Sara; Called away unexpectedly. Please forgive me, my love. For your own sake, it would be best for you to go home to your family. I can't marry you. I expect you to be gone when I return. I am sorry. Jareth

Sarah stared at the letter blankly, then read it again. "What the hell?" She closed her fist around the parchment, then uncrumpled it and read it again just to be sure she hadn't imagined it.

"Bullshit," she growled.

Her first reaction was anger, but upon reflection, she started to become worried. Jareth had warned her about returning to the Aboveground—it would be the death of her—it was hard to believe that he would ever suggest she go back, and certainly never for her own sake. And that was only if you discounted their years of history together, their brief battles, and in the end, Jareth's triumph. He had won, and even if she had doubted that he felt anything for her, she knew that his pride would never allow him to let her go. And marriage? What in God's name was that about? They had never once spoken of marriage; quite frankly, it had never occurred to her.

But what bothered her more than all the rest—the crowning stroke of weirdness, you might say—was that endearment; 'my love'. Not because it was not true—on some level it had probably always been true—but because such worn-out phrases as 'my love' and 'I love you' seemed trite and unnecessary between them. She had always gotten the impression from Jareth that he felt the same way. The one time he had ever mentioned love to her, she had been a naive little girl, and he had been trying to manipulate her.

Sarah paused on the threshold to her rooms, sensing something in the darkness.

"Hello, Sarah," Elipsabet murmured from the shadows in the far left corner of the room. She lit a candle, which threw her features into gruesome starkness for an instant, then softened as the wick took flame. "My husband is causing you trouble, isn't he?"

"So it would seem," Sarah said warily. She moved into the room and took the chair opposite the queen. There was a window between them, and a table beside it where Elipsabet set the candlestick. "He has left the Castle. I thought you all did. Why are you not with him?"

Elipsabet shifted her gaze out the window to the star-strewn sky and the moon beyond, her expression sad and pensive. Her eyes still fixed on the night beyond the window, she said softly, almost in a whisper, "Have you ever been in love?"

Sarah sat back and regarded the Fae woman for a moment over her slim steepled fingers. "For nearly half my life, it sometimes seems," she said slowly.

The look Elipsabet shot her was quick and almost angry. "How wonderful for you," she said dryly.

Sarah smiled indifferently and lifted a shoulder. "If you say so."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Elipsabet's eyes drifted back to the window, but she had lost that dreamy look and now sat straight in the plush chair. Sarah tried to suppress her urgency and made herself relax and wait patiently for the other woman to make her point. That she had a point to make was not in doubt, but, Sarah reminded herself, the Unseelie queen was a courtier, and as such, not given to forthrightness. She would eventually reveal the reason why she had stayed behind, but she would undoubtedly take her own sweet time about it.

Sarah tilted her head back and began humming softly under her breath. It took her a moment to recognize the tune—Greensleeves—but when she did, she smiled, remembering how her mother had loved that song.

"And he loves you back, this man of yours?" Elipsabet asked, abruptly breaking the silence.

"Yes," Sarah said, without hesitation.

The Fae woman considered her next words carefully. "You never doubt it? You never wonder, is he thinking of another woman when he's holding you? Is he wishing you were someone else?"

Sarah almost laughed, but managed to suppress it because she thought it would be cruel. "Oh no," she said. "I don't ever wonder that."

Elipsabet met her eyes with a curious expression. "Why not?"

Sarah felt a twinge of empathy for the queen, who had obviously been grossly mistreated and neglected by her husband, but she forced it back and schooled her featres not to show it. She knew that there was nothing that a pitiable person despised more than to be pitied.

"Why not?" Elipsabet persisted.

"Because he waited for me," Sarah said. At the stunned look on the other woman's face, she felt compelled to explain. "I do not mean that Jareth saved himself for me. Do not misunderstand. Celibacy has never been in his nature."

"I do not understand," Elipsabet said.

Sarah sighed and tried to think of a better way to explain it to her. "I know that he has had many lovers before me, and even more, I am sure, since first we met. What I meant, of course, is much more difficult to explain than mere waiting, and a lot of it would not make sense to anyone but Jareth and myself." She paused and nibbled her bottom lip thoughtfully. "You see, he has had other women, been friendly with them, made love to them, maybe even cared for some of them in his way—and I have done the same—but we . . ." Sarah trailed off because she could see that what she was trying to say was not making any sense to Elipsabet, whose lovely arched brows were drawn together in confusion.

Really, she didn't understand how anyone could be so difficult and still be successful at courtly intrigue. Sarah decided to try another tact; one with all the subtlety and finesse of a dull axe. "You asked me if I ever wonder if he's thinking of another woman when he's with me, do you remember?"

"Yes, of course."

"I don't wonder. I don't have to, because I know that when he was holding those other women, he wasn't thinking of her, of the one in his arms. He was wishing she was me."

Elipsabet dropped her head and gave a shuddering sigh, as though she were holding back tears. "Gods, I envy you," she whispered fiercely, her voice trembling.

"And I pity you," Sarah said sadly. "But perhaps we can still be friends."

Elipsabet shook her head, but whether in negation or distress, Sarah could not tell. "But what if you were the only one?" she asked.

Sarah tilted her head to one side curiously. "The only one?" she repeated.

"If you were alone," Elipsabet explained. "If you were in love, but not loved back."

Sarah did laugh then, but there was very little humor in it, so Elipsabet did not take offense. "If I were in love with Jareth, but not him with me?"

"Yes."

"I would be dead," Sarah said simply. She could not imagine that the Goblin King would have extended her the same offer that he had if he felt nothing for her. He would not have answered her call, and she would have died there on the cold tile floor of the Quick Mart.

"Really?" Elipsabet said. She nervously took the packet of Pixy Dust out of her cloak, sprinkled some out into one of her shaking hands, then lapped it up with her tongue. She tilted her head back with a deep sigh of relief. "I'm sorry," she said to Sarah who was watching her with interest.

"It's okay," Sarah said. "I've seen worse." When Elipsabet looked at her kind of funny, she smiled. "I once saw a guy shoot up in his tear-duct. Trust me, that's nothing."

This guy had not been her tragic junkie boyfriend, Henry Cain, but one of his friends. If Sarah had ever caught Henry doing such a thing, whether she loved him or not, she would have dropped him in an instant and never looked back. She suspected Henry knew this too, and that was why he never tried it. She didn't know what had made her think that she was qualified to save him from himself, but he had believed it, and even toward the end, so had she. Everyone had things in their lives that they could not forget. Henry was one of hers, and Jareth was another. But only one of them mattered now; only one of them was still alive.

Sarah fished a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one. "Besides," she said, "as you can see, I have my own vices." She took a long drag, blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling, then turned her attention back to Elipsabet. "I assume there is some other reason why you are here, other than to discuss the unexplainable mysteries of love."

"I . . ." she hesitated. "I don't know if I should . . ."

"What?" Sarah asked. "Tell me that your husband has abducted my lover?" She laughed, crossed her legs, and leaned forward. "I have already figured that much out for myself." She held up the letter.

Elipsabet took the parchment and smoothed it out on the tabletop to read it. "Oh dear."

"Indeed," Sarah said. "It would seem that your husband has made the all too common mistake of assuming he knows much more than he has any right to." She crushed out her cigarette on the edge of the candlestick and flicked the butt out the window. "I would suggest, if you ever see him again, that you tell him next time he should do a little research. Appearances, you know, can be so deceiving."

Sarah took the letter back and held it up to the flame of the candle. The dry paper darkened, then caught, and she let it fall to the stone floor where it smoldered into ashes. "You are going to tell me where they are," she said.

"What are you going to do?" Elipsabet asked.

Sarah stood, put her hands flat on the tabletop and leaned toward her. Elipsabet shrunk back a little at the feral gleam in her eyes. "I'm going to get him back."