Daggers of Ice

Chapter 11

1010.

The Tenth Year of the Golden Age.

Edmund.

A gentle but insistent tug at his sleeve pulled him backward, step by reluctant step, until the vast hall and its cold, watchful eyes receded into shadow. Edmund didn't turn at first. He let himself be drawn, his gaze locked on the faces that followed him: wolves, dwarves and half-blooded things whose eyes had gleamed with curiosity, burned.

Scorn.
Loathing.

All of it aimed squarely at him.

He had faced down legions before, but that quiet, seething hatred unsettled him more than a line of drawn blades. It was personal. Collective. As if every creature in that room held him responsible for something far older than his reign.

And then the great iron-bound door swung shut with a low, echoing boom.

The last thing he saw before it closed was the wolf-man – the same towering creature who had been with her at Cair Paravel – kneeling before Arianna, holding out the daggers with both hands. The sight was almost reverent.

Then the door sealed, cutting off the light and the low murmur of her court.

A heavy silence followed.

The hand on his arm – small, cool, and oddly strong – tugged again. He looked down to see the dryad who had clearly been chosen to attend him. She moved like a breeze trapped in mortal form, her bare feet soundless against the frost-slick stone.

He had seen dryads before, hundreds across Narnia's woods and gardens: green-blooming, warm, filled with song. But the one before him... was different.

Her skin held no spring hue. It was pale as birch bark, faintly luminescent beneath the torchlight. Her eyes, a delicate violet, caught the gleam of every flickering flame as though they remembered spring but no longer belonged to it. Around her hands and brow shimmered faint traces of gold and green pigment; remnants of the sap that once bound her spirit to a tree. But the leaves tangled in her curls were dry and brown, brittle with age.

The flowers in her hair matches the hue of her eyes.

What kind of tree had birthed her?
What kind of winter had claimed her roots?

"Come," she murmured, voice like a soft wind rustling through a dying grove. "Our queen said you are to be housed in the upper quarters."

He followed, the air thickening with the cold scent of stone and pine. The stair they climbed wound upward in a long, slow spiral, frost glittering along the edges like delicate filigree.

As they ascended, he could feel the pulse of the Keep around him: faint, steady, alive. Magic lived in the walls. Not the chaotic sorcery of Jadis, but far different, something tethered to the bones of winter itself.

He exhaled.
"She doesn't trust me," he murmured, half to himself.

The dryad didn't turn, but he caught the faintest hint of a smile ghosting across her lips. "Of course not," she said softly.

And then she led him higher: past the wolf-engraved archways, past the narrow windows that looked out upon a world of unending snow – until the sound of his own heartbeat was the only warmth that remained.

Then the delicate, shimmering hands pressed against the dark oak door, and it opened with a soft groan of ancient hinges.

The chamber beyond stole his words.