Sorry something went funny with this chapter and I had to upload it again.
Hello again readers sorry about the wait for this chapter but hopefully it's worth it. Some questions answered, some new ones posed. Enjoy! and please review.
Chapter 6
Jareth rushed back to the throne room on foot. He could have simply transported himself but he knew Queen Titania's views on his frivolous use of magic.
He burst through the doors to the throne room a fake smile on his face. "Step-Mother, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company."
"Am I not allowed to visit the boy I helped raise." Her voice was like velvet and she shared the same accent as her stepson. After waiting for him to reply that didn't come she carried on. "Do you have a runner in your Labyrinth at the moment?" The beautiful, red haired woman, who had seated herself on his throne, pointed one elegant and manicured finger at the clock that was still counting down Sarah's now completely redundant extra time.
"No ma'am." He answered with complete honesty walking over to his throne.
"Good, that means that we have time to talk." A smile briefly graced her eternally young face, a face that belonged on a twenty year old.
"And what is it that is so pressing that you would travel all the way from Avalon to my humble home."
"Marriage." The woman smiled again as she pronounced the word.
"I had no idea that you and Father were having problems again."
"I see that your time here hasn't reduced you penchant for flippancy." The Queen sighed. "No not my marriage, yours."
Sarah awoke in a strange room, on satin sheets, in a four poster bed. By the smell of the sheets she could tell whose bed it was. For the second time that day she felt totally embarrassed, one kiss from the man had made her faint and all most of her brain could say to that was, "but what a kiss it was." The small part of her mind that was functioning, despite the massive influx of hormones, was trying to remind the rest that they hadn't resolved any of the major issues.
She moved off the bed and towards what she hoped were the main doors which weren't locked but led to an empty corridor. Not bothering to go any further she closed them again, Sarah had no wish to get lost in the Castle.
"I'm in the Goblin Kings bedroom, in the castle beyond the Goblin City and the Goblin King has disappeared, again." Sarah felt doubly stupid.
"King not gone lady." A small, familiar, goblin voice called from the shadows.
"You can come out and see me, you know."
A small troop of Goblins filed out of a corner that had been cloaked in darkness.
"Where's the Goblin King?" She asked the group
"In throne room," the leader spoke again after being shoved forwards by the others, "Speaking to High Queen."
"The High Queen?"
"Titania, she here 'cause Kingy not married yet." Another answered.
"Why isn't he married?"
"No one wants to be Goblin Queen. Fae ladies don't like us and don't like having fun. We like Lady Sarah, lady fun"
"Well I like you, for the most part, and I like having fun. I think it's time for some mischief." She smiled down at her Goblins.
"Queen Titania, I'm not married nor am I likely to be any time soon." That thought rankled in his brain. No matter what his libido was trying to tell him, his rational mind said he would never forgive Sarah, that ship had sailed, and no other woman would ever compare to her. "If that is all we have to discuss, I am very busy."
"Jareth you need a wife." Queen Titania insisted.
"No, I don't."
"Well your castle could certainly use a womans' touch. When was the last time this room was cleaned?" She looked around at the filth and squalor that adorned the throne room.
"What century is this?" he asked, only partly in jest. He didn't even see the dirt any more.
His Stepmother shook her head in exasperation. "Jareth, please try to be serious about this you have been alone here for far too long."
"I am serious and I don't need a wife."
Queen Titania was about to reply when she saw a young woman enter the side door of the throne room. The girl seemed to be in a state of déshabillé. Her dark hair was messily gathered over one shoulder and she seemed to be wearing one of her stepsons shirts, a white one with a very deep v-neck, over a pair of the denim trousers that were popular above.
"Jareth, I don't believe I've had the pleasure of meeting your friend." She indicated to the woman sneaking up behind the young king.
The Goblin King could feel a headache coming on as Sarah came level with him and curtsied to the High Queen. His mind was blank.
"Since His Highness seems to have lost his tongue, My name is Sarah Williams, your Majesty." Sarah genuflected again before she threaded an arm around the Goblin Kings waist, just to remind him of what her touch could do, she was rewarded by him repressing a shiver.
"I can see what was keeping you busy." Was the Fae womans response to her son. "I hope my stepson has been behaving like the perfect gentleman." She asked finally shifting her brown eyes to look the mortal girl over properly, in doing so she learned a number of interesting things.
"Of course he has, your Majesty. Once he found out about the little mix up that is."
Titania knew that the brunette was up to something but liked watching Jareth squirm too much to call her out. "Mix up?"
"Oh don't worry about it ma'am, it's been sorted privately between me and Sarah." Jareth managed to say, forestalling any more questions.
"Who's watching little Jay?" Sarah asked looking up at the beautiful face of the Goblin King, feeling slightly guilty that she hadn't considered him earlier.
"He's in the nursery, don't worry he's being well looked after." Jareth avoided looking down into Sarah's eyes.
"Little Jay?" The High Queen seemed interested.
"Her son." Jareth couldn't quite keep all the resentment out of his voice.
"I couldn't find a baby sitter." Sarah joked still looking up at Jareth.
"Well why don't you go check on him while me and my stepmother finish our little chat." He tried to smile down at Sarah to keep up appearances.
"I think I would like to see this child." Titania wanted a few moments alone with this strange mortal girl. "It's been so long since my nephews and nieces were small, I miss having babies around me. Don't worry about an escort." She said, rising from her seat. "I remember the way, I'll take Sarah with me." The Queen placed a hand on Sarah's shoulder and the two women disappeared.
The nursery was a large room fully equipped to deal with at least ten small children at once. However Jay was the only occupant at that time and the old nurse had put him down for a nap, watching over him from a sensible chair by his crib. She didn't seem surprised or bothered by the sudden appearance of the High Queen and Sarah, not moving from her position or acknowledging them.
"Young woman, before my stepson arrives I need to know, are you the Sarah? The mortal champion of the Labyrinth?" The High Queen's look was strangely intense.
"Yes, nine years ago I solved the Labyrinth and won my brother back. I may also have inadvertently broken your sons heart." Sarah admitted
"But you came back. Jareth brought you back?"
"Well he sort of misunderstood about little Jay. OK he jumped to completely the wrong conclusion about him." She amended after she looked into Titania's unbelieving eyes.
Titania looked down into the crib and used her magics to truly see the child and recognised something familiar, something that she had seen in Sarah too to a lesser degree. She could also see the obvious, that the boy could not be Sarahs and told her so. "This is not your child."
"Not in the physical sense no. I adopted him." Sarah fondly smoothed down the boys dark hair.
"But you share a blood relationship, through the mother?"
"Yes."
"Then how did he come to be in your possession?"
"Jay is the child of a man my seventeen year old cousin Lily met at a Masquerade Ball. An older man that she never saw again after that night. Her memory was slightly fuzzy, all she could remember was that he was 'drop dead gorgeous, had something to be proud about in the trouser department and that he smelled like Christmas morning,' Lily's exact words and not really much to go on." She paused. "My aunt, her mother, knew I wanted a family, but that the man I was waiting for either didn't exist or didn't care to appear. So a little over a year ago she invited me to visit her and she asked me to help. Lily didn't want the child but by the time she realized she was pregnant it was too late for a termination. I was going to help look after him, pay the medical bills and daycare but then the first time I held him, the first time I looked in his eyes, I fell in love, I couldn't let him go. I adopted him, he became my son on that day."
"And yet you have not told Jareth this?" The Queen Titania could feel the bond between the pair but didn't understand why there was so great a distance between them
"I thought I needed to even the score a little bit. He had no right to expect me to stay faithful to him, not after nine years and not when we never had a proper relationship to begin with." Titania looked slightly confused. "He sort of proposed to me when I was fifteen, after I had completed his Labyrinth, I refused because I didn't understand. Nine years on he hasn't called, hasn't written but he get insanely jealous when he finds out that I have a son that isn't his and drags me back here to run the Labyrinth again."
Titania looked like she was about to laugh. "He has not exactly covered himself in glory." The queen was grinning.
Sarah allowed herself a wry smile. "Yep, you helped raise a man who is as thick as two short planks when it comes to women."
"And I must ask, why are you wearing his shirt?"
The dark haired woman giggled, "I wanted to embarrass him in front of you."
Both women burst into laughter.
Jareth sat fuming in his newly vacated throne. Sarah and Queen Titania having a heart to heart was not really something that he needed at this time, and he could hear the laughter through the open window. He had to come up with some sort of plan, he couldn't let Sarah win, not again.
Hoggle and Sir Didymus had hurried back to the Castle beyond the Goblin City as fast as possible after they finished their conversation with Toby. They now understood about the child, They had to talk Sarah and explain things to the King before he made an unforgivable error.