trimmed mantle. Both were headless.
More searching revealed a broken scabbard and … a hand.
Setting down the head, Serilda picked up this lost limb, broken off just above the wrist and missing the thumb and first two fingers. She brushed away a clump of lichen that clung to its surface.
Her eyes widened.
On the hand’s fourth finger was a ring.
She looked closer, squinting. Though worn by time, the ring’s seal was recognizable.
The R and the tatzelwurm.
Had Gild seen this statue before? Was that why the symbol had been familiar to him?
Or was there a deeper meaning here? If this seal was on the ring of a statue—a queen’s statue, from the looks of the crown—it might have been a family crest. That matched her theories about the gravestones.
But what royal family?
And what had become of them?
Serilda realized, peering around the garden, that she was near the same plot of land where the statue of the Erlking had stood on the other side of the veil.
That statue would have been right?…?there.
Serilda used the stone hand to peel back a thick covering of vines, and it was right where she thought it would be. The statue’s base, where she assumed this king and queen, now broken to pieces, had once stood regally above their gardens.
There were words carved into it.
Excitement skittered through her. Serilda cleared away the grime and debris, using her breath to blow away the layers of dust that filled up the engraving, until finally she could read the words.
this statue erected to commemorate the ascension of
queen
and her husband
king
their most gracious majesties
to the throne of adalheid
She read them again.
And again.
That was it?
No—there should be names.
She felt around the blank plains of the stone, but there were no more words.
Queen and King who?
Serilda traced the words with her thumb, then brushed her fingers against the wide-open spaces where names should have been.
It was nothing but solid stone, smooth as glass.
Which was when she heard the first scream.
Disgruntled, Serilda picked up her skirts and fled.
Chapter 41
Clouds had swept in and it had started to rain again. Serilda sat at the edge of the dock, her feet dangling above the water, mesmerized by the faint droplets making infinite rings across the surface. She knew she should go back to the inn. Her dress was soaked through and she had started shivering some time ago, especially without her beloved cloak. Lorraine would be worried, and Leyna would be eager to hear her tell of another night in the castle.
But she could not bring herself to get up. She felt like if she only stared at the castle long enough, it might spill out some of its secrets to her.
She yearned to go back. Was tempted to cross that bridge even now. To take her chances with the monsters and the ghouls.
But that was a fool’s mission.
The castle was dangerous, no matter which side of the veil she was on.
A flock of black birds rose up above the ruins, cawing at some spotted prey. Serilda stared at them, watching their black bodies swirl and dive before they settled back down out of sight again.
She sighed. Nearly two weeks had passed since Eostrig’s Day and the Feast of Death and all she’d learned was that the Erlking was using the spun gold to hunt and capture magical creatures, and that there definitely had been a royal family who once inhabited this castle but somehow they seemed to have been erased from history, and that her feelings for Gild were?…
Well.
More intense than she’d realized.
A part of her wondered if she had been too hasty last night. If they had been too hasty. What had passed between them had been?…
The perfect word eluded her.
Maybe the word was perfect. A perfect fantasy. A perfect moment caught in time.
But it had also been unexpected and sudden, and when she woke to find Gild gone and the Erlking towering over her, that illusion of perfection dissolved.
There was nothing about her growing intimacy with Gild that was perfect. She needed him if she was to survive the Erlking’s demands. She was constantly indebted to him. She’d paid him with her two most valuable belongings and now the promise of her firstborn child, and regardless of whether or not it was the magic that demanded such sacrifices, it didn’t seem like a basis for an enduring relationship.
They had gotten carried away, that was all. A boy and a girl who had been given few opportunities for romance, overcome with fervid desire.
Serilda blushed deeply at having thought those words.
Overcome with … with heightened longing.