A/N: Just call me the Queen of the Cliffhanger. I can't help it. Throw things if you like. :) As long as you keep coming back for more... There was much speculation about what will happen when the Doctor confronts Irial. Everybody got your money in the pool? Good... Ladies and Gentlemen...Let's Get Ready to Rumble...

By the way, I'm straight stealing this quote from the delightful Heavenmetal's last review. It's too perfect not to lift. Thank you, honey. I do appreciate it.

Today space is magnificent!
Without bridle or bit or spurs
Let us ride away on wine
To a divine, fairy-like heaven!
~Charles Baudelaire "The Lover's Wine"

I.

Áinfean had been everything that was charming as they danced. She was so graceful that it was like holding living light in his arms, like guiding something woven from shimmering air around the ballroom floor. She had been so full of allure as she'd looked up at him that she'd practically purred. Her fingertips had brushed his bowtie lightly, had trailed up and down his arm. She'd tossed her curls, tilted her head to show off her stunning profile to its best advantage, leaned close to press her ample curves against him. Her mind, highly able psychically, sparkled and teased, pressed coquettishly against his own in a way that just bordered on something he would have to do something quite forceful about. Outwardly, the Doctor had simply put on the smiling, distant mask he'd long ago cultivated for these situations, battled her back with his patented mixture of witty conversation and pretended ignorance of her designs. Inwardly, he'd sighed, wished he was back with Pond and strengthened his mental defenses. He knew better than to take this open flirtation personally.

She's after the Time Lord, after the legend. She wants to fill in a ledger page next to Síofra's, some kind of game of Rishellian one-up-manship. Rassilon. I hope Pond never sees that bloody ledger. I need to find out if it's on public display somewhere... I don't think she'd be blasé about it, somehow, particularly if Síofra kept detailed accounts as insinuated. No. Don't think my sweet Pond would just chalk it up to past indiscretions, especially with the lady here being so brazen with things...

He ran his eyes over the sheer white gown and the lush form it enhanced more than concealed. There was too much of her that was art, too little that was unstudied, honest. Her every response, every laugh was an invitation, a snare.

Ha. As if I could be truly tempted by this obvious child. She couldn't care less about me personally if she tried. She just wants to...to...bag me... to hang the trophy on the wall...

Síofra had been a great queen and a great woman. When he had met her, he had been alone and lonely for a long time in his sixth regeneration. Her bondmate had recently died. The two of them had found they had much in common, and when he had helped her with a problem she'd had, the two of them had become friends. The intimacy that had sprung up between them in the brief time he'd been on her world had come as something of a shock to both of them, but not an unwelcome one, ultimately. She'd been brave, smart, and lovely. When it had come time for him to leave, it had been difficult to go with sadness at the parting on both sides. He'd had no idea that it had made it into her chronicle, though. He suspected that Síofra herself would be appalled to know that her private business was being made such public knowledge.

Then again, he reflected as Áinfean's dainty hand trailed lightly down the buttons on the front of his shirt and he had to redirect her politely. I'm not Rishellian. And she did have one hell of a sense of humor. Maybe she thought it was funny, after all.

II.

Added to the other dubious joys of his evening was watching Amy dance with Irial. The Raven Lord was no Rory, lanky and awkward. Irial was textbook hero material, tall, dark, handsome as if he'd been carved for the purpose of making women swoon, and although the Doctor was a poor judge of such things, he feared that those silver eyes were probably the sort of thing women found exotic, as well.

Rot him. And of course, he would have to be the sodding 'Raven Lord.' I mean, that just drips with Heathcliffean melodrama, doesn't it? Bastard. Why is she smiling and laughing? What is he saying to get her to smile like that? And couldn't he have the good grace to step on her foot just once? Or maybe, oh, I don't know, just fall flat on his chiseled elfin face? Is that asking too much?

Amy looked happy. He saw Irial smile, too, a real smile, not his usual slight smirk, and he felt something tighten up inside him.

She's so beautiful. Everybody sees it. The amazing Pond... He's dancing with the real queen tonight, and I'm stuck with...

Áinfean was talking, and he reluctantly pulled his attention away from the couple across the dance floor with a scowl.

"What? What was that again? Sorry. I was a bit distracted for a moment."

Áinfean's smile was all sweetness and light. "Nay, Doctor. Do not apologize to me. I should beg your forgiveness for bringing up such a thing during a time of festivity. Only...they were the fourth group to disappear..."

The Doctor refocused his attention completely, Irial's annoying perfection as a dancer shoved aside by the promise of a problem to solve.

"Maybe you'd better tell me the whole thing over from the start."

III.

High Lords were disappearing. Sometimes it was one individual alone, but in more recent occurrences, two together had disappeared. They were seen walking through the corridors of the Citadel by the servants, and then, suddenly, they were nowhere to be found.

"Surely you've checked with their families and at country estates, places like that? Maybe they've gone visiting or some such thing?"

Áinfean gave him a level look over her soft smile. In her eyes, the Doctor saw the real woman looking at him, a touch of temper glittering. "Doctor, we are not fools. And you forget we are connected to one another through bonds, both familial and those of mating. Those who are missing are not. Their twins, those who are closest to them, cannot feel them anywhere any longer."

The Doctor pondered it, turned her in the dance. "Is there any particular place where it seems to be happening more than any other location?"

Áinfean shook her head. "That is the mystery. The servants say they see them here or there, but we do not know where they are in the end. The last trace we found of the last to go missing was found in the Great Gallery."

The Doctor knew the museum well. Dominating one of the upper floors of the Citadel, it was a mazelike collection of room after room of paintings. Many were so ancient as to be of subjects that no longer had any connection to anything the Rishellians could call reality. Some of them seemed to depict creatures of dream or legend. The Doctor and Síofra had spent many an afternoon touring the Great Gallery together exploring the extraordinary masterpieces there. Some of them had been painted with such majestic skill as to seem almost alive...

"Did any of the others go there? Were there other locations where they have disappeared from? What was found at the scenes? Anything you can tell me might be helpful," the Doctor was turning over theories in his mind.

She looked at him, cocked her head to the side, thinking, "Now that I think of it, I do remember that one or two of the others were last seen near the Gallery, but not in it. Only this last pair were actually last seen within its confines. As for the others, no one is certain where they were when whatever this is happened.

"As for what I can tell you of the disappearances themselves, I can give you almost no information. They simply disappear without a trace. There were a few personal effects, a dropped item or two, left behind them. This last time there was a smear of blood on the floor leading up to the wall. That was the only time there was any thing like that, though. That was the day before you arrived."

The Doctor turned her as the dance required and looked down into her eyes. "I think I'd better have a look at the Great Gallery since that's the last place you know someone disappeared from, don't you?" He held out his arm for her to slip hers through.

Áinfean smiled, and this was as close to a real smile as he'd seen from her. "My dear Lord Doctor, very little else you could have said would have given me greater pleasure." She took his arm, and they left the dance floor together.

IV.

The trip to the Great Gallery was...frustrating. It had settled into its late night aspect, and the Doctor had forgotten what the Citadel of the Moon was like in the early watches of the morning. The carved figures here in this space were grotesques, muscular humanoid bodies with gargoyle-like faces and short, batlike wings holding aloft large orbs. In the daytime and early evening hours, these glowed brightly to allow visitors to see the paintings at their leisure. Now, though, the orbs were dimmed to a faint bronze glow, and shadows were everywhere. The lightbearers themselves became menacing.

As the Doctor and Áinfean passed through the halls that spiraled upwards to the Great Gallery, several times he heard the sound of something whispering. He looked at the queen, but she didn't seem to notice anything amiss. In dark alcoves as they walked they saw Rishellian couples who had left the dance to pursue the courtships they'd begun on the dance floor in more private surroundings. The Doctor's sense of unease grew, but he could not discern the source.

Can't be from the snogging elves. I mean, honestly, who cares about that? Long as none of them have long black hair and a ginger Earth girl tucked into the corner of their arms, it's nothing to me what the local gentry get up to of an evening. But there's something off here, something in these halls that shouldn't be...

Áinfean had him by the hand and she drew him on. That whispering came to him again, louder now, and with it the feeling of a wind blowing. He put his finger in his mouth, wet it, held it up. There was no moving air here... Suddenly the queen stopped.

"Here. This is where we found the last traces of ones who disappeared."

The Doctor carefully looked around. There was a large circular bench carved from a single piece of blackish wood, and, in the open center of it, a trio of the carved-stone gargoyle-like lightbearers standing back to back, arms overhead to hold one giant sphere that could light the entire room when it was fully illuminated. Four large paintings were kept in this chamber, four of the ancient ones. Each one showed a different vista. The first was an open field with mountains in the distance. The second showed a crumbling castle under a yellow sky. The third showed a dark forest, ancient boles twined with brilliant flowers. The final painting showed an empty beach with a storm-tossed beach. The Doctor walked around and looked at them, inspecting them carefully, peering at them, at their frames. The whispering came to him again as well as the undeniable feeling that something about this was wrong.

"Do you hear that at all?" he murmured to Áinfean, and he began to reach into his coat pocket for his sonic screwdriver. Need to scan this room. There's something here...

"Hear what, Doctor?"

That was when everything went insane.

V.

He felt a tremendous surge and swoop in the bond, and he knew that she was in danger. His fingers went numb on the sonic.

"Amy," he whispered. He could feel the incredible euphoria blazing through her, and he was in motion before he'd finished the second syllable of her name.

Áinfean yelled after him, but he abandoned her without another thought, was gone, long loping strides carrying him back down stairs, down hallways, toward the ballroom, toward the Mate he was steadily cursing himself for ever having left in the first place, especially as that horribly-wrong euphoria turned to stark terror. Then, suddenly, horribly, everything screaming through the bond went totally silent.

The last thing he felt just before the bond failed was her calling out for him, and something inside him bared teeth and howled.

VI.

She was not in the ballroom. He'd not bothered with words, with talking to the Rishellians to find her. He'd simply run to the ballroom, shoved rudely through the dancers, disrupting the pattern, causing drinks to be spilled as he forced his way across the ballroom toward where his heart and mind told him that his Mate lay calling for him. He reached through the bond chasing the remnants of the last of that desperate call that had rung out for him, using it to track her. Fear burned through him.

She's not... Whatever else it is, it's not that. She's okay. She has to be. Has to be okay. It's Pond! Pond has to be okay, right? Pond is always okay... I'll reduce this bloody world to rubble if she's not okay...

And then he'd stepped out on that terrace to see them there, sitting, see Pond so weak, pale, shaking, and Irial there beside her. His first reaction was relief. Overwhelming relief. His hearts began to beat again, and he wanted to fall down for a moment and just drink in the sight of her. She wasn't going to become another ghost he had to carry with him as he fled through the stars and the centuries. He still had his Amelia...

But then he really saw... Saw Irial with Pond's lovely, delicate hand in his own, raised to his lips. His eyes took in more details as he forced himself to walk very slowly across the expanse of pale stone. Why was she leaning against the tall Rishellian and were her clothes in disarray?

He fought not to jump to conclusions, but the facts just kept coming...

What had caused that strange surge of euphoria in her? Why was that Rishellian sitting so close to her? And why were they out here all alone in the first place? Irial still held her hand lightly in his own, something the Doctor felt a very strong urge to rip his throat out for.

Need to let her go now. Need not to be touching her. What has gone on here?

He sent his mind out to Amy's, but her mind was shielded, silent, and the gentle brush he sent out to her was like running his fingers over a brick wall. Frustration blossomed bright.

"Amelia," he said, his tone sharper than he intended, "here you are! Are you alright?" It didn't come out as concern. It came out as chastisement. He knelt beside her, reached out to check her pulse, try to check her condition and strengthen the bond with physical contact, and she turned her face away from him slightly.

Into Irial's shoulder.

The beast in his mind grew fangs, claws, pulled on the chain that restrained him.

"Amy," he whispered. And oh, it hurt. It hurt like knives removing a thin, thin layer of his heart...

Irial continued to sit there, unmoved and unmoving. He watched the Doctor from his silver eyes, something flickering through them too quickly to be readable. "She drank Lunacy, Doctor..."

The Doctor's savage temper needed an outlet, any outlet... "What? You drank the Lunacy? Why? After I told you not to? What were you thinking, Amy? Do you have to do everything I tell you not to do?" He reached for her again, and again she twisted out of his grasp, this time glaring at him.

"I didn't do it on purpose, Doctor. And it wasn't exactly a thrill ride, let me assure you."

"Amy speaks the truth, Doctor. I am to blame for this. I did not know she would react as she did or I would never have given it to her."

"Oh, I imagine there's plenty of blame to go around. Wait your turn. I'll get to you in a minute, Raven Lord."

Irial's mouth twisted into its customary slight smile, but his eyes burned mirror bright. The hand that lay on the pale stone of the terrace lifted, came to rest lightly on the hilt of the long dagger he wore at his waist.

The Doctor did not miss the movement, and his smile became wicked, a satisfied return challenge of savage teeth. His hands, resting lightly across his thighs where he crouched, flexed gently.

Amy watched the exchange and her temper rose to drive out the weakness somewhat. She leaned up, irritation hot in her face. "You two can just stop right there." She turned her attention to the Doctor. She jabbed a slightly shaking finger at him. "You. You're not going to come out here after it's all said and done and pretend you've a right to righteous fury and indignation. And you're not going to give Irial any crap for anything you think he's done. All he did tonight was save me from myself, a job, by the way, which he didn't sign up for I think, so if he deserves anything from you, it would only be your humble thanks and goodwill." She punctuated this with a shove that knocked the Doctor backwards to sit on the terrace even as she began to pull herself up with great difficulty.

Irial was immediately there, helping her rise. She shot him a grateful look. The Doctor stayed where she'd shoved him, looking up at her with an irritated expression, trying to hold on to his rage even as common sense and contrition began to eat away at it.

"Now," she said, "I'm going upstairs to my room, and I'm going to try to go to bed if I can get my head to stop turning in these hellish little circles or exploding for five minutes. You've been busy all evening. I'm sure you can find plenty to keep you occupied for the rest of the night if you put forth a little effort, so I'm just going to let you get back to it. Good night, Doctor!"

Her anger rising and rising, she took a deep breath, turned, and said as sweetly as she possibly could, "Irial, could I trouble you for a hand up the stairs?"

Irial glanced once at the Doctor, catching his furious green eyes with his own amused silver ones. "Of course, milady. I live but to serve."

He held out his arm to Amy and they headed for the great double doors of the ballroom once more. The Doctor watched with increasing rage as Irial slipped his arm around Amy's waist as she stumbled near the lit opening to give her extra support.