Hello! A few notes before we get started:

- This will be a longer work. I currently don't have a posting schedule, but I have quite a lot of it planned in advance, so we'll see!

- This fic will explore ruling and the Underground's laws quite thoroughly. I know some readers don't love that in fics, so I figure it's a fair warning to give before you get invested.

Thanks for reading!

I've been meaning to tell you...

My fingers tightened on the wheel. It was the first time my parents had let me use the car without one of them in it with me, let alone at night, and I wasn't going to let the song distract me. I considered mashing the radio button to turn it off, but the dial was temperamental and I didn't want to risk taking my eyes off the road.

Ashley was one of the few friends I'd retained forever, and she'd paired with me for the project our new teacher had assigned to be due on the first day of school. "The course offers college credit," he'd reasoned to a classroom full of antsy, summer-ready juniors, "so I think it's fair that I get a good idea of your abilities before we get too far into the school year together." In other words, Give me this project so I can kick you out quickly if you're dumb.

Ashley, usually calm, was half-crazed about the project, so we'd spent the sweltering summer day inside, perfecting its finer points. If anything, I felt like a leech, knowing she had thought about school constantly and was so much more committed than I was. But I knew why she was concerned. I glanced down at my hands on the wheel, knuckles split and cracked with dried blood, and focused right back on the road.

I've got this feeling that won't subside

I look at you and I fantasize

You're mine tonight

The song had appeared a year after I'd gone...there. It had been on the soundtrack of a popular movie; every kid in school had the record spinning well into the school year. Eventually it faded away, mostly. Every time I heard the song, my chest tightened and my heart rate increased, preparing for an enemy I didn't understand. It took me months to realize why, to realize who.

I always thought I saw him. My eyes created him everywhere, in places that he wasn't, and left me embarrassed by the comparisons. I would see glimpses of blond hair and for a moment be caught, my thoughts and heart seizing, before something would tell me, Whatever you're seeing isn't half as good as him, isn't even close to what he is. And the voice was always right, but it never, ever stopped me.

Except...

Now I've got you in my sights

I had been visualizing him so strongly that it took several seconds for my brain to process the way the speed blew the strands of his hair, the way the headlights moved on his clothes, the way he was utterly real and not at all imagined. I pressed my foot to the brake and floored it hard. The tires and brakes both squealed in complaint, but I stopped several inches from him.

The Goblin King's mismatched eyes caught the light and glimmered like an animal's. My mouth was dry and the car felt less like a castle and more like a cage. I climbed out, afraid for the moment when he was lost from my line of vision, afraid to blink. "What..." I whispered. So many ways I could end the sentence...I couldn't think of just one. I couldn't think.

"Sarah," he began, voice still the same—still unnervingly the same— "I must speak with you."

Like an idiot, I rushed out, "You have no power over me."

He hissed, "Yes, I know. Why do you think I'm so far from you?"

So far? If I took a few steps, I could've touched him. I moved forward as if to prove it, and noticed suddenly the bloody gash above his left eye. His blood was black, more like tar than rubies, but it couldn't have been anything else. "You're bleeding..." I whispered.

"I am breaking the rules to be here. The closer we get, the more I..." He gestured with a gloved hand to his forehead.

"Then leave," I stated.

"We have to speak."

"You can't be here."

Even injured, vulnerable, he was still the king. He did something akin to rolling his eyes before telling me, "If it wasn't important, do you think I'd be here? Is it worth dying to be close to you?"

"I should think not," I admitted, even as I felt more than ever I shouldn't be conversing with him. He was a damaged fae, but he was still fae.

He sighed a little. "Sarah—" There it was again, my name in two syllables, like a song—Sa-rah. "I came to warn you. That is all."

"Warn me of what?" I took another step without realizing it. His teeth were suddenly stained black as he bled from the mouth, and he cursed in a language so potent it left my skin burning. We both stumbled back.

"Sorry, I..." I shook my head. "You came to warn me? Of what?"

The king, though, suddenly seemed interested in something else. "I know why I'm bleeding. The question is, Sarah," he said softly, indicating my hand, "why are you?"

I fumbled with answers for a moment—answers he seemed very interested in, gaze intent on my face—before someone shouted, "Are you alright?"

Shit. I turned, seeing a woman with her dog, then turned again. The Goblin King was gone, and it struck me hard. The woman looked concerned, so I smoothed my face out into normalcy. "No," I told her. "No, sorry, ma'am—I thought I saw something in the road—a dog. But it ran off."

"Alright. I'll keep an eye out. Maybe you should be getting home," she told me.

"Yeah," I said, glancing back at the road. I expected to see something: glitter, a feather, a crystal, a destroyed castle. Instead I doubted I'd ever seen him at all. "Maybe I should."