With Courage [King Caspian X OC]

Chapter 24

As much as Amber disliked being metaphorically chained to the island's shore, she disliked the thought of being chained to the ship even more.

And so when Caspian asked her to remain on the beach near the longboats while a party of sailors went to investigate their surroundings, she agreed without arguing. She would never admit it to his face, but she was hoping to avoid a second kidnapping, no matter what he thought of her recklessness in Narrowhaven.

With her new sketchbook in hand, she found a pocket of chilled shade beneath a tree straddling the line between the sand and grass and sat, removing the pencil tucked into her hair. The island was beautiful but haunting, eerie in the silence. She sketched the view beyond the border she had been expressly asked not to cross: unnatural conical trees, rising like smoke spirals into the rose-hued night. The curve of a hill in the distance. Faint patterns in the grass, too faraway to deign any meaning from.

Her frustrations from the morning continued. Nothing quite looked how she intended it to, though it was hard to know if the issue was her or her subject. After all, it was a magical island. Could a human really capture the essence of such a place in the same way she felt it, twisting in the breeze around her?

She paused. The shadow against her page had grown suddenly darker, though the sun still winked through the gaps in the hedges. She turned and let out a string of curses that drew several raised eyebrows across the beach, and one especially delighted grin behind her.

"Am I really that terrible to look at?" Caspian asked, as casual as if they were discussing the weather.

"Yes." She answered forcefully, her hand pressed against her heart. "If anything that was an underreaction. What are you creeping around for?"

He moved to sit beside her – without invitation, though she stopped herself from commenting on that – and tried to take another look at her sketchbook. She held it against her chest protectively and scowled.

"I was watching you work."

"You could've asked to join me instead of," she threw out a hand and gestured vaguely to the space behind her where he had been, trying to inject calm into her voice, "looming."

"Alright. Can I watch you draw?"

"Absolutely not."

"And that's why I didn't ask."

She huffed in annoyance. It wasn't as if she were genuinely frustrated by him – only that she was annoyed generally at the universe, and as an inhabitant of that universe, Caspian was not free from catching her wayward anger. Nobody had ever asked to watch her draw before. It wasn't a situation she had had the opportunity to develop feelings about.

But if he were to watch her draw, she would prefer it to happen when her hand and her brain worked in tandem – an experience she had yet to have since Caspian gifted her the sketchbook from Narrowhaven only a week ago.

His tone grew earnest. "Is everything alright?"

"I'm fine." She batted his question away, almost taking his eye out with the pencil wedged between her fingers. He was, unsurprisingly, not convinced by her answer.

"You know," he shuffled an inch closer, "as your Captain, it's my responsibility to solve any issues you might be having."

She squinted. "I thought Drinian was the Captain?"

"If you'd prefer his company, I'll go fetch him." With a shrug and a sigh, he moved to stand up.

"No!" Amber cried, grabbing his arm in a vice grip until he sat beside her again, now with a smug grin. They looked ahead to where Drinian stood with his trademark scowl beside the longboats, ordering sailors to and from the beach with a silence that she had convinced herself was a terrifying sort of telepathy, then back to each other. "Not fair."