Brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, gray eyes, but none were the mismatched wolf’s eyes of my Goblin King. I walked up and down the gallery, studying each face, looking for the pair I knew.
At last I came across a portrait at the very end of the corridor, unlit, secluded, and shadowed, as though hiding in shame. It was the most recent in the long line, painted in the style of the old Dutch masters: light and dark in exaggerated contrasts, the details sharp and painstakingly realistic. Its sitter was a young man, dressed in velvet academic robes and a round cap with a tassel. Despite the richness of the material, there was something austere about him, especially as he had one hand clasped around a wooden cross hanging from a cord on his neck. In the other hand, he held a violin upright in his lap, his long, beautiful fingers resting along the neck. I squinted. The scroll of the instrument looked familiar, but its edges faded into shadow, and I could make nothing of it but the vague impression of a woman’s face contorted in agony. Or ecstasy.
I shivered.
I could not bring myself to meet the sitter’s gaze until the very end. I thought I knew what I would find—two differently colored eyes, one green, one gray—but what I saw arrested me.
It was a younger Goblin King in the portrait, his cheeks fuller and not so sharp, his features less defined. A young man my age. A youth. The difference in color in those eyes was in stark relief in the portrait: the left, the bright green of spring grass, and the right, the blue-gray of a twilight sky. Yet I recalled them being the muted hazel-green of dying moss and the icy gray of a winter’s pond. Faded. Old.
Presently the fairy lights tugged at my hair and at my clothing until I moved on. The image of the Goblin King’s younger self stayed with me as I walked away. The expression in his eyes made my breath come short. Unguarded. Vulnerable. Human. I recognized those eyes from my childhood, in the soft-eyed young man I’d stumbled across in the Goblin King’s bedchamber. I saw that expression when my Goblin King looked at me now.
I was all shaken up, my emotions upturned and in disarray. I continued walking down the corridor, suddenly eager to put as much distance between the portrait and me as I could.
It wasn’t until the portrait gallery was far behind me when a disconcerting thought came to me:
When had he become my Goblin King?
*
“Liesl!” K?the enthusiastically greeted me when I appeared in her room. Like mine, her barrow chamber had no door, but one had appeared when I wished it.
Her changed appearance was shocking. My sister had always been full-figured and plump, her cheeks cherubic, her arms full and healthy. Now she was thin, gaunt, and sickly. She wore a dressing gown over her chemise, but it hung off her shoulders, as though the body within it was nothing. K?the was disappearing before my eyes.
“Come sit by the fire and take tea with me,” my sister urged. She seemed at home in the Underground, playing hostess in her suite of packed-dirt rooms.
“K?the,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m fine.” A tea set had already been laid out on the table by the hearth, and she gestured to the chair and bade me sit. Then she poured me a cup of tea and offered me a slice of cake. “How are you, my dear?”
I accepted the slice of cake. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t know at all.”
K?the gave me an indulgent smile, and added another spoonful of sugar to her tea. “Eat,” she said, nodding at the untouched slice of cake on my plate.
I studied my sister. She seemed clear-eyed and conscious; present, in a way she hadn’t been at the Goblin Ball.
“K?the,” I said carefully. “Do you know where we are?”
She laughed and sliced herself another piece of cake. “Of course I do, you ninny. We’re in my quarters, enjoying a spot of tea and some time together. Now tell me,” she said, gesturing to the bare, earthen walls, “what do you think of the wallpaper?”
“The wallpaper?”
“Watered silk imported from Italy, of course,” she said loftily. “Just like we always imagined, Liesl.”
My heart fluttered in my chest. The color was high in my sister’s cheeks, her movements heightened and exaggerated, as though she were playacting the role of a gracious lady. As though she were playing pretend. What if?
“Yes,” I said slowly. “Your quarters are beautiful.” I picked up my teacup and took a sip to hide my frown. “My compliments, my dear.”
K?the’s eyes were alight. “Why, thank you, darling. My husband is a very generous man, as you know.”
My cup rattled in its saucer. “Your husband?”
She pouted. “Don’t you remember? We had the most beautiful wedding in the Munich Frauenkirche, with the archbishop presiding. Josef played your wedding mass to thunderous applause.”
I set down my tea. “My … wedding mass?”
K?the gave me a pitying look. “Oh, Liesl, you must have had a rough night if you can’t remember. The wedding mass you wrote for us. Mother sang the Benedictus so beautifully it moved everyone to tears.”