PROLOGUE
FUTURE
Concerned, she stood there, second row behind a few fauns with the newly welcome summer's breeze playing with her hair, observant of injustice as it came so wildly delivered by the lips of a white nightmare, mindless of the creatures around her yet completely aware of only the Lion standing tall even in his impossibly high stature for a creature such as he. "Tell you?" The witch said, making soft amber pools shift from their study of her beloved helper to look, instead, at the pale white creature so self-claiming of her frozen crown. "Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor-beyond-the-sea?" Even the soft scoff breathed from her darkly smiling lips felt monstrous, and where seconds prior there had only been concern lighting Juliet Capulet's features, now there suddenly rested the mirror of loathing come from the vision of the Witch who had made of the land she loved nothing but an eternal winter that had once claimed her life.
"You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning." The White Witch continued, making Juliet's jaw tense upon the mere mention of a time so magical as it had been the creation of Narnia itself, tainted by the nightmare's words, tainted by the monster's own memories. Mention not a moment such as that, for thou hath no claim upon its deliverance. "You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey," The witch resumed barely a second after her previous words. "And that for every treachery I have a right to kill, and—."
"Oh." Said Mr. Beaver, interrupting the flow of the witch's claims regardless of how her lips had parted to continue on her spoken trail. "So that's how you came to imagine yourself a Queen—because you were the Emperor's hangman, I see."
"Peace, Beaver." The Lion said, shifting of a soft growl as his big yellow eyes focused on the gentle creature he lightly scolded before looking towards the monster again.
Pause enough to anger the White Witch further; enough to make of her following words an echo of desperation and anger, one huffed from pale lips as harshly as the many horrors done to the younger of the Pevensies, if any of it could be judged by the scars left behind, visible or not. "That human creature is mine." She spat, lifting a pointy finger onto the accusation of the forgiven boy. "His life is forfeit to me; his blood is my property."
The growl of the animals around them echoed through the camp, yet even then, the roar of a minotaur's voice came louder. "Come and take it, then." Threatening of a challenge by the sharpness of his tightly held blade.
"Fool." The Witch said, breathing of a short amused scoff as the tips of her hair danced with her shaking head. "Do you really think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force?" She wondered, staring at the great minotaur as if he were naught but a child looking up to his better. "He knows the Deep Magic better than that," She continued. "He knows," Her eyes moved to look in the Lion's direction once again, accusing. "That unless I have blood as the law says, all of Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water."
The Lion's head bobbed in a short nod. "It is true; I do not deny it."
"Oh, Aslan." The oldest of the Pevensie girls said, turning to look at the Lion at her side and speaking with a note as despairing as her eyes seemed; "Can't we—I mean, you won't, will you?" Susan asked. "Can't we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn't there something you can work against it?"
It should not be possible in such a feline face as that of Aslan's, but, somehow, the great Lion seemed to frown. "Work against the Emperor's Magic?" He said, worried, disapproving; at the other side of the Lion, the subject of the betrayal and the Witch's hopeful sacrifice frowned deeply. "Nay," The Lion continued, his head shaking once again before attempting to meet the gaze of every one of the four siblings standing by his sides, even that of Edmund, the one whose gaze refused to lift from the guilt that so drowned his mind. "Fall back, all of you." Aslan said. "I will talk to the Witch alone."
And so it was that the Lion walked away, far from the Pevensies' side and to the awaiting company of a rather smug White Witch, who parted by the other's side but not without staring at the guilty child with what could only be described as evil expectancy before she did, leaving of the long haired brunette who looked on the situation from a few feet away from the siblings with nothing but the deepest sort of angered concern she had not felt since the murder of her own cousin had come to be spoken of to her. She could see the worry in the children's faces, the fear in Edmund's own as he refused to do more than look at the now green grass under his feet, even by the moment in which his younger sister's tiny arms wrapped around his waist with a distressed cry of "Oh, Edmund." and the tears that thereafter flowed down her cheeks, the young boy seemed unable to do more than hold the girl and keep looking at the ground as if it alone held all the solutions to his problems.
It was a look that hurt as much as shook young-looking Juliet, for it was the sort she had seen only once before, once, a long time ago; long before the Mist she called her in-between had turned into Narnia, long before she had even known what a Protector of Love was. It was a look depicting of one's guilt, fear, and all out sorrow over an action made without the claim of a conscious thought; whether done by momentary anger, or a mistake to mirror all the horrors befallen of one's life, it was the sort of look that she had had to kiss away from her once beloved's face as he stepped slowly and quietly into her chamber's safety, the sort she had had to whisper away from Romeo's deep green eyes by the time they met her own for the first time that night. I shan't hate thee for this, if that be the reason thou dare not look upon me. She had told him, her hand resting gently upon the softness of his tanned skin before the press of a gentle kiss finally made him look up for the mere necessity of returning such a contact. For I know mine cousin, and his pride, his temper, t'was one to burn down the streets mindless of who it killed in its path. Thus, fret not, my love, my husband, for mine heart is yours if thou shall still accept it. Ah, if only she had known what would become of him and her after that day, if only she had known he was going to murder her, if she had had Nurse to stop her alike she had been supposed to, alike Juliet herself now did for countless soul mates back in the world of Earth, if only—
"You can all come back." Said a familiar voice that pulled the girl away from the reverie brought from the very sorrow mirrored in Edmund Pevensie's brown gaze, making of a curious and concerned Juliet nothing but the memory of who she was, even standing in her beloved world of Narnia, even whilst looking at the one who had spoken: the great Lion, giver of her second chance at life. "I have settled the matter," he continued, looking directly in the direction of the siblings who seemed to not be breathing at all. "She has renounced the claim on your brother's blood."
The world around Juliet finally breathed and rejoiced, from the fauns in front of her, to the minotaur that had challenged the witch, to the very Beavers who'd only moments prior had been clutching paws as if that alone were to make everything okay; the four siblings embraced each other, and though the heaviness in Edmund's eyes remained, a thankful smile lifted the corners of his lips as he warmed in the love of his siblings. Yes, the boy would live, the prophecy could be completed, and though Juliet Capulet clapped along the small celebration all around her, she could not but find herself haunted by the memories such a gaze in a child's face had brought along.
"But how do I know this promise will be kept?" Came the voice of the Witch, claiming of everyone's attention once again; even Juliet's, whose hands lowered from their clapping and the soft frown in the middle of her forehead deepened with as much her own worries as that of the world's itself.
But alas, such concern dared not remain for long, not when the loud roar of the Great Lion she so dearly felt thankful to echoed all around them, making the hairs at the back of her neck stand, and the once confident pale blue eyes in the Witch's face widen and lose all mighty strength, specially by the time she turned in her feet and finally ran away. It was an echo that remained, that tooted from the sky as if it were a ceiling in a long ball room, one that joined the celebration for all those who need not be scared of it, one that continued on and on and on...
...until its echo rang like a whisper in her ear as she woke from her slumber; oh soft reminder of a time when Juliet Capulet could not have been able to imagine the way her life had been about to change, a time when Edmund Pevensie and his siblings were naught more than the promise of Narnia's freedom. A time so long ago that, though physically she looked the same—as ever she would due to the vows she had made upon her death on Earth—, the shadows of her eyes spoke of a different tale; for the one who woke from her slumber was one who had seen wars first hand, one who had served in the court of the Pevensies for the entirety of their reign, one who had come to think of the guilty boy from her dream as something much more important than the mere reminder of the guilt she had once before seen, one who had fallen in love regardless of how her past should have prevented it, one who had married the very boy from her dream after years of friendship that, with time, shifted onto unexpected courtship, one who had seen miracles come to pass three times to the date by the reality of the child who slept within a crib mere feet away from her or the other two who slept in rooms of their own.
Yes, it had been fifteen years since that day upon the Stone Table, fifteen years since the battle she had missed, fifteen years since the Pevensies had been crowned, and fifteen years since she and Edmund had first met.
Fifteen years, and he was no longer there; Edmund Pevensie was gone.