Page 76 of Gilded

She stilled.

“I would tell you if I had any answers to offer,” he said. “But if I’m being honest, I’m not sure it much matters what I am. I can go anywhere in this castle, but I can never leave it. Maybe I’m a ghost. Maybe I’m something else. Either way, I’m trapped here.”

“And you’ve been here a long time?”

“Ages.”

“Decades? Centuries?”

“Yes? Maybe? Time is hard to grasp. But I know that I’ve tried to leave this castle, and I can’t.”

She chewed on the inside of her lip. Her mind was racing with ideas. Stories. Fairy tales. But she wanted to know the truth.

“Such a long time to be trapped in these walls,” she murmured. “How can you stand it?”

“I can’t,” he said. “But I haven’t much choice.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “I like to look out at the city. There’s a tower—the one in the southwest corner—with a wonderful view of the docks and the houses. I can watch the people. If the wind is right I can even hear them. Haggling over prices. Playing their instruments.” He paused for a long time. “Laughing. I love it when I can hear them laughing.”

Serilda hummed in thought. “I think I understand better now,” she said slowly. “Your jokes. Your … pranks. You wield laughter like a weapon, a protection against your awful circumstances. I think you’re trying to create lightness where there is so much dark.”

One of his eyebrows lifted with amusement. “Yes. You have it exactly right. I assure you, I only think of daisies and shooting stars and bringing merriment into this dreadful world. I never think at all of how His Foulness will turn blue with anger and he’ll spend half a night cursing my existence. That would just be spiteful. Far beneath me.”

She laughed. “I suppose spite can be a weapon, too.”

“Absolutely. My favorite, in fact. Well. Other than a sword. Because who doesn’t love a sword?”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“I met one of the children in town,” she said. “A girl named Leyna. She and her friends like to play games on the docks. Perhaps it’s their laughter you heard.”

Gild’s expression turned bittersweet. “There have been many children. Children who have turned into adults who have made more children. Sometimes I feel so connected to them, like I could walk across that bridge and they would recognize me. That they would know me somehow. Even though, if anyone in that city had ever known me, they would be long dead by now.”

“You’re right,” she mused. “There must have been a time before.”

“Before?”

“Before you were trapped here. Before you became … whatever you are.”

“Probably,” he said, sounding empty, “But I don’t remember it.”

“Nothing?”

He shook his head.

“If you were a ghost, then you would have died. Do you remember your death?”

He kept shaking his head. “Nothing.”

She sank, disappointed. There had to be some way to figure it out. She racked her brain trying to think of every non-mortal being she’d ever heard of, but nothing seemed to fit.

The candle wavered then. The shadows flickered, and dread dug into Serilda’s chest at the thought of the night reaching its end. But a glance told her that the candle was still burning bright, though there wasn’t much wick left to burn. The nightwouldend soon. The Erlking would return. Gild would be gone.

Relieved that the candle was not yet extinguished, Serilda peered at him.

He was watching her, vulnerable and distressed. “I am so sorry about your father.”