Daggers of Ice

Chapter 2

Cair Paravel.

Edmund.

Edmund did not take his eyes away from the woman. No, it was almost as if he could not look away from those enchanting emerald eyes.

Too deep. To green.

She sat in silence, watching him back.

She'd not said a word since she'd awoken. Not even when she'd come to, bound to a chair with a sword pressed to the base of her throat.

Arianna of Charn.

He'd had to knock her out to carry her inside, for he had known she would not be taken without a fight. He'd kept one of his knights posted outside him chamber door and had sent another for his siblings as she'd stared him down. Righteous fury burning in her eyes.

But the door had opened, and it was as if a mask had slid into place, all emotions gone.

He could not tell what sinister thoughts lay behind those beautiful eyes as they'd fixated upon Peter, barely sparing his sisters a glance.

He could see Lucy assessing the young woman, Peter looked wary. Susan worried, though if it was at the woman before them or at the fact she was missing her own party, Edmund could not tell.

Arianna of Charn, if indeed that was her name, looked to be no older than he. But such a thing was not possible. For in the years since the White Witch's defeat they'd had but a few problems with her followers, but none had stepped up to her mantle and claimed to be of the same ilk as she. He'd heard no whispers of this Arianna of Charn.

Her army had fallen apart, crumbled to the wind like her sceptre.

Why would she wait so long before making her appearance?

But...

Something tugged inside him. Had she been the one ordering the raids on the northern villages? The new tactics? The disappearances? Was it to she the naiads had gone?

Surely not.

He would have heard something.

Anything.

"Why have you come here?" Peter's voice cut through the silence of the room, his lion mask long discarded. His eyes, which females often likened to the colour of the sky on a warm summers day, were hard. He was no longer the frivolous man of twenty-four who flirted with the court ladies as if it were a game. He was stern, regal. The embodiment of power. The High King in all his glory.

Edmund almost snorted.

Her laughter was a lovely sound, like the tinkling of bells, running through his mind like music and quite unexpected. And maybe she knew the effect it had, for the smirk that marked her lips seemed to be aimed directly at him.

Maybe it had been a mistake to bring her to his chambers.

It was far too easy to imagine her lounged across his bed with nothing but his sheets and her lustrous curls to cover her.

He glowered.

Where had those thoughts come from?

"I simply wanted to attend one of Queen Susan's famous parties," emerald eyes glinted and Edmund pressed the point of his sword into her throat a little harder, though he'd wanted to throttle her, he knew he should not get too close to her.

"Do not lie."

Another smirk. "It was no lie, King Edmund." She said his title like an insult. "I did not receive an invitation, but I wanted to come."