Wintersong(86)

I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Boredom and futility pressed on me, and I wanted to rip, shred, tear, scream. But the scream was bottled within me, and I could not let it out. I could not let it out. I could not let it out.

“Mmmm.” I recoiled when I noticed Thistle’s face hovering over my shoulder. She had climbed up the stone wall of the grotto and was poised over me, breathing deeply as though inhaling the scent of some delicious perfume. “Such strong emotions,” she purred. “Such fire. It’s so warm.”

“Get away from me.” I shoved her away, and she tumbled down the rock wall to Twig’s crackling laughter.

Twig’s laugh caught the attention of the changelings, who left off their rock-skipping games and slid toward me, silent and smooth. They had the form and feature of young men and women, but they moved with a sinuous grace that was not of the world above.

As they drew closer, the changelings brightened. Their faces shone with vivid expressions; their movements became more animated and less preternatural. I reached for them. Their features—both familiar and foreign—reminded me of my own human ones. I longed for them. I longed to be among them like they were kin.

One of the changelings, a young man—a youth—took my hand in his. He nuzzled his face into my palm. My heart softened and I wanted to hold this changeling. I yearned to draw comfort from his presence, the way I would have turned to Käthe or Josef. The changeling even looked a little like Josef: the same high cheekbones and sharp chin, the same heart-shaped face.

He snapped at my fingers.

“Ouch!” I cried. The changeling had managed to draw blood.

“Didn’t I say they bite?” Thistle giggled cruelly.

The changelings took up her laughter. It sounded like one laugh, broken into a myriad pieces, echoing against each other into a cacophony of mocking jeers. The changeling licked my blood off his hands.

Long, spindly fingers wrapped themselves around my ankles like brambles in a hedge. Twig. A sickening expression crossed her face, half of hunger and half of pity. No, I thought. No. Not Twig. Not her too.

Goblin and changeling lurched closer, the scent of my blood drawing them to me like moths to the flame. The intensity of my emotions, my mortal life, sustained them. Fed them. Fueled them. I kicked out, trying to shake them off, but they clung tighter than burrs.

“Stop,” I said. “Please, stop!”

But they were gone, their black eyes blank in a haze of hunger. I wrenched Thistle’s fingers off the skirt of my dress, pried myself from Twig’s grip, but they were relentless. Skittering from the shadows came other goblins, the flickering waves of my fear drawing them out of the darkness.

This is it, I thought. This is how I die. Unremembered, unsung, torn apart by ravenous hands.

A blast of anger returned strength to my limbs. Beyond the edges of panic and fear, there was clarity. There was sharpness. This would not be how I died. If I were to die, it would not be in this ignominious way. If I were to die, I would choose how. Was I not the Goblin Queen? My subjects were bound by my desire, by my wishes.

“Enough.”

My word was my command. They froze, bound by my will and the wish I hadn’t needed to speak aloud. Not anymore. I pushed them all away, and they toppled over where they stood. I stepped on their fingers out of spite, hearing the bones snap like twigs underfoot. They flinched with pain, and I relished the agony on their faces. I wanted them to fear me, to be afraid to trespass upon my person.

It wasn’t just the goblins. It was everyone. The Goblin King. Master Antonius. Papa’s condescension. Hans’s bored expression whenever I left him to practice on the klavier. The incredulous looks on the villagers’ faces when they remembered that I, too, had talent. I even wanted to rise above Josef’s shadow on my music. I wanted to bend the entire world—both above and below—to what I needed. For once. Just once.

Just once.

Light my flame, mein Herr, I thought. Light my fire, and watch me burn.





MERCY

“You are not attending, my dear,” the Goblin King said from the klavier.

I looked up from my glass of wine, the stem of which I had been listlessly twirling between my fingers for the past several minutes. An open book sat on my lap, but I had not read a single word in the past hour.

“Hmmm?” I quickly turned the pages. “I am.”

The Goblin King raised a brow. “I’ve stump-fingered my way through three pieces and you’ve not said anything about the notes.”

I coughed to hide the blush creeping up my neck.

Since that first, disastrous evening after dinner, our time together had taken on a comfortable, almost comforting routine. Sometimes we would pass the time by reading aloud to each other. I preferred poetry, but the Goblin King—unsurprisingly—preferred his philosophers. He read Latin, Greek, Italian, French, and German, and spoke a dozen other languages as well. He was astonishingly well learned; he might have been a scholar in the world above.