Daggers of Ice

Chapter 3

Cair Paravel.

Edmund.

Those eyes, cold and dark – too green, too hard. Too familiar.

He would know those eyes anywhere; for they had haunted his dreams for years even after the Battle of Beruna.

It was the same colour but between one moment and the next they had changed. And somehow he knew it was no longer Arianna of Charn looking out at him from behind those eyes.

Jadis...

He'd felt the shift and he'd moved without thinking, his sword back at her throat in a fluid motion. He knew it was the White Witch looking at him, it was her laugh that had left lips with too much colour to be hers. The steel kissed her neck, like the gentlest touch of a lover.

His siblings had not yet moved.

She did not stiffen in fright, merely looked up at him calmly through those long lashes. His heart pounded in his chest, heavy and loud and the hand that gripped the hilt of his sword trembled ever so slightly. "What do you want, witch?"

"I could make you a king Edmund, a true king," her voice was a whisper, enveloping him like a lover. He would not fall for it a second time; he would never fall for it again. She was a fool to think otherwise. But that voice touched something deep within him and his grip of her bare shoulder tightened. In the back of his mind it only barely registered that her skin was cold, far too cold. "Join me once more; be my King. Lead my army like you were born to do." That smooth voice sought to enrapture him; tangling him in her web of deception.

There was no doubt in his mind that it was Jadis who spoke to him, though he did not know how. The witch was dead; he had seen her die himself. Aslan had bested her. "My place is here," the words were so easy to speak and he watched as a trickle of blood dripped down her collarbone. He knew that without a doubt that more blood would be spilt.

Her emerald eyes did not harden in anger, as he'd expected them to. Instead she laughed once more. "You are a fool, Edmund Pevensie. But you will be my fool."

...

Arianna.

Arianna's fists clenched by her sides, glaring at the almost-mirror before her – icicles fanning inwards over the transparent wall. There was nothing else in the darkness but the creeping fog that clung to her feet, standing on nothing but a thin layer on ice that seemed as corporeal as sunlight, the water churning beneath. As deep as any ocean, the waters swirled, echoing the turmoil within.

It was not her own reflection she saw within the icy depths of the mirror; no, it was a woman of tall and unearthly beauty, so much more than her. The woman was over seven feet tall – as all royalty of Charn was said to be, with the blood of giants coursing through their veins. With skin as pale as paper, and hair the colour of starlight, the woman looked as if she had been stripped of all colour save for the emerald that burnt in her eyes. She was ethereal, an enchanting kind of beauty – the kind that caused all reason to leave one's mind. The kind that caused men to do whatever she bid.

And all her burning disappointment was pointed at Arianna.

"You have failed me, Arianna," her voice held none of its false warmth, her eyes as icy as the season she held dominion over. And with her crown of glittering ice and pristine white gown, it was obvious to Arianna as to why the woman had been named the White Witch, even if the name was a little unimaginative.

You are cold. You are ice.

But she did not let that icy tone affect her; she merely shrugged her shoulders. If she were a weapon, she would be a useful one. "Your memories of him are not correct." She did not need to elaborate, for she had been taught to think as Jadis herself did; and the witch certainly did not misinterpret her, for rage flashed through those emerald eyes.