Josef grew still. “Try me,” he said quietly, pulling up another chair.
So I did. I told him of Lorelei Lake, of the shadow paths, the covered mirrors. I told him of the year I spent Underground as the Goblin King’s bride, the slow death and agony of falling in love and knowing it would not last. The slipping away of my senses, the diminishment of all that was good and great in the world. I told him of the Wedding Night Sonata, and why I hadn’t been able to finish it, for the selfish act of my decision to walk away had doomed my austere young man to corruption and the world above to the ravages of the Wild Hunt. I told him and I told him and I told him, until my lips were cracked, my throat was parched, and my words had finally run dry.
My brother did not answer immediately. In the silence that followed my tale, he rose to his feet and began pacing the length of the ballroom. Although his expression was calm, there was an agitation and anger to his footsteps.
“Sepp—”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he interrupted.
“I didn’t know how—” I began, but he cut me off with an angry retort.
“Horseshit.” I flinched. I had never heard my brother swear before, and the word sounded even filthier coming from his lips. “You told K?the.”
Not all of it, I wanted to say. Not all of it at all. But I had told her enough, and it was more than what I had told Josef.
“Why?” he demanded. “Why her, of all people?”
“Because she had been there,” I said tartly, unexpectedly stung on K?the’s behalf. “Because she had seen.”
“I’m not talking about the Underground,” he said. “I’m talking about him.”
Him. The Goblin King. I was taken aback, surprised by the vehemence in his tone. The Goblin King was the beginning and the end of my time Underground, yet he was also the least and most magical part of it at once. Compared to the glowing lake, the singing of the Lorelei, the twisting of time and space, the fairy lights, the glittering caverns and halls, our love seemed almost mundane. There had been no grand romantic gestures, no sweeping declarations of feeling, no fighting to be with each other against all odds. We had simply, though not always quietly, broken each other apart and put ourselves back together again. It was not a story in which I thought my brother would be interested.
“What do you mean, Sepp?”
“I mean him,” Josef said again, punctuating the word with an emphatic jab of his bow. “And you.” He pointed the tip of his bow at me, hovering right above my breast like a blade. “You always called me the gardener of your heart,” he said softly. “But you have gone and grown your flowers without me.”
It was then I understood that he had not been hurt by the fact I hadn’t told him about my time Underground; it was that I had not shared with him anything about my feelings as Goblin Queen. We had always bared our souls to each other, our deepest thoughts and darkest emotions, often without speech. My sister had been my confidante through words and actions, but my brother had ever been the keeper of my secrets.
“Oh,” I said. I did not know what else to say. “I’m sorry, Sepperl.”
He shook his head. “Why didn’t you trust me?” he asked, and in his voice, I heard the little boy I had thought I had lost.
I give you back your heart. Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes. “I don’t know.”
But I did know. He was no longer first in my heart. Josef and the Goblin King shared the space where my soul lay within my breast, along with K?the and Fran?ois and Constanze and Mother. My capacity for love had not diminished; indeed, it had only grown with each person I let in, but the formless, undifferentiated love I had felt in childhood only grew more defined with age and time. There were parts of myself I was willing to share with my sister, parts that were given to my brother, and still other parts that had been claimed by an austere young man.
Josef’s stare was hard. Accusatory. “I think you do.”
He always did know me best.
“What is it you want to hear from me, Sepperl?” I asked, suddenly irritated. “I’m sorry? I’ve already apologized to you.”
“But what is it you’re apologizing for?” he shot back. He lowered his arm, his bow hanging limp by his side. “You didn’t tell me for a reason. That’s why you feel so guilty. You’re hiding something from me, Liesl, and I don’t like that. You and I were always open with one another.”
“Were we?” My eyes strayed to his wrists. His arm twitched, as though he were resisting the urge to cover himself. “Tell me, Sepp, have you always been honest with me?”
He stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
I stood up. “Then you had no right to pry either!”
“Fine!” he exploded. “Fine! What do you want to know? That Master Antonius beat me? That he subjected me to every humiliation under the sun and then some? That he twisted my longing for home, for the Goblin Grove, into a shameful, infantile indulgence? I couldn’t talk to anyone, Liesl. Anyone. I had Fran?ois to protect me, but he didn’t understand. Couldn’t. How the farther away from home I went, the less I felt whole. The less I felt real. I was a sham of a boy, the husk of a man, an imposter of a human being. It was only when I played your music that I felt any sort of connection to . . . to life.”
Take us far from the Underground and we wither and fade.
I felt my face drain of blood. And Josef noticed.
“What?” he asked. “What is it, Liesl?”
Would it grant him peace of mind, if he knew the truth of what he was? Or would it merely serve to alienate us even further? Would he hate me for not telling him sooner? If Josef resented me for keeping the Goblin King to myself, how much more would he despite me for not giving him a piece of his own history?
“What is it?” he demanded. “What do you know?”
“It’s because,” I whispered, my voice catching on the edges of my emotions. “It’s because you’re a changeling.”
His lips went white. I waited for my brother to say something, to do something—anything—other than stand there. But he was as still and silent as a statue, almost as though he had been replaced again by another entity. I hated myself for the thought.
“Sepp?” I asked in a small voice. “Talk to me, Sepp.”
“How dare you.” My brother did not sound like himself, and for the first time in my life, I felt as though I did not know him.
“Sepp, I—”
“Don’t.” He threw up his hands, his violin and bow still clenched in his fists. “Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.” I wished the words weren’t so insufficient.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Sepp—”
“Stop calling me that!”
Josef threw aside his instrument, the cherry wood body of his violin clattering across the broken marble floor, the neck snapping off from the rest. I cried out, but the bow followed soon after. “Josef, please—”