"Lucy's growing up," he said, as they walked back to their chambers, half-leaning on each other for support. Perhaps, he thought, that last glass had been a mistake.
Susan did not reply, and so they walked on in silence, past the rooms of the visiting dignitaries. It was only when they had reached the little door leading to the cellars, where unexamined historical treasures still lay draped in dust, that it occurred to him to consider it odd. When he looked over at her, he saw that she was frowning. "Do you not think?"
"You sound displeased." Her tone was almost accusatory.
Peter floundered, for he had grown quite used to her agreeing with him. Indeed, in the months he had spent defending the northern border, he had grown used to not being challenged at all. "She was only seven when we were crowned."
"You were barely twelve," she said, and stopped, blinking hard. "It's strange; I'm certain of it, and yet I can't remember anything that came before that."
After a moment's thought, Peter had to concur that he couldn't either. "And yet I must have been eleven before that, like you were then, but I have no memory of it. Yet the days of our reign are clear in my mind as if they were imprinted upon it."
Susan reached out then, and rested her hand against the crook of his arm, as if they were about to enter an Archenlander ball. "Time was counted differently there, I believe. Perhaps she would remain long a child in the land we have forgotten."
The warmth of her hand seemed to burn through the fabric of his sleeve and onto his skin like a brand, but Peter thought it was probably just the wine, which seemed to warm his veins. "That is hardly any consolation, for this is not that land."
She fell silent then, and they walked on. Ahead of them hung an old tapestry, its threads grown pale with time; the fire of the dragon's breath the only thing distinguishable from merely a few steps away. They stopped before it.
"He looks a bit like you," Susan said, but it was only the passage of time, and the inaccurateness of the medium. King Gale's features were a haze in the dim light of the corridor, his crown melting into his fair hair. Then, "What made you think of it?"
Peter sighed. "I had a marriage proposal for her this morning."
"She's only thirteen," Susan said, an air of resignation to her voice. For once, she did not complain about him being the one to receive such propositions, rather than the prospective spouse.
"Plenty of girls marry earlier." All the same, the thought made him uneasy, for he could still picture, as clearly as if a painting were before his eyes, Lucy smiling as the crown was set on her head, her face still plump with childhood and her head filled with dreams.
She did not reply, but when he looked over, he could see that her jaw was clenched very tightly. "Of course, I don't expect you to set such an example, but you must understand that you'll have to eventually."
She whirled on him then, moving her head so swiftly that her hair swung through the air like a cloud, a few of the jewelled pins that her dwarf handmaiden had painstakingly arranged earlier still hanging onto it tentatively. "I am as much a queen as you are a king, and I hardly see why I should give that up to be only a vessel for heirs! Do you think I want to marry some old man? To be bedded whenever he wishes with no thought for mine own desires?"
In the dim light she was a study of contrasts: her eyes and her dark like coal against her pale skin. Rage had flushed her cheeks red, and it was the first time that Peter realised that it was not only dynastic opportunities that drove those propositions.
The thought made him stagger back, still staring at her.
From somewhere at the back of his mind came the thought that even King Lune looked at her differently at their last meeting, he whose wife had already given him two sons. But the thought of Susan on that jolly old man's lap, him pushing his wrinkled hands up her skirts, like he did the serving girls at Anvard, was abominable. It might have been something he could not recognise as jealousy that made him say, "Well, Narnia does need an heir."
He did not see her hand move until it was too late and she had already slapped him. The sound of the impact seemed so loud that Peter was almost surprised that no one appeared to investigate it. His cheek burned where she had touched it.
Before he realised it, his hands were at her hips, and he nudged aside the tapestry with his elbow, cringing when it instead fell to the ground with one fell swoop, and they almost fell into the little alcove it had concealed.
Peter only had time to feel his back hit the wall, sending a few loose rocks falling, when she fell on top of him with an oomph, still lunging at him.
"I am not a dumb mare to have my body used for others' gains," she cried, as her nails dragged across his skin.
He tried to protest that he had not meant anything of the kind, but there was something terribly hard in her face that made the words dry in his throat.
"Nobody is going to make you do anything," he said finally, when he could find the words, and steadied her upright, walking away before he could say or do something he would later regret.