Page 9 of Gilded

He was dangerous.

He was glorious.

He was not alone. There were at least two dozen other horses, each one black as coal, but for their lightning-white manes and tails. Each bore a rider—men and women, young and old, some dressed in fine robes, others in tattered rags.

Some were ghosts. She could tell from the way their silhouettes blurred against the night sky.

Others were dark ones, recognized by their unearthly beauty. Immortal demons who had long ago escaped from Verloren and their once master, the god of death.

And they were all watching her. The hounds, too. They had heeled to the leader’s command and were now pacing hungrily at the back of the hunt, awaiting their next order.

Serilda looked back up at the leader. She knew who he was, but she dared not think the name aloud in her thoughts, for fear she might be right.

He peered into her, through her, with the exact same look one gives a flea-ridden mutt who has just stolen one’s supper. “In which direction have they gone?”

Serilda shivered.His voice.Serene. Cutting. If he’d bothered to speak poetry to her, rather than a simple question, she would have been ensorcelled already.

As it was, she found herself managing to shake away some of the spell his presence had cast, remembering the moss maidens who were, even now, mere feet away from her, hidden beneath the cellar door, and her father, hopefully still fast asleep inside the house.

She was alone, trapped in the attention of this being who was more demon than man.

Serilda tentatively set the shovel back down and asked, “In which direction havewhogone, my lord?”

For surely he was nobility, in whatever hierarchy the dark ones claimed.

A king,her mind whispered, and she shushed it. It was simply too unthinkable.

His pale eyes narrowed. The question hung in the bitter air between them for a long time, while Serilda’s shivers overtook her body. Shewasstill in her nightgown beneath the cloak, and her toes were quickly going numb.

The Erl—no, the hunter, she would call him. The hunter did not respond to her question, to her disappointment. For if he’d answeredthe moss maidens,she would have been able to lob a question back at him. What was he doing hunting the forest folk? What did he want with them? They were not beasts to be slain and beheaded, their skins to decorate a castle hall.

At least, she certainly hoped that wasn’t his intention. The mere thought of it curdled her stomach.

But the hunter said nothing, just held her gaze while his steed held perfectly, unnaturally still.

Unable to stand any amount of silence for too long, and especially a silence while surrounded by phantoms and wraiths, Serilda let out a startled cry. “Oh, forgive me! Am I in your way? Please …” She stepped back and curtsied, waving them on. “Don’t mind me. I was only about to do my midnight harvesting, but I’ll wait for you to pass.”

The hunter did not move. A few of the other steeds that had formed a crescent around them stamped their hoofs into the snow and let out impatient snorts.

After another long silence, the hunter said, “You do not intend to join us?”

Serilda swallowed. She could not tell if it was an invitation or a threat, but the thought ofjoiningthis ghastly troupe, of going along on the hunt, left a hollow terror in her chest.

She tried to keep from stammering as she said, “I’ll be useless to you, my lord. Never learned any hunting skills, and can barely stay upright in a saddle. Best you go on and leave me to my work.”

The hunter inclined his head, and for the first time, she sensed something new in his cold expression. Something like curiosity.

To her surprise, he swung his leg over the horse and before Serilda could gasp, he had landed on the ground before her.

Serilda was tall compared with most girls in the village, but the Erlki—the hunter dwarfed her by nearly a full head. His proportions were uncanny, long and slender as a water reed.

Or a sword, perhaps, was a more appropriate comparison.

She gulped hard as he took a step toward her.

“Pray tell,” he said lowly, “whatisyour work, at such an hour, on such a night?”

She blinked rapidly, and for a terrifying moment, no words would come. Not only could she not speak, but her mind was desolate. Where normally there were stories and tales and lies, now there was a void. A nothingness like she’d never experienced.