Sarah fell out of the mirror and landed with a curse on her knees. She looked around to make sure that the mirror was still there—it was—then shifted her attention to her surroundings.

It took her only a moment to realize that she was in a dungeon, the same dungeon that she had seen in the mirror before she stepped through it. And there was Jareth—though it hardly looked like Jareth—chained by the wrists to the ceiling. He had sagged forward against his bonds, and would have been on his knees if the chains hadn't held him up.

"Jareth?" she said. She got slowly to her feet, then unable to help herself, she ran to him. "Jareth, oh look at you." She cupped his face in her hands and lifted his head.

His eyes were closed, and at her touch and the sound of her voice so near, he squeezed them closed even tighter. "Go away," he whispered. "Leave me alone."

"Christ, Jareth, you look wretched," Sarah said. She tried to get him to his feet, and though he didn't resist her, he didn't try to help either. "Come on, I have to get you out of here."

He opened his eyes then, and she was shocked to see anger in them. Anger at her. Anger that was close to rage. "Get your hands off of me," he snarled.

"What?" She stared. He couldn't possibly want her to leave him here.

"I said don't touch me," he hissed and tried to jerk away from her. "Don't think to fool me with your glamour, you changeling monster. You are not my Sarah, however much you may look like her."

Sarah blinked. She heard a small shuffling sound behind her and turned to see what it was. What she saw made her freeze and her heart leap into her throat. She was staring into the face of another woman, another woman that may as well have been her own reflection.

The creature, whatever it was, hissed at her like an angry python and all resemblance was immediately gone. The face became the face of a hag. Her skin turned bluish white and seemed to stretch grotesquely over her sharp bones, her eyes sank into her skull and became milk white and blank like the eyes of the dead, her fingers became unnaturally long with sharp, wicked claws, and her hair floated around her in a silver nimbus, casting small prismic rainbows like the hairs were made of spun glass. Sarah could not recall ever seeing anything that was at the same time hideous beyond imagining, and yet so dangerously beautiful.

"He is mine," the creature hissed at her. It frightened Sarah to her very bones that that hiss had been uttered in a voice very similar to her own. "He belongs to me."

Sarah glared. "I don't fucking think so," she snapped.

The creature lunged at her, hands out, claws bared. Sarah ducked and leaped out of the way. The thing flew over the top of her and smacked heavily into the floor.

Sarah faced the thing as it got up, crouched a little, her eyes wary and waiting. She expected the changeling creature to attack her again, but it gave a piercing shriek and vanished in a cloud of blue smoke.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Well, that was easy," she grumbled. "Really, you Underground people have no pride at all. One good hit, or a few defiant words, and your down for the count. It's really very sad."

"I think you will find that not all of us are so easily dispatched," said Raspiel from the doorway.

She turned to face him with a calm air of resignation.

Behind him and just to the left of his shoulder stood Jonas, and he was grinning. "I knew you were human," he said. "I fucking knew it."

"Really?" Sarah said, cocking one eyebrow and putting a hand on her hip. "Now, I wonder, what could have possibly given you that idea. My name? But I already explained that, didn't I? The way I talk?—it's a dead giveaway, I know. Or maybe it's because I knew exactly what you were talking about when you asked me for a Coke. They don't have soft drinks in the Underground, do they?"

Raspiel exchanged a look with Jonas and they both laughed.

"Foolish girl," Raspiel said. "Don't you know humans are property down here?"

Sarah laughed. "But I'm not your property, Raspiel, and that's what counts."

"Yes, yes, yes, you belong to the Goblin King, don't you?" He said, his lavender eyes gleaming maliciously. "But you see, little one, he belongs to me."

"Yeah, you and everybody else it seems," she said, her eyes narrowing angrily. "But I've said it before, and my answer hasn't changed; I don't fucking think so. I'm taking him home."

"I'd like to see you try, human," he snarled, striding toward her with his spear in his hand. "Mortals have no power here."

Sarah held up her hand as he drew near and he halted. Her stance alone was an order to stop, but the way she held her hand, fingers splayed and pointed at him, was a clear threat. "I'm taking him home, Raspiel," she said softly, but firmly.

"I can't let you do that," he said. "Your Goblin King has something I want. Something I need if my people are to survive."

Sarah regarded him coldly. "I don't give a flying fuck if your entire whoring race shrivels up and dies for want of magic. I'm taking him home."

"I can't let you do that," he said again.

"Well you're going to anyway."

"Or what?" Jonas asked. "Whatcha gonna do if we decide we want to keep him. Nothin, that's what. You can't do a friggin thing."

Sarah rolled her eyes toward him, but kept Raspiel in the peripheral of her vision. "I gave you that eye," she mused, studying Jonas' one green eye beside the grey one. "I can pluck it out." She summoned the eye from his head, and it ripped from the socket.

Jonas screamed in agony and Raspiel, thinking she was distracted, moved toward her. She turned her head to look him directly in the eyes and he froze. Jonas screamed again, but neither of them looked at him. His eye hovered in the air a few inches away from his face, still attached by a bundle of nerves.

"Tell me again how I don't have any power here," Sarah said to Raspiel. She summoned Jonas' eye to her and it jerked free of the nerves and flew into her outstretched hand. Her gaze still on Raspiel, she turned her hand over and very deliberately crushed it beneath the heel of her boot.

Raspiel looked white and a little ill. Sarah merely smiled at him and waited to see what he would do.

"You bitch!" Jonas screamed. He fell to his knees on the floor with his hand over his bleeding eye socket. "You fucking bitch! I'll kill you!"

Sarah didn't find this threat all that alarming. He hardly seemed to be in any condition to be threatening her.

"How did you do that?" Raspiel finally asked.

She glared at him. "None of your business. Just know that I did it, and I can do it again."

Truthfully, she had not been entirely sure that she could do it the first time until she did it. Because her magic came from Jareth, and he was essentially powerless from the looks of things, she had been a little afraid that nothing would happen. If nothing had happened, she knew that what Raspiel had said would be true; she and Jareth would belong to him. There was nothing she could have done about it. She had risked it simply because she knew that if she did not, the result would be the same.

It would seem that this time, her mortal human blood could be counted a blessing.

"He has more power than I thought if he can bequeath it to you and not be drained by that," Raspiel said with a greedy spark in his eyes.

'Bequeath?' Who the hell said that anymore? "Look," Sarah said calmly, "get out of my way or I'm going to hurt you."

"You think so?" Raspiel smiled unpleasantly. "I don't think so."

Sarah noticed that Jonas had stopped screaming and cursing. She looked to see where he was; make sure he wasn't trying to sneak up on her. He wasn't. He had passed out from the pain.

Raspiel's attack was so swift that she just had time to turn her attention back to him before she was thrown to the ground and the air was knocked out of her. She lay there gasping, cursing her own carelessness, her heart beating in panic, as he laughed. He moved to stand over her and pointed the tip of his spear at the hollow of her throat.

Sarah gasped and his smile widened. He was suddenly very confident with her on the floor at his feet. Such confidence would have seemed appropriate if they were two humans fighting, but not when hehad only a spear and what little magic the Aboveground had granted him, and she had the power of the Goblin King's wand.

She lay there panting, trying to get her breath back. She was more than a little curious to know why he was so sure that he now had the upper hand. She could have just wrenched the spear from his hands with her magic and sent it flying across the room. What did he think was going to stop her from doing that?

"Cold iron, Sarah," he murmured triumphantly.

She lifted a brow at that. "So?"

"Sidhe magic withers before cold iron," he told her. "Didn't your Goblin King tell you that?"

No. Somehow Jareth had failed to mention that part to her. For the first time since she had stepped through the mirror, she was truly afraid.

She turned her head to look at Jareth, who was once again slumped against his chains, head hanging forward, blood running down his ravaged back. He looked so lovely, even broken and bleeding as he was, he was still so beautiful.

She suddenly heard his voice in her head, Promise me that if it comes down to a choice between them and you, you will be selfish and pick you.

I can't, Jareth, she thought in despair. Please forgive me, but this time, I can't.

Something occurred to her then as she was laying on her back on the cold stone floor with the tip of Raspiel's spear biting into her throat and Jareth bleeding at the ends of his chains. Something, some little tidbit of wisdom she had read somewhere, in a past life. Her past life.

It is alright to hope and noble to strive, but in the end . . .

Not Faulkner or Steinbeck, or anything classical at all. Some popular modern novelist. Peter Straub or Stephen King perhaps. It really didn't matter.

It is alright to hope and noble to strive, but in the end . . .

"In the end, it is doom alone which counts," she whispered.

Raspiel looked at her sharply. "Indeed," he said sardonically. "How very true."

Sarah grasped the pointed head of his spear, and using Jareth's magic behind the strength of her own arm, she shoved him back and got to her feet. His eyes widened in shock as he felt her power tingle along his skin and he backed away a little before he could make himself stop.

"Impossible," he said.

"Probably," Sarah said.

"You can't—"

"But I did," she said. "You see, you made one really stupid mistake."

He glared at her and started moving towards her again, spear at the ready. "And what was that?"

"You assumed that my being human put me at a disadvantage." She shook her finger at him in mock reproach. "Don't you know that you should never take anything for granted?"

With a roar, Raspiel lunged at her again, but this time, the spear hit an invisible shield and he stumbled back. In a fury, he started hammering the shield with the iron tipped spear, then suddenly, he stopped and stood there panting and glaring at her.

"Guard!" he abruptly yelled. "Guard!"

Sarah paused on her way to release Jareth and stared as a handful of Unseelie men armed with shining swords and spears, came running into the room. They spread out and began moving toward her and Jareth with their weapons outthrust.

Sarah gave Raspiel an angry look and moved to stand in front of Jareth. She was willing to bet those spears and swords were tipped with iron, and though she could guard herself against them—for the iron apparently meant nothing to her—she did not doubt that in his weakened condition, a deep enough wound from one of them would kill Jareth almost instantly.

When one guard, braver than the rest, or just more foolhardy, edged toward her with his sword in one hand and a short dirk in the other, she snarled at him like an angry she-wolf defending her mate.

He drew back and shared an amused laugh with a few of his comrades. Soon they were daring each other to move closer, just a few more steps, she can't hurt you.

Silly fairies, she thought. She threw up her hand as one of them drew too close, then slowly and firmly closed it into a fist. The man made a strangled gasping sound, his back arched, he shuddered, blood flying from his lips, then he fell to the ground like a marionette with cut strings.

The men mumbled between them and shifted uneasily.

"Get them!" Raspiel screamed. "Kill the woman, but not the man. Be careful not to kill the man. I need him."

They hesitated for only a moment, then three of them rushed her at the same time. Sarah killed one, but got no further than that before she was once again knocked to the floor by one of the others.

My ass is going to be so sore tomorrow, she thought.

The guard that had knocked her to the ground stood over her and pointed his sword at her throat.

She was really getting tired of people pointing things at her throat.

"Get up," he said.

"Kill her you idiot!" Raspiel screamed. He was really getting quite hysterical.

"What's this?" The guard asked her, ignoring his king. He picked up the wand pendant resting between her breasts and ran a finger down it, caressing it. "Magic," he whispered. "There is magic in this."

Sarah jerked away from him and pulled the pendant out of his hands. The chain snapped and the wand went flying. She watched in horror as it shattered into dust against the stone floor.