Chapter Twenty-One
Jareth gazed into a crystal, black as the opal of the necklace he had given his Queen. Demanding with his vision, he peered in deep; she was more lovely in her anger than he had dared assume. He laughed; dark intermixed with a deeper, passive light, tendrils of his nearly limitless power surging through his limbs. He would have her. She would be his; all she needed was a little push.
Adam pushed out his lower lip, never looking more like a child of Sarah than at the moment. "You're not my father." He grunted and folded his scrawny and newly muscular arms tight. It came out as part question, part affirmation.
Eddie languished behind his jailed bars. "Of course I'm not." He eased onto his backside, crossing his legs beneath him, ignoring the cold stone floor. "But I would have been, my boy."
"I'm not your boy." The thirteen-year-old glared, his mouth tilted in rebellion. "Where's my mother, and what have you done with her?"
"I haven't done anything. In case you haven't noticed, I'm holed up in a goblin prison." The man's voice was tart, satirical. Lost.
"Where you belong."
Jareth came to stand behind the boy. His son. His arm went out protectively, but Adam shrugged it off.
He said, whim in his young voice, "I wish I didn't have to be here."
"You wish." Jareth inhaled. The child was as prone to dreams as Sarah. He hardened himself against folly. "So futile to wish what cannot be undone, when I am the Keeper of Wish and Dream." He softened the blow. "I would give you your mother if I could."
"You could take me back." The boy's throat choked up. He cast his head down, weakened but not defeated.
Jareth had experience with children. He took them by command, after all. But this was the first time he had stolen his own child.
He didn't miss the irony. The boy was the image of Sarah's spirit, trapped in a youthful body that imitated the king's. He couldn't let any of them go. Not while the boy kept reminding him of Sarah's bravado, and while the girl had her very face.
Cathy, the young one, he placed in a suite of rooms that befitted a princess. He rued that he couldn't have her as his own blood. She was pure and innocent, as Sarah had been as a girl, with the hope of belief inside her. With the same tenacity that of her mother. And she had the scrapes on her knees to prove it.
Now he had a small part of her, a part of him, staring back at him with eyes of icy blue. His eyes. He looked away before the chill of despair gripped him. Sarah would come for the boy, come for her girl, but she wouldn't return to him.
Jareth upped the stakes. He took the young female and her father, casting the man in a pit of dark. The man didn't deserve light when he had treated Sarah as he did at the end of their relationship: cold with mutated hate. The man blamed Sarah for her lack of reciprocal love. The king knew that wasn't how relationships worked, and the pull of give and take bled into him. How was he, Jareth, any better than this weak man?
He had begged upon the invincibility of Time to leave him bereft of his love, to steal all memory of her. His queen. Over and over, he pleaded. He had positioned himself at the gates of Death, waiting for the Fade of the Alone to overtake him, his misery overriding. Death would be a singular dream, a wish he couldn't grant. Never had he felt the sting of immortality as much as when she left.
She crushed him, wiped him of totality, made his heart burn and sting. She wouldn't return, not of her own accord. Jareth planned, he ciphered with Wish and Dream, he bartered against Time to bring her back to him. What use was selling himself to the Unknown if he couldn't be granted retribution?
So many years he had waited. Watched. Grew more restless and bitter, grew ever more in love and want and denial. Sarah was his heartbeat, the soul he would never relinquish. She escaped him, but he would have her back, under him, beside him.
Adam cringed at the sight of Jareth. His lower lip protruded more than it did a minute before. "You're not my father, either."
"Ah, yes. The little princeling," Jareth said, mirth in his voice. He ignored the childish taunt. "Do you wish to visit your sister?" He used pure distraction; it worked, momentarily.
"Can I?" Eager, chilling with the plead only a child that has had life ripped from him can beg.
"Of course. I wouldn't deny you."
Adam's face twisted with a sneaky display. He bit out, in a voice that cracked and bled with near manhood, "Mom hardly mentioned you. Except to curse. I heard her tell Dad-" he stopped. "I mean him," he pointed at Eddie, "That you were like the devil himself. She barely ever cursed, except about you."
"Indeed." The smile faded. Trust the child to nip his merry clean away.
There were mischief and malice in the boy's voice. "Oh yeah. She also said she wished herself away from the mighty king of the Underground. Maybe I should do that."
"You wouldn't get very far, I'm afraid. I am the Master of-"
"Yes, I know. Wishes, Time, Dreams, and Nightmare. Geez, I've heard it already." The boy held snark in his tone. His arms crossed tighter. "Mom is going to come for us. I know it. She's not afraid of anything, even you."
Jareth conceded. His grin told the story of his plan. "I am reckoning on it, my boy."
"When she gets here, she's going to have your head. I mean it, mister. She'll rip it clean off."
"Vicious, aren't you?"
"Aren't you?" said Adam in retort. "We are in a jail, and he is in it." He pointed with dramatic intent at Eddie.
Jareth had placed them in the cell rooms by request. The boy had demanded to see his father, but upon inspection, his mood changed and he became the inquisitor. Denying the man he had known all his life, and refusing Jareth also.
Jareth loved the boy for his inherent drama. How like he and Sarah he was. Flair soared out of every part of him, the little princeling—his son. He would be a good king one day, overcoming the doldrums of every day, the boredom, the passivity of the unknown, all because he didn't buckle. He didn't bend. The goblins could flay nerves with their abhorrent forced subservience, but he surmised the youth would overtake them, just as Jareth did in his time.
Hope careened in Jareth's heart. Years of being abject and alone now thrilled with the company that could never leave. His mind rejoiced. His, his and Sarah's, just as it should be.
He didn't know how he had managed to wait this long until he summoned them. He tapped at the heavily beamed bars of the jail. Praise to the man inside for being so dimwitted with his prize. Sarah wouldn't want him back, surely. Not after the way Eddie had treated her at the end.
Yes, hope. It was a very good thing.