Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(79)

“Ludvik was the good twin,” the Count said suddenly. I was surprised by this sudden turn in conversation. “The good twin, and pure. There were those who called him elf-touched, and those meaner still who called him simple. Thickheaded. Mad.”

I did not like where the story was headed, but my host continued without a second glance in my direction, eyes fixed straight ahead, staring at something not before him, but within him.

“There were rather more of us in the old days,” he said. “Der Erlk?nig’s own, that is. But science and reason have thinned our ranks, and now only the mad, the fearful, and the faithful remain. Even my own family, despite their sacred charge to safeguard the barriers between worlds, had let Snovin fall to ruin and decay. There was no one else, you see. No one else to pay the price.”

“What price?”

He gave me a hard look despite the laudanum coursing through his veins. Despite the opium dreams and the poppy milk, the Count was still present, still clearheaded, still aware. Too aware. I was beginning to understand why it was he partook of the drug. The weight of belief was too much to bear alone.

“Innocent blood.”

I recoiled. “What?”

A slow, syrupy smile began to spread across the Count’s face like blood through water. “Elena told you of ancient protections in her bloodline. Blood is part of it, yes. But not hers. The Wild Hunt and the old laws still find her an aberration, a mistake. The first Goblin Queen cheated them not only of a proper sacrifice, but Der Erlk?nig as well. As punishment, they would hound her and her kin to the ends of time, lest she pay in blood.”

Realization was dawning within me, an inevitable, inexorable revelation I did not want to face. Not yet. Not yet.

“Whose blood?” I whispered.

The Count pulled the philter of laudanum from his pocket, although it was empty. He gazed longingly at it, searching for the oblivion that had not yet come. “It was easier then,” he murmured. “Easier when there were still those who left out gifts of bread and milk for the goblins and fairy kind. Easier when superstition ruled and science did not. The Faithful were easy prey.”

With growing horror, I thought of K?the’s warning words in the mirror. Blood of the Faithful, unwillingly given, to seal the barrier between worlds.

I thought of the poppy field growing outside on the grounds of Snovin Hall. The souls of those stolen by the Hunt, my sister had said. The souls of the Faithful.

The souls of the sacrificed.

“But as time went on, the Faithful became wise to our ways,” the Count went on. “And they went underground. Not,” he said with a chuckle, “to the realm of the Goblin King, but to ground. Into foxholes, through the shadow paths, and into darkness. And so,” he said, his voice thin, “we turned to our own.”

My blood ran cold. “Ludvik?”

His dilated eyes met mine. “He was Der Erlk?nig’s own, after all.”

I gasped, my hands flying up to cover my mouth. Do you remember the stories of the young girl they took under their wing?

“And . . . Adelaide?” I swallowed hard. “The girl who died . . . was she truly your daughter?”

The Count turned the empty vial over and over in his hand. He could not answer, and that was answer enough.

“How did she die?” I asked.

“She drowned,” the Count whispered. “In Lorelei Lake. They always return, you know. The changelings.”

I was startled. “Changelings?”

He nodded his head. “She was such a beautiful child,” he crooned to himself. “Such a beautiful baby. Here, and gone. A mayfly. We tried to keep her safe, Elena and I. We tried to keep her whole. But in the end, she wanted to return home.”

Josef.

“I must go,” I said, rising to my feet in a panic. “I must find my brother. I must save Josef.”

“There is nothing you can do for him,” the Count said sadly to my fleeing back. “He is for Der Erlk?nig now.”





BRAVE MAIDEN’S END

i knew where Josef had gone. He, like me, was ever drawn to the strange, the queer, and the wild. Lorelei Lake was a threshold, a portal, one of the sacred spaces where the Underground and the world above existed together. It was where I would have gone. It was where I had gone, after the Countess’s startling revelation about her family history.

I ran back to my quarters to retrieve the Count’s compass, which I had never returned. He had claimed it granted me a measure of protection against the Wild Hunt, but I saw now that the greatest danger came not from the unholy host, but my so-called host and hostess. My benefactors, my captors. The Hunt had ever and always been the least of my worries; it had been a symptom, not the disease. I was the disease. I had broken the balance, I had corrupted the Goblin King, I had betrayed my brother, I had set the old laws loose upon the world.

And now it was up to me to make things right.

Back in my rooms, the compass was nowhere in sight. I could have sworn I had left it on the dressing table, but when I returned, it was gone. I upended every drawer and cupboard, combed through every jewelry box and vanity, but the trinket remained missing.

“Looking for this?”

I whirled around to see the Countess standing behind me with her husband’s compass in hand. I went still. She stood there with her green cat’s eyes glowing in a small smile, sharp and piercing. She had managed to sneak up behind me on silent footfalls despite her club foot, or—I thought with a chill—she had lain in wait, hidden somewhere in my rooms until I returned.