A/N: Happy November to you all! Guess what that means? Thanksgiving in a few weeks and only a month and a half till Christmas! LOVE Christmas time. On to the story because I keep leaving you all hanging a bit, hehe...aaaannd you may kind of love and hate me all at once by the end of this chapter...

Colicade: Yes, love does need time :). I'm so glad you agree and that the progression is worth the wait! Thank you so very much! I highly appreciate your review and you taking the time to articulate the things you like about the story :)

hungrypiranha: The cover is a good idea, but I'm kind of going along with Jareth's personality which he'd be the type to answer questions with an attitude of "it's none of your business, and I don't want to answer." That would be a great idea though if I were to take the route of giving everyone an explanation. I wasn't very 'brilliant' and didn't really think of doing that, haha. Thank you though! Glad you're enjoying it :)

Alionya: Chocolate? That's quite a compliment, haha! I certainly will continue until it's complete. Always. I refuse to leave a story undone! Thank you so very very much. It's satisfying to a writer to have their readers enjoy the story so much :)

Big, giant, humongous thanks to my awesome reviewers: Alionya, hungrypiranha, Colicade, Kaytori, She with the hazel eyez, Invoguewetrust, DawnRain, The Queen of Water, CompleteBookworm2, , DaniellaPeirce, deerstop, boybandelflover, Reine Shadow, Aleta Wolff, and Guest (whoever you are :D).

Chapter Seventeen: I'll Lay My Love Between the Stars

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Lighted lilies glowed white, gold, and silver around the grounds behind the palace, leaving pools of light at their feet and illuminating the shadows of night. Not a single cloud hovered in the sky, so the vast arrays of glittering stars shone across the entire black expanse and the moon gleamed bright in their midst. The stars reflected on the surface of the lake, and the moonlight shimmered on the dark waters like a wavering path leading to something magical. The grass was cool, and the air was fragrant.

Sarah got lost in the splendour of it all. There was such peace and stillness here that made her forget about their strange encounters and the impending danger looming around them.

She slid her arm out of Jareth's grasp and walked closer to the white shore where the water's gently lapped, but because of her dress she stopped before her feet sank into the sand.

Out into the night, a voice pierced the air. It was someone singing inside the palace. Sarah turned her head to look back in wonder at the entrancing minstrel whose voice rose and fell smooth and clear unlike any human could manage.

They stood listening for a little while until Jareth broke the stillness.

"It's tradition. An unparalleled singer is chosen to sing the ballad "Midsummer Night" to welcome in the summer solstice. The feasting and the dancing stop and everyone stands silent to listen."

"It's absolutely beautiful," she whispered.

The captivating richness and ringing clarity continued a bit longer. Not another sound could be heard except the stirring waters and a faint rustle of grass in the breeze. One last resounding note swirled around them all, echoed over the lake, and faded into silence.

An eruption of applause and cheers burst from the palace and from all those outside like the two of them. Colours and lights burst up in the air as the cheering continued. They weren't fireworks but certainly reminded Sarah of the Fourth of July confections with a strong dose of magic.

"The midnight hour has struck then," said Jareth.

A booming voice that sounded like King Alaster announced the hour just after Jareth's comment and asked someone to sing for them. From what she could hear of the rest of his words, it now was time for any who wished to sing songs for all to hear as the height of the celebration arrived.

The ceremonial "Midsummer Night" ended on a final piercing note, but Seraphina didn't pay much attention. In her mind she plotted ways to get rid of the girl with Jareth or ways he would need her help, or anything she could muster. She would not give up simply because he was toying with some pathetic mortal: that just gave her a good challenge.

A creeping sensation tingled down her spine. With a subtle move of her head to the left, out of the corner of her eye she saw a dark figure standing a few feet away. Not all of the Sidhe were creatures of light and all things lovely for some preferred the night, the shadows, or the side of evil rather than good.

With a flick of her eyes she saw his face: Fiachna the Raven Mage. As she suspected he would, he noticed her interest in him and looked directly at her even though she no longer paid attention. In a moment, he was moving to stand beside her.

"Seraphina," he said in deep tones as his eyes swept over her. "It's always a pleasure."

"It was once before, Fiachna," she said as she finally deigned to confront him. "I'm surprised to see you here tonight and hadn't noticed you before."

"I've only just arrived. No point in wasting too much time at this glorious occasion."

She swished her straight, fair hair over her shoulder. "So you have a particular reason for coming. What might that be? Odd considering Jareth also attended, and everyone knows how you loathe each other. Or at least, how you loathe him. Ah, I see that you already know that. Is that why you've come then?"

His golden eyes gleamed with a strange light, and he crossed his arms over his chest, all draped in black and gold. He studied the revellers celebrating the summer solstice with renewed enthusiasm. "Perhaps it is. Why should you wish to know? Oh yes, you're still pining over him like a child over its lost toy. Are you ever going to move on?"

She sent an icy scowl his direction. "Says the mage who can't seem to let go of some grudge against the same man. Ironic for you of all people to comment on stubbornness of will."

He shrugged his shoulders, but a cruel smile curled his lips. "I say it only because I heard all the rumours spreading around this place like fire in the wind. It seems he'd rather a mortal girl than you."

Seraphina hissed at him and angled her body away in cold rage. Fiachna knew just where to send his arrows to pierce the sharpest and the deepest. But her reasoning slipped in amidst the anger and formed an idea that quelled her emotions.

"Fiachna," she purred, "there seems to be a common thread tying us together." She rested a hand on his arm and slanted her eyes seductively at him as her fingers trailed up to his shoulder. "What we both want could be achieved if we worked together."

Fiachna did not react to her attempts to mould his mood, but he did grow still as thoughts churned in his mind. She could see he was considering her words with great depth. It was a minute later that he looked at her again with a new light sparked in his eerie eyes.

"My dear Seraphina, you may be right. The solution to your problem is the key to solving my own problem. And thus my solution becomes yours as well. But why do I need you to help me?"

"It appears you plan to use the girl against him, but I see nothing of this scheme of yours in play. Have you succeeded yet? I thought as much. If we act together we can form a plan that actually works. I distract Jareth to get him away from that mortal for enough time that you can sweep her away to wherever you please and kill her."

"Kill her? That's an assumption on your part."

"I'd rather she was dead," Seraphina spat. "That would leave Jareth alive for me and him wounded enough to please you. Am I correct? I refuse to deal with you if you plan to kill him. That isn't what I want."

"You have given this much thought," he said with a bitter laugh. "I also considered this. Better to leave him alive and suffering, but do you forget? Our kind have a powerful weakness, one that plagues him just as much as the rest of us. His heart. If I take the girl's life, he could very well die."

"That's a risk we must take, and I do not think she's dear enough to him for that yet."

Fiachna eyed her with a frown. "You do not realise the depth of their relationship then, Seraphina. I think it very likely. You were not there when he came to defend her." His voice had dropped to almost a whisper, and his eyes grew haunted. "This is a dangerous task no matter what we do for we face the wrath of the Goblin King. Do not think he will stand by and let it happen without a fight. Even if we succeed in taking her life, he will seek revenge. If he comes for me, I will kill him. Whether you wish it or not."

Seraphina pondered his words and the emotions behind them. She desired to make a deal with the mage to get what she wanted, but their desires were two different things, and she was willing to betray him for Jareth's sake. This could work out in her favour better than she ever expected. Jareth surely would try to take revenge on Fiachna who would fight for his life, but she could intervene to help the Goblin King and so claim a debt or affection for her efforts. Then the Raven Mage would be gone along with the truth of her allegiances.

"Yes. It is a risk worth taking. I am willing," she said. She was practised at lies and deceit, and Fiachna was too blinded by his bitterness to see through her intentions. "What is your first move?"

"Well, now that that is settled," he said with a pleased smirk. "It's a known fact that you cannot properly distract him, so I will do that part and you will capture the mortal."

"This is the best karaoke I've ever heard."

"What?" Jareth's face was bathed in pale light enough to see his expressions. His was flummoxed.

"Oh, something from my world. Don't worry about it," she said hastily. She didn't feel like explaining something like that right now when everything was so lovely and tranquil.

"Such curious things," he said.

Had he gotten closer again? His voice sounded somewhere just over her shoulder. He moved without sound and startled her half the time. And he never was moving away from her: always closer.

What if it's like New Year's Eve for them and their traditions? A kiss. Stop Sarah! Don't go there...

"Seraphina made it sound like you two were...together...before."

As soon as she said it, she regretted it. Was now really a good time to ruin the mood by talking about that woman?

Jareth made an indignant sound in his throat. Yes, he certainly was close. She could almost feel his looming presence hovering just behind.

"That woman only wishes it, but I wouldn't go near that creature even if it meant my life," he said. "Does anyone willingly cast themselves into the web of a spider? Besides, I'm no fly to be ensnared by her but rather an owl to hunt her."

Sarah shuddered.

A feather-light touch grazed her bare shoulder. "Why, are you jealous, Sarah?"

She shuddered again but on account of something more. "N-no! I just thought maybe you parted ways as lovers and that's why you isolated yourself." I wasn't jealous because I assumed there wasn't anything between them. But...I would have been if there had. Oh no. Oh no, no, no...What have you done, Sarah?

She knew she was highly attracted to him from the very start. No question there. But she thought that was all there was, being attracted to his obvious appeal and strikingly handsome features. Lately though, she recognised the familiar swell of her heart and the anticipation before he arrived in the same room. She had been fighting it from the start, but what if she didn't? Her excuses were stricken away one by one until now when there was nothing to hold onto anymore.

It was fear. Fear of leaving everything behind to choose him. Maybe she could visit home, maybe not. Beloved friends and family waited back there in the Aboveground, some she'd known all her life, and it frightened her to think of having to make a choice. They would become her past. And Jareth…

Jareth actually gave a curt laugh. "Not one of these Fey can claim any such thing. That certainly wasn't why." His fingers pushed aside some of her dark waves of hair from her pale throat, but she still stayed facing the lake.

"Was it because of your parents?" she said softly.

His fingers lifted away from her hair. "Ètaìn. What did she tell you?"

"Not much at all really. She just said they were gone. She didn't want to make you angry by saying too much."

"Yes," he said solemnly, "they are gone. They both died over four hundred years ago, but the story is one I will not tell."

"I'm sorry for bringing it up." She wanted to turn and see his face, but she was afraid of what might happen if she did. Although he'd removed his hand from her soft locks of hair, he still stood close. In fact, he moved even nearer so that she could feel his warmth radiating on her back. Her pulse raced in her throat.

"Don't be sorry, Sarah," he said with a lighter tone.

For an instant she caught the strains of a haunting melody floating out from the palace. From the few lines she could make out, it sounded like a tragic love story.

"You sang to me when I was here before," she said with a new thought. "But I haven't once you heard you sing this time. It makes me worry that I've put too much of a burden on you with all the stuff that's happened with...well, you know."

She felt his warm breath faintly hit her skin when he sighed deeply. "I spoke rashly when you first arrived. You're never too much of a burden, so don't think such nonsense." His apologetic tone was rather non-apologetic sounding compared to most, but he did treat everything with such aplomb. "Would you like me to sing for you?"

"Oh, I didn't mean—"

"You didn't?"

She frowned. That reminded her of their very first encounter in her parents' bedroom when he burst through the windows as an owl and transformed before her eyes. She heard his silver coat rustle as he put slightly more space between them.

And then he began to sing in a quiet voice that thrummed bewitchingly in her ears.

No one can blame you,

for walking away.

Too much rejection,

no love injection.

But down in the underground,

you'll find someone true.

Down in the underground,

a land serene, a crystal moon.

When he stopped, she opened her eyes and stared at the moonlit waters with an ache in her heart. Those words. They found a deep place in her heart where old wounds lay as scars. Did Jareth know about what happened to her with her mother or with Christopher? The words he sang fit so well that it sort of frightened her.

"My mom left when I was still a kid. She wasn't ever mean to me, but she was pretty caught up in a life I wasn't a part of. All the time she talked about her career, how her fans adored her, and making it big on the stage. I got left behind." She fingered some of the thin material of her gown between her fingers as she told him the tragic tale. She just needed to let him know. "When she left, I hardly ever saw her again. I realised then that she cared more about being a dancer and an actress than about her daughter. She might love me, but she got caught up in the glamour of it all. As a kid, that broke my heart."

There it was out in the open. Her closest friend Amber was the only one she'd really talked about it with, but it felt such a relief to loose it from her soul.

"I know it might sound silly since a lot of people have had someone do something like that, but it really left me broken. Rejected. That song you sang wasn't just some song to me. I just needed you to know."

A long spell of silence passed between them. It felt as though a weight was off her shoulders.

Jareth finally spoke. "It doesn't sound silly, as you put it. Broken dreams and broken hearts are never trivial. And, as a matter of fact, that was something I sang for you once when I first knew you, although you didn't hear it at the time."

"What?! For me. When I was in the labyrinth?"

"No, when I first knew you. You see...when you made the wish, it wasn't the first time I'd seen you."

Sarah couldn't help it. She spun around to face him and found him rather close. She had to tilt her head back a bit to meet his eyes. The pale shades of his clothes glowed so very faintly in the light. His head was crowned with stars, and the moonlight glimmered in his eyes.

He was more dangerous in this moment than he ever had been sending the cleaners, the goblin army, or the giant steel goblin machine. Much more dangerous.

"Wait a minute, what does that mean? Were you spying on me? For how long?"

"Of a sort," he said with a quirk of his lips. "I stumbled upon you one day in that park of yours and found you quite intriguing. On occasion I would return to see you because there was something about you, something that ensnared me so that I would never be free. Such a sad love deep in your eyes..."

He reached out to gently touch her face. She didn't pull away.

"I was too rash," he continued after letting his hand fall back to his side. "I offered you something you did not yet understand." A grim smirk barely diminished the impassiveness of his face. "Perhaps your impetuous youth had some effect on me after all."

"No, I didn't really understand, but I knew that it was choosing Toby or...choosing you. Why did you make me choose like that?"

"Make you?" he scoffed. "You wanted me to be the villain, Sarah, and so I was."

That she couldn't deny, and she lowered her head with the weight of it.

"In that dream, as soon as you pushed away and as soon as you broke out of it, I knew...I knew I'd lost you."

The ache in her heart was growing even though the way he said everything was like stating simple facts. She raised her head and said, "But you still tried again in those last moments when it was just you and me."

"Of course I did, Sarah. Even with such a great challenge presented to you, you still pressed forward and never gave up. But you're not the only one who doesn't like to give up even when it all seems hopeless."

The more the Goblin King said, the more she began to tremble. This was the most forthright they had ever been and it terrified and thrilled her all at once. She backed away a few steps and turned around to clear her head in false hope that her heart would calm down instead of trying to beat out of her chest.

But there he was just behind her again, this time placing a hand on her waist and leaning in by her ear. Her breath hitched.

"Your dreams...they're shifting," he whispered. "I can sense it even this moment."

Jareth was right. He was too right.

His nose brushed her ear as he leaned back. The hand on her waist slowly brought her around till she was facing him once more. She was under his power yet again, but this time she didn't try to stop it. They gazed long into one another's eyes with the stars shining bright above them until Jareth couldn't wait another moment. He gradually bent his head.

She could feel her whole body trembling. She knew what was about to happen.

But it didn't.

Jareth recoiled with an angry cry of pain.

NOTE: *silence*

Before you hunt me down, I shall try to update sooner than usual so it's not quite so evil of a cliffhanger ;)

So...what do you guys think? All that build up is finally breaking through eh?