Page 173 of Gilded

“You will do as I say,” he said, “because I still have something that you want.”

Tears prickled at her eyes.Gerdrut.

“In exchange for the little one’s freedom,” he continued, “you will be my doting bride. I will expect you to be very, very convincing. The child is mine. No one is to suspect otherwise.”

She swallowed.

She couldn’t do this.

She couldn’t.

But she pictured Gerdrut’s smile, missing her first milk tooth. Her squeals when Fricz tickled her. Her pouts when she tried to braid Anna’s hair and couldn’t quite figure out how.

“All right,” she whispered, a tear escaping her eye. She did not bother to wipe it away. “I will do what you ask, if you promise to let Gerdrut go.”

“You have my word.”

He beamed and lifted a hand, revealing a gold-tipped arrow in his fist.

It happened so quickly. She barely had time to gasp before he plunged it down through her wrist.

Pain tore through her.

Serilda fell to her knees, her vision going white at the edges. All she could see was the shaft that jutted from her arm. Her blood dripped along its length, down the gilded tip, splattering drop by drop onto the floor.

Still gripping her hand, the king began to speak, and Serilda heard the words from two places at once. The Erlking, devoid of emotion as he recited the curse. And her own story, told in the empty throne room, echoing back to her.

That arrow now tethers you to this castle. Your spirit no longer belongs to the confines of your mortal body, but will be forever trapped within these walls. From this day into eternity, your soul belongs to me.

The agony was like nothing she’d ever known before, as though poison were leaching into her, devouring her from the inside. She felt her bones, her muscles, her very heart crumbling to ash. Left behind was just a shell of a girl. Skin and fingernails and a golden arrow.

She heard a quiet thump as something fell behind her.

And—the pain vanished.

Serilda sucked in a breath of air, but there was no satisfaction to it. Her lungs did not expand. The air itself tasted stale and dry.

She felt empty, wrung out. Abandoned.

The Erlking released her hand and her arm dropped into her lap.

The arrow was gone. In its place, a gaping hole.

She was almost too afraid to look back. But she had to. She had to see it, she had to know.

And when her eyes fell on her own body sprawled out behind her, Serilda surprised herself. She did not cry or scream. She merely observed, as a strange calm overtook her.

The body on the floor was still breathing.Herbody. The blood around the arrow shaft had begun to clot. The eyes were open, unblinking and unseeing—but not lifeless. The golden wheels on her irises glimmered knowingly with the light of a thousand stars.

She had seen this once before, when her spirit had floated up over her own corpse on the riverbank. It would have kept floating away if she hadn’t held tight to the ash branch.

But now there was something else tethering her here.

To this castle. This throne room. These walls.

She was trapped.

Forever.