A/N: I think there is just enough plot and character in this chapter to justify its inclusion. That and Peridan deserves a happy day after so much angst. FYI, this chapter very much flirts with the edge of the 'T' rating, so... (it is skippable and the rest of the story will make sense)

The next couple of days were as long as they promised. I played that encounter in the hallway over in my head a hundred times. I ignored Gormal's taunts and Taran's judgment and listened to Edmund's groan of desire instead. I forced myself to concentrate long enough to win my next bout, and I celebrated by going down to the docks to engage a boat for the rest day. I could not get close to Edmund again. We almost had a moment at breakfast, but no sooner had we reached out for each other's hand than Peter and Lucy came sweeping in.

But at last the appointed morning arrived in a riot of sharp colour and I hurried down to the entrance hall to find Edmund already waiting. We smiled at each other and set off. In the empty stretch of road between the palace and the town, he confessed, 'I had a bit of a job getting away. Lucy was very keen to come. In the end, Susan put her off. We owe my sister a debt of gratitude for her unwitting aid.'

'We are lucky then,' I agreed, but we had started to pass people and refrained from any further conversation.

The only thing I could think of to distract myself on the boat was to recite all the boring facts I had learnt in Trade and Bartering. I recited these to Edmund while we leaned on the railing. Talking about sheep farming and wool trade helped tamp down my nerves.

'You know an awful lot about trade,' Edmund observed. 'Is this another hidden passion?'

I snorted. 'No—something I learned out of necessity. I had to drag up half remembered lessons when I arrived in Narnia.'

At last the boat bumped on the shore and Edmund and I climbed out onto the pebble strewn beach. I collected our provisions and arranged a time to meet. Then I started walking. Edmund jogged to catch up, then fell into step.

We crested a hill and looked back. The boat had already crawled halfway across the narrow channel to Doorn. The blue sky seemed to come down to the grass in front of us, like a wall. We stepped forward, down the hill. Everything was perfectly silent apart from the twittering of a bird. We glanced over our shoulders again and we could not see the channel or anything of Doorn. In all the world, there was only Edmund and I.

He gripped my shoulder and I turned to face him. His hand slid across my shoulder to the side of my neck. I closed my eyes. I wanted everything that was to follow—I wanted it so much I was a bit afraid.

'Tell me what else you know about sheep farming,' Edmund whispered in my ear.

I burst out laughing, and he grinned at me. I swept my gaze over him and bit my lip. 'Are you sure you just want to hear about Banking and Commerce?' I said, and I laced my fingers behind the small of his back, drawing him close.

'Surely it must have been your best subject' He said, wrapping his arms round my shoulders.

'Far from it. I truly excelled at Etiquette.' I moved closer to him, and brushed my lips against his jaw.

He chuckled. 'Oh, do tell me about Etiquette.'

'Obviously we all had to prepare for meeting our monarchs,' I murmured, skimming my fingers over his waist. 'The saviours of Narnia.' I kept kissing his jaw, his throat. 'They are very important and illustrious people.'

'Yes, I know,' Edmund said. He was trying to sound wry, but his breath was coming shorter.

I found his belt and unclasped it. 'Thus it's important to pay them meet adoration.' My voice was laced with laughter. Thrills of desire ran through my body. I pulled his tunic off him.

He tutted. 'I thought you were good at Etiquette, my lord. Look at how presumptuous you are.' I had only a split second of anxiety before I saw the laughter in his eyes.

'Yes—you see, I have a bit of an insouciant streak,' I teased.

'We shall have to school that out of you,' he said, and he pushed me to the ground, kissing me with a hard passion. He pulled my tunic off and ran his hands over my bare skin. I arched into his touch. All the rules we had been made to memorise in Etiquette class ticked through my head. Never touch the monarch. I pressed my fingers into Edmund's skin. Always wait for him or her to initiate any interaction. I lifted my head and sucked gently on his earlobe.

'Tell me what you want me to do,' he breathed.

My mind reeled with possibilities and I blushed. Despite everything over the past couple of days, I could not dare speak these things out loud, however much they played through my mind. I had taught myself to never speak my desire. Always petition the monarch through appropriate channels.

I bit my lip. He turned to me and caught me in a kiss. I felt the hunger in it. I let us linger over it, sinking into him and the fugue of my desire. We pressed our hands into each other. That gave me enough courage to guide his hand to the waistband of my undergarments.

He pulled away, his eyes eyes wide with surprise but also glinting with possibility. 'You know so much,' he breathed.

I shook my head urgently as he peeled the last scraps of my clothing away. 'I hardly know anything. I only know what I want.'

'Is it me?' He teased.

'It is you,' I said with a grin.

He grinned as he kissed me, and his fingers skimmed over me. I moaned, arching toward him, but he teased me a moment more, watching my helpless desire.

'You want this so much,' he marvelled.

I wanted to say something witty in reply, but I couldn't think. I could only gasp. 'So much. Please.' He groaned and kissed me and curled his hand around me and everything exploded inside of me and I was on fire but I wanted more, wanted to burn, and when I looked up it was Edmund's face looming over me not in a dream, but in reality, his eyes dark and his lips parted, and dimly I could feel how much he wanted me too as he moved in time with me.

'Oh, Peridan,' he moaned.

My name on his lips, dripping with desire is what brought on the release, more powerful than I had ever known. He held me and watched and his eyes were dark, almost black, and flashing.

He laid me down and stretched out beside me. I was trembling and trying to catch my breath, and he pressed closer, kissing my cheek and my throat. I turned to him, brushing my fingers over his body. When I did, he gasped. I could not question. He wanted this too. I toyed with the lacings on his trousers and glanced at him. Despite his evident desire, I needed him to say it. He answered my look with a low groan and yanked at the lacings himself. I knocked his hands out of the way and stripped him of his clothes and touched him. There was a certain miracle to watching his desire unfurl. The way his eyelashes fluttered. His lips were slightly parted and warmly pink. His muscles tightened as his body arched and twisted and for that moment he was mine, exactly as I dreamed.

Afterwards, we wrapped our arms round each other and lay looking into each other's faces. He exhaled a shaky laugh. I rested my forehead against his and we shared a few lazy kisses before we dozed off in each other's arms.

I woke up some time later, my chest tightening with the regret of having lost some of this precious day. But then I took in Edmund's face so close to my own and the memory of what we had already shared, and I could regret nothing. He was snoring lightly, and his dark lashes fluttered against his pale cheek.

I grinned and then slipped out of his embrace and began to lay out our lunch. Even the whiff of the food made my stomach rumble. I plucked a grape from the bunch and chucked it at Edmund's chest. 'Wake up,' I said.

He blinked awake, staring in bemusement at the grape. I chuckled, and he looked over at me and stretched out on his side. 'Oh good,' he said when he saw the food, 'Lunch. I'm ravenous. I think I should lie here while you feed me, like they do to the Tarkaans.'

And so I did, to meet his dare. 'Is this to your Majesty's liking, o my King and the Delight of my eyes?' I asked as I fed him cherries.

He snatched my wrist and licked the dark juice off my fingers, and I laughed at his audacity. He kissed the inside of my wrist, just touching the tip of his tongue to my skin, and then he lifted my arm and kissed the inside of my elbow. My breath caught. I wanted him to kiss me everywhere. He laughed against my skin. 'What sort of madness is this, wanting to kiss the inside of someone's elbow? Yet I do.' He squinted up at me. 'What are you doing to me?'

I drew my lower lip into my mouth, but I could not suppress a grin. I stretched out beside him. 'I keep thinking about the space between your collarbones,' I said, stroking this spot before I kissed it. Now it was his turn to laugh breathlessly.

'The hollow under your ear,' he said, and nuzzled that spot before kissing it. I did not know that such a simple caress would set my whole body shivering with pleasure.

We explored each other's bodies, teasing each other with laughter and caresses, lingering over our renewed desire. I found a mole on his thigh, and a sprinkling of tiny ones across his shoulder like a constellation. He discovered the little birthmark over my rib cage. He traced it with his finger and my skin rippled as he caressed my ticklish spot. I held back the laugh, but the merry spark in his eyes told me he had noticed I was ticklish. I had half forgotten.

I put my face close to his so we were nose to nose. 'You get freckles in the sun,' I announced.

He wrinkled his nose. 'I know. Very inelegant.' I stroked his nose with my finger and tapped the tip of it. He slipped his arm around my waist. I waited for him to dip his head and kiss me, but instead he frowned and pushed me onto my stomach. He laid the palm of his hand on my back. 'What are these?' He asked. He had found my scars.

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. 'Don't ask me. Not today.'

'I should know,' he insisted. And then, he started to stroke my ruined skin with great tenderness. My eyes filled and I blinked the tears away.

'One day,' I said, my voice a bit gravelly, 'But not today. I'm so happy today.'

He was still and silent a moment, and I stiffened. But he stretched out beside me and gave me a nudge with his shoulder. 'Me too,' he said. I grinned again.

'You ought to smile like that more,' he observed. 'It makes you passably attractive.' I laughed then, and leaned over to kiss his shoulder.

We sat up and ate the whole of our lunch. I don't remember much of it, except that it was one of the best meals I've ever had. After we finished, I leaned back on my elbows and gazed up at the wheeling blue of the sky and thinking how I had never had a day anything like this. Then Edmund pounced on me and started to tickle me. I tried to bite back my laughter, but soon I was curled up in a helpless ball, my chest heaving. 'Mercy, Sire!' I gasped. 'I cry you mercy!' When he stopped, I jumped on him, only to find that he wasn't ticklish.

'Catch as catch can!' I cried, and slapped his stomach before leaping to my feet. I raced down to the water, and he tore after me, the both of us churning up sand with our feet. He caught me round the waist and we tumbled into the surf, at which point we spent several minutes trying to dunk each other under the water. We only left off because we were breathless and our noses were stinging. I stood waist deep in the water and tasted the brine of the sea on my lips while I soaked up all the light: the diamond reflections of the sun on the rippling water and the warmth of it on my brown skin.

Edmund dove under the water and surfaced next to me, splashing me with the cool water. He was on his knees in the water and I looked down at him with my hands on my hips, examining the bluish tinge of his fair skin under the water. He squinted one eye as he looked up at me. Then he shook his head.

'You are far too beautiful for your own good,' he pronounced. Before I could even blush, he leaned forward and caught a droplet of water on my belly with the tip of his tongue, lapping up its trail until he was kissing my neck.

I wanted to give him more, everything, and I was struck with a wild inspiration, something I'd only half heard about. I took him by the shoulders and pushed him over to one of the massive rocks on the shore. I sat him down with his feet dangling in the water and knelt in the shallows before him. His eyes were wide—he didn't know what I was going to do. I gave him a little half smile before I took him in my mouth. Then his whole body stiffened and he choked on a moan. He buried his fingers in my hair and I gripped his hips. I tried everything I could think of to sharpen his pleasure, although I didn't know much at all. I needed to know how he wanted me.

Afterwards we lounged on the rocks. He leaned back against one of the sun warmed rocks and I lay with my head in his lap. He toyed idly with my hair, his other arm slung over my body. We sat for awhile in silence. I watched the sky and the water but didn't take much of it in; more of my being was concentrated on Edmund's hands twirling my hair and the weight of his arm on me, the way my cheek stuck to his thigh. If this is all I ever have, I thought, it will feed me for years.

This thought drove me to break the silence. 'Sire—'

He arched an eyebrow. 'I think we're a bit past titles now, don't you?'

I laughed and began again, in the same tone, 'Edmund—' Somehow calling the sovereign by his name and nothing more seemed more audacious than anything I had done up till that point.

But Edmund closed his eyes and smiled. He nudged me. 'Say it again. My name.'

'Edmund. Ed,' I said, using the nickname only his siblings used and only in private.

He smiled even more. 'And what should I call you? What do people call you in private?'

'They call me Peridan, Lord of Lionshaim and Knight of the Order of the Table,' I said, lifting my nose in the air.

He snorted. But then he stroked the hair back from my face. 'Susan always says you seem lonely. I reckon she must be right. It strikes me that there isn't really anyone to give you a nickname.'

I shrugged. He examined my face for a long moment, stroking my hair back all the while. 'You gave me one,' I observed, though my voice was a bit thick. 'Thwarter of Assassins, you called me.'

He laughed lowly. 'So I did. But I will have to think of something more intimate.'

A little shiver went through me. The question which had originally prompted me to speak now bubbled to my lips. 'How did you know that you wanted—'

'To be very...intimate with you?' he asked. I nodded, holding my breath to hear his answer.

'Oh, you really want to know,' he said, pulling a face. He leaned his head back against the rock. 'The problem is it's rather hard to say. You have fascinated me for a long time, my Thwarter of Assassins, with all your hidden talents and your perfect court manners and then, every so often, these glimpses of irreverence.'

'What you didn't realise,' I said, 'Is that I'm irreverent most of the time. I just don't show it.'

'Yes, I'm very aware of that after today,' he said, and we both laughed. 'And really, I think you ought to be irreverent with me all of the time,' he added. I studied his face, trying to understand how quickly this had all unfolded. I was about to press him again when he put the question to me.

'What about you?' He asked. 'How did you know?'

'That I preferred men or that I wanted you in particular?' I replied, because teasing him so gave me a sense of freedom.

'Both,' he said, his voice rising with curiosity.

I shifted my shoulders and watched a lone cloud scudding across the sky. I saw myself dragging my feet as I walked out of school. Orran was waiting, and he greeted me with a smile. Seeing him, my heart felt a bit lighter. Here was someone to help me feel less confused.

I started to speak my thoughts aloud, twining the present with the past. 'I was about twelve or so. At school we were separated from the girls most of the time, but around that age we started having lessons in dancing and hierarchy and etiquette with the girls. After one of these lessons all the boys were talking about who they thought was the prettiest, and I realised I didn't have an opinion. I could have said who was the best dancer or the kindest, but prettiest seemed a word which didn't apply. They teased me, and Gormal called me names I didn't understand.

'So I told Orran, who listened in a way that told me I was saying something very significant even though I wasn't aware of that. Do you know that feeling, when an adult suddenly takes you very seriously?'

'I know something about it,' Edmund said, rolling his eyes. He nudged me. 'Go on, though.'

I took his hand and started to trace patterns on the palm. 'He said, "It is possible to find boys prettier than girls. In a manner of speaking." I knew what he meant, and I said, "But I'm a boy myself! How is that possible?" And he said, "Why is it impossible?" While I thought, he added, "You have been talking about young Taran an awful lot."

'Taran!' Edmund interrupted, pulling a face.

I smiled a bit, still tracing the patterns on his palm. 'He had just come from Archenland. He was terribly exotic.'

Edmund snorted. 'You must really have been starved for entertainment if Archenland is exotic.'

I gave him a look of mock seriousness. 'The Witch's reign was a difficult time.'

He laughed. 'So that was it. Then you knew.'

'Sort of. Enough to explore. I figured out pretty quickly that Taran was an odious prig—'

'Excellent detective work there,' said Edmund.

'And Simar and I started spending more time together, so...' I tailed off when I saw the look on his face.

'Oh,' he said blankly. 'Simar.'

I shook my head a bit. 'What about Simar?'

He was silent for a moment, then burst out, 'I don't want to be second to him, you know.'

I blinked. 'Second to him?'

'I saw you two the other night. Together.' He looked away, his jaw tight.

Everything slotted into place. 'So that was why you seemed so angry with me.' I sat up a bit and cupped his face. 'But you have it backwards. I was with Simar because I thought I could never be with you.'

'Truly?' He asked, frowning diffidently still.

I laughed softly. 'If only you knew. My head has been so full of dreams and fantasies. I thought we were friends and I didn't want to ruin it but all this time I've wanted you. I've wanted you so much.' I didn't let myself say love, though it was on the tip of my tongue.

'All this time?' He asked.

'All this time,' I answered.

'My good lord,' he murmured, and then he kissed me deeply.

Eventually the sun started to sink towards the horizon, suffusing everything with a glow of liquid gold. Edmund and I sat on the rocks still. I leaned back against him and he rested his cheek on my shoulder and wrapped his arms around me.

'The boat will be waiting for us,' I said, my voice was blank. The boat, Narrowhaven, the arena—none of that seemed real anymore.

'I wish we didn't have to go,' Edmund said, rubbing his cheek against my shoulder blade.

But we knew we couldn't stay. We slipped down from the rocks and waded back to shore. We packed up the picnic bag and polished off the last swallows of wine, and then we dressed. My clothes felt strange against my skin. We started back towards the rendezvous point. The evening was starting to come on, and the air was cooler. I had that dizzying feeling of having been in the heat all day and suddenly starting to cool off.

We climbed the hill. Once we reached the crest we would be back in the world, with the boat waiting for us on the shore and the lights of Narrowhaven twinkling beyond. Before we reached the top, though, Edmund gripped my wrist to stop me. His lips were parted and his dark eyes shuttling across my face, searching. I leaned forward and kissed him. His skin was still radiating heat, his lips warm and dry. I lingered over the kiss. It was all the reassurance I could offer myself.