Jareth is frantic. He's sent every goblin not performing scheduled duties out to search for Sarah. It's been two hours since she disappeared from his sight and he immediately sent out search parties to scour the kingdom. He has even condemned a few to search the Labyrinth. He told all of them that if they returned without the queen, he would bog them and then kill them. He hasn't seen a goblin face since. Now he paces the throne room and casts his gaze frantically out the window and towards the door, his mind a jumble of panic. She was taken. He should have seen the signs but his magic was always too strong for him to be forcibly transported. By the time he realized what was happening, it was already too late. There are only two possibilities for what or who could have taken her. It could have been another king or queen in one of the other kingdoms, but they wouldn't dare try to forcibly remove a goblin monarch in such a way. To do so, that king or queen would have to bind his or her magic to the goblin queen's, and that is exceedingly dangerous. The goblin magic is too strong to be bound like that without taking over. The only other possibility is that the Labyrinth took her. Jareth has never been transported by it, but he's read of it happening to others.
If this is the case, Sarah is still in the kingdom. This is hardly a comfort considering how volatile the Labyrinth is of late. He's spoken to the Labyrinth before, but if she was unpredictable enough to take his magic and let the maze itself fall into such disrepair, there was no telling if she would be loyal to Sarah. Jareth turns back toward the throne and drops into it, letting his head fall into his hands. If he'd only trained her properly, it would never have been possible for her magic to be manipulated. Now he has no idea where she is or if she's even alive and there is no way to imagine the fault is anyone's but his.
Footsteps reach his ears in the empty room and his head shoots up to see Sarah walking quickly toward him from the doorway to the entrance hall. In his relief at seeing her, Jareth misses the look of rage on her face. His own breaks out in a smile and he pushes himself off the throne to gather her into his arms. Just as she reaches him, Sarah hauls her hand back and slaps him full in the face. Stunned, Jareth falls back from the force of the blow and collapses back into the throne, his hand on his stinging cheek. Sarah follows his fall, leaning into him with both hands on the arms of the throne, towering over his form and baring her teeth in anger.
"You son of a bitch!" she hisses at him. His face twists in offended surprise at her actions and her words. Before he can line his harried thoughts into coherent words, she continues, " The Labyrinth told me how you tricked me into suppressing my magic. How could you do that? No, nevermind. I knew, I knew you didn't do anything without your own agenda. You tricked me with the peach and you tricked me last night. But this isn't some game, Jareth!"
Jareth's lip curls in indignation and his own fury. No one has ever spoken to him with such blatant disrespect. He's always given Sarah latitude, but she has never gone this far and the king in him can't take it. His breathing becomes fast and heavy and he straightens his back, forcing her to lean back slightly to avoid touching him. Her eyes squint in disgust at the proximity and even in his anger, the look cuts him. His face is merely an inch from hers as he growls, "Just what in the hell are you talking about?"
She pushes off the armrests and stands before him with her hands on her hips. She glowers at him for a few seconds before laughing a hard chuckle without humor and shakes her head. "Unbelievable," she says in a soft grumble. Then she bends at the waist, throwing her arm out extravagantly and dipping her head into a deep mocking bow before him. "Congratulations, Jareth," she says before straightening. "You really had me going." Jareth sits frozen on his throne. No, she can't know… Sarah notices the spark of knowledge in his eyes and nods at him. In the same mocking tone she says, "Oh yeah, I know all about it. How you kept me from learning magic and that you fantasize about killing me." She has to swallow before continuing, "I just want to tell you how great you did. You really had me believing I could trust you. Bravo."
Jareth doesn't know what to do. Should he deny it? Own it? Fall to his knees and beg for her mercy? That last thought twists his face again and he knows he can't, not anymore. He propels himself from the chair too fast for her to react and looms over her, careful to keep the tiniest distance, remembering what happened the last time he threatened her. He can still smell himself on her from the night before and the realization somehow drives him further into his anger. Everything was perfect and she is ruining it. He growls, "What did you expect me to do, Sarah? Roll over and let you have everything I have ever worked for, everything I had won? Of course I wanted the magic back; I deserve it. If I bought myself some time to work out how to get it, it was justified. As for killing you, I notice that you're still frustratingly alive, so why don't you do the math?!" he finishes with a shout. She winces but holds her ground against him. "Besides, what kind of king would allow the safety of his subjects to rest indefinitely in the hands of a spoiled little girl who knows nothing about power or how to respect it?"
Sarah looks him levelly in the eye and asks, "Then why didn't you kill me?"
Jareth huffs in frustration and looks down his nose at her as he says quickly, "Because I love you, you little fool."
Sarah blinks. The Labyrinth had told her as much, but no one has ever said those words to her except her parents. But this man knows nothing about true love, the kind Sarah always read about in fairy tales. As quickly as her guard fell, it slams back up. "How dare you?" she hisses. "I wasn't playing a game last night, Jareth. You tricked me and you used me and I never want you to touch me again." She starts to turn from him, but he grabs her arm and yanks her back to him. She whips her arm out of his grasp but faces him again.
He's desperate. He decided last night that she was his, that he would never allow anything to hurt her. He can see the pain under her anger and even through his indignation it's killing him. He's never felt this way before, never been this attuned to another's emotions. Something had cracked in him last night and he can't take this pain and resentment from her. She's always making him the villain when all he wants is to be her hero. Yes, he did consider killing her, but he knew he couldn't live without her. He did try to stunt her magic, but there was no way she could have learned this quickly anyway. He may have taken villainous routes, but his goal had always been to keep her alive, and with him. He would never hurt her because doing so would only cause him anguish. All of this runs through his mind and he curses himself. Why can't I just say it? Instead, he takes a lightning quick step toward her and grasps the back of her neck, slamming his lips down on hers.
Sarah is stunned into immobility and Jareth lets out a breath against her skin. Once she has a moment to realize what's happening, she pushes against his chest with all her might, but only manages an inch of separation between them. "Get the hell off me, Jareth!" she screams. He prepares himself for the burn of her magic, but feels nothing but the slight pressure of her pushing against his chest.
He glares down at her with a cruel smile. "Do you want your first lesson in magic, Sarah?" he laughs. He moves closer until there's a millimeter of space between their lips and whispers, "You have to want it. You don't want me off of you, or I would be." He drives his lips into hers again, just as violently.
She hates him, she wants him, she loves him. Sarah feels like the fool he accused her of being when her arms slide from his chest to wrap around his neck and his snake around her waist to mold her body against his. Her frustration and anger and pain combine and burst out of her and she's kissing him as if she wants him punished. She didn't know kisses could be like this, so full of hate. They challenged each other and were well matched. Hands grope and scratch and cling, tongues stab and teeth bite. Jareth growls low in his throat and it sounds predatory and triumphant, like a wolf over his kill. She answers him with a growl of her own and plunges her hands into the neckline of his shirt. Jareth moves his hands to grip the tops of her thighs and lifts her so that she can wrap her legs around his waist. The momentum of her lower half curling around his drives him backward and his knees buckle against the seat of the throne and they both drop onto the cushion. His mouth breaks from hers to suck at her neck. He bites her where the column of her neck meets her shoulder and she groans, her hands twisting into his hair. Her eyes fly open and she finds herself staring at the back of his throne. Her throne. She looks at the worn material draped from curved ivory as Jareth sucks at her skin and wonders how many goblin kings and queens have sat on this throne, ruled from this spot. She wonders if any of them had ever been betrayed by someone they trusted. Likely, none of them were foolish enough to make love to the biggest threat in their lives. She suddenly feels as if the throne is laughing at her.
Sarah's frantic groping calms. Jareth feels her still and grinds his hips into hers to try to illicit a response. Sarah's face twists in disgust again and she tries to untangle herself from Jareth, but he's unwilling to let her go. His arms become shackles and Sarah says, "Jareth, stop. Let me go!"
He buries his head in her shoulder and says, "No, Sarah. Just let yourself feel. I'd never hurt you."
Those words unlock her fury again. Never hurt her? No, just cripple her. Make it so that she was completely dependent on him. Her hands move to his chest again and she shoves against him. His arms are like steel and she can't move. She feels her emotions bubbling up inside her and before she can become completely conscious of it, her hands pulse and a light bursts out from where her skin meets the cloth of Jareth's shirt. Jareth screams and his arms jerk away from her. Sarah scrambles off of his lap as he brings his hands up to his chest where blood is soaking through the shirt in the shape of two small handprints. Sarah's eyes go wide. She hadn't meant to hurt him so badly; she just wanted him off of her. Jareth stares down at his shirt until the blood ceases its fall over the white material. Then he closes his eyes and leans slowly back into the throne. Sarah stands and watches him, preparing for whatever he might do. She honestly has no idea. How can she be in love with someone who she thinks might kill her or kiss her?
He feels the ivory press into his back and thinks over her words from before. Was he playing a game with her? No, but that's how it must seem. While she has no knowledge of it, he knows exactly how the magic works. He knows that without training it only manifests in the monarch's strongest impulses. Maybe she hadn't meant to slice his chest open, but the thing she wanted more than anything else in that moment was to get him off of her. She wanted him to stop touching her so badly that her magic reacted defensively. He hadn't expected that. It made sense in the oubliette because he was treating her violently, but now he'd been kissing her, trying to show her the things he couldn't say. Every ounce of trust she had in him had been obliterated before he was aware enough of it to mind his actions. If he weren't fae, she would have killed him just now.
He opens his eyes to look at her. She looks much the same as she did when he first saw her in the oubliette, wearing nothing but a shirt with a slight film of dirt on it. Her face is carefully guarded against him and his expression softens. She's so scared of him in this moment and he could never hurt her. They just stare at each other for a long time, long enough that Sarah starts to fidget.
She shifts her weight onto her right foot and crosses her arms as if she's cold, hunching her shoulders in on herself. Still looking into his eyes, she says defiantly, "I won't apologize. I told you to stop."
He looks at her a few moments more before saying, "So you did. How about you give me a chance to explain myself instead of you forming your own ideas based on second hand opinions?"
Sarah sighs and lets her arms fall to her sides again. She's relieved that he's being calm about her attack and a vital piece of information floats to the top of her mind. "I will give you a chance to explain, but there's something else I have to tell you. The Labyrinth called me into an oubliette to tell me that there's a threat in the North."
Jareth's eyebrows shoot together and he launches himself out of the chair to stand before her. "What? What threat, what exactly did she say?"
"She said that the magic was shaky and that she couldn't see exactly what the threat was, only that it felt fae and it was at the Northern border. And there was a great number."
Jareth's fingers pinch the bridge of his nose. "That's it?" Sarah nods. He turns to walk towards the window and presses his hands into the sill. Suddenly, he jerks back to strike the wall with the palm of his right hand, letting out a frustrated growl. "This can't be! They wouldn't be so foolish as to rise against me!" But they weren't rising against him. He isn't the king anymore, not in any way that they would recognize. Sarah is the goblin queen and she's weak. They must know about the magic changing hands and decided that now was the right time to act. Jareth turns his head to look back at Sarah, who stares back with wide eyes. His eyes slide to look out the window as he says, "You know how the goblin magic is acquired, Sarah? Traditionally?"
"Yes, the goblin monarch is killed and the person who killed him or her gets the magic." Sarah's hands start to shake. "Do you mean… they're going to try to kill me?"
With his back to her, Jareth squeezes his eyes shut against the pain. "You need to be trained. Really trained and as fast as possible. We need to send out scouts to the Northern border and we need to contact old allies. I need to know who is leading the force against us and whether the full army of the Fae Kingdom is behind them."
Ok, so we're getting into it now. I don't know how much longer this story will go, but I would guess we're not too far from the end, which I do have planned out. PLEASE review, they are so helpful!