I don't own Narnia or the Pevensies.


As Danya ran her finger down the paper, reading it carefully, Lucy came around the maid's side to look at it, and saw that it was an unlabeled list of names and positions that she assumed must be opponents of the king. A sort of underground organization, she thought.

"Our trouble is, as always, the guards," Danya sighed, sitting down on the bed. Lucy noticed that she kept the list shielded from the doorway with her body, so that anyone walking in would not see it right away. "Valin pays his soldiers well and fills them with ideas of loyalty and duty to their king. And well…to state the obvious, they know how to fight; we don't."

"Is there a way to prevent the wedding without fighting?" Lucy asked.

"Well…yes, but not without a whole lot of danger to ourselves," Danya frowned, looking over the list once again. "If we managed to stop all preparations, prevent the Cleric from performing the ceremony at all, retrieve the magicians from their quarantine, the wedding wouldn't happen. But Valin would inevitably send the guards down on us, and any number could die. The people are afraid enough as it is. We could never mobilize enough of them to stop it completely."

Lucy understood this. She bit her lip.

"The magicians," she began uncertainly. "Can they fight? Would they?"

Danya laughed hollowly.

"I doubt it," she said, shaking her head. "Most of them are old and senile; the younger, more powerful ones we haven't seen in weeks. They're up to something in the South Tower but no one knows what. And I doubt they'd fight with us, in any case, not when they seem to be in such close council with the king."

"I do know what they're up to," Lucy put in. Danya looked at her sharply.

"That's quite a statement," she said, the hint of a warning in her tone. "I've heard plenty of rumors. I only trust that you won't turn me in because the guards wouldn't jail you if were on their side, but I don't really have a reason to believe you. But what have you heard? And who from?"

"I heard it from my sister," said Lucy, knowing again she had no proof. "Susan. Valin's bride-to-be, if we don't stop the wedding. She said Valin has coerced the magicians into seeking ways into other worlds, to find more land and resources for his people."

"Yes, I'd heard that one," Danya said with a frown. "And I wouldn't put it past him at all. But how would he plan to take it, if the lands are already inhabited? Does he plan a full-on war?"

"I think so," Lucy replied. "He's already attacked her, after all, and kidnapped her into this country. Perhaps he plans to use her as a hostage." And perhaps he intends that for Peter and Edmund, too, she thought to herself worriedly. They were in quite a compromising position.

"And that would start tomorrow," said Danya with a low whistle. "A war. He plans a war. We don't have the resources or the manpower for a war. He would take every able-bodied man from our country and leave us crippled. Don't we struggle enough already as it is?"

Lucy stood in uncomfortable silence, looking down at the list. Though it was a full sheet of parchment, a few dozen names out of the hundreds in the castle didn't seem enough to stage even a protest, much less a revolution.

"What can we do?" she asked, biting her lip. Danya looked at the paper in her hand, tapping it against her thigh a few times. Then she took a deep breath and looked back up at the young queen.

"If we can't defeat his army…we have to defeat him," she stated. "I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but there's no time left. We've no other option."

"What do you mean?" Lucy asked in confusion. Danya stood up, checked the list one more time and set her jaw resolutely.

"Assassination," she said simply.

Lucy felt a sharp twist in her stomach. Though she understood that such an act would prevent hundreds or even thousands of other deaths, it still felt underhanded. When she and her siblings had first taken up the throne, they had had history lessons, and learned how more than a few of Narnia's ancient monarchs had fallen alone at the hands of rogue fighters, and whenever the four of them traveled out into the country, they were accompanied by a small guard. Only once had any of them faced any real danger from assassins – Peter, while traveling through the Lone Islands, had been poisoned at a meal with a mutinous old chieftain – but the fear was always with them. Lucy could not help but wish for another option.

"The question is, who could do it?" Danya frowned. Lucy looked back over at her, jerked back from her thoughts. "I would, but I could never get close enough, and I haven't the strength or skill to do it from afar."

"Is there really no other way?" Lucy needed to know. Danya sighed.

"I don't see one," she said gently, laying her hand on Lucy's arm. "If you can't bring yourself do something like this, you needn't be involved."

"But…Susan is my sister," Lucy whispered uncertainly. "If…if that is the only way, then I'll help you to do it…for her sake. And for my brothers'."

Danya nodded and knelt down to slide the list back into the lining of her trunk, Lucy saw; it was a clever hiding space.

"Then come with me," she said, rising to her feet. "Come with me, little queen, and we'll find a way."

She held out her hand with a grim smile. Lucy knew that the title did not indicate that Danya believed her, only that she trusted her, but that was enough. Though her stomach rolled slightly as she thought of what blood might soon be on her hands, she thought again of her brothers' secret torture, of her sister's imprisonment, and forced her heart to harden. She must. For their sake, she must learn to be older, harder, less sentimental and more tough. Her foolishness had already cost them the first set of rings, stolen into the night by a man she thought she could trust – she would not be naïve again.

So she took Danya's hand and left the room, never noticing the movement of the heaped blankets on the corner bed.