She screamed, loud and long, praying that someone would hear her. Screaming had never been something she'd done much of, not even when she came across the grizzly bear in the berry bushes the summer she was ten years old or when she'd fallen out of the canoe into the icy river. This was far more terrifying than the encounter with the bear. The lights from the Hall glowed like distant beacons as she was carried further and further from their safety. She struggled, kicking, clawing, biting, and scratching, but her captor's grip remained firm. He merely shifted her weight, carrying her in his arms like a squabbling child. From her new position, she saw again that terrible angelic face and wondered at the wrongness of this. How could beauty be so terrifying? The forrest was around them now, the dark shapes of trees blocking out most of the moonlight under their thick canopy of leaves, but the monstrous angel walked as smoothly as if it were day. She kept struggling to be free, but fear and effort were beginning to exhaust her, and her escape attempts grew weaker and weaker. After a while, she became aware that they were not alone, an awareness that was confirmed when her captor spoke strange sounding words into the darkness and the darkness answered back. Her eyes tried to adjust to the night, but only when they drew close did she see the faces. They were dazzlingly pretty, inhumanly so, but none of them were as terrible as her captor's. He set her down on the soft grass, holding her tightly around the waist. A group of beautiful women hurried up to her as her captor said something in the strange language again. One woman with blonde hair came forward to take her arm and her captor let her go. Immediately, she tried to bolt, but she couldn't. As her heart hammered in a horrified panic, the blonde woman led her through the clearing as the other beautiful women followed. They went into the forrest again, and she realized that the women must be able to see in the dark, for no one stumbled or tripped like she did. To her horror they began taking her clothes off and what hair stilled remained pinned, down. She put up as much of a fight as she could, clutching her shift close until the blonde woman offered her a strange green dress. Seeing the distraction, the other women quickly had her shift from her and the new dress over her head before she could fight them off. Someone tied a belt around her and slipped another dress, a darker green than the first over her head. The dresses fit her perfectly, but how that was possible, she didn't know. Hands were in her hair, combing and braiding it and she smelled flowers and felt a wreath being placed on her head. The women chatted happily as they surveyed their work, but all she felt like doing was crying. The blonde woman took her hand and led her back they way that they had come. A crowd was assembled in the clearing now, a crowd of inhuman beauty dressed all in green. They opened to make a path for her that lead to her captor. She felt dizzy and sick with fear as she was led down the crowd. She was too tired to fight when the blonde woman gently pushed her down onto a stool, to tired to care about the tears that were streaming down her face as her captor tied strands of lilies around her wrists and ankles. Gently, he pulled her to her feet and spoke to her for the first time since kidnapping her.

"Look at me." Despite herself, she did and found that she couldn't look away from those black eyes. Something told her that she should, but she couldn't. It was as if the entire cosmos above them was in those eyes, pulling her very being into them. The strange feeling faded and she looked down to see that the flowery bracelets were gone, replaced by silver stars that now enclosed both her wrists and ankles. The stars glimmered and shone as she turned her wrists this way and that, not noticing that her captor had knelt down and was writing something on top of her bare feet. He rose slowly and took both of her hands in his.

"Stand still." He said and she did. She didn't know why, but she obeyed and couldn't even move when he kissed both of her eyelids and spoke the strange language again. A happy babble broke out, like the crowd assembled around them had been holding their breath. A fiddle and harp began to play and the crowd began to dissipate, dancing off into the clearing. Past bewilderment and terror by now, she stood there shaking from fear and exhaustion. Her captor saw this and picked her up, carrying her off towards the trees.

Lena's eyes flew open as the Daylight Spell released her from sleep, her breath coming in shaky gaps. She felt herself being lifted up and clung to Usan's arm as he held her and stroked her hair.

"It's alright." The elf King murmured. He kept stroking her hair. "You're safe Lena."

Lena felt too miserable to reply. Nearly two months had passed since that night of their wedding, two months since she'd learned that elves and goblins were real and she found herself forced to join their world. As Usan held her, her thought went back to her family and she wondered if they were looking for her. They'd heard of her disappearance from Aunt Catherine by now, but it would take weeks to get from the wilds of Wyoming to England. She let go of Usan's arm and he let her go.

"It's nearly time for the evening meal." He said quietly. "Do you want to go eat with the others?"

She shook her head. All she wanted to do was to stay in the tent and hide. Usan took her hand in his.

"Come and spend time with us." He said and Lena found herself following him out of the tent as her starry shackles sparkled in protest. She wasn't sure how the spell decided what was a reasonable command, but it didn't change the fact that she didn't always have control over her own actions now. Lena couldn't even take her hand from the elf King's as they made their way from the sleeping area under the thickest cover of trees. Elves emerged from the sleeping area or the river where they bathed and joined their king and his wife as they went to break the day's fast. The elf King led Lena to a the base of a small oak tree that had a thick carpet of grass. She sat down and he left to get their food. The happy sounds of elvish chatter was all around her even if she couldn't see the speaker clearly. Maybe her eyes were getting used to the dark, but she missed her sight almost as much as her family. Homesickness welled up inside her until it hurt and Lena shut her eyes in a pathetic attempt to shut out the pain. It didn't work. It never did. By the time Usan returned with some apples, bread, and venison, she was silently sobbing.

"I want to go home!" she whispered, more to herself than to him. She didn't see the elf King's face grimace in pain at her words, but she felt him wrap his arms around her as he sat down. Lena pulled away from him. "Don't tell me it's going to be alright! Don't you dare!" she snapped. A few nearby elves lifted their heads at her angry tone, but she didn't care if they had an audience. The elf King looked upset, though why he should be was beyond her.

"This is your home now." He told her. "I 'd let you go back to the daylight world if I could, but I can't. You're too important." He took some of the bread and pressed it into her hand. "You need to eat Lena. I won't let you starve yourself. Eat."

As her hand torn off a piece of bread and her teeth chewed it, Lena glared at her husband with loathing and her tears became angry ones. When she'd eaten enough to satisfy him, she balled her hands into fists, wishing that the stars would let her strike him. A blonde elf man ran up and made a salute of some kind before rambling off something in elvish. Lena's grasp of the language was small, mainly because she refused to answer when Usan tried to teach her, but she did catch the word for border mentioned several times. From the frown on the elf King's face, the messenger's news was not good. Usan rose and called an elf over to them. Lena recognized Kiba, the older blonde elf woman who had been in charge of preparing her for the wedding. He spoke to her in elvish and Kiba nodded solemnly. "There is some business on our borders that I must take care of." He told his angry wife. "Kiba will keep you company until I return. Follow her instructions as you would mine." The last word were for the stars and Lena shot her new jailer an angry glare in response. The elf woman merely looked passively at her. As the elf King walked off with his lieutenants, Kiba said something to her and Lena found herself getting to her feet. They wandered through the camp with many of the elves calling out greetings as they passed, but Lena felt her mood darken as the twilight faded. A little elf girl ran up to them, looking timidly at Lena with big dark eyes as she hurriedly said something in elvish. Kiba smiled and turned to Lena.

"Lilan ask if you want to play with them. The children send her to ask." She explained in halting English. Lena looked at the little girl, who smiled up at her hopefully from beneath her black was the smile that did it. Lilan offered her hand and Lena let herself be led towards a group of children. None of them spoke English, and so they pantomimed how to play their game, which Lena quickly realized was a version of hide and seek. Lilan became her partner, sticking by her side to help her. As the game went on, Lena actually found herself grinning as she chased and was chased by screaming children. She laughed as she caught her breath, for the first time in two months. Eventually the game ended and the girl disappeared to other activities. Seeing Kiba preoccupied by a conversation with an elf man, Lena snuck into the trees and towards the river. At this time of night, the river was empty, with the elves having already bathed. She made her way along the banks until she came to the curve in the river where the elf King brought her to bathe. Slipping off her slippers, she walked onto the little rocky outcropping and sat, dangling her feet into the cool running water beneath. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend that she was home, sitting by the fishing spot on the Snake River where her parents liked to picnic. Mama. Papa. I miss you. Please find me. She prayed. How long she sat there wishing for home, she didn't know, but a soft hand on her shoulder made Lena jump. She looked up to see the elf King.

"Kiba told me you were down here." He explained softly. He paused. "That place in your thoughts. Is that your home?"

Any other time Lena would have panicked over the revelation that not even her thoughts were her own now, but the homesickness that had eased with the children's game had returned and it clenched her heart so tightly that she couldn't speak. She nodded slowly, her eyes shut as she tried to keep the image fixed in her mind for as long as possible.

Usan sat down next to her. "It is beautiful. I see why you miss it." Hesitantly, he put an arm around her and Lena let him draw her close. It wasn't that she thought any better of the elf King. Right then, all she wanted was the comfort of being held.