Page 136 of Gilded

The smile fell, overcome with a desperate plea.

Don’t go,whispered the voice.You alone can break this curse. You can set me free. All it takes is a dance. One little dance. Please. Please, don’t leave me?…

Another step back. Her foot landed on soft mossy ground.

The woman’s brittle sorrow morphed again, now a vicious sneer. She lunged forward, her fingers reaching to grab Serilda—to claw or strangle or shove her, Serilda didn’t know.

She lifted a hand to protect herself.

A wooden staff smacked the woman’s hands away. She released a shriek of pain and reared back.

A figure leaped onto the bridge, between Serilda and the glowering woman. Lithe and graceful, with moss where hair might have been, growing between tall fox ears.

“Not this one, Salige,” came a stern voice.

A familiar voice.

It took Serilda a moment to recall the moss maiden’s name. Basil? Purslane?

No.

“Parsley?” she asked.

The moss maiden ignored her, her eyes on the woman. Salige, she’d said.

Wait—salige.That was not a name, but a type of spirit. The salige frauen—malicious spirits that haunted bridges and graveyards and bodies of water. That demanded a dance from travelers, begging them to break a curse … but usually ended up killing them.

I found her first,hissed the salige, baring pearlescent teeth.She could break the curse. She could be the one.

“So very sorry,” said Parsley, holding her quarterstaff like a shield in front of her as she slowly backed away, forcing Serilda off the bridge. “But this human is already spoken for. Grandmother wishes to have a word with her.”

The spirit screamed, a sound of frustrated agony.

But when Parsley turned and grabbed Serilda’s arm, yanking her away, the spirit did not follow.

Chapter 43

Are you really taking me to see Shrub Grandmother?” said Serilda, once the bridge with the salige was far behind them and her heartbeat had begun to slow. “TheShrub Grandmother?”

“I would tame your awe before we arrive,” said Parsley, a bit snarly. “Grandmother does not respond well to flattery.”

“I can try,” said Serilda, “but I cannot guarantee.”

The moss maiden moved like a fawn among the branches, quick and graceful. In her path, Serilda felt more like a wild boar crashing through the woods, but she was comforted to know that the schellenrock, at the back of their odd little party, was the noisiest of all with its coat of shells, and Parsley wasn’t tellingitto be quiet.

“Thank you,” she said. “For rescuing me from the salige. I suppose now I’m inyourdebt.”

Parsley paused beside an enormous oak tree, one that stretched so high Serilda could not see the top of it when she craned her neck.

“You’re right,” said the maiden, holding out her hand. “I’ll take back my ring.”

Coldness swept across Serilda’s skin. “I … left it at home. For safekeeping.”

Parsley smirked and Serilda could sense that she didn’t believe her. “Then you will have to remain indebted, for I doubt you have anything else I would want.” She grabbed a curtain of vines draped across the tree’s trunk and pulled them aside, revealing a narrow opening just above the tangled roots.

“Go on,” she said, with a nod at the schellenrock. It ducked inside, its shells jangling. Parsley turned to Serilda next. “After you.”

She stepped into the hollow trunk and was greeted by impenetrable blackness—no sign of the river monster. Squeezing her shoulders, she crouched low so as to fit through, and inched into the tiny shelter, stretching out her hand. She expected to feel the rough, cobwebbed insides of the tree, but found only emptiness in the dark.