“Is this it, then?” I asked. “Have I won?”
He was quiet, quiet so long I feared he would never speak again. “Yes,” he said. There was more than fatigue in his voice; there was defeat. “You win, Elisabeth.”
Somehow the declaration did not bring the sense of victory or triumph I expected. My body was bruised and bloodied, and I was tired, so tired. “Oh,” was all I said.
“Oh?” Though I couldn’t see his face clearly in the shadows, I knew his eyebrow was raised. “You who faced me in all my power, you who rent the fabric of my world asunder, you who broke the old laws—all you can say is oh?”
Of all things, this brought a smile to my face. “May I go, then?”
“You don’t need my permission, Elisabeth.” His voice was soft. “You’ve never needed my permission for anything.”
I turned my head away. “How could I possibly trust that, after everything you’ve done to me?”
There was a long silence, before a small, jagged voice returned to me. “I’ve done terrible things, yes,” he said. “And you’ve borne the brunt of it. Yes, you were right not to trust me.” The space between us, empty of words, was nevertheless filled with past regrets and painful memories. “I was your friend, once,” he said. “I had your trust, once. But I’ve squandered that horribly, haven’t I?”
“Yes.” I saw no reason to lie. But even as I told him the truth, a part of my heart protested the pain, both his and mine. I slumped over, my head against my sister’s shoulder. Our bodies rose and fell together.
“There.” The Goblin King pointed. “That is your avenue of escape.”
Moonlight streamed in from an opening above our heads, moonlight and starlight and the cold winter air.
“You are so very near to the end, you need only take the merest step to find your freedom.”
The merest step. Twenty feet above our heads, a way out into the world above. No great distance after what I had been through. But I was spent, wrung of every last drop of determination and resolve.
“Well,” said the Goblin King, a hint of impatience in his voice. “What are you waiting for? Leave me here, and go. Go back to your family, your mother and father and inimitable grandmother. Go back with your sister, go back to your brother, go back to that insufferable, stolid lover of yours and be happy.”
Mother. Papa. Constanze. Hans. Somehow, sitting here with the Goblin King was preferable to facing the world above. After all, what world would I be returning to? I thought of that false reality that had so nearly seduced me, a world where I was not Liesl the innkeeper’s drudge, Liesl the discarded sister, Liesl the lesser. That was not the world waiting for me.
“Elisabeth,” the Goblin King said. “You must leave now. The way is open as long as the moon is risen. You don’t have much time.”
“If you are so anxious for me to be gone, mein Herr,” I said, “then conjure me a ladder of vines, or a stairwell of tree roots. I am not so tall as to reach the end myself.”
“You broke me, my dear. I can scarcely conjure my name, let alone a ladder.”
“Well, you did tell me the game was unwinnable. I should have taken you at your word.”
Even his laugh was tired. “Ah, the winner’s curse,” he said. “It cost you more to win than to lose.” Then he sobered. “It cost us both.”
“What will it cost you?” I did not have the strength—or the heart—to mock him now, not when we were both broken. “What will it cost you but a bride?”
“Oh, Elisabeth. It will cost us both everything.”
I waited. I laid my head against K?the’s soft flesh, listening to the slow thump of her beating heart.
“As the old year dies, so too does the world. Without sacrifice, nothing good can grow. Without death, there can be no rebirth. A life for life, that is the cost.”
“You have heard that it hath been said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” I murmured.
“Aye,” he said. “The old laws and God’s laws are not so different.”
“You could,” I began, but the words stuck in my throat. “You could find another bride, couldn’t you?”
“Yes,” the Goblin King said. He sounded almost hurt. “I suppose I could.”
“You suppose?”
It was a long time before he answered. “Would you like another story, my dear? It isn’t as pretty as my last, I’m afraid.”
“Before moonset?” I glanced through the threshold to the world above.
He laughed. “We have time enough for this.”
I nodded.
“Once upon a time, a savage, violent time, humans, goblins, kobolds, H?dekin, and Lorelei lived side by side in the world above, feeding, fighting, preying, slaying. It was, as I had said, a dark time, and Man turned to dark practices to keep the blood tides at bay. Sacrifices, you see. Man turned against brother, fathers against daughters, sons against mothers, all to appease the goblins. To stop the needless deaths, one man—one stupid, foolish man—made a bargain with the old laws of the land, offering himself as a sacrifice.”