Daggers of Ice

Chapter 8

The Northern Lands.

Edmund.

He was aware of the change the moment her nails dug into his chest, claw-like and demanding.

No longer seeking.

Taking.

"Yes," her voice was a cat-like purr, murmured between their lips, self-satisfied and dark. He thrust away, stumbling slightly. The warmth that had suffused through his body was replaced with ice when he looked into those emerald eyes, half-lidded with desire. "Come back to me, Edmund."

His mouth opened. And then closed.

He could find no words.

No words to express the bile that threatened to rise.

No words to express the way his stomach had dropped.

Jadis.

"It's me you want, not her," her voice was a whisper, eyes darkening even more as the storm clouds rolled in. "That pull you feel. It's not Arianna. I can give you the world, Edmund."

"I don't want the world."

Liar.

"Don't you?" She stepped closer to him, her hips swaying, raising her arms as if to embrace him once more. Those lovely rosebud lips, flushed and bruised, turned upwards in that cruel smirk that he had not seen for many years. For eleven years. "You wouldn't have to answer to anyone."

It was as if the witch could see into his very soul.

"Through Arianna, I can give you the world. You could be our king."

Our king.

No.

...

Arianna.

"I had it under control," Arianna growled, almost glaring at the ice-mirror before her.

Jadis seethed.

The White Witch's hands were clenched into the folds of her white gown, white-knuckled, her lips curled back.

She was livid.

But Arianna was not afraid.

Warmth had filled her. Yes, that was what had given Jadis control, but she had felt.

She had not been ice.

Nor had she been cold.

And warmth had filled every fibre of her being.

"You had nothing under control!" Emerald eyes, so like her own, bore into her. "You forget, Arianna; you chose this."

Yes.

She had.

At the tender age of eight when she would have done anything to make Jadis happy. Perhaps she would not have agreed if she had truly understood what Jadis had been asking of her. Of herself and of others.

Perhaps then Myria would not have died.

Perhaps she could have been with Edmund.

Perhaps no one would have sheltered the northerners.

Perhaps no one would have listened to their plight.

Perhaps she would choose the same again.

"Your little pet's death is regrettable." There was nothing sincere in her cold tone. Jadis did not understand friendship; there was nothing where her heart had once been for her to feel what one needed for friendship. The witch was unable to feel. "I thought I taught you better. It is why you make no ties."

It was what Arianna had always struggled with.

Don't feel.

You are cold.

You are ice.

She paced before the mirror, the mist ever-swirling, wondering if her body had collapsed upon the snow or if Edmund held her still.

Her eyes hardened, turning back to Jadis. It would have been better for all had the sorceress never saved her life. She should have left her in the enchanted sleep.

Then Narnia would have been rid of the White Witch when she had been defeated at the Battle of Beruna by the Great Lion.

For Arianna had never been able to say no to the woman who had raised her; for so long she had done everything in her power to please the woman. She had become her weapon.

No longer.

"Then why is it you wish to make Edmund your King?"

Jadis did not share.

She watched with satisfaction as surprise flickered across the witch's pale, timeless face. And pale lips curled backwards, and Arianna could see why the giants had been so scared of her. "It is not I who is failing. You cannot even kill a King."

She could practically see the thoughts calculating behind the witch's eyes, for in that moment she had no true sense of them. But she could guess. In Jadis's eyes her plan had failed; she had gone to Cair Paravel to rouse the interest of High King Peter, to seduce him. To have him follow her back to her wintery lands, where it would have been easy to slide her dagger between his ribs and disappear into the night.

And with their High King dead, the Narnians would have gone into mourning. Confused and adrift, their great country would have been easy for the picking with the forces that Arianna had amassed.

That had been Jadis's plan.

A plan which had depended on Edmund's absence.

And she had felt the shift in Jadis's attention the moment she had seen him, and she had panicked.

So Arianna had improvised.

For the good of all.

She never would have been able to seduce Peter.

"You will not fail me," the witch snarled. "You will not."

But Arianna did not reply as she felt herself coming to.