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Parsley chuckled mildly. “You must not know much of humans, to believe that,” she said sourly. She tilted her chin toward the gifts. “If you do not accept these tokens, then our debt has not been paid and we must be in your service until it is.” Her gaze darkened warningly. “We would much prefer that you take the gifts.”
Pressing her lips together, Serilda nodded and closed her hand around the jewelry. “Thank you, then,” she said. “Consider the debt paid.”
They nodded, and it felt as if a bargain had been struck and signed in blood for all the loftiness the moment carried.
Desperate to break the tension, Serilda held her arms out toward them. “I feel so close to you both. Shall we embrace?”
Meadowsweet gaped at her. Parsley outrightsnarled.
The tension did not break.
Serilda drew her arms quickly back. “No. That would be odd.”
“Come,” said Parsley. “Grandmother will be worried.”
And just like skittish deer, they ran off, disappearing down the riverbank.
“By the old gods,” muttered Serilda. “What a night.”
She banged her boots on the side of the house to rid them of snow before going inside. Snores greeted her. Her father was still sleeping like a groundhog, utterly oblivious.
Serilda slipped off her cloak and sat with a sigh before the hearth. She added a block of bog peat to keep the fire smoldering. In the light of the embers, she tilted forward and peered down at her rewards.
One golden ring.
One golden locket.
When they caught the light, she saw that the ring bore a mark. A crest, like something a noble family might put on their fancy wax seals. Serilda had to squint to make it out. The design appeared to be of a tatzelwurm, a great mythical beast that was mostly serpentine with a feline head. Its body was wrapped elegantly around the letterR. Serilda had never seen anything quite like it before.
Digging her thumbnails into the locket’s clasp, she pried it open with a snap.
Her breath caught with delight.
She’d expected the locket to be empty, but inside there was a portrait—the tiniest, most delicate painting she’d ever seen—showing the resemblance of a most lovely little girl. She was but a child, Anna’s age if not a little younger, but clearly a princess or duchess or someone of much importance. Strings of pearls decorated her golden curls and a collar of lace framed her porcelain cheeks.
The regal lift of her chin was somehow completely at odds with the impish glint in her eyes.
Serilda shut the locket and slipped the chain over her head. She slid the ring onto her finger. With a sigh, she crawled back beneath her covers.
It was little comfort that she now had proof about what had transpired this night. Probably, if she showed anyone, they would think these things were stolen. Bad enough to be a liar. Becoming a thief was the logical progression.
Serilda lay sleepless, staring up at the golden patterns and creeping shadows on the ceiling rafters, gripping the locket in her fist.
Chapter 6
Sometimes Serilda would spend hours thinking about evidence. Those little clues left behind in a story that bridged the gap between fantasy and reality.
What evidence did she have that she’d been cursed by Wyrdith, the god of stories and fortune? The bedtime tales her father had told her, though she’d never dared to ask if they were real or not. The golden wheels over her black irises. Her uncontrollable tongue. A mother who had no interest in watching her grow up, who left without so much as a goodbye.
What evidence was there that the Erlking murdered the children who got lost in the woods? Not much. Mostly hearsay. Rumors of a haunting figure that stalked through the trees, listening for a child’s frightened cries. And long ago, once every generation or so, a small body discovered at the forest’s edge. Barely familiar, oft picked clean by the crows. But parents always recognized their own missing child, even a decade later. Even when all that was left was a corpse.
But that had not happened in recent memory, and it was hardly proof.
Superstitious nonsense.
This, however, was different.
Quite different.
