The question struck him in the chest, spreading through his throat and face like the blush of dawn. With life and color to his features, he looked once more like the austere young man in the portrait gallery: young, idealistic, and vulnerable.
“I would take my violin and play.” The words were spoken almost before his lips could catch up to what he was saying. “I would walk the world and play, until someone called me by name and called me home.”
His name and his home. What had my Goblin King left behind in the mortal world? Was it a greater torment to watch everything you had known and loved transform and disappear before your eyes while you remained alive and unchanging? Or was it worse to die before you could witness that change for yourself?
The Goblin King’s eyes met my own, and for the briefest moment, I saw him—truly him—behind the mask of Der Erlkönig, down to the boy he had been. But he blinked, and the mantle was upon him once more.
“And what of you, Elisabeth?” he drawled. “What would you do, if you were free?”
I turned my head, eyes stinging. He had returned my question with a particularly vicious volley, and we both knew it.
“We can play this game all you like,” he said. “Question for question, answer for answer.”
“You can keep your answers to yourself,” I replied. “I have no further questions.”
“Oh, Elisabeth.” His voice was sad. “What happened between us? What happened to you? You were once so passionate and open with me, and now I can barely see the friend I once knew. Why won’t you come out and play, Elisabeth? Why?”
He had all the questions, but I had no further answers. We finished our meal without another word between us.
After the goblins had cleared the last of our dishes away, the Goblin King invited me to join him in his retiring room. A slight tingle of excitement began at the base of my spine at the prospect of being in his private chambers again, and I agreed. I wished I could sort out my feelings for him, my lord and jailer, friend and foe. Part of me yearned to draw him close, while another wanted to keep him at arm’s length. The Goblin King offered me his arm and we left the dining hall on a breeze.
When I caught my breath, we were in a beautifully appointed space with two fireplaces, the near wall lined with bookshelves, the far wall lined with enormous silver mirrors that showed snow falling on a winter wood. A klavier stood at the center. A white gown smudged with dirt hung from a rack beside the instrument. I frowned.
“This,” I began, but my voice squeaked. I cleared my throat. “This is your retiring room?”
The Goblin King nodded. “Of course, my dear. What do you think of it?”
“But it’s—it’s the one connected—” I could not finish the sentence.
“The one connected to your bedchamber?” he asked dryly. “But of course; we are married, after all.”
A flush heated my cheeks. “And then your bedchamber—”
“Is on the other side of this wall.” He gestured to the wall on the opposite side from my bedroom. I noted no threshold connecting his quarters to the retiring room. The Goblin King saw me searching and lowered his voice.
“There is no direct path from your bed to mine,” he said softly. “And I could remove them even farther from each other, if that is your wish.”
My cheeks flared even hotter, but I shook my head. “No, no,” I said. “It’s fine.” I straightened my shoulders and lifted my eyebrow, matching his dry tone as best I could. “After all, we are married.”
A twitch at the corners of his lips. He conjured two chairs and a reclining couch before one of the fireplaces. “Relax, my dear.”
I sat on the reclining couch. Two comely youths crawled from the shadows, one bearing a decanter of brandy, the other a tray with two cut-crystal glasses. I was startled by their appearance, not just because I hadn’t seen them in the dark, but because of their humanlike appearance. Most of the goblins I had seen were of Twig and Thistle’s ilk: more creature than kin.
One of the attendants presented me with a glass of brandy. I gasped; for the space of a breath, I thought it was Josef beside me.
Then I blinked. The face waiting so very patiently by my side did not belong to my younger brother; the skin was too pale, the cheekbones too angular, the features altogether too pretty. Yet there was something of Josef in this youth’s face, in the sensitive tilt of his mouth, the cant of his brows. But the eyes were pure goblin: a flat black that left no room for the whites about the pupils.
The Goblin King gave me a sharp glance. “What is it, my dear?” He saw me staring at his attendants. “Oh, Elisabeth,” he said, “surely you’ve not forgotten my changelings?”