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She collapsed against a pillar, gasping for breath. It had sounded close this time, but she didn’t know which direction it had come from. She didn’t know if she wanted to find out the source of the scream or not. It sounded like someone needed help. It sounded like someone was dying.
She waited, struggling to listen over the mad thumping of her heart and her rapid, halting breaths.
The scream did not come again.
Legs shaking, Serilda headed toward what she thought was the great hall. But when she turned again, she found herself facing an alcove with a set of wide-open double doors. The room beyond was enormous and in as much disrepair as the rest of the castle. What little furniture remained was toppled and broken. Crackled ivy leaves littered the floor, along with chipped stone and twigs dragged in by whatever critters had tried to make this forsaken place their home.
A raised dais stood at the far end of one room, with two ornate chairs on top of it.
Not chairs, exactly. Thrones. Each one gilded and upholstered in cobalt blue.
They appeared pristine, untouched by the decay that had ruined the rest of the castle, preserved by what magic she couldn’t begin to guess. It looked as if the castle’s rulers might be returning any moment. If only the rest of their castle weren’t being slowly eroded away. Claimed by nature, by death.
And thiswasa place of death. It was unmistakable. The smell of rot. The taste of ashes on her tongue. The way misery and suffering clung to the walls like invisible cobwebs, floating on the air like bits of ephemeral dust.
She was halfway across the throne room when she heard the low, squelching sound.
She paused, listening.
On her next step, she heard it again, and this time, she felt the sole of her boot sticking to the stone.
Her gaze dropped to the floor and the trail of bloody footprints that stretched out behind her to the corridor she had just left. A dark pool now swelled around the edges of the throne room, spilling out into the corridor.
Her insides spasmed.
She backed away, slowly at first—then turned and fled, toward the large double doors facing the thrones. The moment she crossed the threshold, the doors slammed shut.
She did not stop. She passed from one grand, decrepit parlor into another, until suddenly she recognized where she was. The enormous fireplace. The carved doors.
She’d found the great hall.
With a shuddering, hopeful cry, she launched herself toward the doors and yanked them open. Gray light spilled across the courtyard, which had fared little better with time. The hound statues at the base of the steps were now streaked with green decay, their surfaces pocked by corrosion. The stables were collapsing on one end, the thatched roof mottled with holes. The courtyard itself was being devoured by brambles and spiny musk thistles. A wayfaring tree had sprouted up in the southern corner, its roots tearing through the cobblestones, its barren winter branches like skeletal fingers reaching for the gray sky. The berries that had not been picked clean by the birds had fallen onto the stone and were rotting away into bloodlike splatters.
But the gate was open. The drawbridge was down.
She could have wept with relief.
As a freezing wind blew off the lake, tossing back her hair and cloak, Serilda ran as hard as she could. Behind her she could still hear the screaming, the cries, the cacophony of death.
Wood thundered underfoot as she crossed the drawbridge. On the other side, the narrow bridge that connected the castle to the town stood weathered from time. Its stones chipping away. One section of rail having collapsed down into the water below. It would have been frightfully treacherous in a carriage, but even the fragile, narrow middle of the bridge still afforded plenty of room for lone Serilda. She ran until all she could hear were the wind whistling in her ears and her own panting breaths.
She finally slowed and grabbed on to a pillar, which had just last night held a blazing torch, but was now nothing more than damp, worn stone. She leaned against it as she struggled to catch her breath.
Slowly, she dared to turn.
The castle reared up from the mist, as eerie and imposing as it had been the night before. But this was no grand fortress for Erlkönig, the Alder King.
Now Adalheid Castle was nothing more than ruins.
Chapter 15
When she had passed through the small city the night before, it had been quiet and solemn, as though all the villagers had sequestered themselves behind locked doors and shuttered windows, frightened of what might be prowling their streets beneath the Hunger Moon.
But as Serilda made her way over the bridge, she saw that during the night—or, the century, if she had indeed slept for a hundred years—life had returned to the town. No longer did it appear foreboding and half-abandoned in the shadow of the enormous castle. In the morning daylight, it actually looked rather lovely. Tall half-timbered houses lined the lakeshore, painted in tones of pale green and marigold and accented with dark wood trim. Bright morning sun alighted on snowy rooftops and gardens where more than one little snowman was slowly wasting away. A parade of small fishing boats was moored along a series of docks, and on the road that stretched along a pebbled beach there stood a row of thatched-roof shelters that Serilda didn’t remember seeing the night before.
A market.
That was the greatest transformation of all, she noted, as the sounds of merry bustling greeted her. The villagers had emerged and reclaimed their city, as if the wild hunt had never ridden past. As if the castle on the water, just beyond their doorsteps, was not overrun with monsters and ghosts.
