Chapter 33

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Where the Northern Lands Meet the Western Woods.

Arianna.


Their gazes were like eagles as they watched her examine the map.

"It would be wise to move now," she said absent-mindedly, looking at the different coloured gems on the map. Red for Corradyn's men and amber for the Narnians. The map looked as if someone had bled over it, red splattered and pooling across the parchment. "Before the last of winter's frost melts."

"While you are at your strongest," Peter was watching her closer than most; she could not find it in herself to care. She knew that the violet-eyed woman waited in the tent next to them, with her winsome smile and undeniable beauty. Waiting to sink her claws into Peter once more; to tear to shreds the small bit of trust that Arianna had gleaned from him.

She said no word of what she was.

For they would never believe her.

"Yes, and while Corradyn is at his weakest," if decorum had let her hit her face with her palm she would have. She wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. How could he know she was more akin to a volcano than the Ice Queen they all thought her to be; a frozen exterior but molten heat beneath, just threatening to break through.

And Aslan, how she wished she could draw her blades.

But it was not a time for force.

Not when the peace was so uneasy.

"And what do you propose we do?" It was Edmund's voice, serious as always that sent shivers through her body. A dark tingle along her spine that was not wholly unexpected. She did not raise her eyes to meet those twin pools of darkness; instead her eyes swept the map once more. She saw only one option. "Could we not draw him out into the open instead?"

When had she become so easy to read?

She shook her head, at last meeting his gaze. And it was as if the world had melted away from them. "No, it is that only way. He will think himself safe; and it is what he expects us to do."

She didn't want to go back there. Neither of them did. But it was the only way she could see.

"If he expects us to attack him in his castle, why would we do that very thing?" Lucy's voice was befuddled, her cornflower blue eyes puzzled.

"Because he will think he has the upper hand, he will try to trap you within his walls," Edmund said, his eyes widening slightly as he realised her plan. But he was not foolish enough to speak against it.

"And won't he succeed?" Peter snapped. "We will be sitting ducks."

"No," Arianna shook her head. "You have me; and he does not."

"And what can you do that makes you so special?" There was nothing condescending in Susan's tone, just disbelief and confusion. "I thought the Witch no longer held sway over you, that you could not use her powers as your own."

...

Asura.


Asura wanted nothing more than to bang her head against a wall. Such a shame that the walls of the crimson tent they were inside would offer her no such service.

"Is he not the most perfect?" The question was followed by a delicate giggle. There was no need to ask who Lily was talking about; for she'd been talking about the same person for the past hour.

That Asura agreed with her to some degree, she would never say so aloud, she wished the woman would shut her pretty little mouth. It took every ounce of her discipline not to yell at her.

She almost wished for the cold Ice Queen's presence instead.

...

Edmund.


"They are not the witch's powers, they are mine," Arianna's tone was blank, one that Edmund had heard before, though perhaps not recently. He saw the way that calmness washed over her face and she half-turned her head as if listening to something. "Like fire is a part of Corradyn, water is a part of me. I am his opposite; his counterpart. I am the reason he is alive and so I shall be his end."

"Does that not mean that he, too, could kill you?" Edmund breathed softly and watched her emerald eyes flicker to him for a moment before meeting his brother's orbs.

"Yes, it does."

"I trust this means you have a plan?"

"Tell me, High King Peter. What do you know of the giants?"

...

Unknown.


They stole through the forest, silent as wraiths, the tents of the Narnians like scattered blood across snow before them. Hidden by the frosted trees, they watched silently with crimson eyes. 

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