A/N: With my record, I probably shouldn't try to start another chaptered story, but I've got about twenty pages of this sitting on my computer, so I'm going to give it a try. I'll do my best to update regularly.
It's midday, three days after their victory at Beruna, and Caspian is sitting in the sunlit castle kitchens, enjoying a leisurely mug of coffee and talking about nothing in particular with the High King (although they have all insisted that he call them by their given names, he can't quite make himself do it inside his head). It's the sort of day where one doesn't want to do anything in particular, and though Caspian has a thousand things that need doing, he can't quite make himself rush. The things he took for granted a scant few months past--hot coffee, hot pastries, bread that isn't stale and meat that isn't about to turn--now seem like unparalleled luxuries, and even when breakfast is reduced to crumbs, he lingers.
He's on his second mug of coffee when King Peter reaches across the table and catches his forearm. Caspian glances at him, startled, and sees that he is staring at the small, rose-shaped birthmark on Caspian's inner arm.
"That's an odd mark," he says, and his voice is quiet and strange.
Caspian glances down at it himself. "I get it from my mother, from the southern clans," he says by way of explanation.
Behind him, the door opens. Queen Susan, Queen Lucy, and King Edmund drop into the empty seats at the plain wooden table without ceremony and begin loading their plates with food. King Peter scarcely glances up at them; he is still peering at Caspian's arm. "The southern clans?"
"Doctor Cornelius says that they were Archenland's landholders. They were driven into the hills when the Telmarines invaded. My mother was one of them, on her father's side." Beside him, Queen Susan goes abruptly still; he can see her out of the corner of his eye, staring at the High King. King Peter is still looking at him, though, so he continues. "All the first-borns of my line have it--that's what Doctor Cornelius says anyway. I've never met anyone else. He said they call it the--er--the Lion's Kiss." He blushes, saying it. It all seemed fascinating when he was translating dusty history tomes in Doctor Cornelius' study, but now, with the Kings and Queens of old sitting with from him in the flesh, it sounds a bit silly.
King Peter doesn't laugh, or even smile. His eyes lift slowly to Caspian's; his face is white and he looks as though he's been slapped. For a long moment his mouth moves silently, then he drops Caspian's arm and shoves his chair away from the table hard enough that it falls over and he almost trips over it in his haste to leave the room.
King Edmund puts his fork down, very deliberately, and pinches the bridge of his nose as though trying to stave off a headache.
"Oh dear," says Queen Susan.
Queen Lucy finishes her mug of chocolate. "Ed, you'd best go after him. We'll explain."
"Right," mutters King Edmund. He shoves his own chair back and stalks off in the same direction that King Peter went.
Caspian is blinking, his arm still stretched across the table, trying to make sense of what has just happened. "What--did I say something--?"
"It wasn't you." Queen Lucy pats his arm. "Peter's just had--"
"--a bit of a shock," finishes Queen Susan in a dry tone.
Caspian rubs the birthmark with two fingers, as though it is a spot that he can scrub away. "I don't understand."
Queen Susan sighs. "I wasn't expecting this--"
"I'll explain," interrupts Queen Lucy firmly. Caspian smiles a little at that. She looks so young--they all do, really--but there is something about her that is older than her years. Even though her feet don't quite reach the floor. She pours herself another mug of chocolate and crosses her legs under her. "You see, in the sixth year of our reign, bandits were raiding the borders of Archenland, and since King Lune had pledged most of his troops to fight the Giants in the north, he asked us to take in the landholders' families, for their protection."
Queen Susan smiles a little, remembering. "Peter hated it."
"Yes," says Queen Lucy, "but hush. I'm telling the story. So, once upon a timeā¦"
