THE KINSHIP BETWEEN US
i awoke the next morning with my hand wrapped about the Goblin King’s ring. Despite the rough journey and the restless, turmoil-laden sleep, my head was clearer than it had been in a long time. The wisp of a dream returned to me, and I clung to it, trying to remember what I had seen, felt, experienced. But it was gone, leaving nothing but the sensation of fullness, as though my mind were a well that had refilled in the middle of the night.
The door between my brother’s room and mine was still shut. I wondered if it would ever be open again, or if I had locked us up and thrown away the key. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to demand an apology. I hated what we had become. I hated how Master Antonius and the Goblin King had come between us, and I hated even more that my brother could make me resent what had been the deepest and most transformative time of my life. I wanted to yell at Josef. I wanted to break down that door between us. I wanted to throttle him. I wanted to coddle him.
I shoved off my linens and threw myself forcefully from my bed.
Nina had left me a tray of food and some clothes outside my door. The food was cold, but the clothes were clean, and I gratefully changed out of my travel-stained clothes into something more comfortable. I washed my face and did my best to tidy my hair without the use of a mirror. By now I was ravenous, having barely eaten since we left Vienna. I supposed I could have eaten the bread and cheese left for me last night, but it was cold and stale, and I was more of a mind to wander and explore . . . and potentially find someone who might help me get word to my sister and François.
The twisting, labyrinthine corridors and passageways of Snovin Hall were no less confusing by day than they had been by night. I knew we were in the east wing of the house, having marked it when we arrived. I headed back toward what I assumed was the entrance, figuring it would be easier to orient myself from there.
The neglect and decay were far more noticeable in the light. Although the wing where Josef and I were staying was relatively sound, a large part of the house had completely and utterly fallen apart: the roof collapsed in one room, brambles and vines climbing through empty window frames in another. I passed by portraits of Procházkas past, their stern faces looking down upon me from tattered hangings, an interloper in their midst.
“I know,” I muttered to one particularly grim-looking fellow. “I don’t know what I’m doing here either.”
The Count and Countess told me that I was in danger from the Wild Hunt, that they had abducted me and my brother in order to protect us. But Snovin Hall hardly seemed a refuge with its dilapidated walls and desolate halls. There seemed to be no staff, no personnel, no armed guard at the Procházka ancestral seat. It didn’t seem as though Josef and I were any better protected here than we had been in Vienna. It led me to believe that we had been brought here for other reasons.
The warning from my old landlady Frau Messner swirled about my mind, the story of that young woman who had disappeared, the young man who had died. An incident. At their country home. Käthe’s voice, too, rose up in my memory. The Procházkas sacrifice goats to a dark god in occult rituals. They call upon sinister forces.
But it was the Countess’s words from the night we were abducted that echoed the loudest. Your music creates a bridge between worlds.
I looked down at the Goblin King’s ring on my finger. Incontrovertible proof that the veil between us and the Underground was thin. The Procházkas claimed that I could save us all from the end of the world, but I did not understand how. Not without going back. Not without giving up everything I had left for in the first place. My music. My life. Myself.
And then I thought of mismatched eyes and a mouth tender with love. I thought of the Goblin King as I had seen him that last night as husband and wife, not entwined in our marriage bed, but playing a sonata in the chapel. Perhaps going back wasn’t giving up. Perhaps it was giving in.
Then I remembered blue-white eyes and inky-black skin stretched over hollow bones, a voice hissing, He that you love is gone.
Before long, I realized that I had come to an unfamiliar part of the house. I thought of my time as the Goblin Queen, when the pathways of the Underground rearranged themselves to suit my whim. I hadn’t paid much attention the night before, but I did not recall coming across a gallery this size. What seemed like portraits or paintings were hung high on the walls above me, covered with sheets. Curious, I reached up to look under the sheet when there was a gasp and a crash.
I jumped and whirled around to see Nina on her hands and knees. She must have dropped another tray at the sight of me, and was hastily trying to gather the broken crockery. I got down to help her clean, apologizing profusely for the fright.
She tried to wave me off, but I insisted, pretending not to understand her Bohemian, even though her emphatic gestures were perfectly clear. It appeared as though the housekeeper had been coming to bring my brother and me our breakfast, but now that I had ruined the service, she seemed amenable to bringing me to the kitchens.
Only it wasn’t the kitchens she brought me to. Instead, Nina led me to a small, brightly lit room with large windows, where the Count was sitting before a large, roaring fire.
“Ah, Fräulein!” he said when he saw me. “You are up, I see. Please, come join me for breakfast.”
By the looks of things, he had already been up for hours, his dark eyes bright and beady, his cheeks pink with health and good humor. He rose and offered me his seat, walking to a sideboard I had not seen laden with pastries, fruit, an assorted selection of cured meats and cheeses, as well as a large silver carafe.
“Do you take coffee?” he asked.
“I, uh, yes, thank you,” I said, a bit flustered. Coffee was a popular beverage back in Vienna, brought to the city by the Turks, but I had never developed much taste for the bitter brew.
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Both, please.”
The Count made me a cup before pouring himself one as well. He drank his without anything to cut the acrid bitterness, smacking his lips with relish. His chipper countenance this morning suddenly made much more sense.
“I trust you and your brother slept well,” he said. “Alas, you must excuse my wife. She is not an early riser, nor is she much for breakfast. It looks as though it will be just you and me this morning.”
The Countess and I had this much in common at least. In Vienna, I had grown accustomed to rising late; without the pressure of chores and other duties to perform around the inn, the luxury of lying abed when I could had been too sweet to resist.
We sat in silence with our coffees for a while, me sipping gingerly, the Count gulping his down. I wasn’t much for breakfast either, but felt I had to eat for courtesy’s sake. I set my cup down and walked to the sideboard to fill a plate with a few small, cookie-sized pastries topped with a sweet poppy seed paste. The room in which we sat was one of the few better-maintained parts of the house, the furniture sturdy if shabby, the rug of high quality if threadbare. Two sets of windowed doors framed the fireplace, opening onto a terrace that overlooked wildly overgrown lands. Like the dining room, a painting or a mirror was hung above the sideboard, and as with the rest of the framed objects in the house, it was covered with a sheet.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” I said, pointing to the framed object, “may I ask what it is you keep covered under there?”
The Count coughed, choking a bit on his coffee. “Now, now,” he said, face reddening. “Mustn’t touch.”
Another voice from another time returned to me, whispering the same words. No, no, mustn’t touch. I thought of the mirror in my chamber Underground, my enchanted window to the world above.
After a few more minutes of coughing and clearing his throat, the Count continued. “It’s not a painting or a portrait, my dear,” he said. “It’s a mirror.”
I was surprised. “A mirror?”
“You may consider it a silly old superstition,” he said sheepishly, “but around these parts, it is ill luck to keep mirrors uncovered in empty rooms and while the house is sleeping.”
“Why?”
He gave a nervous laugh. “Oh, it’s an old wives’ tale, but they say that if the mirrors aren’t covered, a dreamer’s soul may accidentally wander through them to the shadow world and become trapped.” The Count gave the one hanging above the mantel a sidelong glance. “One never knows where one’s soul might end up. The realm behind the reflection may or may not be true, and they say the fey and the spirits of the restless dead travel through the shadow-world paths created by mirrors.”
I shivered, thinking of how I had spied upon my brother and sister through the enchanted mirror in my chamber Underground. Suddenly, I understood the why of it. One never knew just who was staring back as you gazed into your reflection.
“Are you frightening our guests, Otto?” The Countess emerged from the hall, limping into the room on Konrad’s arm. “Don’t believe everything he tells you,” she said. “Otto does love a good story.”
He gave his wife a tender smile. “Especially ones with happy endings.”
The Countess rolled her eyes. “My husband is a sentimental fool, I’m afraid,” she said, but she could not keep the smile from her voice. “I myself prefer the old tales. Wouldn’t you agree, mademoiselle?” Konrad helped the Countess to her seat while her husband rose to his feet and made his wife a cup of coffee.
“I would prefer it if we dispensed with the storytelling and went straight to truth seeking, if you don’t mind,” I said tartly. “What are we doing here? Why? How?”
She sighed and set down her cup after a sip. “I had hoped to get settled in before all that.”
“Get you acquainted with Snovin,” the Count added. “You are our guest, so please make yourself comfortable and at home here.”
I lifted my brows. “And how long will my stay be?”
“Until the danger to you is passed,” the Countess said. “And in order to make sure you’re safe, we need your help, Elisabeth. You are far more precious to us than you know.”
“Precious?” I laughed incredulously. “To you? Why?”
“Because of what you are,” she said seriously. “And what I am.”
“What I am,” I repeated. “The Goblin Queen.”
The Countess nodded. “There is kinship between us.”
“Kinship?” I was surprised. “Who are you?”
She glanced at the Count, who met her gaze briefly, then returned his eyes back to his plate. “I presume you do not mean to ask about the illustrious house of Procházka und zu Snovin, of which my husband is the nineteenth count and I, his wife.”
I crossed my arms. The Countess sighed again.
“We are—I am,” she began, “the last of a line no less old or illustrious than my husband’s, if not quite so noble. The Procházkas have ever kept watch over the in-between places and thresholds of the world, but my family have been the keeper of its secrets. We keep the old laws and we safeguard them, maintaining the balance between our world and the Underground.”
I frowned. “How?”
“I told you that those of us touched by Der Erlkönig can reach across the barrier.” She held her hands apart. “We can find the windows and”—she clapped her hands shut—“close them. You can do this, Elisabeth,” she said, nodding toward me. “As can I.”
“You?” She nodded again. I narrowed my eyes. “What are you?”
The Countess and her husband exchanged another glance. This time, he held her gaze and gave her the slightest of nods. She turned back to me, those eyes of hers large, luminous, and an impossibly bright green. “I am of his blood,” she said in a low voice. “My foremother was the first of his brides. A brave maiden, who gave her life for the world, then doomed that very same world to bring Der Erlkönig back from death.”