Chapter One
Serilda stopped telling her tale, checking to see if the children had finally fallen asleep.
A moment passed, before Nickel opened bleary eyes. “Is the story over already?”
Serilda shifted toward him. “You should know by now,” she whispered, pressing down a lock of his fluffy blond hair, “that the best stories are never truly over. I would argue that ‘happily ever after’ is one of my more popular lies.”
He yawned. “Maybe. But it sure is a nice lie.”
“It sure is,” she agreed. “Now hush. It’s time to go to sleep. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.”
He posed no argument, just rolled onto his side to make more space for little Gerdrut, who was sandwiched between Nickel and Hans, with Fricz and Anna splayed at awkward angles at the foot of the bed. The five children had taken to sleeping in Serilda’s bed, even though they had been given their own cots in the servants’ halls. She didn’t mind. There was something about their cluster of tangled limbs and open mouths, blue-tinged eyelids and muttered complaints that someone was hogging the blankets that filled her heart with something close to contentment.
How she did love these children.
How she hated what had been done to them. How she tortured herself with guilt, knowing it was her fault. Her and her traitorous tongue and the stories she couldn’t stop telling. The imagination that had carried her away on so many fancies ever since she could remember … yet had brought her nothing but trouble. A life full of misfortunes.
The worst misfortune of all—the lives taken from these five precious souls.
But they kept asking her to tell her tales, so what could she say? She could deny them nothing.
“Good night.” She tugged the blankets up to Nickel’s chin, covering the spot of blood that had leaked through his nightshirt over the hole in his chest, where the Erlking’s night ravens had eaten his heart.
Leaning forward, she brushed a kiss to Nickel’s temple. She had to bite back a grimace at the sensation of cool slipperiness on his skin. As though even the gentlest touch might crush his skull, as if he were as brittle as autumn leaves in a child’s fist. Ghosts were not delicate beings—they were already dead, and not much more harm could come to them. But they were caught somewhere in between their mortal forms and decaying corpses, and as such, it was as though their figures could not decide where to end, what amount of space to occupy. To look at a ghost was a bit like looking at a mirage, their outlines shifting and blurring into the air. To touch one felt like the most unnatural thing in the world. A bit like touching a dead slug, one that had been left to rot in blistering-hot sun. But … colder.
Still, Serilda loved these five little ghosts with all her being, and even if her body was missing, trapped in a haunted castle, and she could no longer feel her heart beat, she would never let them know how much she wanted to pull away every time one of them wrapped her in a hug or slipped their dead little hand into hers.
Serilda waited until she was certain that Nickel was asleep and Gerdrut had started to snore, quite impressively for such a tiny thing. Then she eased herself off the bed and dimmed the lantern on the bedside table. She approached one of the leaded windows that overlooked the great lake surrounding the castle, where evening sunlight shimmered on the water.
Tomorrow was the summer solstice.
Tomorrow she would be wed.
A light tap at the door interrupted Serilda’s thoughts before they could fall into despair. She paced across the carpet, keeping her footsteps light to avoid disturbing the children, and opened the door.
Manfred, the Erlking’s coachman and the first ghost Serilda had ever met, stood on the other side. There was a time when Manfred had served the king and queen of Adalheid, but he had died in the massacre when the Erlking and his dark ones murdered all the inhabitants and claimed the castle for themselves. Manfred’s death, like so many, had been brutal—in his case, a steel chisel through one eye. The chisel was stuck in his skull even now, the blood dripping slowly, eternally, from his eye socket. After all this time, Serilda had begun to get used to the sight, and she greeted Manfred with a smile.
“I wasn’t expecting you this evening.”
Manfred bowed. “His Grim has requested your presence.”
Her smile fell fast. “Of course he has,” she said, her tone sour. “The children have just fallen asleep. Give me a moment.”
“Take your time. I don’t mind making him wait.”
Serilda nodded knowingly and shut the door. Manfred and the other ghosts might be serving the dark ones, but they loathed their masters. They tried to find small ways to annoy the Erlking and his court whenever they could. Small acts of rebellion, but rebellion all the same.
She retied her long hair into twin braids. It occurred to her that many girls, upon being summoned to the side of their husband-to-be, might pinch some color into their cheeks or place a dab of rose water along their collarbone. Whereas Serilda was tempted to sneak a dagger into her stocking on the chance she might have an opportunity to stick it into her betrothed’s throat.
She cast one more glance at the children, noting how they did not exactly appear to be sleeping. They were too pale, their breathing too still. In rest, they looked utterly dead.
Until Gerdrut’s head drooped to one side and she let out a sound like grinding millstones.
Serilda bit her lip against a laugh, remembering why she was doing this.
For them.
Only for them.
Turning away, she slipped out into the stairwell.
Serilda had memorized the route to the Erlking’s chambers, but she was nevertheless grateful for Manfred’s company as they made their way through the corridors, lit with torches and hung with eerie tapestries that depicted the most grotesque scenes of hunting hounds and ravaged prey. She was growing accustomed to the ominous, haunting shadows that filled the castle halls, but she doubted she would ever feel comfortable here. Not when any corner could reveal a dark one sneering at her or some otherworldly monster watching her with hungry eyes.
Soon she would be queen of this place, but she doubted even that would bring her much security. The ghouls and creatures that had been here long before her made it clear in their haughty expressions and snide remarks that they would sooner devour the skin from her bones than bow before a mortal queen.
She tried not to take it personally.
“Is everyone eager for the festivities to be over?” Serilda asked as she and Manfred wound their way through the labyrinthine halls.
Manfred responded in his usual monotone. “Not at all, my queen,” he said. Opposite to the dark ones’ indifference—perhaps, in part, because of it—the ghostly servants had adapted quite graciously to Serilda’s rise in station. Many had already begun to use royal titles when they addressed her—Majesty and Queen and occasionally even Your Radiance. “My understanding is that many have seen the wedding preparations as an enjoyable distraction.”
“Distraction from what?”
He glanced sideways at her with his good eye, a subtle smirk making his gray-speckled beard twitch. “Our lives,” he said dryly. Then, with a shrug, he added, “Or lack thereof.”
Serilda frowned. Though Manfred and many of the ghosts had been dead for centuries, it was obvious how their deaths remained open wounds. Literally, in many cases.
“Manfred,” she said slowly, “do you remember serving the former royal family? The ones who lived here before the dark ones came?”
“I remember little of life in the castle before. But I do recall feeling”—he considered his words a long moment, and appeared oddly wistful when he finally said—“proud. Of my work. Though what I had to be proud of, I could not say.”
Serilda offered him a soft smile, which quickly shuttered his expression back to stoicism. She was tempted to say more, to push him on this, to urge him to remember something, anything—but it was useless. All memories of the former royal family had been eradicated when the Erlking cursed the prince and his name, erasing the royal family from history.
She found, in trying to get to know the resident ghosts, that the closer someone had been to the royal family, the fewer memories they had of their lives before the massacre. A maid who scrubbed pots and pans in the scullery might remember her former life almost in its entirety, but someone who had regularly been in the presence of the king and queen, or prince and princess, would remember almost nothing.
No one else knew it, but their prince was still here among them. A forgotten prince.
These days, the people of Adalheid knew him as Vergoldetgeist. The Gilded Ghost.
Others called him poltergeist. Gold-spinner.
Serilda knew him simply as Gild. The boy who had gone along with her lies, spun straw into gold in order to save her life, again and again. Who had unwittingly crafted the golden chains that the Erlking planned to use to capture a god.
Even Gild’s own memories had been stolen from him. He could remember nothing. Not of his life. Not of his death. Nothing from the time before he was a cursed boy, a poltergeist trapped in this horrid place. The Erlking had even erased his name from all of history—from the books to the gravestones. Gild had not known he was a prince until Serilda told him the truth of what had happened to him and his family. Him, cursed. The others, dead. Murdered, all in an act of vengeance against the prince who had killed Erlkönig’s great love—the huntress Perchta. To this day Gild acted skeptical whenever Serilda mentioned it.
But Serilda didn’t care about any of that. Not his name. Not his legacy.
She cared that Gild was the father of her unborn child.
She cared that once, in a fit of desperation, she had promised this unborn child to him, in return for his help spinning straw into gold.
She cared that she was a little bit in love with him.
Maybe—more than a little bit.
“I imagine you were very important,” she said as she and Manfred passed a series of parlors. “Higher ranking than a coachman, for sure. The king’s valet, perhaps. Or a royal adviser. That’s why you can’t remember much. But I am sure that you have every reason to be proud.”
Manfred remained quiet. She had told him, during their nightly walks, a little bit of the story of what had happened here. To the royal family. To him and all the people who had been unfortunate enough to be in this castle when the Erlking exacted his revenge. There was a time when she had told the story to Gild, believing it all to be a made-up fairy tale, but now she knew it was true. A gift from Wyrdith, her storytelling godparent, no doubt.
None of this castle’s tragic past came as much of a surprise to those who had been forced into servitude to the dark ones for hundreds of years. They knew something horrible had happened to them. Many had the wounds to prove it. Some had fleeting memories of life before. They wore clothes befitting various roles in the castle, from chambermaids to pages to fancy courtiers, though former status meant nothing to the dark ones.
It was no far stretch to assume they had been serving royalty when the Erlking took over and murdered them all, even if they could not recall their monarchs’ faces or names or whether they had been respected and loved.
No one knew that Gild, the meddlesome poltergeist, was their forgotten prince. She dared not tell anyone the truth. She could not risk the Erlking finding out that she knew, and she couldn’t trust anyone to stay silent. Much as she liked many of these spirits, their souls belonged to the Erlking. He might allow them some freedoms, but ultimately, they obeyed him.
They had no choice.
It was the same with the children left sleeping in her chambers. The Erlking pretended they were a gift for her. Attendants for his queen. But they were also his spies. Or they could be, if she gave the Erlking any reason to spy on her.
She couldn’t trust anyone in this castle.
Anyone, except—
Ahead of them, a glint of gold caught her eye. A tiny thread looped around the base of a candle on one of the wall sconces. The tiniest detail, easily missed by anyone. By everyone.
But these past weeks, Serilda had grown accustomed to searching out tiny details.
She stood straighter. “Thank you, Manfred, but you needn’t escort me the rest of the way. I can find it from here.”
“I do not mind, my lady.”
“I know you don’t. But I have to learn my way around this maze eventually, don’t I? And I could use a moment … to steel myself.”
A touch of pity flashed over his features. “Of course, my lady,” he said, bowing. “I will leave you be, then.”
“Thank you, Manfred.”
He walked away with the same unyielding posture and measured steps with which he always carried himself, and Serilda couldn’t help but think of him as one of the few true gentlemen in this castle, surrounded by the demons and all their callous frivolity.
As soon as he’d turned the corner, Serilda let her shoulders relax. She reached for the candlestick and slipped the knot of golden thread up and over the flame. She wrapped it around her finger as she studied the hall.
Silence and shadows.
“Come on out, Gild,” she said, smiling. “I know you’re there.”
Chapter Two
Summoned to the king’s chambers yet again?”
The voice came from behind her, so close she imagined the tickle of warmth on the back of her neck. She did not startle. She was used to Gild’s sudden appearances. His spirit had been cursed and bound to this castle like hers was, but he could move freely within its walls, able to vanish and reappear at will anywhere he liked. It was a marvelous magic trick, and he used it often—to pull pranks, to sneak up on people, to eavesdrop and spy. He especially loved to jump out and frighten the children, sometimes even passing right through them, since he could walk through ghosts. They pretended to be angry, despite their bewildered giggles.
He had been trying to teach Serilda the skill as well, but it was more difficult than he made it seem. So far she’d only managed it once, and though she’d tried to transport herself to the queen’s boudoir, she’d ended up in the buttery instead, along with a vicious headache.
Despite Gild’s closeness and the subtle dance of breath against her skin, there was an edge to his voice. An envy he had tried to keep from her since the king first announced their betrothal, but that became more apparent as the wedding approached.
Serilda hated lying to him about this. It was the most difficult lie she’d ever had to tell.
Gild knew that the Erlking wanted a mortal wife so that he could father a child. Gild assumed—and Serilda let him—that her frequent visits to the king were for this purpose, though the mere idea made her want to claw off her own skin.
What Gild didn’t know, and she could never tell him, was that she was already with child. That she had been since the night Gild pressed his lips to hers, trailing kisses along her jaw, her throat, the swell of her breast. They had been intimate only once, and Serilda still shivered when she let herself remember his closeness, his touch, the way he’d whispered her name like poetry. That night, in their passion, they’d conceived a child.
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