A sickly sweet smell begins to fill my senses, causing me to cough and gag and retch. A heavy, cloying scent, it clouds the world around me again, pulling me away from Der Erlk?nig, from the hellhounds, from the Hunt.
No! Der Erlk?nig is furious, lunging for me before I disappear into a purple haze. But those gnarled hands pass straight through me, spearing me with ice and cold and death. I scream with pain, gasping out a name, but that ghostly embrace is keeping me in this dream, this nightmare.
At once those blue-white eyes warm, filled again with color. Elisabeth!
The Goblin King wrenches himself away and I fall to my hands and knees, breathing hard. Mein Herr!
Elisabeth, he says, and I can see him struggling to hold on, to fight back the darkness threatening to subsume him. Go. Run. Get away from here, lest the Hunt claim you.
No, I say. Stay with me. Be with me!
But the Goblin King shakes his head. The intense, flowery smell grows stronger, and the world wavers, as though seen underwater.
The old laws seek to redress the ancient balance. I made you a promise, Elisabeth, and I intend to keep it. He holds his hand out to me, and in his palm I see the ring I had left for him back in the Goblin Grove. His ring. A symbol of his power and our troth. I reach out and for the briefest of moments, we touch. Our palms brush each other’s, and I am swept up in a tide of longing so intense, I fear I will go mad.
Hold me, kiss me, take me, ravish me, steal me away—
No! The Goblin King’s eyes go wide, and he shoves me away.
Oh please oh please oh please oh please—
Go, Elisabeth! he cries. Go, before I am lost, before—
And then he is gone, those mismatched eyes drowned in a sea of white.
Mein Herr!
Elisabeth!
Still he calls my name. I search for his, digging, clawing, tearing at the corners of my mind, scratching at the corners of sanity to find it.
Elisabeth!
Elisabeth!
I wake up.
THE END OF THE WORLD
“elisabeth!”
I struggled to open my eyes, feeling as though they were each weighted down and sealed shut with iron. I was overwhelmed by the strong smell of ammonia, my lungs involuntarily seizing as I try to draw in large breaths of stale, flat air. Nausea roiled my stomach, and I rolled over, retching out my guts.
“Ugh!” Someone made a disgusted noise beside me, but nothing but bile burned my throat.
“She’s awake,” said another voice. Female. Familiar. “Put that away, the smell is quite putting me off my supper.”
Slowly, as the waves of nausea subsided, my senses began to return. I was lying on something soft and plush, a luxurious velvet rubbing against my cheek. Whatever I was lying on was moving, rocking me back and forth, back and forth, like a boat on the sea. A rattling noise filled my head, clop-clop-scritch, clop-clop-scritch. My fingers were curled around something small, hard, and round. I cracked open my eyes, my vision blurry and hazy, hand unfurling to reveal something glinting silver in my palm. Two chips of blue and green winked at me.
A ring.
His ring.
It was then I recognized the rattling noise as the clop-clop-scritch of horseshoes on gravel, the swaying beneath me as the bouncing of a carriage. I quickly closed my hand over the Goblin King’s promise as I sat up with a start, wincing as a sharp pain lanced through my skull.
“Liesl?” It was my brother’s voice, unstrung and ragged with worry.
“Sepp?” I croaked. He did not answer, but I felt his hand wrap around my closed fist, clammy despite the cold. “Where—what—”
“How are you feeling, my dear?” asked a kindly voice. With a herculean effort, I looked up to see the plump form of Count Procházka sitting before me, his skull’s-head mask still perched atop his head.
My throat was on fire, my mouth stuffed with cobwebs and cotton wool. “Like I’ve just been drugged,” I rasped.
“We did apologize,” said another. The Countess, her white dress gleaming in the darkness, her face in shadow. Only her vivid green eyes were visible, catching the dim light filtered through the curtains like a mirror. “The methods were uncouth, but we didn’t have time to explain.”
“Then explain now,” Josef said tersely. “Explain where you’re taking us and what you’ve done with Fran?ois. And K?the.”
Alarm rang in my chest, waves of fear resonating in my bones like a bell. It cleared away the remnants of fog from my mind and I leaned forward, yanking at the draperies that concealed us from the world outside. Moonlight poured into the carriage along with the cold, illuminating unfamiliar farms and fields wreathed in mist. We were hours—miles—from the city, judging by the empty, desolate, sparsely populated landscape rushing past.
“Do close those curtains, child,” the Countess said. “You’ll catch your death of a chill.”
“What have you done with my sister?” I demanded. “Our friend?” I thought of the stories circulating around the Procházkas, the mysterious disappearance of the young woman in their care, the suspicious death of a young man of their acquaintance.
“They’re fine,” the Count said. “I promise you they are alive and well. They are at Procházka House at the moment. Our friends and associates shall care for them.”
“Have you drugged them too?” I asked sharply.
“They shall come to no harm,” he repeated.
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
“You are forgiven.”
I turned my head to face the Countess, startled by the sight of her distinctive eyes in an unfamiliar face. Then I realized that she had removed her Frau Perchta mask, at last revealing her countenance entire. The Countess was not a young woman, perhaps ten or so years older than Mother. Her hair was dark and liberally streaked with gray, but her complexion was bright and clear, the bones of her face strong, giving her an ageless quality. She was not beautiful, exactly, but her features held the same old-fashioned elegance of many of those in the rural villages where I had grown up. It was not a delicate, refined face; it was the solid, high-cheeked, heavy-jawed face of a dairy wife or farm Frau.
“Your sister and your friend shall come to no harm,” the Countess said. “But the same cannot be said for you or your brother.”
Josef’s grip tightened, and the Goblin King’s ring bit into my palm. “Is that a threat?” I asked.
“No, Elisabeth,” she said. “Not a threat, but a warning. We are en route to our summer estate in Bohemia at the moment, a stronghold of our family. There are forces in the world that wish you harm, and it is our duty to protect you.”
“Protect us?” I was incredulous. “Why?”
“A covenant has been broken,” the Countess said, her face grim. “The old laws have been cheated of a proper sacrifice, and they have let the unholy host loose upon the world.”
Scraps of spectral flesh hanging on skeletal frames, eyes white with death, silver blood on my hands and a voice urging, Go. Run. Get away from here, lest the Hunt claim you.
“And you believe we are in danger?” I asked.