𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 || Narnia x The Hunger Games Crossover

Chapter Twenty-Three

Peter stumbled, Lucy's dagger trembling outstretched in bony fingers as his longsword flashed into the air.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

But the blow never came.

She blinked, a pair of black boots flickering in the fire's glow mere strides away, unmoving, and she followed them slowly up the rest of the boy's figure, every inch of his body braced for attack but frozen, chest heaving.

And falteringly, almost as if caught in a trance, he lowered his sword.

She stared wide-eyed.

From the other side of the fire, a girl shouted "Peter!"

He didn't move.

His eyes flicked over Lucy, then into the darkness behind her.

Aravis' desperate gurgling breaths rasped through the air and through Lucy's blood as Edmund murmured something she couldn't quite hear.

She didn't dare look back.

The violent orange glow of the fire edged Peter's disheveled golden hair like a halo, sweat dripping down his throat as he stared at her, blue eyes glinting yellow. And then he shook his head distantly and slumped with a heavy sigh, as if giving in under some great weight.

At last, he breathed "Get out of here."

Lucy's brain stuttered. "What?"

He opened his mouth and shut it again as if chiding himself, brows twitching against some invisible force, that handsome face that had gloried in the Capitol's adoration now plagued with a fierce and harrowing conflict.

"It's okay," breathed Edmund from the shadows as another sickening breath rasped in answer, his rushed and desperate tone almost unrecognizable from the boy she knew as Edmund Alexander Warren. "It's okay."

Lucy's stomach flipped, reality spinning, tilting off-kilter.

Peter shook his head again as if to clear it. "I'm not going to fight you."

A cannon boomed and Lucy jumped.

The ragged night went silent.

"Hey!" snapped another voice beyond the fire. "Whose side are you on?"

Lucy glanced past Peter to Rhince storming out from the archway, shoulder bloody and bound in tight, crimson rags, but his sword flashed in both hands, gleaming white hot against the blaze.

And still, Peter stood firm, unmoving.

"Go," he said, urgency strengthening his command, "I can't give you all the time in the world."

Lucy swallowed, uncomprehending, and then a set of strong arms gripped her from behind and hauled her up by the waist, pulling her back into the shadows.

"Go, run!" shouted Edmund in her ear as he shoved her down the corridor she'd first taken to escape the careers with Aravis, her own feet stumbling beneath her as she threw herself into the echoing darkness in spite of fresh pain stabbing up from her calf into her thigh.

She glanced back only once, back into the fire as Rhince brought his sword crashing down into Peter's defense, and a crumpled figure flickered amidst a spreading dark pool just on the other side of the pillar, Aravis' frizzy hair catching the light as Lucy tore her gaze away and bolted into the night.

Footsteps clapped to her left, and then she veered to the right and every other noise grew distant, head spinning, muffled shouts breaking through the haze with another clash, running only for fear of pitching over onto her knees.