Daggers of Ice

Chapter 23

The Western Mountains.

Jadis.

Jadis could feel the magic swirling around her, housed within the confines of Arianna's mortal flesh. She could feel the body weakening, dying. She felt the strength ebbing from the small body, a weariness that when far beyond physical. Exhausted from the heat and the battle.

Exhausted from constantly trying to keep her at bay.

Lightning did not crash in the darkness around Jadis and the mirror; it was a strange calm. And empty calm in that corner of her mind.

The mirror dimmed.

Panic welled within her; it could not end!

Not yet, not when she was so close to being able to free herself from the young woman's body. She was trapped; the small girl who had loved her with every fibre of her being that had become her prison, her coffin. She felt strange, almost regretful, that things had ended as they did with Arianna – the young woman who she had raised from birth.

But that apple, the apple she had eaten so long ago to gift her immortality had robbed her of any true feeling of joy. She'd not felt proper joy when Arianna had hit her first target, nor at the way her eyes had glinted when she'd taken her first life. A glimmer of pride, maybe, but not joy.

Never again.

She had wanted what was best for the girl; it was why she had placed her in an enchanted sleep – she had not been able to care for her. Not in the way that a child needed.

But then Corradyn, her old enemy, had awakened the child.

Their blood called to each other.

She could not let him win.

Her enemy, the enemy of Narnia. She would not let him triumph.

For if he won, the blood of Charn would be lost forever.

...

Edmund.

He looked at her again for what must have been the tenth time that minute.

Since Corradyn had knocked her out she had not awoken. Her skin was pale beneath her tan, her slight body wracked with slight tremors, her eyes darting from beneath her closed lids. She was fading – he could see that. Never before had he seen her so weak, so vulnerable.

Her breathing was soft and shallow, her chest not straining against the shirt that was torn and splattered with blood that was not her own.

She had come to rescue him, and she was dying.

It was that and nothing else that led him to inch closer to her – far enough that he could take her slender frame in his arms. He hadn't been expecting the soft sigh that escaped her lips as she snuggled closer to him, or the way his stomach twisted at the sound.

Her braid had become unbound, her thick locks of dark chocolate hair falling over her slender shoulders – her leathers had been taken off her sometime in the night when he had slept. The thought of another's hands upon her made his blood boil. His eyes traced the gentle curve of her shoulder, the golden brown skin visible from where her loose cream blouse had fallen open. Heat rose in his face and he glanced away sharply, looking at the dark crevices of the opposite wall.

You see the one you desire most.

He pushed the thought from his mind. He could not trust her.