“If you are so anxious for me to be gone, mein Herr,” I said, “then conjure me a ladder of vines, or a stairwell of tree roots. I am not so tall as to reach the end myself.”
“You broke me, my dear. I can scarcely conjure my name, let alone a ladder.”
“Well, you did tell me the game was unwinnable. I should have taken you at your word.”
Even his laugh was tired. “Ah, the winner’s curse,” he said. “It cost you more to win than to lose.” Then he sobered. “It cost us both.”
“What will it cost you?” I did not have the strength—or the heart—to mock him now, not when we were both broken. “What will it cost you but a bride?”
“Oh, Elisabeth. It will cost us both everything.”
I waited. I laid my head against Käthe’s soft flesh, listening to the slow thump of her beating heart.
“As the old year dies, so too does the world. Without sacrifice, nothing good can grow. Without death, there can be no rebirth. A life for life, that is the cost.”
“You have heard that it hath been said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” I murmured.
“Aye,” he said. “The old laws and God’s laws are not so different.”
“You could,” I began, but the words stuck in my throat. “You could find another bride, couldn’t you?”
“Yes,” the Goblin King said. He sounded almost hurt. “I suppose I could.”
“You suppose?”
It was a long time before he answered. “Would you like another story, my dear? It isn’t as pretty as my last, I’m afraid.”
“Before moonset?” I glanced through the threshold to the world above.
He laughed. “We have time enough for this.”
I nodded.
“Once upon a time, a savage, violent time, humans, goblins, kobolds, Hödekin, and Lorelei lived side by side in the world above, feeding, fighting, preying, slaying. It was, as I had said, a dark time, and Man turned to dark practices to keep the blood tides at bay. Sacrifices, you see. Man turned against brother, fathers against daughters, sons against mothers, all to appease the goblins. To stop the needless deaths, one man—one stupid, foolish man—made a bargain with the old laws of the land, offering himself as a sacrifice.”
“The last time, it was a beautiful maiden,” I said from my spot by Käthe’s side.
“A brave maiden,” the Goblin King corrected.
I smiled.
“His soul was the price,” he continued. “The price he paid to sunder the goblins and the fey from the world above. His soul—and his name. No longer a mortal man, he became Der Erlkönig. For his bargain, the foolish man was granted immortality, and the power to manipulate the elements as it suited his needs. He restored order, seasons progressed in their normal manner. But the further away from mortality he grew, the more capricious and cruel he became, forgetting what it was like to live and love.”
He was right; it wasn’t a pretty story. What did immortality do to one who was once mortal? It stretched him thin. I watched what little I could see of the Goblin King from my vantage point. In this half-light, in this half-space between the Underground and the world above, I thought I could see the mortal man he might have been. The austere young man in the portrait gallery. That soft-eyed young man who had been my friend.
“It isn’t just the life of a maiden I needed, you know,” the Goblin King said quietly. I glanced sharply at him; his tone had changed. “It was what a maiden can give me.”
“And what is that?”
His smile was crooked. “Passion.”
Heat flared in my cheeks.
“Not that sort of passion,” he said quickly. Did I imagine things, or were his cheeks tinged a faint pink? “Well, yes, that too. Passion of all sorts,” he said. “Intensity.”
“Goblins do not feel the way mortals do,” he went on. “You humans live and love so fiercely. We crave that. We need that. That fire sustains us. It sustains me.”
“Is that why you stole Käthe away?” I looked at my sister, thinking of her voluptuous body and inviting laugh. “Because of the passion she inspired?”
The Goblin King shook his head. “The sort of passion she inspires in me is all flash and no heat. I need an ember, Elisabeth, not a firecracker. Something that burns longer, to keep me warm for this night and all other nights to come.”
“So Käthe …”
I could not finish my question.
“Käthe,” he said in a low voice, “was a means to an end.”
The way he spoke of my sister vexed me. A means, as though she were cheap. Disposable. Worthless.
“To what end?” I asked.
“You know the answer, Elisabeth,” he said softly.
And I did. The goblin merchants, the flute, all the way back to when he had granted my wish to save Josef’s life—everything he had done, he had done for me.
“A means to an end,” I whispered. “Me.”
He did not deny it.
“Why?”
The Goblin King was silent for a long while. “Who else but you?” he asked lightly. “Whose life would you rather it be?”
He was avoiding answering my question. We did not look at each other. The darkness was too complete, and the light from the world above too harsh. But I could feel an answer between us, pulsing like a heartbeat. It made my breath come faster.