𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 || Narnia x The Hunger Games Crossover

Chapter Twenty-Five

By the time Lucy stepped back out onto open rock, the sky had turned grey and the faintest tinge of pink edged the horizon at her back.

She let out a deep breath, long since having regained control of her face, though it still burned raw as her breaths rasped from exertion. She'd taken a long and winding detour to come out a bit further south than where they'd entered the sparse forest, and now she pressed out over the crags stretching bare before her, glancing around as her flesh pricked on high alert.

Alone.

Exposed.

She hadn't been alone since… before she'd found Eustace and Jill.

The cameras must be on her, now. Even absent of action or conversation, anything she did now would be noteworthy. Because she was alive. Because she'd outlasted seventeen other tributes who might have taken her place.

Lucy Pevensie, a Hunger Games finalist.

Who ever would have guessed it?

"The Capitol will see once we get into the arena."

She faltered and almost tripped as Caspian's soft voice crashed unbidden into her mind.

"Since I'm the one who's actually seen her in training, I must claim to know better than anyone here that you can't just go by the numbers."

Lucy swallowed hard and shook her head.

No, she didn't need to think about him now. She didn't need to think of that smile under dazzling stage lights. She didn't need to imagine the Capitol's reaction to the final confrontation digging itself like cut crystal into her brain.

But holding back thoughts of Caspian Telmar felt like holding back a churning sea behind a single sheet of cracking glass.

Even as she launched herself up hills of jagged stone, her feet still ached to turn and run straight back to him.

No.

No, don't you dare, Lucy Pevensie.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Stupid boy and stupid black eyes and stupid impossible promises.

The sun rose and pierced the mist, and the stone sizzled beneath Lucy's feet as the back of her throat scratched dry, but she hesitated to pull the water bottle from her pocket, pressing on for nearly another hour before giving in and downing the last lukewarm drop sloshing inside. The very last dregs of water in the whole of the arena, save for the valley now rising up ahead.

She'd just caught the first glimpse of green beyond the edge of the cliff when movement flickered in the corner of her eye and she ducked behind a low, stony ridge, heart skipping a beat as her hand flew up to her bow.

She froze. Waiting. Silent.

She hardly dared to breathe.

But no noise indicated that she'd been spotted. No shout or clatter of stone came from beyond her hiding place.

And at last she dared to peek, edging the barest half-inch out into the open, holding her fiery hair back from the world of grey.

A single figure moved a long way off, climbing across the uneven landscape in the direction of the valley, and Lucy breathed a low sigh when she recognized the glint of wavy dark hair and the squarish silhouette of broad shoulders and body armor.

Rabadash.

Not Caspian.

He must not have seen her.