“Let us drink.” He offered the goblet to me. “To seal our troth.”
The wine was as dark as blackberries, or sin. I remembered the heady rush of goblin wine, the sweet, full-bodied taste on my tongue. I remembered the loose-limbed, wanton self I had become at the Goblin Ball, and a slow, languorous heat began to warm me from within. I brought the chalice to my lips in a hasty swallow, a few drops falling onto the white silk of my wedding gown. They looked like drops of blood in the snow.
The Goblin King took the goblet back and drank a little himself, his eyes never leaving mine. There were promises of nights to come, and I swore to myself then that I would hold him to every single one.
He set the cup back on the altar, and slowly wiped the wine away from his mouth with the back of his hand. I swallowed hard. Then the Goblin King offered me his arm and we walked out of the chapel, into the Underground, as husband and wife.
WEDDING NIGHT
We emerged directly into the goblin revels.
At the center of the large cavern that had served as the ballroom was an enormous bonfire, around which the twisted shapes of goblins danced. A gigantic boar was speared and spitted over the fire, and the smell of roasted meat was overpowering. There were no lights in this cavern: no torches, no fairy lights, no candles burning away in their unsettling candelabras shaped like human arms. Only the flames of the bonfire, its bloody, inconstant fire growing shadows instead of throwing light.
I shrank away from the scene, but the Goblin King held my hand firmly.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured into my ear. “Remember my troth.”
But I was afraid. I had danced and feasted at the Goblin Ball, but this was something entirely different: wild, untamed, and feral. The Goblin Ball, hosted by the Goblin King, had had a veneer of civilized behavior overlaying its orgiastic abandonment, but there were no such niceties now. This was not hedonistic indulgence; this was savagery. I could smell blood—freshly spilled. It smelled of copper and iron and flesh. Twining, writhing shapes copulated in the corners of my vision, and I thought of the little objet d’art in my barrow room that depicted the nymph and the satyr. Music wailed on pipes and horns and catgut lutes—rude, rustic, without refinement. The goblin wine took the edges off my fear, but the chill of it still ran through my veins.
“Come,” the Goblin King said. “Let your subjects pay tribute to their new queen.”
He led me down the steps into the throng. Bodies and fantastical faces crowded me on all sides, leering and cheering at me, their spindly fingers like brambles in a hedge, catching on the edges of my dress, my veil, my hair. A little hunchback of a hobgoblin skipped up beside us and offered me a flagon of wine.
“Ah, the music maiden,” it said. “She smolders still. Tell me, mistress”—it winked at me—“does His Majesty fear to set you alight?”
I blinked, trying to place where I had seen its face before. The hobgoblin hummed a familiar little tune, and I caught the scent of summer peaches.
The goblin market.
It cackled when it saw recognition bloom across my face, and cackled even harder at the blush on the Goblin King’s cheeks. “Only a breath, Your Majesty. A breath, and she bursts into flame.”
The Goblin King grabbed the flagon from the hobgoblin’s spindly hands. He threw back his head and downed the wine, heedless of whatever spilled from his lips and coursed down his throat like blood. Then he offered me the flagon, and grinned.
I was taken aback by that grin. It was all sharp edges and pointed teeth. His hooded eyes twinkled maliciously, and he was the Lord of Mischief once more. Which was the mask and which was the man? Der Erlk?nig or the austere young man to whom I had said my vows? I stared at him as I took the flagon from his grasp. Neither his expression nor his manner changed or softened, but something flashed across his eyes when our fingers brushed.
The goblins hooted and called as I threw back my head and gulped down the wine. It burned down my mouth and throat, staining my dress. The room wheeled and spun, and for a moment I thought I might be sick.
Eyes watched me as I struggled with the effects of the wine, judging my reaction. I took a deep breath, threw back my shoulders, and smiled. If it could be called a smile. It was more like a challenge met, a grimace, the way a dog bares its teeth in its last extremity. I might have even snarled.
The goblins whooped their approval, hissing appreciatively. They rubbed their long, spindly fingers together to make a shushing sound, the sound of the wind in the trees. They did not clap the way humans did, and I suppressed a shudder of revulsion. The Goblin King’s hooded gaze rested on my wine-stained and dripping lips, and I stared back, bold for the first time in my life. He inclined his head.