A/N: Apologies for posting this a few hours late! I may or may not have been writing down to the wire on this chapter... I've been under the weather and heard a rumour this site might be on its last legs, so I was a little preoccupied this week. If you notice any errors, please let me know so I can fix them 😅 And in case this site hiccups, this story is cross-posted on AO3.
Right then, who's ready for a dash of angst, some sweet domesticity, and a pinch more angst? 😇
Chapter 65 Content Warnings: N/A
Chapter 65: i hate me too
Caspian
Caspian spends the next days avoiding Doctor Cornelius' study. The Doctor keeps him abreast of his research on the rings at breakfast, and that is all he need know. Thus far, Cornelius has found no mention of rings, magic pools, or the Wood, but he's confident he and Addie will find something eventually.
After the Doctor's updates, Caspian does not think of it. He spends his early mornings on the sparring field, his afternoons catching up on meetings, petitions, and taking tea with Lilliandil, and his evenings mired in paperwork. As he has ever done, he dedicates himself to his kingdom, to the never-ending business of ruling, and if he thinks of the rings at all, it is to wonder if more exist and others can enter Narnia unannounced.
Nothing more.
Nothing more.
Doctor Cornelius also hasn't divined if the rings - and Addie - arrived by Aslan's will or not. It seems a terrible oversight on the Lion's part to allow such objects to exist, usable by anyone who happens upon them and can puzzle out their use.
Or… it is possible, perhaps, that…
You are both where you must be.
If this is Aslan's will, if He brought her back…
You still have not let her go.
Is this a test? Aslan dangling the woman who defined the word "almost" to see if he will hold to his purpose, find a suitable queen, secure his succession? He is only twenty-two. Why the hurry?
Caspian clenches his jaw and continues on to the garden - formerly irises and belladonna surrounding a single apple tree kept by his uncle, now a garden of wildflowers, herbs, and flowering ivy kept by Narnians. This has quickly become Lilliandil's favoured spot for tea, and he's glad to indulge her. He will take tea with her and think of the rings and their passenger no more.
After this morning's hours-long council meeting, he could use a pleasanter aspect of duty.
Caspian finds Lilliandil by her glow, silver-white reflecting off the fountain in the garden's centre. The castle walls cast long shadows over the flowering white and blue wildflowers, orchids and roses, ivy and daffodils. Though the afternoon sun is still bright, the king's garden sits to the northeast. From dawn to noon, the garden is bathed in sunlight, but by teatime, shadows provide a welcome respite in summer. Lilliandil's light brightens everything within three feet, illumination without heat.
By the fountain, a small table for two sits in a patch of sunlight. Lilliandil is circling the fountain, smiling up at a bluejay serenading her and dipping her fingertips in the water.
"My lady," Caspian says, bowing. "I trust your morning has been pleasant?"
Lilliandil continues around the fountain and dips into a small curtsy. "Very pleasant; there is much to see. And yours?"
"Busy," Caspian answers. The council meeting this morning covered every Narnian territory and province from Ettinsmoor to Beruna to the Lone Islands.
The council is more concerned about Calormen than Lord Trumpkin seemed, especially given Lord Bern's progress eradicating the slave trade. After the blow to their economy, Calormen will not remain as quiet as they have been the last two years. Telmar too has been affected, though Lord Bathulum called them "indentured servants" rather than slaves, but the difference was in name only.
Difficult though change will be, Lord Bathulum and Calormen must adapt to the changing times. No one - human, beast, or any other sentient creature - should be enslaved, forced to work and live and die at another's pleasure. Without persons of every trade, skill, and expertise, how can any kingdom hope to prosper? Narnia's robust economy is thanks to fruitful harvests, to discoveries of gold in the Western Mountains bordering the Wild Lands of the North, and Narnians returning from exile in Archenland. But most of all, Narnia's prosperity is because her people have prospered.
These are not concerns he would trouble Lilliandil with. She's here to see Narnia, to explore as she has not yet been able. To live among people rather than watching their lives from above. At least, that's how she explained her desire to sail west with him, to Narnia.
So instead, Caspian simply tells her, "The council had many topics to discuss," and asks what she has not yet seen.
Lilliandil tilts her head, eyes wide and guileless as she ignores his question. "Certainly, I imagine they did."
It's as clear an invitation as she's ever given, curiosity peeking through decorum, but Narnia's affairs are his burden, and his alone.
For now, Narnia is still all he has. Only time will tell if he might hope for more.
"After my year away, there was much to share," Caspian says. He pulls out a chair for Lilliandil and offers his hand to help her sit. Her fingers are cool to the touch, soft and unblemished. He wonders, briefly, if his own feel rough. If Lilliandil noticed the callouses on his fingers, the sparring scar on his index knuckle, she never betrays it.
A fortnight of courting, and the touch of her hand still feels…
Different. That is all; only different, a hand that has not been roughened by work nor cut in battle. A hand free of the past, of complications.
Caspian clears his throat and sits opposite her, a steaming pot of tea, a plate of fruit and biscuits, and two teacups between them. He takes his sweetened to syrup, an indulgence he's free to enjoy at his castle. He's never quite developed a taste for the drink. Too many memories of the bitter medicinal teas Rainroot prescribes.
"Where else in Narnia interests you?" Caspian asks, spoon tinging his cup as he stirs in another mound of sugar. "Anywhere you wish to go, just name it."
Lilliandil sips her tea, lips delicately curled over the cup's edge. She takes hers unsweetened.
"Even from the sky, my sight only stretched to Narnia's eastern shores. Everything west of the sea has been new to me," she says. Another sip, her light flickering brighter. "I confess the lamp-post intrigues me., as does the Stone Table. Queen Lucy spoke of both."
Caspian gulps a too-hot mouthful of over-sweet tea to delay his answer. He has not set foot inside the How, nor seen Aslan's Table, since he won his crown. Like this castle, the place reeks of memories best left alone. Moreover, the How has been unstable since the war and Miraz's catapults. A team of dwarfs and moles just finished fixing the structure after a cave-in last month.
"Lantern Waste is beautiful in autumn," Caspian says. "Narnia's affairs should be well-settled by then."
Trumpkin ensured most of them are well-settled now, but he can't abandon his capital so soon after returning. His people need constancy after he left them in favour of the sea.
Lilliandil's blue eyes peer over her cup, lingering on him a moment too long. One of his most - and least - favourite characteristics of Lilliandil is how blatantly she studies him, as if he is a tangle of yarn she longs to set right.
Yet she herself is difficult to read. Four months Caspian's known her, and still he can never tell what she's thinking.
That is a good sign, surely; better than thinking he knows her every whim and finding a stranger in her stead.
"I don't mean to trouble you," says Lilliandil. "If you are needed here -"
"I'd be glad to accompany you," Caspian interrupts, rude, but he so dislikes these stilted manners, this insistence on his comfort when he ought to tend to hers. "If you wish, you will have me. If you do not, I will not insist."
He still longs for a woman who knows her own desires and chases them. Not recklessly, but confidently enough to breach etiquette if need be.
Perhaps he has been too stiff, too formal. Perhaps he still expects too much.
Lilliandil's cheeks tint pink, the soft, inviting blush of cherry blossoms.
"I do wish it," she says.
"Then you shall have it," Caspian answers quickly. "The journey and my company, when the first leaves change."
"I look forward to it."
Lilliandil plucks a plump, red grape from the plate between them. She must have noticed his hesitation, but she's gracious enough not to question it.
She ought to. He's… distracted, and he shouldn't be. His only thought at this moment should be her, this graceful, noble lady with every quality a king should seek in his… in his…
It is too much, still, to think the word. After all, only one chair sits in the throne room.
"I wish something else, too."
Caspian refocuses on Lilliandil's guileless face and the delicate Terebinthian china in his hand.
"Tell me."
Lilliandil rolls the grape between her thumb and index fingers. Her eyes are as blue as the Eastern Sea as she regards him, an unspoken question tainting them.
"I'd like to explore beyond the city," she says. "Dalia tells me Narnia is best in summer, out in the meadows and forests."
"A lovely season," Caspian agrees, though he prefers autumn.
As a prince, he longed for spring's new beginnings, the bright chirps of birds newly awakened to the world. But as a king, he came to prefer the little death of autumn, the crisp chill to wake him, the fleeting reds and golds bathing Narnia's forests before the northern winter winds swept them away, brown and crinkled.
"I should like a picnic on the morrow," Lilliandil continues. "Out in the field and fresh air. I think…" She pauses to eat the grape, chewing quietly. "I think it would do us both good."
"Tomorrow? I…" Caspian falters. He was to meet with Doctor Cornelius, first thing after lunch with Lilliandil. Then his meeting with the Lord of Beruna, then sparring with Glenstorm, then…
Lilliandil is his guest, and it was he who asked to court her.
He knows what havoc duty can wreak on a relationship.
"Yes," Caspian amends. "That would be well. Shall we depart at noon?"
Lilliandil smiles more freely than she has yet in the castle, and he is glad to be the cause of it.
Addie
After the dinner shift, Addie walks arm-in-arm with Lola over the windy bridge to the city. The sky is splashed red and purple, the sun shrouded in rain clouds that have yet to spill. The air nips at her wrists and face, a reminder of the English winter she left behind and the Narnian winters she missed.
"So, anything?"
The wind almost steals Lola's question, spoken low and guarded. She asks every day if Addie's found a way back, though never in so many words.
Addie answers the same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.
"Nothing," she says.
At Doctor Cornelius' request, Lola doesn't know about the rings, only that she's looking for a doorway to England.
Lola greets the bridge guards - two white satyrs, with long, twisted horns whose friendliness barely peeks through their severe faces.
"Find anything interesting, then?"
"The eastern shoreline has sea caves," Addie says, steering around a cloaked woman pushing a rattling cart of bells and wind chimes.
"Good," Lola says. "Then we'll make a summer trip of it, go exploring. Cesare's never seen the ocean."
Addie doesn't point out that she might not - should not - be here come summer. Lola doesn't need reminding, and Addie's tired of the awkward, sour tension whenever she mentions it.
"Have you?" Addie asks, louder to be heard over a braying donkey.
Lola guides them between a pair of squabbling schoolchildren and a man stumbling out of the nearby alehouse.
"I've always wanted to," Lola says. "And you? Did England have a seashore?"
"It's an island, so yes, but I only saw the sea once. Didn't really have time for holidays."
Lola snorts. "You never have time for holidays."
Of course not; in Miraz's Narnia, holidays were for the nobility. In England, holidays were for the well-to-do. She fell into neither category.
Apparently, under Caspian's rule, short holidays are becoming common enough that even maids can take them.
"So?" Addie says. "Neither of us did."
"All the more reason we're going on one. We'll sleep on the sand and let the gulls wake us. And don't think of arguing. Cesare would love it, and you wouldn't want to disappoint him, would you?"
Addie almost rolls her eyes. In her absence, Lola has perfected the art of the guilt-trip.
It's effective. One thought of little Cesare's chubby hands tugging her skirt, and she agrees.
"Of course I wouldn't."
Lola sniffs and marches on, chin high. "Good."
Addie doesn't say she would've agreed just for Lola's sake.
No point in saying it if Lola wouldn't believe her.
"Momma, I caught a candle-bug!"
Cesare scampers up on chubby, toddling legs, his tiny hands cupped together. He has his father's ringlet curls and Lola's wide, fast smile, all teeth.
Lola squeezes Addie's arm - an unnecessary, though appreciated, comfort - and jogs to greet her son.
"Lightning-bug, my love," she laughs, kneeling to inspect Cesare's hands, yellow shining between his fingers.
Cesare cracks his hands to show her, and the bug flies free. Lola misses it as Cesare jumps, wailing, and misses too. Addie waits for the flickering insect to fly her way as it dodges Lola and Cesare's attempts to grab it. Her patience is rewarded - the bug flashes yellow, flies close, and Addie cups her hands around it. Its wings tickle her palm in protest.
Momentary tears forgotten, Cesare bounds to her, hands outstretched.
"Careful," Addie says, kneeling. "It's still flying."
"Give i-i-i-i-it!"
"Cesare!" Lola tuts.
"Give it ple-e-e-ase!" Crafty little thing, Cesare blinks his big, honey-brown eyes up at her, pouting for all he's worth.
Addie helps the boy slide his hand beneath hers, flips them, and closes his other hand before the bug can escape.
Lola ruffles his curls, smiling and shaking her head.
"What do you say, Cesare?"
Cesare giggles, all chubby cheeks and four-year-old glee. "Thank you, Aunt Addie."
Addie says, "You're welcome," but Cesare is already scampering back to his grandparents' house, determined to show them his find before Lola takes him home, to the small house she and Alfonso bought soon after Cesare was born.
And if Addie wonders if Cesare might have a playmate had she made different choices, if she pictures a boy with dark hair and darker eyes, if she imagines a quieter child begging for bedtime stories of Old Narnia, well, that's no one's business but hers.
It's no good to dwell on what will never be, but she can't help wondering.
It is an easily dismissed, half-moment of weakness.
Nothing more.
Alfonso has already started dinner when they arrive with Cesare. He greets Lola with the same smitten, boyish smile Addie remembers as he scoops up Cesare, a parsnip peel stuck to his wrist. Lola giggles as she kisses him sweetly and dangles the peel between them.
"Ew, papa!"
Cesare wriggles on Alfonso's hip, face scrunched in disapproval.
"Here, how about we catch more candle-bugs, give your mum and dad a few minutes?" Addie says. Lola admitted she's had little privacy with Alfonso since Cesare was born.
"No!" Cesare pokes Alfonso's chest, puppy eyes already in place. "I want Papa to play with me!"
Alfonso and Lola trade a glance.
"Alright, little man. What're we playing?"
Cesare beams in victory. "Dragons and knights! You're the dragon."
Shaking her head fondly, Lola kisses Alfonso's cheek and heads into the kitchen. Addie follows, tying her hair as she goes. From the main room, Cesare's little feet patter as Alfonso roars and gives chase.
A cutting board of vegetable peelings and a shaggy dough pile on a floured mat have overtaken the kitchen's small countertop.
Addie waves Lola away.
"Let me. You've been on your feet all day."
Lola reaches around her for the peelings bucket. "So have you, silly."
Addie bumps Lola's hip and kneads the dough into a loose ball, careful not to overwork it.
"Not really; library mornings, remember?"
Moreover, Lola has a spirited four-year-old demanding either hers or Alfonso's attention. No matter her insistence otherwise, Lola must be exhausted.
Lola huffs and empties the bucket into the slop trough outside, but she doesn't protest further. Instead, she strays to the doorway, where Cesare's shrieks war with his father's attempted dragonish growls. Addie busies herself with the crust for the pork and parsnip pie - pinching the edges, carving a dragon into the top, stoking the oven, placing the pie inside to cook. Thankfully, Alfonso precooked the pork and parsnips both, so it's just browning the crust.
"He's growing up so fast." Lola leans against the door frame, her eyes suddenly misty. "He was such a fussy baby, you know?"
Addie swallows thickly. She heard this wistful tone before - in Mum's diaries.
The Lola she remembers shouldn't sound like that.
"Go on." Addie nudges Lola toward the main room. "I've got this."
Any pretence of protest abandoned, Lola dabs her eyes, kisses Addie's cheek, and joins the game as a second dragon, much to Cesare's delight.
Addie returns to the kitchen with the buttery scent of baking pie crust for company.
After dinner, Alfonso takes a yawning Cesare upstairs to bed despite his sleepy protests. Addie wraps up in her shawl - a gift from Sellea, who still works in the kitchen and took up knitting in her free time - and murmurs a goodnight that Lola waves off.
"Keep me company, won't you?" Lola says. "I'll be up a while yet."
Addie nods toward the stairs. "Don't you want some time with your husband? You haven't seen him all day."
Lola's shoulders stiffen. "Alfonso's not going anywhere. Tea?"
That guilt again. Addie wills it away. She offered to keep her distance when she told Lola that she's researching potential paths back to England with Doctor Cornelius, and Lola reacted… poorly.
Being here, while she can, is the best she can do.
"I'm alright, thanks," Addie says, following Lola into the kitchen. "Since when do you like tea?"
Lola sets a kettle to boil over the dying hearth and shakes some herbs and dried flowers into a cup.
"I don't, but since Cesare was born, I can't sleep without it." A shrug, a rueful smile. "Even Alfonso's breathing keeps me up."
Addie hums. Sleeping tea is the opposite of what she needs. These days, she rises earlier than ever to start her research before the rest of the castle is awake. Less chance of running into anyone.
"So, you said England is where you're supposed to be. Why's that?"
Addie blinks. Lola keeps her gaze fixed on the kettle, as if she can will it to boil.
"Did Aslan tell you that?" Lola asks.
Addie glances toward the kettle, but it stays stubbornly quiet.
I will open a door to other worlds beyond Narnia. If you step through, you will return home with my blessing.
"Not in so many words," Addie says. "But he called it home. My home."
A trail of steam wisps from the kettle's spout, the water bubbling. Lola pokes the coals and reveals more embers, the orange glow sharpening her frown.
"Since when do you care what Aslan thinks? Or any god, for that matter?" Lola rests the fire poker on the floor. "As I remember it, you liked being everywhere but where you were supposed to be. What's different now?"
What use is it wondering why when nothing will change the choice she made? Everything is different now, because she chose her parents over Narnia and everyone here that she loved, and time took away whatever was left.
Lola knows all that happened in England, and she still doesn't understand. How many more ways can Addie explain it?
Instead of trying again, Addie just shrugs.
"I learned my lesson."
Lola drums her fingers on the poker. "Because of King Caspian?"
Addie flinches.
"I went to find my parents," she says, hollow as it sounds. "And I found Mum."
Exactly on cue, the kettle whines. Thick towel in hand, Lola takes it off before it whistles in earnest and fills her cup. An earthy, floral steam fills Addie's nose.
She hates that smell. It reminds her of the How.
Of being sent away. She understands better why, now, and it doesn't matter anymore, but the tension remains, like taut scar skin over a healed burn.
Lola stirs her tea, spoon clicking against the pottery.
"I remember you weren't convinced at the time. Sometimes I think…" Lola's thumb taps her cup, nail scratching the dull surface. "Sometimes, looking back, I wonder if I talked you into it when I shouldn't have."
Lola feels guilty?
Addie joins Lola at the counter and hugs her. She made that choice, not Lola.
"Don't say that. It was good advice, and I'm glad I took it."
"Even now?"
Does it have to be yes or no?
Addie rests her head on Lola's shoulder and stares at the floor.
Had she stayed in Narnia, Mum would have been all alone - a husband and a daughter who never came home. Addie wouldn't have known, but it would have been cruel to her mother regardless, a mother who did want her after all, who only sent her away out of love.
A mother who wanted to be there, and did the best she could during a war.
The pain of losing her mum is worth the happiness - the relief - of having known her. Of having felt her love, however imperfect.
Yet, the pain Addie left in her wake here, in Narnia…
She could have left under kinder circumstances.
"I wish it hadn't been so sudden," Addie whispers. "I know the way I left was…"
"Rushed."
Addie nods. "But I think it was the right thing."
Lola sets aside her cup and hugs her in turn, so tightly Addie can barely breathe.
"I'm glad you found your mother," Lola says. "Really, I am. But she's gone now and… and you don't have to go again. Why go back?"
Addie breathes, her chest tight and her eyes stinging.
"It's home."
The city is dark by the time Addie leaves for the castle. Lightning-bugs dart through the streets like dancing stars, and moths flutter around the lanterns, drawn to the light but risking their wings as a breeze stirs the flames.
Can they feel the heat? Do they know one errant flame could burn them to ash? Or do they only see light and follow it on instinct, heedless of the danger?
Addie tugs her shawl tighter around her shoulders. She's not unlike those moths.
At least she has sense enough to avoid the light, to try to leave it behind. The Doctor's records will eventually turn up answers; then, she will flit around fire no more.
Main Street takes her past the city square, now emptied of vendors. And then, past the overlook.
The tree is there.
Or it used to be. Lola said it's gone now.
Is there still magic in it?
Addie wanders into the courtyard. Pale cobblestones awash in moonlight stretch between her and the stone railing guarding the cliff's edge.
There, straight ahead, stands a stump twice the width of her shoulders. It's clean-cut at the left side and splintered on the other, bits of bark chipped and carved away.
Addie's lungs snag, oxygen caught in her throat.
She has seen that stump before.
Weeks ago, she followed a stubborn wind into a thunderstorm, and found the stairs and a stump - this stump, the rough-hewn remnants of twisted trunks. She feels no pull to it now.
Lola said Caspian ordered it cut down.
Why?
Because he moved on? Because he was angry? Because he…
Addie shakes the thought away. It doesn't matter why; Caspian has moved on and obviously still thinks the worst of her - her leaving didn't change that. Sooner or later, she will figure out the rings, the pools, and leave Caspian and Lola in peace.
Why go back now?
Why not? She's intruding here, bringing up old memories best forgotten. She can't give anyone closure by staying here, by trying to explain. The best she can do is get out of the way. Let their lives carry on in peace.
She does them more good by leaving than by staying. It was true then, and it's true now.
Isn't it?
Her mistake with Caspian was running instead of giving a proper goodbye, but leaving was the right thing.
There was nothing left between them. She merely accelerated the inevitable, cut off an infected branch before it poisoned the tree entire.
Had she stayed, her and Caspian's tryst would have died a slower, far more painful death - death by festering, by resentment, by mistakes too profound to forgive. Trust too damaged to salvage.
Her fault, mostly. Splitting from Caspian in the escape was the beginning of the end - the critical break that would never heal. A departure as sudden as it was cruel, ill-conceived, and reckless. But was it worth it, to know now that Caspian survived that night? Would he still have lived had she run with him?
Addie sits at the foot of the stump and stares across the empty courtyard. If she could go back, she wouldn't gamble a different path without knowing Caspian would have survived.
Just like she would not change running through this tree. She never would have known her mother, would have carried the belief her parents were either dead or didn't care enough to keep her off the street for all her days.
She did not sacrifice Caspian to know her mother. Their love was dying anyway.
Even had Caspian apologised sooner, had he reached her in time, had he just looked at her as she stood in the crowd silently begging him to change her mind…
There was no mending what broke between them. For all her messy, imperfect efforts at earning back his trust, obeying his orders when he spoke as a prince, and holding him when he doubted himself, for every attempt at making it up to him, Caspian could not get past the trust she broke by running. She ran to him with Aslan's news of her parents ringing in her ears, and Caspian did not believe her.
He greeted her as he did in the throne room.
Since the escape, Caspian decided he couldn't trust her, and in the end, there was nothing she could do to change that.
He thought the worst of her, completely and utterly. What love was left between them after he spoke so coldly? After he bid her to run and now punishes her for having done it?
Addie breathes in the midnight air, the scent of mountain pines floating on the breeze, and stands.
Even if she could go back, she would change nothing.
Leaving has always been the best she can do. But this time, she will manage a gentler exit.
A/N: Now to figure out wtf I'm doing next chapter... I think we need to get Caspian and Addie in the same room again, yes? 😏
Chapter 66 Preview:
"You should dance, Addie! It's a festival, after all."
"I don't think -"
Her denial is lost to the crowd's cheers as two horses ride into the field: one snow-white, docile mare bearing Lilliandil, Lady of the Stars, and the other…
The other is as dark as spilled ink, bearing the king.