He frowned. “Beg pardon?”
I set down the napkin and looked the Count square in the face. It was the first time we had looked directly at each other since Josef and I had come to Snovin, and I saw in the depths of those twinkling eyes a measure of fear and trepidation. He had the startled, panicked look of a rabbit just moments before the hawk. But who was the hawk? Me, or his wife?
“Your Illustriousness,” I said softly. “Tell me what is going on. With me. With the Hunt. With my brother and sister.”
He swallowed. Those rabbit eyes darted back and forth, searching for a way out, an escape. I thought of the chuckling stranger I had met in the labyrinth of his house in Vienna, the plump-cheeked man in a death’s-head mask. Even then I hadn’t been afraid of him; he was too cheerful, too good-humored, too frivolous to be much of a threat. He was a summer storm, all bluster and wind, but his wife was the lightning strike, beautiful but deadly. It was she I feared.
“I . . . can’t,” he said at last.
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
The Count shook his head. “Both.”
“Why?”
His gaze flicked to the hallway, toward the rooms upstairs. It appeared the Countess was the hawk after all. “Because,” he whispered, “it is not my place.”
Irritation rose like a gorge in my throat. “Snovin is yours. Lorelei Lake is yours. This uncanny legacy is as much yours as it is your wife’s. Be brave and claim what is yours.”
He shook his head again. “You don’t understand,” he said in a strangled voice. “I dare not cross her.”
I thought of the sweet gestures between the Procházkas, the affectionate teasing and comfortable ease with which they carried around the other. The pride with which the Count beheld his wife, the girlish blushes she suffered prettily beneath his charm. His fear seemed odd and misplaced.
Then I remembered his reluctance to speak of the shadow paths in mirrors. How he had gifted me with his compass against the Countess’s wishes. I suddenly realized that he had not only given me his only talisman of safety from the Wild Hunt, but a measure of independence from his wife. With the compass, I need not worry about the unholy host without the Countess’s protection.
There is an ancient protection in my bloodline because of what my foremother did when she walked away.
“Your Illustriousness,” I said slowly. “Just what did the first Goblin Queen do to ensure her escape from the old laws?”
Nothing is free and clear. Not with the old laws.
“It is not my story to tell,” the Count whispered.
“Then why won’t your wife tell me?”
It was a long time before he replied. “Haven’t you heard?” he said with a bitter laugh. “That the tales from House Procházka are more incendiary than most?”
*
The Count refused to tell me more.
As frustrated as I was with his inability to divulge anything, I was infinitely more angry at myself. I felt like a dupe, the butt of a jest, hoodwinked by this coward of a man and his fraud of a wife. I threw down the remnants of my breakfast, not caring that it was rude or thoughtless, and stormed out of the morning room.
For a moment, I contemplated returning to Lorelei Lake, to dive into those blue-green waters and swim to my sister on the other side of that mirrored world. If my letters did not reach her, then let my body do so. Let me travel the shadow paths and escape this prison of good intentions and unholy expectations. So what if I were the last Goblin Queen? What if my decision to leave the Underground had all been for naught? I was right back where I was before I became Der Erlk?nig’s bride: trapped, stifled, smothered.
But without thinking, I became lost in the bowels of Snovin Hall instead. I had meant to return to my quarters, to wait for Josef, to plot our way out of his accursed valley together somehow, and had made a wrong turn somewhere in the house. I found myself in a room I had never seen before with a large grandfather clock in the corner and a suit of armor on the far side.
The clock chimed the hour.
Gong, gong, gong, gong. I counted the bell strikes, one, two, three, four, but they did not match the hands on its face. Indeed, instead of numbers, symbols were painted around the edge of the clock—a sword, a shield, a castle, a melusine, a dolphin, a wolf, and on and on, an unusual zodiac of eccentric objects. There was something off about the arrangement of figures around the face, and it wasn’t until I counted them that I realized there were thirteen instead of the customary twelve.
All the hairs rose on the back of my neck.
After the gonging echoes faded away, there was an odd, erratic clicking sound. No second hand ticked away the moments, but moreover, the noise was coming from another part of the room.
I turned around.
Behind me, the suit of armor was lifting its arm.
Pulse pounding, I watched as the artifact moved of its own accord, animated by nothing but its own inanimate intelligence. Goblin-made, I realized, imbued with the magic of the Underground. Its fingers curled, all save one, which remained pointing in a direction down the corridor.
I followed where it led, down to a set of doors I had never seen. They were tall, reaching from floor to ceiling, and ornately carved with grotesques—leering satyrs, screaming nymphs, and snarling beasts. The doors were gilded once, but the gold had flaked and worn off with age, leaving nothing but rusted iron beneath. I glanced over my shoulder at the suit of armor still pointing its arm. It nodded, once, twice, the squeal of ancient metal grinding against itself grating on the ears.
I pushed open the doors.
Searing white brightness burned my eyes, and I threw up my hands against the light. When the world returned after temporary blindness, I saw that I was standing in a ballroom.
Surrounded by mirrors.
They caught the light of the morning sun, reflecting and refracting the rays to an almost uncomfortable intensity. There were no shadows anywhere in this prism room, for even the cracked and broken floors were polished to a high shine. The forest had begun creeping in on this space years ago, and now it was as much a part of the wild outside as it was the house. Roots burst through the tiles beneath my feet, climbing up the shattered walls, and down the wooden door frames on either side—one leading back into darkness, the other into the light.
The doors to darkness slammed shut.