“No.” I shook my head. “I broke my promise. I gave you my music, but I withheld my trust.”
And it was true. I had given him everything but the one thing he truly needed: not my hand in marriage, not my body in his bed, not even my music. I should have trusted the Goblin King back when I was a little girl playing her music for him in the wood. I should have trusted him with the consequences of my choice to become his bride. I should have trusted him when he tried to give me back to myself.
“Oh, Elisabeth,” the Goblin King said softly. His eyes were bright, vivid, and intense. “Your trust is a beautiful thing. Let me give you mine in return.”
He fell to his knees.
Confused, I tried to bring him back to his feet, but he wrapped his arms about my waist in response.
“Mein Herr, what—”
“Be, thou, with me,” he murmured. “How glad would be my end”—he lifted his eyes to mine—“if it be your dear hands into which I commend my soul.”
Those mismatched eyes were clear as a well, and I could see down to the boy he had been. The boy he might have been, before he had been transformed and consumed by a wolf in the woods. Before he became Der Erlk?nig. My hands and limbs were trembling, and I sat down upon the bench.
“Elisabeth,” he said. “You gave yourself to me, whole and entire. Let me do the same. Let me give myself back to you.”
He lowered his head to place a soft kiss against my knee. And then I began to understand.
“You would … you would have me lead you into the dark? Into wildness?”
“Yes,” he whispered. I felt every vibration of his voice, every movement of his lips against my leg. “Yes.”
I hesitated. “I’m … I don’t know the way.”
I felt the Goblin King smile. “I trust you.”
Trust. Did I have the courage to take it? Could I bear its weight? I was the Goblin Queen, but I was also just a girl. Just Elisabeth.
But was I not also a brave maiden?
I swallowed. “All right,” I said, stroking his hair and pushing it away from his face. “As you wish.”
“As you wish.”
*
The Goblin King bows his head with gratitude, with reverence, with submission. I tangle my fingers in the luxuriant thickness of his thistledown hair, trying to lift his head and meet my eyes.“Look at me,” I whisper.
We hold each other’s gaze for a long moment. The nakedness in his expression turns me tender and nervous at once, the trust in his face mingling with a waiting apprehension. He has surrendered all power, and it is only now I understand that he had surrendered it to me long ago. When I offered him my life for my sister’s. When I offered him my music. When I offered him myself, entire. He has been in my thrall for longer than I can remember, and the realization of it makes me gasp. I could hurt him; I do not know if I could bear to hurt him.
His heart is in my grasp. It always has been.
His heart and trust are in my hands. I know what I want, but what I want brings a flush to my skin. My heart hammers in my breast, my blood sings in my ears, and my breath comes fast and hard. I strive for control, for an implacable countenance.
“You will … you will do everything I ask?” My control over my voice is incomplete. It shakes and trembles and shivers. “Without protest, without question, and … without laughing?”
He nods, his smile gentle. “Yes, my queen.” His eyes are steady on my face. “Your wish is my command.”
A nervous laugh crawls up my throat, but I swallow it, suppress it. The Goblin Queen does not ask for pleasure; she demands it. But I am not just the Goblin Queen. I am also Liesl, Elisabeth, a girl—no, woman—who yearns for nothing more than for the man at her feet to touch her, to take responsibility out of her hands. She does not know what to do with his trust.
Slowly, shyly, I undo the ties of my dressing gown. The Goblin King watches every movement of my hands with intense focus. I cannot control the blush that spreads from my chest through my body, but my hands are steady and sure. His eyes are fixated upon me, and I resist the urge to cover myself.
He waits upon my every word, and a trickle of surety, little by little, begins to fill me like a well.
“Stand,” I say.
He complies.
“Undress.”
The Goblin King lifts his eyebrows in surprise.
“Please.”