Sunrise in the Northern Kingdoms has a harsh, ethereal beauty to it. It contains the magic that only the Underground can weave, but the sun on the everlasting snow stung the eyes and made such spectacles hard to watch. But Jareth watched it, sitting across from Anlach in his office, sipping brandy and waiting for his brother to speak, at the same time bracing himself for whatever dramatics were to come.

Anlach's office was pristine and perfect, a drastic contrast to Jareth's own. The order of the place was most likely due to his competent servants rather than the lord himself, as Anlach was usually never around, something that his family frowned upon. But Anlach had acquired his own rebellious streak, longer and wider and nastier than even Jareth's, and could rarely be subdued by a slap on the wrist.

Jareth had been restlessly pacing the towers of his castle after returning to the Underground when he had received Anlach's invitation to his home just before dawn. Though he was tired, he was pleased with the distraction, and had hastened to the north as quickly as he could. He found himself confused by the recent events, and anything to take his mind off of whatever mess he was in now was certainly welcome, even if it meant he had to console and oversee his older brother.

As Anlach pretended to read a treaty (that already had his signature on it), Jareth pondered about the past. Anlach used to be his guardian and his mentor. He wondered when all of that had turned around, when the older brother had to be taught by the younger.

"Jareth, what are you doing?"

A young boy was crouched in the uppermost branches of an oak tree, leggings scraped and boots scuffed, his shoulder-length mass of blond hair looking more like a bush with all the leaves and twigs it had collected. Below him stood a pale figure dressed in white, his long, platinum hair tied behind him in a thick braid that reached down to his lower back. The boy in the tree couldn't have been older than eight or nine years by human standards, while this other person standing on the ground looked to be in his late teens.

"I thought if I wen' up inna tree, it would help me change into a bird." His voice had a youthful, country slur to it, something that his very refined parents had been trying to break him of for the past few years.

The pale boy sighed. "Jar, mum and da would have a fit if they saw you climbing in your clothes."

Jareth huffed indignantly. "Mum and da throw a fit if I do anything, Anlach."

Anlach raised an eyebrow. "You don't do much to endear yourself to them."

"I dunno what that means," was his reply, along with a stuck-out tongue.

"Come down, and I'll tell you."

"No."

"Why ever not? You won't be able to successfully change shape until you get older. Sitting here is pointless."

"I can't…I can't get back down. I been sittin' here for hours now."

Anlach pursed his lips in a haughty manner. "What you meant was "I've been sitting". Grammar."

Jareth rolled his eyes. "Whatever."

Anlach strolled languidly around the base of the tree. He supposed he could climb up and drag him back down, but he wasn't really feeling like pulling branches out of his hair for the next week. "If you got up there, then you can come back down."

Jareth folded his arms, petulant child that he was. "I tried."

Anlach stepped back and craned his head to stare through the branches where his little brother was perched, glowering down at him. "Try harder, then."

The boy dropped his defense and wailed. "I can't!" His pale odd eyes were wide as he clung to the tree trunk. "I'm frightened I'll slip."

His older brother sighed. "Jump then."

"Huh?"

He spread out his arms. "I'll catch you."

Anlach had never lied to him before. He had never misled him or went behind his back or snitched on him to their parents whenever he did something bad, so Jareth had no reason to think that he would come to harm. And so he jumped.

Both boys toppled to the ground, Anlach's arms wrapped firmly around his brother's smaller frame. When they were at rest in the grass, Anlach pushed Jareth off of him, panting frantically as he straightened up to tower over him. "What the hell was that?"

Jareth blinked up at him owlishly. "You tol' me to jump. So I did."

Anlach made a show of straightening out his clothes so Jareth wouldn't see his shaking hands. "I wasn't exactly serious when I said that. You going to be the death of me, kid."

Jareth wriggled up to his feet, not bothering to brush himself off like his more pristine brother, instead more content to let himself remain dirty. "Sorry?"

The white-haired boy sighed and stretched out his hand. "Never you mind. Now come on, I'll take you to get cleaned up. It wouldn't do for you to be caught out here looking like this."

His brother grinned and threaded his hand with Anlach's without a moment's hesitation, and the older boy led him off the grounds and into the castle.

Anlach sat at a table in a bar, the hood of his cloak pulled up over his eyes, his hands clasped in front of him. He believed he was far enough from the kingdom to avoid being recognized, but he wasn't taking any chances; if he was seen here, word would go back to his parents faster than a wildfire, and he would probably spend the next month being strung up from the ceiling by his ankles for doing something so mundane as setting foot in a common bar.

Another hooded figure plopped down across him, the mismatched eyes glowing out of the shadows of his hood.

"Thanks for coming, Jar."

"Of course," his brother responded smoothly, waving away the waitress who had tentatively begun to creep forward for their orders. She looked slightly annoyed (it was, after all, bad manners to enter a place like this without eating or drinking anything), but she backed off with a respectful dip of her head. "So why all the sneaking about?"

Anlach smirked. What Jareth really meant was 'why the hell are you making me duck around in these shadowy places?'. "I think I'm in 'love'."

The figure across from him failed to catch the sarcastic lilt to his voice and straightened immediately and leaned forward. "With whom?"

"The daughter of the Woodland King, Insidia."

Jareth flinched back, surprised. "That traitor?"

"Shh," Anlach responded sharply, glancing around them cautiously. "Do try to keep your voice down."

But Jareth would not be silent, not over a matter such as this. What the hell could his brother be thinking, pulling some trick like this? It was downright insane, and he wouldn't let him do this without making some sort of protest. "Anlach, think for a moment. Insidia is the daughter of a King who has, on numerous occasions, attempted to orchestrate uprisings against the North. Such an alliance would be disastrous."

He was leveled with a cool glare. "I have my own motives for selecting her, motives that I did not see fit to include you in since I knew that you would react with your typical brash statements."

The other man growled. "My brash statements have never crippled the Kingdom before. But should you chase after this woman, I fear for the safety of the people."

Anlach had no comment, and a tense silence settled over the pair, permeated only by the quiet murmurings of the other people in the bar. Jareth sighed, willing to catalogue this information in his mind for later use if that meant he could wring more answers from his slippery brother now.

"When did this happen?"

His older brother rubbed his eyes, suddenly looking very weary. "Jareth…You wouldn't know, because Uncle has been taking you to his kingdom to introduce you into their society-"

"Society," Jareth cut off with an uncharacteristic snarl in his voice. "I hardly believe that those foul creatures conform to any society."

Anlach cut him off with a sharp gaze, and Jareth automatically fell silent. It was a look he was accustomed to from his youth, and though he hadn't been on the receiving end of it in the past few years, it was still enough to render him speechless. "Goblins may be despicable, unsightly creatures, Jareth, but if anything Uncle says is true, they are loyal and devoted to their King. Anyways, as I was saying, Mother and Father are desperate for me to find a wife."

Jareth arched an eyebrow. "So soon?"

"They are losing favor with the court and with their people for refusing to act on the disturbances to the south. They are afraid that our family will be overthrown."

"And so they should be," Jareth interrupted dryly. "If I were not their son, I would be joining those screaming crowds as well."

Anlach sighed. "Do not be so judgmental, brother. To openly declare war on the Dark Sidhe, even if they are deserving of it, would devastate the Kingdom. We haven't the proper army now to fight them. Now, stop interrupting."

"Mmm."

"They want me to take control as quickly as possible; I am more popular with the court than they are at the moment, and the news of a new Lord of the North will temporarily draw the court's attention from the battles in the south." He began to curl a lock of his pristine hair around a long finger. "In order for me to ascend, I need a wife. I would prefer it to be someone beautiful."

Jareth scoffed. "So shallow, brother."

"And what would you have me do? Marry someone I loved?" His brother sneered sarcastically. "Pull your big head out of those clouds you're so fond of living in, Jareth. We're politicians and aristocrats. There is no woman capable of loving people like us."

"I never said there was," Jareth snapped back, struggling to keep his voice down, "but there's a difference in marrying for beauty and marrying for benefits. There is no potential alliance between the North and the Woodlands."

But Anlach was shaking his head. "I'm not going to bow to anyone's decree on this. If they are forcing me to wed, then so be it, but I will not allow them to hold my hand and pick out a suitable companion for me."

"And Insidia qualifies as a suitable companion?"

"Hardly. But as you pointed out before, she comes from a very dangerous family. Our union would…keep her under my hand, so to speak."

Jareth's face lost some of its disdain, which was replaced by a glimmer of understanding. "You want to keep an eye on her."

His companion bobbed his head affirmatively. "Having her at my side would make for a most unpleasant personal life, but as far as appearances go, we would make an attractive couple, and the court, of course, would lap it all up." He began imitating their speech: "How noble of you to move past such trivial differences, Lord Anlach, you are far more mature than we previously believed you to be."

Jareth snorted. "How willing do you think her father would be?"

"More than enough. To have an insider in the North, let alone someone who is wedded to the Lord, would probably fulfill all of his greatest fantasies."

"Do you think you can handle such a relationship?" Now that his annoyance was ebbing away, Jareth was beginning to feel a bit of fear for the gamble that Anlach was taking. "It will not be easy by any means."

Anlach laughed loudly, making some of the other customers look about in mild alarm. "We are the children of the most devious, plotting pair in the entire Underground, brother. Nothing is ever easy, but that is what makes us stronger in the end."

And now here they were, sitting opposite of each other, mirroring the bar situation that had happened over a century ago. Anlach was still fiddling absentminded with his trivial parchment, and Jareth was suddenly seized with the urge to rip it out of his hands and force him speak. But that would be ridiculously rude, so instead he resigned himself to make the opening statement, seeing as how his brother didn't seem to be doing so any time soon.

"So what summons me here on this fine morning?" He questioned smoothly, setting his empty glass on the surface of the polished desk.

His voice combined with the chink of glass on wood made Anlach look up. He set the treaty aside, playing with his long fingers instead. Jareth found himself beginning to get annoyed with his beating around the bush and gave him and irritated glance.

Anlach responded with an apologetic smile that seemed out of place on his weary face. Upon a swift, closer inspection, Jareth observed that his skin looked a bit paler than usual and there were dim shadows under his eyes; Anlach had always had very fair skin, and even one restless, stressful night would be enough to make him take on an ill appearance. His eyes shrank into cat-like slits.

"Did you sleep with that mortal woman?"

At the mention of Emmaline, Anlach shifted in his chair. Just barely, but Jareth's owl-eyes caught the movement. The Goblin King pursed his lips disdainfully.

"Yes."

It was amusing, really, how his voice still had that aristocratic air to it, even though its owner looked like he had just crawled through his own personal hell and back.

Well? Is that it? "And?"

"I didn't want to leave her."

Oh. Well that was certainly a surprising revelation; Anlach was usually gone right after the act, leaving nothing behind except maybe a few snowy white feathers and a wailing bundle of joy (though the latter wouldn't appear until nine months into the future). He was selfish and narcissistic, not compassionate or romantic. He knew how to please women, and that was about as far as his knowledge of them went.

Jareth frowned. "What brought this on?" Though he was genuinely interested, he was also skeptical; though Anlach had never seemed so worked up over a woman before with the exception of…that night…he did have a new love interest every day of the week, fickle as he was. Not to mention that if he carelessly broke the girl's heart, Jareth would have a very pissed Sarah snapping at his heels, which was something that, while not necessary fear-inducing, might prove to be tiresome.

Anlach twisted three stands of his hair into a thin braid, and though he was looking at Jareth, his eyes had a faraway, glassy look to them, and Jareth knew that he wasn't really seeing what was in front of him. "I don't know," he muttered quietly, running one of his fingers through the braid to undo it, only to start twining it back together again once it came unraveled. "She was crying, at that place."

"I know." Jareth waved one lazy hand over his empty glass so it was full again, and took another small taste. The alcohol was strong, and it set his throat on fire, but he liked it. Because if he could deal with the mild discomfort now, he would be left with a pleasant buzz later. Rather like how he felt when…no, no, no mention of that now. "I was there, if you remember."

Anlach was brought back down to earth at Jareth's annoyed tone. "What's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong?" The fire burned its way down to his chest now, but he set down the empty glass with an eerie calm. "You are the esteemed Lord of the North, respected and admired by all who come in contact with you. And yet when I feel that you are in danger, I find that you are simply engaged in a simple barfight in an establishment far beneath our notice." He had been almost frantic, fearing that Anlach had repeated what had happened last time and was dying somewhere of iron poisoning. When he used his crystal to find his brother, he had been relieved to discover that it was not poisoning at all; if that had been the case, his crystal would have been clouded, and would not have yielded Anlach's location. But what he did see intrigued him; his proud, regal brother coming to the defense of a mortal. And he had seen Sarah as well, watching with a curious, fearful gaze. It had seemed to out of the ordinary to pass off as coincidence, and so he had gone Above too.

His older brother sniffed haughtily. "I assure you, there was no danger. The beast was naught but a common troll."

Jareth gave a toss of his head. "That's not what I saw."

"Enlighten me."

"Could you not sense it," the younger of the brothers asked softly, "that underneath that mortal skin was something much darker? His aura was practically spilling out the bar, and when he walked past me, I thought I would be stifled!"

Anlach frowned. "Black auras are the mark of the Dark Sidhe, Jareth. Even the weaker ones have them, it is nothing to be worried by."

Jareth shook his head. "This was definitely something, Anlach. You disappear in the fringes of New York City for three days, and you have the nerve to go back there when someone tried to take your life! This is not something to overlook, brother."

Anlach ignored Jareth's warning and resumed playing with his own hair. "So someone did try to kill me, then? Is that what the girl told you?" He sounded bored and uninterested in his own death, but they way his shoulders stiffened when he spoke betrayed his underlying anxiety.

"Sarah knows nothing about it, but she says that you were given to her by a mysterious boy who apparently had bad relations with snakes."

The hands stilled, and Anlach raised his eyebrows. "A mongoose?"

"I am certain of it."

"Such bad-mannered, foul-tempered rodents, mongooses are," Anlach sighed, dropping his hands to his desk and folding them serenely. His hair straightened back out slowly, as if it had never been touched. "Now, which one of those mammals do we know would see me dead?"

A mirthless chuckle. "Adunyoka, for one."

Anlach smiled. "Ahh, I must say I forgot about him. But I would think that that quarrel is long past, wouldn't you? Father did concede the disputed land to his Clan when he was still the Lord of the North. I thought that would have settled it."

"True, but he and his band of loyalists have never quite seen eye to eye with our family. They probably noticed that our opposition has been swelling recently, and threw their money in with the Dark Sidhe."

The Fae grinned in a nasty way, his cold blue eyes turning flinty. "A mistake if there ever was one."

Jareth cast him a devious look, but did not respond in like fashion. Instead, he switched back over to the topic their conversation had started out on. "So, about this mortal girl…"

Anlack gave him a sly smirk. "Stuck on mortal girls are we? Which one are we talking about?"

The Goblin King wrinkled his nose snobbishly. "Hush. You were looking so atypically surly when I came in earlier, I can only assume it has something to do with your newest bird."

"Hn. You assume correctly." Anlach frowned. "She felt so warm."

"When? After the actual sex, or while you were still-"

"Jareth."

The blond laughed and cocked his head to the side. "She must have really done something to you, brother. You're usually not so prudish about your sexual conquests." It was true; Anlach wasn't ever shy about his sex life, and his irritating conversations often left…interesting images lingering in Jareth's mind that he'd rather not be having about his own brother. "So did she sweep you off your feet or what?"

Anlach's long fingers tapped out a rhythm on the top of his desk. "She's different. She has beauty, but she doesn't slither around like a poisonous serpent."

"I thought you liked the poisonous serpents."

"They're certainly more…forward," Anlach admitted sneakily with a wry smirk. "I always assumed I would never want to be with an innocent little airhead. But it certainly has its quirks."

"I find myself confused. Are you addicted to the girl, or her body?"

"Both, I think. You can't have one without the other, after all," Anlach quipped cheerily, pulling out a stack of papers at random and reading through them quickly.

Jareth blinked. "So what got you so upset over it, then?"

Anlach shrugged briefly, adding his majestic signature to the bottom of a page before licking his thumb and flipping to the next. "I'd prefer not to get too attached. Mum and Da would never approve anyways."

"Yeah, like you've ever let something like our parents get in your way."

"Give me a rest, I'm looking for excuses."

He arched an eyebrow. "You're looking for an excuse to be upset?"

The Northern Lord tossed the completed documents to the other side of his desk and reached for another. Before reading through it, he raised his eyes to Jareth's, and to Jareth's surprise, they were surprisingly deep with thought. "I never pay a visit twice…I think I may miss her."

Ahh, so a new light has touched your life the same way one touched mine. Now you may understand my reluctance to let it go. Had he just thought that? He examined his brother closely - despite his sober words, there was a merry light in his eyes that was typically absent; though Anlach was pleasant and clever, he was never usually truly happy. And he was actually doing work for his kingdom for once…Jareth straightened. Mortals had a philosophy, right? Happiness leads to a better work ethic?

He leaned forward eagerly. "I think you should see her again." So maybe he was using her to make his brother happy. As long as Sarah never found out, it wouldn't be too much of a risk to his life.

Anlach looked surprised, and glanced at the large stack of proposed laws and requests awaiting his attention and approval. "I would have thought that you would certainly object to any sort of other…obligation."

"Look at you. You're doing work. You're getting something accomplished." Jareth flinched at how he sounded – like a parent praising a small child for saying "please" and "thank you". Anlach picked up on his tone and stuck out his tongue childishly.

"And this girl helped with that?"

"Whatever she did has apparently made you happy."

"Ah, so you wish for me to use her to get you out of taking care of my kingdom?"

"In a sense, yes."

His brother snorted in disbelief. "You could at least have the decency to lie."

Jareth smirked. "You use women all the time. I fail to see how this is different."

Anlach flushed in irritation. "I use the meaningless women. This girl is different."

"So she's different? What, has the great Lord been overcome by a simple crush?"

"Me? What of you?" Anlach swung the conversation on its head. "What did you and your little mouse do last night?"

"We talked. Briefly." Jareth bit out, annoyed to have the subject at hand turned against him. He really didn't feel like talking about Sarah at the moment, because he had no idea what to say about it. She was somewhere between friend and foe…that dangerous gray area where dangerous things happened.

The ruler opposite of him grinned like a maniac. "Don't try to sell me that shit. You want me to keep on seeing her friend so you can tag along and accidentally run into her." He began laughing. "Maybe we could go on a "double date"."

Jareth, who despised being laughed at, bristled. "Fine, then. Go back to being a pathetic, miserable fool." He rose quickly from his seat and summoned one of his crystals, fully intending to leave. Anlach covered his mouth to stifle his laughter.

"Come now, brother. Do not be so immature." He waved his hand towards Jareth's vacated chair. "Sit back down."

Jareth stubbornly remained standing.

"Oh, very well then, you spoilt boy. I'll indulge you." Anlach scrawled another one of his loopy signatures on a document and set it aside. "However, I am confused on how to go about using her. I am not made to go Aboveground for extended periods of time like you."

"You never seem to have a problem with it when you go up for those "visits" of yours."

"That's only for a night. I keep most of my activities closer to home than that."

"Unfortunately," Jareth drawled in response, running his fingers through his hair. Hmm…how to deal with this? Frequent visits Aboveground would result in a slow onset of iron poisoning from all the exposure. Jareth himself had built up an immunity to it from doing his duty of collecting children from those who had wished them away, but Anlach's visits were few and far between; there were plenty of beautiful women Underground for him to choose from, after all. Then, an idea came to him, and a slow, languid smile stretched over his face. Oh, Sarah was not going to like this one.

"Then why don't you bring her down here?"

"Hoggle, what can you tell me about the Dark Sidhe?"

"I can tell ya a lot, but what are ya doin' messin' 'round with that sort?"

When Sarah had woken up that morning, she had immediately pulled out her mirror from where she kept it under her bed. Ever since she was fifteen, she had been using it to communicate with her friends back in the Labyrinth, and when she had moved out, she had taken the mirror with her, knowing her friends would take it personally if she broke off contact with them. College had been tricky; many times, she would have to hold her phone up to her ear while she talked to Hoggle and Didymus to pretend she was talking to someone on the other line, as her roommate wasn't very fond of knocking before opening the door. Those four years at the university had been interesting indeed.

When she moved into her apartment, she still had the mirror. Some might have viewed it as childish, to cling on to such old memories like a lifeline, but Sarah couldn't bring herself to leave the mirror behind anywhere or to throw it away. The Labyrinth had changed her, shaped her into a more docile, mature person. Hoggle, Didymus, and Ludo had helped her on that journey, and she was loathe to leave them all behind. She still cared about them. They were her friends, and friends didn't just leave each other behind.

So here she was, sitting cross-legged in her pajamas on a spring morning, chatting nonchalantly with a three foot dwarf on the other side of the mirror. Apparently, Didymus had been called in by Jareth to take care of the castle for the morning, which would explain the little fox's absence. Sarah found that rather amusing; Jareth hadn't seemed overly fond of her friends when she had run through his maze, and the fact that he was employing one of them to oversee the going-ons of the morning struck her as ironic. She also had to wonder where he was going at such an early hour; were children unwittingly still wishing away their little brothers and sisters? Or was he just out for a morning stroll?

Thinking of Jareth made her think about Anlach, which made her worry about Emmaline. Sarah wasn't sure why she trusted Anlach not to hurt her. He was virtually a stranger, but he had that honorable nature about him that made her think that he wouldn't ever do anything questionable or harmful to someone innocent. If Em hadn't called her by…10:00am, then she would drive over to her house to check up on her. She just hoped that she wouldn't catch them in a…compromising position.

"I'm not messing around with them, Hoggle, I just want to know."

The dwarf looking suspicious. "How'dya find out 'bout the Dark Sidhe, anyhow?"

Sarah shifted. "A book."

"Liar."

"The internet?"

"'Wos that?"

"Nevermind." Sarah glanced around furtively, though of course she was alone in her room. Unless you counted Kobold, who was sprawled out lazily on one of her pillows. She spared him a tiny scowl before turning back to the mirror. "Do you know who Anlach is?

To her amazement, Hoggle grinned. "Oh yeah, I know 'im alright. Not very fond 'o me, he isn't."

She gave him a dubious look. "You know him personally?"

Hoggle shrugged. "More 'o less. He don't share much 'o his life's details with me, no, but we've met several times. I like ta annoy 'im. He looks down on all the ugly beasts, ya see."

"Oh, Hoggle, I don't think you're ugly." She was surprised at how true that statement was; over the past ten years, the odd appearances of her friends had ceased to be grotesque, and had become somewhat…normal to her.

At her comment, he looked down and rubbed his head shyly. Sarah couldn't help but grin. For all the cowardly things he had done in the Labyrinth, he held a sort of innocence in his own right. She pressed on. "So you've met with him a lot, then?"

"Yup. Speakin' 'o which, how do you know of 'im?"

"Er, he kinda paid me a surprise visit one night."

Hoggle began to look rather angry. "Paid ya a visit, did he? Did he hurt ya, Sarah?"

The young woman felt her cheeks begin to warm with embarrassment at the dawrf's suggestion. "Oh, no, it wasn't that sort of visit," she amended hastily. "Honestly…it was kind of an accident that we even met each other."

Hoggle immediately relaxed, though still looked a bit puzzled. With a quiet sigh, Sarah decided to just go ahead and tell the entire story. Hoggle listened patiently through all of it until she finally concluded with what Jareth had said to her last night. She skipped the bit when Jareth said her name, not sure if she would be able to keep her voice from trembling. By the time she was done, Hoggle was nodding wisely.

"The whole Labyrinth was inna uproar when Anlach was discovered missin'," He muttered. "I never seen Jareth so upset, not even after ya beat 'is game."

Sarah blinked, feeling surprise shoot through her. "He must care very deeply for his brother, then."

Hoggle nodded again. "The blood in that family runs deep. Jareth would prob'ly cut off 'is own arm if it meant savin' the life 'o his brothers." The slamming of a door on the other side of the mirror made Hoggle turn around. Didymus bounded in, as crazy as usual, his loyal steed trotting in behind him. He turned toward the mirror, delighted to see Sarah there watching him back with a smile on her face.

"My fair maiden!" He shouted, bowing so low his nose practically brushed the floor. "This devoted knight would be glad to speak with you, but I must return to my post at the castle."

"So Jareth hasn't returned yet?" Hoggle asked grumpily, annoyed with the fox's chipper attitude at such an early hour.

"I daresay he has, my brother," Didymus corrected him merrily, Hoggle's sour attitude flying completely over his little head. "But the King looked dreadfully weary, and so I will return to the castle to oversee the throne until he is rested."

Sarah tensed at the knight's words. Jareth, weary? Somehow, those were two words she never thought would fit together in a sentence. She felt a twinge in her stomach, and it took her a moment to identify it as worry. She gave herself a mental shake in disgust, and her thoughts turned to the Goblin King's brother. She glanced at her digital clock. 9:13 AM. She still had another half-hour before she would drive to Em's house to see what was up. Before Didymus could leave, she stopped him.

"Sir Didymus!" The fox paused, halfway out the door, to look back at her with his good eye. "Please send the King my sympathies at his state of unrest…and ask him about that surprise visit."

The knight looked horribly confused, but he nodded his head enthusiastically, and with a final wave of his paw, he was gone. Hoggle turned to Sarah with a confused expression on his face.

"What was that all about?"

When Sarah sprang up the steps to Emmaline's house, it was a little past ten. She eyed the cozy little home with a fraction of jealousy; Em's parents had bought it for her, apparently, after she graduated college. Sarah tried to imagine her parents doing that for her and almost laughed out loud. It wasn't as if they were cruel, they just firmly supported the notion of "tough love".

While Em's home wasn't grand by any means, it had the personal touch to it that Sarah envied. It was a bleach white, accented with pale blue trim, giving the house an airy, cloudy sort of look. There was a potted plant filled with daisies taking up half her front porch, and Sarah paused a moment to admire their beauty, the bright yellow of their petals standing out against the plain white wood of the porch floor. With a smile, the raven-haired woman shook her head, crossing over to her friend's front door.

She had learned quite a lot about the Dark Sidhe from Hoggle before she had left. Of course, she had had to break him off of the topic of Jareth; he had been curious about why Sarah would offer him her sympathy. Sarah had playfully told him to bugger off, and he had pretended to be angry, until a minute later, when she had asked him about the Dark Sidhe again. Hoggle, ever eager to please anyone who would listen with his surprisingly vast knowledge of history, had quickly launched into several descriptions about various different dark creatures.

They were trolls, leprechauns, demons and other creatures of shadow, who had chosen evil over goodness at the beginning of time, and taught their wicked, sinful ways to their children. At least, that was how Hoggle had poetically put it. He had also cautioned her about other Clans of beings that weren't necessarily Dark, but were still considered dangerous. He reeled off about half a dozen, among those the faeries and the goblins. Sarah hadn't believed the latter. She had, after all, seen the goblins in Jareth's city. They were malicious fellows, but not particularly smart of dangerous.

"That's 'cause they're just people, en't they?" Hoggle had reminded her gently. "Them goblins are really just humans who was caught up in the Labyrinth, and it changed them. Trust me, Sarah, real goblins are a force to be reckoned with."

Sarah was curious. "Why does the Labyrinth change them, Hoggle?"

He had shrugged at her. "Unless they're protected by powerful magic, humans don't last long in the Underground. Your kind live like fire – burnin' hot n' violent for a while, but can be snuffed out at any time. Underground, you's immortal, and can't support that kinda life anymore."

"Anlach seems pretty crazy to me."

"He was born into it, o' course he can be wild. Humans is so used to only having so long to live, they're reckless and stupid. The Underground changes 'em to make 'em impervious ta all the dangers here. So that way if they get inna any danger that would kill 'em as humans, they survive 'cause of all the changes the Underground wrought on them.

"So, those changes save their lives?"

"Exactly."

He had also been stuck on two particular individuals. One of them was a woodland princess by the name of Insidia, and Hoggle had spoken of her with a particularly venomous tone. Apparently, she and Anlach had wed about a century before, but had not been married long before things began to go awry.

"I dunno exactly what happened with 'em," Hoggle had admitted. "There's a lotta mystery there, and only the family knows what happened. All I knows is that there was some sorta betrayal, and then that girl wasn't ever seen again. And after all that, that's when Lord Anlach started to get really…off-the-wall."

"He wasn't always like that?" Well, that was surprising.

Hoggle had chuckled. "There was a time when Anlach was the prim n' proper one of the family, an' his only blemishes were his activities with women, which always amused Jareth and Brechin to no end. But after this…he got careless and grew more n' more promiscuous, but at the same time, he was growin' colder an' colder."

Sarah thought about Anlach's bright eyes and carefree grin, and found it hard to believe that underneath all that, he was really an unhappy person, but didn't press the issue, because she wanted to know more.

The other one was a lesser ruler named Adunyoka, who's other form, like the young man in the pet store, was a mongoose. He was a rebellious, bloodthirsty lord of a tiny Kingdom in the northeast, who was constantly at odds with the North. His motives had been pure at first, Hoggle had admitted reluctantly; the Dark Sidhe were a constant threat to his people, and he was infuriated with Anlach's lack of open hostility towards them, and made his displeasure widely known. But when the Northern Lord continued to deny him, his hatred grew until he turned to his enemy to remove him from a position of power.

"But why doesn't Anlach just completely remove him?" Sarah had asked, curious as to how the powerful Fae couldn't just snuff out his life.

"That'd be a very dangerous move on 'is part, Sarah," Hoggle responded gravely. "So far, they haven't been able to prove the slippery rat's at the bottom of all these uprisings that've been staged. Killin' him would jus' bring confusion and anger down on his shoulders." He looked around in an almost conspiratorial manner. "'sides, by this time, Adunyoka's probably in way too deep with the Dark Lords. Killin' him would be an excuse for 'em to attack."

Why were politics so complex?

When Sarah had looked up to see that it was already ten, she had bid Hoggle a hasty farewell and rushed out to her car to drive the short distance to Emmaline's house and see exactly what had gone on the night before (well…maybe she could do without all the details.).

She raised her hand to knock on the door, but it swung open before she could. Sarah braced herself for tears and sniffing, but to her surprised, it was a very cheery girl, still dressed in her pajamas, that opened the door. Emmaline grinned at Sarah from ear to ear before beckoning her inside her home with a wave of her arm. Bewildered, Sarah followed her.

Em flopped down on her couch in the living room, still smiling that particular smile. Sarah, instead of sitting in the small armchair on the other side of the room, chose to sit in front of her friend on the carpet, folding her legs underneath her on the floor.

"So?"

The redhead looked up. "Oh Sarah, last night was amazing."

Sarah felt her face grow hot. "I'm sure it was…"

"He was so kind, he's not like anyone else that I've ever met before at all! Everything about him was so perfect and beautiful, it was like he wasn't even human." Her eyes glassed over in a glazed expression that made Sarah uneasy.

"So you don't mind that he used you and left you?" Sarah growled hotly, wondering what had come over her friend in the span of a single night.

That wiped the dreamy expression off of her face, and for a moment, Emmaline looked a bit downcast. "How did you know?"

"He seemed the type," she retorted coolly. She wondered what kind of bewitchment Anlach held over her head to make Emmaline completely head over heels for him. Though Sarah was more reserved when it came to men, Em was no stranger to one-night stands. She was pretty and clever, despite her airy personality, and was bouncy enough to have flippant wild nights with no strings attached. She was a master at keeping sex and emotions separate, so to see her so…affected was disturbing.

Emmaline sighed. "Willy, I dunno what's come over – oh!" She had leaned sideways to rest her elbow on the table next to the couch, but now she wrenched back like she had been burned. Something had appeared there that Sarah was certain had not been there before. She got up on her knees and shuffled over to look at whatever it was, and Em, who was rubbing her arm, leaned forward curiously.

There was a piece of parchment, rolled into a neat scroll. It wasn't tied, and Sarah picked it up wearily, flipping it around to see how it was held together. Along the seam, she saw there was an elaborate wax seal holding the edges together, and she raised it up to her eyes to examine it while Emmaline reached for the other two objects that were lying on the table.

The wax was the color of a cold winter sky; pale, harsh blue. In the center was the silhouette of some great bird with its wings outstretched. It was holding something in its feet, though the seal was too small for Sarah to make it out clearly. And emblazoned over the entire thing was a shining, ostentatious "A".

"Sarah, look at this!" Em's excited squeal cut across the churning wheels in Sarah's mind as she glowered at what was obviously Anlach's personal seal. She frowned and looked up at Emmaline, who looked both confused and excited. In one hand, she held a large, pure white feather, and in the other was a long pale chain. It looked like a necklace, but half of it was clenched in Em's fist, so she couldn't be sure.

"Let me see that," Sarah demanded, stretching out her hand. Em handed over the chain without much protest, but continued to twirl the feather between her fingers with an awed expression. The minute it touched Sarah's skin, she flinched; it was freezing to the touch, and she could see why it had startled Em when she had accidently leaned on it.

"I think it's made of ice," Emmaline whispered, watched it with wide eyes. As Sarah examined it, she could see the sense in that. Not only was it cold, it was smooth and slippery, and was far too clear to be anything else. The chain was fine and light, and attached to the end of it was a single snowflake. How sentimental.

"Who knows what it is. This," she added, extending the scroll to her friend, "is for you, I think."

Em took it from her gingerly and took a while examining the seal as Sarah had done. Finally, she slid her thumb along the seam and broke it. As the paper unfurled gracefully, revealing a short note inside, Sarah clambered up on the couch beside her friend to read over Em's shoulder.

Emma, (Sarah's eyes narrowed at the gentle nickname)

My sincerest apologies for leaving you so soon, but I'm afraid that business has called me back to my home. However, I'm finding it hard not to think about you, and I wish to extend an open invitation for you to visit me at my home at any time you wish. Should you want to see me, merely express it in words, and I will be there.

The note was left unsigned, but there was no doubt as to who it could be from. Sarah read through it again, feeling herself gag at Anlach's false romanticism. She wondered if Jareth had helped write it. Emmaline, however, lapped it up completely, smiling broadly and flipping the paper over to see if there was anything written on the back. Upon seeing that there was nothing there, she looked confused.

"I don't understand. He said he would be able to hear me if I wanted to see him. How is that possible?"

"It isn't, and even if it was, it would be creepy and stalker-ish," Sarah responded stiffly. She made to snatch the letter from Em's hands before she could say anything stupid, but they held fast. "Em! Let it go!"

She was suddenly fearful. They had broken the seal of a magic document that had most likely been made by two very powerful beings.

"But Sarah! I want to see him!" And those were the magic words.

The parchment grew hot in their hands, and Sarah yelped. But try as she might, she couldn't make her fingers drop it. It was like they had been glued to the paper. She glanced up at Emmaline's startled expression and realized that her friend was in the same boat. There was a powerful tug inside her chest, and then the two of them both vanished from Emmaline's living room, but as quickly as they disappeared, they reappeared somewhere else.

Wherever it was, the floor was hard.

Sarah opened her eyes and exhaled slowly, only to see her breath unfurl before her in the suddenly frigid air. She turned her head to see Emmaline already struggling up to her feet, so Sarah put her hands underneath her to push herself up. The ground gave slightly, and she realized it wasn't ground at all; they were in snow that was about six inches deep.

Lord of the North…

When she finally got to her feet, vertigo making the earth spin around her, an amused voice called out to them.

"So glad you could drop in."

Oh, how funny of you.

Anlach was observing them from the top of a staircase, leaning against a banister with his usual cocky air. Now that he was Underground, his hair was long again, tied back in a waist-length braid, and he was dressed in a similar fashion as Jareth, with the poet's shirt, vest, tight breeches and knee-high boots. The only different was that Anlach obviously preferred a mix of blue and white, while Jareth preferred a more monochromatic colour scheme.

And speaking of Goblin Kings…

He was hovering over his brother's shoulder, looking very much like his brother in the way he dressed and how he thought of himself. He smirked at Sarah briefly before turning away to disappear into the grand castle behind them which, oddly enough, Sarah had just noticed. At her dazed stare, Anlach laughed.

"Other-worldly travel will cloud your heads for a while, but give it a few more moments and everything should clear up right away." He brushed past Sarah, pausing only to touch her shoulder in greeting, to take Emmaline's hand and raise it to his thin lips. The girl smiled, all the while blushing madly. Sarah scoffed and turned away to look up the stairway, which was decorated with icicles that were twisted in various spires and helixes, reflecting the light in a charming yet harsh way. From somewhere to her left, she heard the strange singing of a bird, and she turned to see a vast forest flanking the castle on all sides.

Anlach was escorting a very confused Emmaline slowly up the stairs, his hands on her thin shoulders, wrapped around them in an obvious gesture of possessiveness, though he would, of course, only say that he was trying to keep her warm. Sarah followed after them warily, careful of where she put her feet, for the way the sun shone down on the steps made them appear to be slippery.

Jareth reappeared as soon as she reached level ground, still following the pair at a respectful distance. He carried a thick white cloak with him, which he wordlessly offered to Sarah as she drew up next to him. It was cold, and she was in no real mood for and argument, so she took it from him silently, throwing it over her shoulders. The affect was instantaneous, and she was grateful for its warmth, though still kept a mistrustful eye on the two nobles.

Had she been in a more relaxed state of mind, maybe she would have observed her surroundings with greater care. As it were, she kind of floated along the path in a fog, watching only where she put her feet and trying to ascertain whether or not she and Emmaline were in any immediate danger. So she was a bit surprised when they were suddenly at the doors, which were swung open for them instantly upon a lazy wave from Anlach's hand by the human-like guards standing there. But as Sarah walked by, she noticed that their hands were clawed and their ears were pointed. Not human in the slightest.

"Welcome to the House of the North," Anlach said with flourish, spinning on his heel to face them. Sarah didn't think that Emmaline really appreciated the view; her face was pale and blank, and she hadn't said anything since they had arrived. Sarah felt very sorry for her; at least she had had a book to prepare her for this when she had first come here. Emmaline was armed with nothing, guilty only of falling for the charming smile that happened to belong to a powerful Fae king, while Sarah had, in a sense, had it coming to her.

As Anlach took Emmaline's hands in his own and spoke to her softly, Jareth was suddenly at Sarah's elbow. Though the warmth of the air had increased upon entering the castle, it was still cool, and the Goblin King's warmth seeped through the cloak and into her skin, bringing colour back to her cheeks. She looked up at him as he looked down at her. He offered her a wry grin, the kind of smile you give someone when you feel sorry for them.

"Welcome back."

Wow, that's a lot of line breaks, eh? This one is so long, I didn't really have any idea where to stop it. It's also rather quirky and jumpy towards the end, but I felt like I had to get the plot rolling sooner than later.

Adunyoka comes from Swahili: Adui (enemy) and Nyoka (snake) - essentially, enemy of snakes.

A better description of Anlach's castle/palace is coming soon. It would have been in this chapter, but this one's already too long as it is.

Read and review!
-T.B.U.