Page 37 of Gilded

Ages passed before the Erlking’s fingers clenched around the bobbin, encircling it in a tight fist. “Tell me your name.”

“Serilda, my lord.”

He considered her a long while. Another age passed before he said, “It would seem that I owe you an apology, Lady Serilda. I doubted you most severely. In fact, I was convinced that you had taken me for a fool. Told me grand lies and stolen from me my rightful prey. But”—he glanced down at his closed fist—“it would seem that you have been given the blessing of Hulda after all.”

She lifted her chin. “I hope you are pleased.”

“Quite,” he said, though his tone remained sullen. “You said before that the blessing was in favor to your mother, a talented seamstress, if I do recall.”

This.This was the worst part of Serilda’s terrible habit. It was so easy to forget what lies one had told, and in what detail. She tried to dredge up the memory of that night and what she had said to the king, but it was all a blur. So she merely shrugged. “That is the story I’ve been told. But I never knew my mother.”

“Dead?”

“Gone,” she answered. “The moment I was weaned from her milk.”

“A mother knew that her child was god-blessed, yet she did not stay to teach her how to use such a gift?”

“I do not think she saw it as a gift. The town … all the villagers see my mark as a sign of misfortune. They believe I bring bad luck, and I’m not sure they’re wrong. After all, tonight my so-called gift has brought me into the dungeon of the great and horrible Alder King himself.”

His expression showed a hint of thawing at that. “So it has,” he muttered. “But the superstitions of humans are so often the result of ignorance and ill-placed blame. I would pay them little heed.”

“Begging your pardon, but that seems like an easy thing for the king of the dark ones to say, who surely carries no concerns over long winters or failed crops. Sometimes superstitions are all that we have been given by the gods in order to make sense of our world. Superstitions … and stories.”

“You expect me to believe that the ability to do this”—he held up the bobbin of gold thread—“portends ill fortune?”

She glanced at the bobbin. She’d almost forgotten thatthiswas the blessing the Erlking believed she had been given.

It made her wonder whether Gild saw his talent as a gift or a curse.

“As I understand,” she said, “gold has caused as many problems as it has ever solved.”

A silence settled over them, cloaking the room.

Serilda hesitated to meet his eye again. When she did, she was startled to see a grin stealing across his lips.

And then, horror of horrors, helaughed.

Serilda’s stomach swooped.

“Serilda,” he said, his voice newly warmed. “I have met many humans, but there is an oddity about you. It is … refreshing.”

The Erlking stepped closer, blocking the torchlight from her view. The hand that did not hold the thread lifted and grasped a strand of hair that had come loose from one of her braids. Serilda had been given little occasion to peer at her reflection, but if she had any vanity, it was for her hair, which fell past her waist in thick waves. Fricz had once told her that it was the exact color of his father’s favorite aged ale—a dark, rich brown, just without all the foamy white stuff on top. At the time Serilda had wondered if she should be offended, but now she was sure it had been meant as a compliment.

The Erlking tucked the loose strand behind her ear—the touch excruciatingly tender. She averted her gaze as the tips of his fingers barely traced the edge of her cheek, faint as cobwebs against her skin.

Strange, she thought, to experience two such gentle touches in such short order, and yet to feel so very differently about them. Gild’s caress of her hand had struck her as bizarre and unexpected, yes, but it had also brought a tingly warmth to the surface of her skin.

Whereas everything the Erlking did felt calculated. He must know how his unearthly beauty could make any human heart pound faster, yet his touch left Serilda feeling as though she had suffered the caress of a viper.

“It is a shame,” he said quietly. “You might have been beautiful.”

Her stomach curdled, though less from the insult than from his nearness.

Pulling away, the king tossed the bobbin of thread at the ghost, who snatched it easily from the air.

“Have it all taken to the undercroft.”

“Yes, Your Grim. And the girl?”