Page 39 of Gilded

She spun around and allowed herself to forget about ghosts and prisons and kings. Of cats and mice. Of hunters and the hunted.

She kicked off her shoes as she pulled back one of the velvet curtains. An actual gasp escaped her lips to see the luscious bedding that awaited her. An embroidered coverlet, a sheepskin throw—pillows.Real pillows, stuffed with feathers.

She slipped out of her filthy dress, finding a piece of straw caught in the fabric of her skirt as she dropped the cloth into a puddle on the floor beside her cloak. She didn’t bother with her chemise before climbing under the coverlet. The mattress sank invitingly beneath her weight. Engulfing her. Embracing her. It was the most miraculous thing she’d ever felt.

As the sky lightened beyond the window, Serilda allowed herself to enjoy this moment of comfort, such a perfect complement to the all-consuming weariness that clung to her bones, weighed down her eyelids, deepened her breaths.

Dragged her down into sleep.

Chapter 14

She awoke shivering.

Serilda curled in on herself, grasping for heavy blankets, feathered pillows. Her fingers found only her own thin muslin chemise and gooseflesh-covered arms. With a groan, she rolled onto her other side, thrashing her feet around, searching for the coverlet she must have kicked off. For the sheepskin throw that had so delectably weighed down her legs.

Her limbs met only crisp wintry air.

Shaking, she rubbed freezing fingers into her eyes and forced them open.

Sunlight spilled through the windows, shockingly bright.

She sat up, blinking to clear her vision.

The velvet drapes around the postered bed were gone, explaining that wicked draft. So, too, the blankets. The pillows. The hearth lay empty of everything but soot and dust. The furniture remained, though the side table was toppled onto its side. No sign of the porcelain bowl, the pitcher, the candle, or the little vase of flowers. The glass on one window was shattered. The gossamer window drapes, vanished. Cobwebs clung to the chandelier and bedposts, some so thick with dust they looked like black yarn.

Scrambling from the bed, Serilda hurried to pull on her dress. Her fingers were so numb she had to pause to blow hot breath over them and rub them together a minute before she could do up the last of the buttons. She threw the cloak over her shoulders, gripping it around her arms like a blanket as she stepped into her boots. Her heart was thudding as she peered around at the barrenness of the room, so stark against the memories of the night before.

Or—the early morning.

How long had she slept?

Certainly not more than a few hours, and yet the room felt as though it had sat abandoned and untouched for a hundred years.

She peeked out into the sitting room. There were the same upholstered chairs, now smelling of mildew and rot, the fabric chewed through in spots by rodents.

Her footsteps echoed hollowly as she made her way down the stairwell, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Water dripped down the stones, leaking in from the occasional narrow window, many of which had broken or missing panes. A few tiny sprigs of bristle-leafed weeds had sprouted up between the mortar on the steps, coaxed to life by the shard of morning light that struck them and the cold moisture in the air.

Serilda shivered again as she reached the main floor of the castle.

She might have been transported to a different world, a different time. This could not be the same castle she’d fallen asleep in. The wide hall might have the same stonework, the same enormous chandeliers, but nature had laid claim to these walls. Sparse vines of ivy trailed along the floor, climbing up the doorframes. The candles were gone from the chandeliers and the sconces. The carpets, disappeared. All the taxidermy beasts, the stuffed victims of the hunt, vanished.

There was a tapestry hanging in tatters against the far wall. Serilda approached it hesitantly, her boots crunching on chipped stone and dry leaves. She recognized the tapestry with its image of an enormous black stag in a forest clearing. But last night, the image had depicted the animal being shot through with a dozen arrows, the blood leaking from its wounds making it clear that it would not survive the night. But now that same beast stood exalted among the sun-dappled trees, graceful and strong, its massive antlers stretching toward the moon.

Last night, the macabre depiction had been pristine and vibrant.

Whereas this tapestry was marred by moth holes and mildew, the dye of the fabric long faded from time.

Serilda swallowed hard. She had once entertained the children with a tale of a king who was invited to partake in the wedding of an ogre. Sensing that to decline would be to offer great insult, the king attended the wedding, and relished in the ogre’s hospitality. He enjoyed the drink, feasted on the foods, danced until his shoes were worn through, then fell happily asleep. But when he awoke, everyone had gone. The king returned home only to find that a hundred years had passed. All his family were dead and his kingdom had fallen into the hands of another, and no one alive could remember who he was.

Staring at the tapestry now, her breath steaming the air, Serilda felt a bewildering fear that this was what had happened to her.

How many years had passed while she slept?

Where was the Erlking and his ghostly court?

Where was Gild?

She frowned at this question. Gild might have helped her, even saved her life, but he’d also taken her locket, and she wasn’t happy about it.