Daggers of Ice

Chapter 39

Where the Western Woods meet the Mountains.

Edmund.

Edmund narrowed his eyes at the dryads, ignoring beautiful, headstrong Rayla who'd once tried to make him fall in love with her by using the petals from her tree. The petals in her hair had once been a lovely, soft cherry-blossom pink, to match the rosiness of her cheeks, the leaves to match the moss colour of her eyes.

But those petals had darkened, as had her eyes.

Both the stunning ruby of a fresh drop of blood.

It explained her absence.

But it was not her he focused on; it was the pale northern dryad by her side. She wore a quiver of arrows across her back, silver-tipped he was sure, to match the one she had aimed at his heart. Myria was the best archer we had, Ari had once told him. As good as your sister Susan. Perhaps even better, for her arrows are not blessed.

The one who had stabbed him.

Who had almost killed him.

Myria is alive. She had whispered, terrified and hopeful and panicked.

So the dryad before him was Arianna's friend, Arianna's best friend whom she had wept 's dead friend. Was she how Corradyn was planning on winning the Ice Queen to his side? For Edmund did not believe that the sorcerer would give up so easily.

Was she how he had been pinpointed and predicting Arianna's actions so easily?

"So you're Arianna's little plaything?" There was a sneer in the dryads voice, her obnoxiously loud voice. "I must say, I expected something...more. Someone like your brother perhaps. Tell me, little king...do you know the truth about Arianna? Who she truly is? If you knew you would not be so eager to bed her." Her laughter grated against his ears, against his very nerves.

Edmund's fingers tightened on the hilt of his sword. But he would not let her get to him. He would not give her the pleasure, the pretty twisted dryad who had once been so much more. He would not let satisfaction flicker in Corradyn's crimson eyes, even as curiosity sparked at the dryads words that he refused to acknowledge.

But he could not tell her that he knew.

He knew who she was. And he didn't care.

She was Arianna and that was all that mattered to the Just King of Narnia.

Then something shifted in the archer's eyes. "Go."

And then she turned her arrows upon his crimson-eyed assailants.

...

Susan.

Susan had never felt less gentle. She'd not been at the Battle of Beruna; she hadn't yet seen men fall by the hundreds. But her hands did not still; arrow upon arrow was loosed from her position atop the griffin as they soared above the crumbling castle.

Arianna's giants had made quick work of the walls; nothing remained but piles of smoking stones. There was something off about the sorcerer's men; they were faster than they should be. Stronger. Smarter. The dryads were swifter, the faun's more nimble.

She guided the griffin down, swooping lower over the battlements. She'd lost sight of Lucy and Peter sometime after the armies had clashed. Edmund, she knew, was somewhere within the castle. Seeking out the sorcerer with Arianna where they would pierce his heart with those cursed daggers of hers. But she needed to find Peter.

Or Lucy.

Or Aslan.

For she could see what they could not.

She could see where the giants had gone overboard and damaged the foundations of the castle. It could fall at any moment.

...

Corradyn.

"Ah, there you are, my dear," Corradyn's chuckle alerted him to the footsteps that echoed throughout the throne room. "I was thinking that you weren't going to turn up and let your lover be burnt to a crisp."

Edmund stared.

Arianna was snarling, her hands twisted behind her back and held there by a dark-haired, dark-eyed man. Tynan, Arianna's one-time advisor and Jadis's lover.

That had not been part of their plan at all.

And yet, just as he thought it, the ground rumbled beneath their feet.

...

Arianna.

It was different from any time before; for it was she who initiated it.

She felt Jadis's presence growing stronger as she destroyed the mirror within her mind.

It swallowed her whole, the darkness consuming her very essence. She felt the power hum in her veins. Nothing could defeat her/them. She felt the burning hatred in Jadis's mind, the hunger for power.

Images assaulted her mind. A burning city, great marble spires crumbling, the ocean beyond it was turbulent and churning. The city she looked upon with a burning hatred.

The city which should have been hers.

Both of theirs.

"Corradyn, my old friend," her voice was different, coming from her lips. Words that were not hers, once again she was merely a watcher in her own body; though she could feel Jadis within her. Unlike before they were two separate beings. "It is good to see you."

"Do not belittle me witch," Corradyn, she could see, knew it was Jadis who spoke. For it was the witch's haughty tone, filled with ancient anger and deadly power. "What is it that you seek?"

She felt something shift inside her, a sharp stinging that lanced through her mind and she watched as a shadow formed before her eyes. Reaching outward from with her. "Join with me, we would be unstoppable." The ghostly form of the witch whispered, moving towards Corradyn – her new chosen host.

Once more Jadis had played her for a fool.

Dread stole through her as she realise Jadis's plan, what had been her plan since she had regained control of her body.

Her eyes met Edmund's once more; her mind clear for a moment as Jadis was distracted. "Kill him, now," she mouthed, seeing Corradyn's eyes riveted on Jadis. He nodded once in understanding, his grip shifting on the hilt of the blade that the dwarves had given him.

She gripped her own knives tighter.

"We would rule, Fire and Ice, as the Deep Magic meant it to be," Jadis whispered, her skirts fluttering in a wind that was not there.

No.

They struck at the same time; Edmund's blade severing Corradyn's spine, Arianna's piercing her own heart.

Time froze in that moment.

She coughed, eyes watering, and she saw her crimson blood splatter across the floor. Jadis screamed, her shriek desperate and wild as she tried to free herself from the dying mind. But Arianna tightened her grip, their minds interwoven as one.

The edges of her vision flickered.

Edmund was moving towards her, but slow, so slow, as she felt her legs collapse. His dark eyes were wide, full of horror as moved to catch her. Bodies littered the ground, the stench of death filled her. His cries were heart wrenching as his footsteps echoed in her ears, pounding, heavy. But he moved so slowly. She felt the life leaving her body, her mortal flesh strangely pale. The darkness closed in around her. She embraced it, welcoming the void of nothingness. The hunger left her, leaving nothing behind. The king reached her.

"NO!" His scream shuddered through her as a tear drop fell onto her face.

The emptiness beckoned.