“A philosopher as well as a king,” I muttered. “How charming.”
“Do you find me charming, Elisabeth?” His voice was a velvet purr.
I searched his face for the soft-eyed young man, a hint, an anchor I could cling to. But I could find none. “No.”
The Goblin King pouted. “You wound me.” He moved close, bringing with him the scent of ice and sweet loam. He took my chin in his long, elegant fingers and raised my gaze to his. “And you lie.”
“Release me.” I trembled, but my voice was steady.
He shrugged. “As you wish.” He pulled away, and the absence of his touch was a sudden chill. “I don’t see your sister with you.”
I sighed. Käthe, so brave until now, had suddenly turned mulish in his presence. She remained hidden in the roots of the great oak, unwilling to come out into the open.
“Then help me free her from the tree,” I said.
He raised his brow. “With nary a please? Tsk, tsk, where are your manners, Elisabeth?”
“I wish you would free Käthe from the tree.”
The Goblin King bowed. “Your wish is my command.”
The oak tree split open from root to tip, revealing a terrified Käthe at its heart. She was tightly curled into a ball, hiding her face between her knees, her shoulders shaking with fright.
“Käthe, Käthe.” I took her into my arms. “It’s all right. It’s all over. We can go home now.”
“Not so fast.” The Goblin King stepped forward. “We are not yet finished.”
My sister cringed and buried her face into my shoulder.
“Yes, we are,” I said. “We had a wager.”
“Did we? Remind me.”
Sometimes it was all too easy to forget that Der Erlkönig was ageless, ancient, older than these hills. “That I would find my way out of the Underground and bring my sister,” I said through gritted teeth. “And lo, here we stand, in the world above.”
“Is that what you think?”
Dread began to grow inside me, rising waters of panic, drip by drip. “What do you mean?”
“A valiant effort, Elisabeth,” the Goblin King said. “But you have lost.”
At his words, the forest about me changed. What I had taken for trees smoothly changed into columns of stone, leaves into bits of ragged cloth, and the night sky froze and cracked, like a pond icing over in winter. Käthe gave a quiet sob against my shoulder, and what I had taken for the chattering of her teeth was in fact a repeated refrain: too late, too late, too late.
“No,” I whispered. “Oh no.”
We were still Underground.
“Yes,” he said, the word a soft, sibilant caress. “I win.”
I gripped my sister tighter to me.
“Well,” the Goblin King amended. “I will win, once the full moon rises on the new year.”
I stiffened. “It hasn’t risen?”
“Not yet,” he admitted. “You are close. Too close for comfort, in fact.” He waved his hand. The icy sky rippled, and the stars returned, weak and watery, as though seen through a reflection upon the surface of a lake.
“We stand upon the threshold, you see,” he said. “The world above lies beyond that veil.”
Käthe sucked in a sharp breath as she turned to face the stars. They bathed her face and hair in silver and she closed her eyes, as though to shut out the sight of freedom, so close yet so far.
“How long before the moonrise?” I asked.
“Not long,” the Goblin King said. A grin spread across his face. “Not long enough for you to escape, at any rate.”
“You have to give me a chance.”
He crossed his arms. “No.”
“A gentleman would honor the rules.”
“Ah, but I am not a gentleman, Elisabeth.” The Goblin King was all affectation and languid sarcasm. “I am a king.”
Realization swept over me in a wave. “You were never going to let me win.”
“No.” He bared his teeth. “After all, am I not the Lord of Mischief?”
The Lord of Mischief. Of course.
“Then why play this game?” I asked. “Why bother with all this when you could have simply taken what you wanted?”
An unfathomable expression flashed across his eyes. Suddenly he seemed terribly old—old and weary. I was reminded that Der Erlkönig had existed in these mountains and woods longer than I, longer than time itself.
“I do not want this.” The words were soft, so soft I might have imagined them. “I never wanted this.”
Surprise slashed through me, leaving me cold and breathless. “Mein Herr,” I said. “Then what …”
The Goblin King laughed. His face, previously old and haggard, took on a puckish expression. His features sharpened: his gaze hard and glittering, his cheekbones a slash of shadow.
“What did you think the answer would be, Elisabeth? I toy with you because I can. Because it gives me great pleasure. Because I was bored.”
An inarticulate scream of rage strangled me. I wanted to destroy something, to spend my anger against the unfairness of everything. I wanted nothing more than to grapple with the Goblin King, to tear him from limb to limb, a Maenad against Orpheus. I tightened my hands into fists.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Go ahead. Hit me. Strike me.” The invitation was not just in his words, but his voice. He advanced. “Use your rage against me.”