Page 177 of Gilded

Chapter 56

The children had fallen asleep on top of the massive bed that once seemed like the grandest luxury. Serilda watched them now, recalling how giddy she’d been to see feathered pillows and velvet drapes. How she had marveled at all this castle had to offer.

When this had all seemed a little bit like a fairy tale.

How preposterous.

She was grateful, at least, that sleep was still possible for them. She didn’t know if ghostsneededrest, but it was a small blessing to know that there would be moments of respite in this tragic captivity.

She wasn’t sure ifsheneeded rest. She could understand a bit more now, how Gild had known he was different. She was not dead. She was not a ghost, like the children, like the rest of the king’s servants.

But what did that make her?

Tired,she thought. She felt so very tired. Yet restless, too.

She found herself thinking about the games that she had played when she was young with the other children in the village. Those whose parents hadn’t forbidden them from playing with her, that is.

They were princes and princesses. Damsels and knights. They built castles of twigs and made woven crowns of bluebells and swanned around the fields as if they were nobles in Verene. They had imagined a life of jewels and parties and feasts—oh, the feasts they had dreamed up—the dances, the balls.

Serilda had been so very good at dreaming. Even then, her peers were eager to hear her turn their simple musings into unparalleled adventures.

But never had it crossed Serilda’s mind, not for the shortest swallow trill, that it might come true.

She would live in a castle.

She would be wed to a king.

She would be wed to a monster.

And, true, his court might be sumptuous in its own way. Feasting, dancing, merriment, and drink. She might even be given gifts and an imitation of romance—the king would have to feign some amount of adoration for her if he was to convince everyone that he was the father of her child. But she would be a prisoner more than a queen. She would have no power. No one would heed her commands or listen to her pleas. No one would help her, unless the king permitted it.

A possession. He’d called her a possession, and that was only when she was the novel gold-spinner. Now she would be a wife, tied to him in whatever ceremony the dark ones used to commemorate such things.

And amid all this turmoil was still the disbelieving joy, somehow impossible to tamp down. She was going to have a child.

She would be a mother.

Unless that child was ripped out of her arms and given to the huntress Perchta the moment it was born. The thought brought bile to her mouth.

She sighed heavily and sat on the corner of the bed, careful not to jostle the children’s sleeping forms. As her fingers brushed a strand of hair back from Hans’s brow, then adjusted the blanket on Nickel’s shoulders, she hoped with all her heart that pleasant dreams would not elude them.

“I will find a way to give you peace,” she whispered. “I will not let you toil here forever. And until that day comes, I promise, I will tell you the happiest of stories to take your minds away from all of this. Where the heroes are victorious. The villains vanquished. Where everyone who is just and kind and brave is granted a perfect finale.” She sniffed, surprised when another tear clung to her eyelids. She’d begun to think she was empty of them.

She was tempted to lie down, curl her body into what little space was left for her, and try to let her thoughts settle with all that had happened in a short twenty-four hours.

But she could not sleep.

There was still something she had to do before this disastrous day was over.

A wardrobe had been stocked with fine gowns and cloaks, all of them in tones of emeralds and sapphires and bloodred rubies. All much too fine for a miller’s daughter.

What would her father think to see her in such things?

No. She slammed her eyes shut. She could not think of him. She wondered if she would ever be able to properly mourn him. He was just one more jewel in her crown of guilt. One more person she’d failed.

“Stop it,” she whispered, pulling a dressing gown from the wardrobe. She left the candle on the nightstand, so that if the children awoke they wouldn’t find themselves surrounded by darkness in an unfamiliar room.

Then she slipped out of the tower. She was not sure how to get to the roof of the keep, but she was determined to follow every staircase until she found the right one.