Chapter XIV
She was getting there. It was torture having to watch her do it, though. Wanting to scream every time she nearly came to the right conclusion and turned the wrong way. Why was it never so frustrating when she did that in his Labyrinth? He even enjoyed having her fall into all of his traps. He had gotten such pleasure from watching it.
But now, when no one but herself was stopping her from getting to the heart of the matter, it was agonizing to watch.
And he no longer had control over time, no longer was its guardian. Much as he wanted to turn the hands of all of his clocks forward, he could not. And besides, there were no clocks and no hands to turn anyway.
Needing to speed up this process in some way, he got to work on the parents. It is a hard thing, even for a powerful fae, to manipulate the minds of practical and self-absorbed adults. It was that much harder for the former Goblin King.
But, in the end, Sarah ended up alone.
He had meant to visit her dreams again during those several days, but was forced to leave her alone in her quarantine, again underestimating the power he had left.
It was maddening, really – to not be able to follow at least every other whim. And at times he needed to remind himself that, though Sarah was to blame for this, he had already forgiven her, and needs her there with him, needs her to rebuild what she destroyed. That there isn't long left to wait now.
His logical, darker fae nature insisted on nagging him more and more. The longer Sarah took, the more it urged Jareth to drop this foolishness and start fresh, or to use the third way of regaining power, which would be so much better than the first, and so much more satisfying.
To rule her, to rule her body and her mind, to not leave her a choice of believing or not. The way was not new to Jareth, or his kind. It was a common practice among faes, and he wouldn't have even thought about an alternative route to it, had his enemy been anyone else. But the part of him that loved Sarah resisted, still managing to keep the upper hand, which was becoming increasingly difficult.
This struggle with himself did nothing to help the already precarious situation, and, unresolved, it tainted his thoughts and dreams of Sarah.