It was like coming home.
“Don’t,” he whispered against my lips, fierce and urgent. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.”
Don’t touch me. Don’t tempt me. Don’t ever try to leave the Underground again. I did not understand what he was protesting, but it did not matter. We were two juggernauts on a collision course, and this joining had been a long time in the making.
“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t,” I said, but I did not know what I was promising. I did not care. My flesh leaped at his touch, erasing all conscious thought.
He tangled his fingers in my hair then, yanking me away from his lips. I struggled to kiss him again, but his grip was strong. He grabbed my chin with his other hand, forcing me to meet his gaze.
Those eyes. So pale, so startling, so different. His breath was hot against my face, and we stared at each other. I was stunned to see I was looking into the face of the austere young man, not Der Erlkönig, not the wolf, and suddenly I understood what he had been pleading.
Don’t leave me.
A warmth spread from my center, turning my limbs liquid. But when that warmth reached my heart, it turned into pain.
“Never,” I breathed.
At my word, his eyes transformed. Hardening into jewels, the mask of Der Erlkönig returned. He lowered his mouth to the column of my neck, a light touch of teeth, his hand moving to rest lightly against my collarbone.
“Good,” he growled.
And then with one swift motion, he tore the fabric of my dress from the neck down.
* * *
We are rough and reverent. We fall onto my bed together, a twisted, tangled knot of torn clothing and exposed limbs, a pair of wrestling wolves.
Our bodies reacquaint themselves, relearning the other’s touch. I hold the Goblin King and he is mine, familiar and new all at once.
“Don’t,” he says.
Don’t let go.
“Never,” I breathe.
We struggle to find a rhythm, a consensus, a progression, but neither of us give in to the other, both wanting to take and take and take. I deserve it, I deserve this for the ages he starved me of his touch. He deserves it, he deserves it because I nearly abandoned him, abandoned the Underground, abandoned the world. We are angry, but our anger is like play, like hounds practicing for the hunt.
The Goblin King has ever been generous with me in our marriage bed, but it is only now I understand just how much. He presses my shoulders down, legs pinning my torso, and leans over me, his face close. His expression is wild and feral, brows furrowed, mouth curled into a snarl. The austere young man is gone; there will be no one to guide me through the forest now.
He crushes his lips to mine, our tongues dancing, his hands running over my body to rest between my legs. I feel him against me, and tense.
The Goblin King pauses. “Your wish is my command,” he murmurs. He waits upon my word.
I hesitate, then nod. “Yes,” I whisper. “Yes.”
I’m not quite ready for the joining, but I am caught breathless as he pushes close. This is more than fullness, this is fulfillment. I lift my head up to the heavens. Heaven is far away, but the fairy lights twinkle above me, stars in a firmament that will never see the light of day.
And then we play together, our tempos matching, a shared rhythm that grows wilder and wilder. I am not me. I am not Elisabeth. I am not a human girl. I am a wild thing, a creature of the forest and the storm and the night. I run through dreams and fancies, through all the stories of my childhood of the dark and uncanny and strange and weird. I am primordial, I am made of music and magic and Der Erlkönig.
I am lost.
Gradually, I return to myself, bit by bit, body part by body part, sense by sense. First my feet. Then my hands. Then my body, draped with the warmth of him. Color returns to the world, the taste of blood where I’ve inadvertently bitten my lip. Sight and touch and taste and smell. I wait for sound to join me, but as the moments tick on, I hear nothing but the thudding of my heart.
Little by little, they will take your sight, your smell, your taste, your touch; a slow feast.
Fear grips me.
The Goblin King feels me panic, and reaches down to stroke my face. I reach up to touch my nose and my hand comes away with red. A nosebleed.
I feel the horror that runs up and down the length of him a second before he wrenches himself away.
Elisabeth? I see the Goblin King’s mouth form the syllables of my name, but I cannot hear him.
Elisabeth!
He shouts something more, but I can no longer understand him. Words blur into an unintelligible muffled drone, and with a chill, Thistle’s words come back to me:
Think you your beating heart the greatest gift you could give? No, mortal, your heartbeat is but the least and last.
The Goblin King shouts something again, and within an instant, my goblin girls appear.
No, not this. No. I returned from the world above. My sister still remembered me. My brother still said my name. As Twig and Thistle fuss over me, I hold the Goblin King’s gaze, looking for answers, knowing he cannot give me the ones I want to hear, because I can hear nothing at all.
JUSTICE
Somewhere in the distance, a violin sang a song of sorrow, regret, and apology.
“Josef?” I murmured, stirring from a dream.
But it was not my little brother. I did not hear Josef’s characteristic clarity in the music; instead I heard a weighty sort of grief, the notes lacquered with years—centuries, perhaps—of loss.
It was the Goblin King.
I gasped and sat up in my bed. Memories of what had passed between us returned in a flash of heat, mingled with the chilling terror of the consequences. I shuddered and touched my ears, listening, hoping, fearing.