With Courage [King Caspian X OC]

Chapter 28

Caspian figured he envied the Blue Star in a peculiar sort of way.

When they had first spied it, glimmering so perfectly against the dusty blue of morning, it had renewed his crew in a way his words simply couldn't. Perhaps, he thought idly, its magical quantities extended beyond its directional purposes. Back on Dragon Island, he had watched the sailors load the ship and prepare the sails with a newfound energy he hadn't seen since their original departure from Lille Guia's port.

It had made him feel stronger too, though maybe that was due to the woman in his arms at the time.

By the time they eventually met Llilandil his mind was already occupied, otherwise he might have asked if she herself had bestowed upon them the energy that saw them to Ramandu's Island. Did she exact her influence over his men or was it simply hope that carried them there?

It was best not to know, he concluded.

On the morning of Amber's return, not that he was aware of it, Caspian woke with an ache. He didn't dream often, but when he did, it was always of her.

He asked his staff for some peace. A breakfast was brought to his room and left by the window with a curtsy. On days like these they never met his eye, though he had never been brave enough to ask why. What did they find in his eyes that repelled them so? He would never find out himself. The mirror avoided him too.

Once the footsteps had disappeared from behind his door he lay in bed and took in the slice of sunlight that filtered in between heavy curtains, how it refracted off the pitcher of water that had been left him, a technicolour prism like shattered glass across the floor. He imagined it moving. A delicate web of gold rolling over the walls and the furniture as the floor beneath him rocked softly. He heard the hush of a calm sea. Laughter like a knife in his chest.

Reality blurred.

Amber appeared before him, stood in his office like it belonged to her, squinting as the light slid over her with every crest of a wave. He remembered how those veins of gold traced her like something shattered and repaired; each crack and splinter brought back together with starlight. He followed it over the curve of her nose, through the scrunched concentration of her brow. It ran across the tendons in her throat, lined her knuckles as she readjusted her grip on the blade.

What he would give to follow that same path with his hands... A luckless fool searching for some unknowable treasure at the end of a rainbow. His fingers twitched.

She smiled at him – slanted, sideways. Not up. A distinction he knew to pay attention to.

A fissure of light glimmered against her mouth. He wanted to trace it with his.

"Are we fighting or daydreaming?" She teased.

It was the early evening. They had left Dragon Island that morning after the Blue Star had finally deigned to make an appearance. Eustace was powering the Dawn Treader forward with untoward speed. Everywhere he went the crew was jittery with anticipation, talking louder and acting out in an attempt to expel their excess energy, to slow down the fraying of their nerves as Ramandu's Island began to come together on the horizon.

Amber found him in the bowels of the ship, also escaping the strange energy above, and gave him an unnaturally nervous smile. "Fancy another lesson? It's been a while, I don't want to get rusty." There was tension pinched in the corner of her eyes, buried in the crease of her mouth. He heard it in her words too, the beat of her question. Caspian had no memory of learning the melody of her voice, only the knowledge that he knew it well enough now to pick out the discordant notes.