This is something I dug up in my files. I've written more than this has. Hopefully I'll post the rest of it soon. I don't intend to keep posting new starts and never finishing anything! I'll keep writing things. As always, your best bet for getting me to continue is to review. (For anything and everything.)
"We have found the traitor, your Majesty."
High King Peter leaned forward, his expression brightening. "By the Mane! Who is it?"
"As per the Narnian right to anonymity in capture, we have not ascertained that, sire."
"Bring him in."
Peter realised his error almost immediately: the prisoner brought in, a kerchief shrouding their features, was small and slight enough for him to instantly know it for a human girl.
His blood ran suddenly cold as he recognised the figure. Her hands were tied; curtly, hoping for and dreading her identity being revealed, the High King ordered them to release her. A moment later she stood alone facing him.
"Take off your head covering. It is Narnian law."
"Well know I Narnian law, royal brother," came the defiant voice, and Lucy the Queen was revealed.
"Queen Lucy!" he said, dull distress in his tone. "You to be the traitor! Aslan…."
She laughed harshly. "You would call on Aslan, High King! On Aslan!" There was a note of derision in her voice.
"What," said Peter wearily, "you too have lost your faith in him, Queen Lucy? You who were the closest to him?"
Lucy did not deign to reply, her gaze hard and unwavering.
He made a noise of disgust. "You know what you are guilty of."
A faint sneer graced her lips, but the younger Queen did not reply to his statement.
"Lucy Pevensie, once known as Queen Lucy the Valiant, you have been seen succouring known traitors and associating yourself with them by that action, in direct and deliberate defiance of our laws." He glanced at her guards, a sick feeling rising within him. "Take her away."
As his sister was taken away, Peter closed his eyes. When had everything changed? At some point, she'd changed from the sweet child who'd first entered Narnia to this defiant woman, and he hadn't even noticed, caught up as he was in leading the rulership of the land.
"Sire." He was snapped out of his reverie by the voice; it was that of the good faun Tumnus, with an odd hesitation to it.
"Friend of the Kings and Queens, what is it?" A sharp ache caught his throat as he said it: despite over five years without one of the tetrarchs, he hadn't yet got used to it.
Tumnus gave no sign that he was aware of the slip. "What is to be done with the impostor?"
His brow darkened, fury quickly building within him. "Leave him in the dungeons until he knows that we are not joking with the punishments we devise!"
"Certainly, High King Peter."
"I have another suggestion," another voice rang out. He glanced up in surprise, his eyes meeting Susan's as she sauntered into the throne room.
"What is it, royal sister?"
She smiled thinly. "Let me deal with the impostor."
Peter returned her smile. "Very well."
As she strolled out again, Tumnus hurrying in her wake, Peter fell to musing again. Susan was another disappointment. Instead of a practical, level-headed guide, Susan had grown cold, mockingly arrogant and manipulative. It hurt Peter to see her fashioned into that: the perfect weapon against the Calormenes, true, but nothing like the Gentle moniker Aslan had once bestowed on her.
Aslan! He had not come to them for a little more than seven years now, and to Peter - who was used to at least hearing of him visiting a few times a year - it was heartbreaking. How could he know what to do best without the guidance of Aslan?
He alone was true to Aslan's words.
It was Edmund's disappearance, he thought, that made all the difference. Susan had been hesitant, nervous for a good six months afterwards, until quite suddenly she changed, to the cool, confident woman she had become.
And they had been so happy ruling Narnia together!
It was only recently, though, that trouble really began, when an impostor looking somewhat like Edmund appeared claiming to be that lost King. Several Mice had supported him and actively planned to overthrow the High King. In retaliation, he had thrown them all in the dungeon and declared them traitors. Someone had been continuing to feed them well, though, and that someone - as it had turned out that very day - was Queen Lucy.
He felt a mixture of shock and anger at her betrayal. Perhaps it was not entirely unexpected - she had, after all, pleaded for the case of the Mice and the impostor - but to find his co-ruler joining in the plotting was hard.
Was Narnia to be brought low because of this? Was all Narnia now to fall as he watched?
Queen Lucy had betrayed him. Only Queen Susan stood by him now. He would show them. His power could be asserted. High King Peter must show himself as even cruel; it was the only way to hold his power, to save Narnia. It would be hard, but he could—must—do it.
For Narnia.
What do you think? What's going on? Any ideas?