Page 132 of Gilded

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. Iftheyhad been too hasty. What had passed between them had been?…?

The perfect word eluded her.

Maybe the wordwasperfect. 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 wasnothingabout 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.

That sounded a bit more respectable.

They were hardly the first couple to tumble into bed together—or, in their case, an old settee—with little forethought. And they would by no means be the last. It was one of the favorite pastimes of the women in Märchenfeld, to tsk and tut over which unwed boys and girls had become, in their opinion, a littletooclose. But it was relatively harmless gossip. There was no law against it, and if pressed, most of those same women would gladly talk abouttheirfirst tumble, with a smidgen of roguish, wanton pride, and always followed up with the disclaimer that it was all alongtime ago, before they met the love of their life and settled down in marital bliss.

Serilda knew that not every first intimacy was a happy one. She had heard tales of men and women alike who had believed themselves in love, only to later find those feelings were unrequited. She knew there could be shame attached to giving so much of oneself. She knew there could be regrets.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to determine whethershefelt any shame. Whethershehad regrets.

And the more she thought of it, the more it became clear that the answer was … no.

Not yet, at least.

Right now, she just wanted to see him again. Kiss him again. Hold him again. Do … other things with him. Again.

No. Not ashamed.

But she couldn’t fulfill any of those wishes. And if there were any tricky, difficult feelings, that was the source of them. He was trapped behind the veil, and she was here, staring at a castle where ghosts moaned and cried and suffered through their deaths over and over again.

A breeze kicked up from over the water. Serilda shuddered. Her dress was soaked, her hair saturated. Little droplets had begun to slide down her face.

A fire would be nice. Dry clothes. A cup of warm cider.

She should go.

But instead of getting up, she tucked her hands into her dress pockets.

Her fingers wrapped around something and she gasped. She’d forgotten all about it.

She pulled out the bobbin, half expecting to see it wound with scratchy straw. But no, she was holding a handful of fine spun gold.

She laughed with surprise. It felt a little bit like a gift, even if, technically, she had stolen it.

A new sound intruded on her thoughts. A jangle. A clatter.

Serilda hid the bobbin against her body and glanced around. There were fishing boats out on the lake, their crews casting nets and lines, occasionally hollering information at one another that Serilda couldn’t make out. The road at her back sported a handful of carts, their wheels rattling loudly on the cobblestones. But with the dreary weather, the town was mostly quiet.