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“I’m not sure the repulsion isfeigned.”
He snorted. “Show me a lady who does not enjoy a tender cut of venison on her table, and I will concede the point.”
Serilda had no argument for that.
“To your question,” she said a bit hesitantly, “I do not think myself to be particularly sensitive, no.”
“I hoped as much.” The king paused before a set of wide double doors that Serilda had never seen before. “Few mortals have ever witnessed what you are about to behold. Perhaps the night will exhilarate us both.”
A flush burst hot across her face. His words brought back flashes of intimacy and pleasure that she was trying hard not to think about in this most inopportune moment.
Gild’s body. Gild’s hands. Gild’s mouth?…?
The Erlking shoved open the doors, letting in a rush of cool air, the melodic rhythm of a light rainfall, the thick scent of sage.
They emerged onto a covered stone walkway that ran the length of the northern side of the keep. Before them, half a dozen steps led down to a large garden hemmed in by the fortress’s tall outer walls. The garden was neat and precise, segmented into squares by tall boxwoods. Within each square was a centerpiece—a tiered fountain or a topiary in the shape of a lyre-playing nymph—surrounded by patches of bluebells and poppies and star-shaped edelweiss. In the corner far to Serilda’s right, the segments were more practical, though no less lovely, filled with spring vegetables, herbs, and fruit trees.
Serilda had not stopped to wonder about how the dark ones fed themselves. Clearly theydideat, or else they would have had no interest in the feast the citizens of Adalheid prepared for them. But she wasn’t sure if theyneededto eat, or if they simply enjoyed it. Either way, she’d had an image of their feasts being made entirely of the food claimed during the hunt—wild boar and venison and game birds. Clearly, she’d been mistaken.
The Erlking did not give her time to properly take in the splendid view of the gardens. Already he was at the base of the steps, and Serilda hastened to keep up with him, jogging down the central path that led straight through to the far wall while a mist of drizzling rain clung to her skin. She shivered, wishing she had her cloak.
Her gaze caught on a statue in one of the garden patches, standing ominously over a swath of black roses. She stumbled and paused.
It was a statue of the Erlking himself, clothed in his hunting gear, the crossbow in his hands. It was carved of black stone, granite perhaps. But the base was different. A light gray, like the castle walls.
She blinked, surprised at what struck her as a blatant display of vanity. The king had been eager to show off his trophies in the castle—the taxidermy and mounted heads. But he had not struck her as particularly … well,vain.
She shook herself from the daze and hurried to keep up, for the king evidently had no intention of waiting for her. She passed a couple of undead gardeners. A man with enormous shears jutting from his back was pulling weeds from one of the beds, and a woman whose head seemed permanently cocked at an odd angle, as if her neck might have been broken, was pruning a hedge of topiaries into the shape of a long-tailed serpent. There were more ghosts milling about the gardens in the distance, but as she neared the back castle wall, Serilda’s attention was drawn away from the patches of lush foliage.
Her steps slowed as she was led through a wrought-iron gate that had not been visible from the palace steps. It led onto a narrow, tidy lawn here at the back part of the gardens, what might have been used for lawn bowling.
All around its perimeter stood a series of ornate cages. Some were small enough to hold a house cat, others nearly as big as the mill’s waterwheel, all lit by the blaze of a hundred torches burning at the edges of the lawn.
Some of the cages were empty.
But others?…
Her mouth fell open and Serilda could not make it close. She wasn’t sure that what she was seeing was real.
In one cage, an elwedritsch, a plump birdlike creature covered in scales instead of feathers, with a rack of slender antlers sprouting from its head. There was its cousin, the rasselbock, a rabbit in size and form, but also sporting antlers like a roebuck. In the next cage, a bär geist, an enormous black bear with glowing red eyes. And there were creatures she had no names for. A six-legged oxlike creature that bore a protective shell on its back. A beast the size of a boar, covered in shaggy fur that, on closer examination, might not have been fur at all, but sharp porcupine-like quills.
A sound almost like a gasp, almost a laugh, escaped her as she spotted what appeared at first to be an average mountain goat. But as it hobbled closer to its food dish, she saw that the legs on the left side of its body were significantly shorter than the legs on the right side.A dahut.The creature whose fur Gild had said was his favorite to use for spinning.
She wandered closer, shaking her head in wonder. Only a few feet from the dahut’s cage, she could see that it indeed had great patches where the fur had recently been sheared off in haphazard strips. She doubted the dahut cared much, especially as the days grew warmer, but something told her the Erlking and his hunters would be most annoyed at the random patches of fur that occasionally went missing.
She shook her head, trying to smother her grin.
It was easy to do when she stepped back and took in the caged beasts all at once. They were a mixture of peculiar and regal, but they all looked cramped and miserable in their enclosures. Many were despondently curled up in the far corners, shying away from the rain and watching the dark ones with wary eyes. A couple had visible open wounds that had not been tended to.
“All these miraculous beasts,” muttered a haughty voice, “and the mortal wants to see the dahut.”
Serilda startled. Forcing her attention away from the creatures, she saw that she and the Erlking were not alone. A cluster of dark ones in their hunting gear stood gathered at the far end of the lawn, near an enormous but empty cage. It was a man who had spoken, with bronze skin and hair like flaxen gold, a broadsword on his back. When he saw that he had her attention, he raised an eyebrow. “Is the little human afraid of the beasts?”
“Hardly,” Serilda said, standing straighter. “But I prefer natural charm over vanity and brute strength. I’ve never seen a creature so purely guileless. I’m rather smitten.”
“Lady Serilda,” said the Erlking. She jumped, and the stranger smirked. “We have little time. Come, I wish to show you our newest acquisition.”
“Concern yourself not with her, Your Grim,” yelled the man, “for the human has poor taste in beasts.”
