“Get out,” he snarled. A vase flew from the mantel straight at Twig’s head. “Get out!”
“Stop!” The vase halted in midair. The Goblin King whirled around as my goblin girls stared at me, wide-eyed.
“Leave them alone,” I said. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”
The vase crashed to the floor. “You!” His eyes flashed, his nostrils flared, and his hair was wild. Two bright spots of red stained his cheeks, a high, hectic, color. “You—you—”
“Go,” I said to my attendants. They did not need to be told twice.
The Goblin King made an inarticulate sound of fury and kicked at a small side table. It went tumbling into the fireplace, sending ash and embers everywhere. The Goblin King hauled the now-smoldering side table out of the hearth and threw it to the ground, stomping it into pieces. He was like a child in a tantrum, fists clenched with anger, face clenched with irritation.
I knew I should be sorry. I knew I should be contrite. But I couldn’t help it; I laughed.
The first giggle that escaped me nearly choked me with surprise. I had not laughed in an age, and the muscles of happiness and humor were unused to it. But the more I laughed, the better it felt, and I bathed in my mirth, an endless bubbling fountain.
“And what, my dear,” the Goblin King said in acid tones, “is so funny?”
“You,” I gasped out between breaths. “You!”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do I amuse you, Elisabeth?”
I collapsed onto my bed, back and stomach spasming with a fit of giggles. Then the storm subsided and my body was no longer wracked with the uncontrollably joyous hiccoughs of laughter. But their aftermath fizzed along my veins, and I felt loose, limber, and languid. My head hung over the edge of my mattress, and I looked up at the Goblin King upside down.
“Yes,” I said. “You do.”
“I’m glad one of us finds the other amusing,” he fumed. “Because I am wroth with you.”
“I know, and I am sorry,” I said. “But I don’t regret it.”
The truth dropped between us like a stone, surprising the both of us. The Goblin King went livid, an ashen-gray color. But I … I was flush with life and fervor again. I did not need to look at a mirror to know that the pink had returned to my cheeks, or that a sparkle had returned to my eyes. I could feel it in the singing of my blood. I had set foot in the world above … and returned.
And the Goblin King was angry. His shoulders were heaving, his eyes alight, his lips tight. I felt his fury roll off him in waves, heating the air between us. He had once said he could no longer feel the intensity of emotion, but I knew that anger boiled his blood, and he held himself tight to contain it. My breath came quicker.
“What, mein Herr,” I said, “did you think I would say otherwise?”
I watched the pupils of those mismatched eyes contract and dilate. His fingers curled into claws. The wolf inside him was thrashing and shaking to get loose.
Come, I thought. Come and get me.
“Perhaps I was foolish enough to think that the consequences of your actions would have at least caused you some concern.”
I remembered the sky returning to cloudless blue, the leaves greening. I remembered tears in those pale eyes as the world around us returned to summer.
“Have I condemned the world to eternal winter?”
I could see the truth in the Goblin King’s mouth. His jaw tightened and his lips thinned with the effort of holding it back.
“No.”
“Have I set the denizens of the Underground loose upon the world?”
A furious pause. “No.”
“Then there’s been no harm done.”
Insouciant, impertinent, impudent. A coquette’s arsenal of flirtation, and I was reckless with it. He was so close to breaking, so close to grabbing me by the shoulders and punishing me. I wanted it. I wanted the pain and the pleasure, and the reminder that I was still alive.
“No harm done!” He grabbed a statue from the mantel and hurled it against the far wall. “What if I hadn’t heard you? What if I couldn’t bring you back? What if—” He stopped himself, but I heard the rest of that sentence, hanging in the air between us.
What if you didn’t want to come back?
I got up from the bed. With each step forward, the Goblin King retreated, but when I had his back pressed against the wall, he could run no farther from me. I placed my hands on his chest, a light touch, and rose up onto my toes to whisper in his ear.
“I came back,” I murmured. “Of my own free will.”
His hands shot out and gripped me about my shoulders, but whether to push me away or pull me close, I wasn’t sure. His fingers dug into the flesh about my upper arms.
“Don’t you ever, ever do that again.” Each word was a dart to my heart, deliberate and sure. “Ever.”
I felt both his anger and his fear in his grip. Every bit of him was strung with tension, balanced between wanting to put me in my place and wanting to let me go. His trembles traveled all the way down my body, like his passion was the finger that plucked the string connecting us, reverberations and resonance pooling deep within me.
So I kissed him.
The Goblin King was startled, but I grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer. I clung to him like a drowning man clings to a lifeline; he was my lifeline. He returned my kiss with desperation, over and over and over again, each one sloppier and rougher than the last. His arms tightened about me, his hands grasping at the back of my dress, while my own hands found the hem of his shirt and slid them against his bare skin.