Liora's voice rose clear and mellow over the softly played chords of the piano as Jareth took Sarah by the hand and led her to the center of the crowd.

" …The wild, the free,
I'll be all that you need,
But just don't leave me behind.

The one to kneel,
the heart under your heel,
Darling, you know I wouldn't mind…"

The words seemed designed to sear her heart, a half-focused imitation of the words Jareth had once pleaded with her. So much so that Sarah cast a glance at Liora to see if she was singing them specifically for her benefit. But Liora's gaze was fixed firmly on Roswen, draped over the piano in sparkling white silk. She was beaming up at Liora with every word sung, her enraptured giggles shaking her frame. The blushing Bride of the Decennial.

Sarah looked away, focusing on the lapels of Jareth's jacket instead, and as he wound his arm around her waist, she let herself be pulled in closer than they'd ever dared before. No chaste distance between them this time, only the emotional one she was desperately trying to build around herself.

"Don't you know already, it makes me crazy,
to see you in the arms of another?
Don't you know already?"

Sarah flinched, unintentionally manifesting images of Jareth undoing the sparkling laces cinched tight around Roswen's waist—

Stop thinking about it!

She forced away the images of him and Roswen, lest he read them on her face, and raised her gaze to his, steadfastly. Her grip was tight on his shoulder, her back stiff, and she knew he read the tension in her posture as a soothing hand squeezed hers.

He set them into a gentle sway, every slight touch they'd shared sitting so heavy between them that Sarah thought she might suffocate.

"Are we still enemies, Sarah?"

The question made her miss a step, nearly standing on his foot.

She shook her head, grateful when he made her fumble into an elegant turn.

"I thought we were friends," she replied with a half-shrug.

Admittedly friends was a bit of a stretch, considering the handful of times they'd seen each other since she'd defeated his Labyrinth and dashed his propositions on the rocks, but there wasn't any other term that comfortably fit their cadence of star-crossed strangers.

Not currently anyway.

Jareth hummed around a tight smile, and she felt his fingers flex briefly where they held her by the waist.

"Wouldn't a friend tell me what was on her mind?"

Sarah squirmed internally, hating to be so easily picked apart.

"Nothing's on my mind."

His goading smile broke into a grin.

"Nothing?" He hugged her tighter, his hand splayed over her lower back, and lowered her in a dip towards the floor. "Not even the man with his arms around you?" He clicked his tongue in faux disappointment. "I forgot how cruel you can be."

Sarah managed to roll her eyes, as he brought her back up.

"I forgot how fragile your feelings are."

"Ah, there's that cutting tongue I've missed so much," Jareth chuckled, and Sarah suppressed a smirk, a minute amount of warmth breaking across the frigid ice around her heart.

"You missed my tongue?"

Jareth's eyes sparkled, his lips pulling back into a hungry grin.

"Dreadfully," he answered, then lowered his voice to a whisper. "Though admittedly I don't know it as well as I'd like to."

"Well, you'll just have to stay unacquainted," she cut back as a flare of bitterness renewed her confidence. "I don't play second fiddle."

Another slow spin brought them closer still, his cheek grazing hers, his words in her ear.

"You are second to no one, Champion."

She turned her head, her nose grazing his. The rise and fall of his lungs as he breathed low became a swell of pressure against her chest.

"Is this real, Jareth?" she asked, keeping her eyes off Liora and Roswen, but only just. "Or are you trying to trap me again?"

A tight twitch of a smile tugged at the corner of Jareth's mouth. He let out a slow sigh that intimated she'd hit a nerve she hadn't intended to.

He leaned in, no longer dancing, still in a sea of movement.

"What if it was a trap?" he asked, his mismatched gaze pinned her further, and Sarah felt the moment her pupils dilated brazenly, but couldn't look away. "Would you break free this time?"

Sarah studied him for several heartbeats, searching for the truth on the sharp planes of his face, almost wishing this was all just some elaborate trick to force her hand.

Jareth returned her stare, letting himself be scrutinized, and Sarah offered him a smile, unaware of how miserable it looked.

It wasn't a trick; no half-eaten peaches to tumble her into a ballroom with no escape… and she didn't find any solace in that fact.

"No," she whispered, skin feverish from the admission she hadn't intended to make tonight.

The hand at her back loosed its hold, and she thought he was about to pull away into the crowd until he wrapped his fingers around her hand that was splayed over his shoulder.

"...No?"

Looking just as somber as she felt, he tucked her hand against his chest. Shivering with tension, she tilted her head ever so slightly as his other hand brushed back a lock of hair from her face, coming to rest along her jawline. Inching closer with soft touches and heavy breathing. His lips grazed hers.

She closed her eyes—

And the music changed. No longer the tinkling piano notes and Liora's melodic voice, but a clamoring crash of percussion, paired with a thick baseline that seemed to shake the floor as the crowd turned into a riot of cheering.

"Dance for the Decennial! Dance the Magic Dance!"

Sarah glanced back, catching the moment Liora and Roswen slipped into the sudden frenzy, twirling in each other's arms ecstatically.

As she looked back Jareth was dragged deeper into the crowd, his hand squeezing hers before they were pulled apart, offering her a conspiratorial smile before disappearing into the glittering mass.

Her heart twinged but only briefly, the crushing weight of the moment falling from her shoulders with a thud as she found herself tangled in amongst goblins, Tojî and Yâlda's arms wrapped her shoulders, jumping to the beat and forcing her into just as much of a graceless romp, the festively charged hordes drawing her in.

She briefly caught sight of Jareth, grinning wide as he danced with Köliadâ, a goblin with graying curls at her temples, accentuated by silver ropes woven into thick locks spilling down her glittering black dress.

He let her lead, laughing as she spun him artlessly into another goblin before the throng obscured Sarah's vision.

It was three more songs of riotous tempo and exhausting jostling from one enthusiastic dance partner to another, before she managed to extract herself to the edge of the dancefloor, panting from the crush of bodies.

She took a goblet of wine off a platter and slumped against a pillar, catching sight of Jareth again on the opposite side of the ballroom surrounded by goblins. His eyes met hers, a knowing look electrifying the air between them.

He smiled, and she creased her eyebrows in reply—not understanding the smirk playing across his face—when glittering white silk caught her attention at the corner of her eye. Sarah jolted, realizing she'd come to a stop right next to Liora and Roswen where they were tucked into an alcove, Liora's arm slung companionably around Roswen's petite shoulders.

Sarah blanched as Roswen's dark brown eyes framed by fuchsia pink tones swung her way, her pale skin rouged with glittering blusher. Rose hued lips broke into a grin.

Sarah almost bolted, but a warm hand gently caught her wrist.

"You're The Sarah," Roswen said, smiling wide, sounding delighted.

Sarah stalled, and couldn't help smiling hesitantly back at Roswen's almost awed tone, despite the squirming awkwardness threatening to overturn her stomach.

"I'm definitely 'a' Sarah," she answered and drained her goblet.

Roswen giggled and took something that looked like a crab puff off a passing silver platter, seamlessly handing one to Liora too. "The goblins call you His Sarah."

Sarah stiffened.

"Oh?"

She raised her gaze to where Jareth was surrounded by a mob of goblins, draped around him and almost on top of him as though their human shapes were of little hindrance to their crowding instincts. He was chuckling at whatever joke Lóhri was telling him, and as the punchline hit he let out a guffaw that could be heard on the other side of the ballroom.

Sarah smiled to herself, forgetting she had company for a moment until she realized Roswen was watching her with an expression of unrestrained glee.

"You like him," crowed Roswen as though she'd won a point in this unnamed match, pressing a forefinger into Sarah's arm.

Sarah rolled her eyes, sick of all these fae royals reading her emotions as though they were tattooed on her skin. "We're friends."

Roswen pursed her lips, nodding in insincere agreement, a laugh dancing in her eyes. "Friends," she repeated, somehow making the quotation marks surrounding the word almost deafening.

"That's all," Sarah insisted.

Roswen's smirk threatened to break loose. "Mm."

Sarah glanced at Jareth, her heart skipping straight off a ledge as he met her gaze and winked back at her, his eyes creasing in amusement as she glared at him.

"And you?" Sarah managed once her throat opened enough for words to make it out. "You and he are…?"

Roswen grinned.

"We're friends," she said, but the cadence was amicable. A real 'we're friends' sentiment, without any inflection of pining to sour the edges—the difference between her tone and Sarah's, cavernous—and Sarah felt a shard of dread working its way loose from beneath her skin. Not least because it didn't seem she was the only one Roswen was saying these words to, as Liora's stance behind her softened ever so slightly.

"Just friends," Sarah repeated, managing to sound like she didn't care either way, making room against the pillar as Roswen took the weight off her feet next to her.

"I mean, I could fuck him," Roswen added offhandly, and Sarah blinked at her disarming lack of tact. "And his ego doesn't need me to say that it wouldn't exactly be a hardship."

Liora snorted, as Sarah managed a half-chuckle at the truth of it.

"I'm sure," Sarah acknowledged, and Roswen smirked alongside her.

She nudged Sarah with her elbow.

"You could make love to him though," she said in a pointed whisper, a nonchalant shrug rolling her shoulders, before she disappeared into the crowd, leaving Sarah staring after her.

"She's right, you know?"

Sarah turned and realized Liora was still next to her, her wrist propped on the hilt of her sword. A small amethyst dragon inlaid into the pommel caught the candlelight as she angled herself towards Sarah.

"Nothing is set in stone. Not yet," she murmured, low enough that only Sarah would hear her. "It's only the right words that bind."

"I'm not the one in a wedding dress," Sarah replied flippantly like she had no stake in the game whatsoever. As though her pulse wasn't currently louder than the music,

Liora offered her soft smile—a raised eyebrow making it clear she didn't really think wardrobe held any bearing on the situation at hand —but her eyes slipped from Sarah's face anyway, down the crimson flare of her dress. She tilted her head in consideration before raising her gaze back to Sarah's.

"I disagree," she said softly, before striding off into the crowd after Roswen, her bangles and chainmail tinkling over the goblin ruckus, dark hair swaying across her shoulders.