Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(44)

“Do close those curtains, child,” the Countess said. “You’ll catch your death of a chill.”

“What have you done with my sister?” I demanded. “Our friend?” I thought of the stories circulating around the Procházkas, the mysterious disappearance of the young woman in their care, the suspicious death of a young man of their acquaintance.

“They’re fine,” the Count said. “I promise you they are alive and well. They are at Procházka House at the moment. Our friends and associates shall care for them.”

“Have you drugged them too?” I asked sharply.

“They shall come to no harm,” he repeated.

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

“You are forgiven.”

I turned my head to face the Countess, startled by the sight of her distinctive eyes in an unfamiliar face. Then I realized that she had removed her Frau Perchta mask, at last revealing her countenance entire. The Countess was not a young woman, perhaps ten or so years older than Mother. Her hair was dark and liberally streaked with gray, but her complexion was bright and clear, the bones of her face strong, giving her an ageless quality. She was not beautiful, exactly, but her features held the same old-fashioned elegance of many of those in the rural villages where I had grown up. It was not a delicate, refined face; it was the solid, high-cheeked, heavy-jawed face of a dairy wife or farm Frau.

“Your sister and your friend shall come to no harm,” the Countess said. “But the same cannot be said for you or your brother.”

Josef’s grip tightened, and the Goblin King’s ring bit into my palm. “Is that a threat?” I asked.

“No, Elisabeth,” she said. “Not a threat, but a warning. We are en route to our summer estate in Bohemia at the moment, a stronghold of our family. There are forces in the world that wish you harm, and it is our duty to protect you.”

“Protect us?” I was incredulous. “Why?”

“A covenant has been broken,” the Countess said, her face grim. “The old laws have been cheated of a proper sacrifice, and they have let the unholy host loose upon the world.”

Scraps of spectral flesh hanging on skeletal frames, eyes white with death, silver blood on my hands and a voice urging, Go. Run. Get away from here, lest the Hunt claim you.

“And you believe we are in danger?” I asked.

Her green gaze grazed my skin, stinging like the rays of the sun. “No. I know you are,” she said in a low, hard voice. “Goblin Queen.”

The words thudded in the thick air, heavy and portentous and accusatory. Silence came down like a curtain between us, muffling all thought, all feeling, all sensation. Josef hissed in surprise, drawing away from me as though he had been burned. Betrayed. The Count’s eyes darted between his wife and me, shrinking like a nervous rabbit caught between a hawk and a wolf.

“No,” I whispered. “How did you . . . I’m not . . .”

“Yes,” she hissed. Those green eyes were lit with fervor, crackling like St. Elmo’s fire. “Did you think you could walk away without facing the consequences?”

I shook my head. “He let me go.” My voice was small, remembering the last time I had seen the Goblin King, whole and entire, standing in the Goblin Grove with his hand upraised in farewell. “He let me go.”

The Countess scoffed. “And you believed him?”

I thought of the ring in my hand, but I dared not turn it over to study it, to verify that I had pulled a promise from a dream. “Yes,” I whispered.

“He is not the Lord of Mischief for nothing,” she said.

I thought of mismatched eyes fading to white, the image of a young man turning into a monster, his beautiful violinist’s hands contorting into claws, horns growing from the crown of his head. “He is so much more than that.”

“Liesl,” Josef said. “What is going on? What is happening? Goblin Queen? Unholy host? What does this all mean?”

I said nothing. I did not—could not—face my brother at the moment. I had once tried to tell him of my fantastic past, of my time beneath the earth as Der Erlk?nig’s bride. I had bared my soul in writing, in words if not in notes, but Josef never received them. That letter had never reached him, along with the countless others I had sent, stolen by the woman before me. And now the rapport between my brother and me was broken. Muffled. Stifled. Silenced.

“It means nothing good, lad,” the Count said gently. “It means that we need to get you and your sister somewhere safe as soon as possible, away from the unholy host.”

Josef narrowed his eyes. “The unholy host?”

“They have many names.” The Count was the very picture of a bumbling, absentminded man, the kind people were apt to dismiss due to his amiability. Yet his black-button eyes were sharp, and a canny intelligence gleamed there, nearly lost to the smiling chubby cheeks. “Some know them as the Wild Hunt. Back home in Bohemia, we call it divoky hon. Your dark-skinned friend would know them as le Mesnée d’Hellequin, I should think.”

“Hellequin?” I thought of the figures of the commedia dell’arte, those black-and-white-masked players onstage as Columbine, as Pierrot, as Harlequin. I’d seen those costumes at the Procházkas’ ball. “Like the trickster?”