"The bottom," echoed Caspian.
The bottom of the world.
For all Lucy knew, that could have been true.
She stepped hesitantly forward and let out a staggered breath, chest heavy with the sheer magnitude of the place, plain grey stone running up suddenly into glittering black ocean, cracked glassy surface illuminated in faint daylight as if pouring in from another world, another universe.
"Careful," murmured Caspian, his voice so low it barely registered, small and lonely as if outdoors in the middle of the night.
Their ghostly tunnel ended as abruptly as if it had been cut off with a knife, towering pillars sprawling out before them in the darkness of the gargantuan cavern, some broken or missing or lying flat over stretches of the ground that had not caved in, crumbling under their own weight.
"No way did they build this," breathed Caspian, and Lucy looked at him.
"You think it's…?"
Real. The word hung unspoken in the air, so overwhelming was the thought that it crushed even the smallest tremor of a voice.
He met her eyes, the possibility of it shining back at her, the whisper of stories filled with hidden underground realms too vast to map, too dangerous to explore, swallowing lost souls and dragging them down into the depths never to touch the light again.
"What are we supposed to do now?" asked Jill.
"Cross it, I suppose," said Lucy. "There must be something on the other side, I can see the wall."
"But it's miles across, and that would be bad enough even if it had a floor!"
"It has a— well, it has most of a floor."
Jill shot her a dry look, unconvinced.
"Do you want to go back?"
"I don't think we have a choice," said Caspian. "My guess is all paths lead here, eventually. This place is too good to waste, they'd want somebody to get to it."
"So… it's the only way through," said Lucy.
"That's how I would design it."
"Nobody asked you," muttered Jill, but the aggravation lacing her tone only confirmed she thought he was right.
Lucy inched forward again, slipping her foot over dull rock to place her toes on shiny black stone. "Seems solid enough."
She stepped further and put real weight on it, half expecting the ground to crack or crumble or drop out beneath her, but nothing happened.
She took another step, both feet planted solidly on the strange surface, and glanced back at Caspian.
He scanned her, scanned the stone, shrugged, and stepped out beside her.
Still nothing happened.
"Well…" he gazed out across the staggering expanse, glittering like a night sky sunken into the earth. "Let's get moving, then."
Lucy and Caspian strode carefully over the slab of onyx marble, scattered debris clinking and crunching like glass beneath their boots, and Jill followed a moment later, though she muttered a great deal about heights and kept very close to Lucy's shoulder.
A stone's throw to the right the ground fell away beyond a sharp edge into solid nothingness, but they continued over the flat surface until it ran up against a low ridge and they realized their slab had only been one very tiny piece of the jigsaw, offset as if it had shifted a full two feet lower than its neighbor over the past few centuries, like a tile in a bathroom floor, if the tile were the size of a building.
Caspian stepped over the rise and the girls followed—though Jill did this very gingerly—and glinting before them the ground really did appear like a jigsaw, shattered to pieces a thousand years ago, now jumbled and missing in large swaths that left only certain paths through the ancient world.
Jill glanced over her shoulder.
"Woah."
Lucy followed her gaze.
Along the cave wall, spaced apart at intervals of several hundred feet or more, dim green hole after dim green hole opened in the cliff face, stretching endlessly to either side as far as the eye could see, the tunnel they'd emerged from only one of many shelves in the gargantuan wall.
"I guess that proves your theory," muttered Lucy, and Caspian nodded vacantly.
The dull green glow came off as utterly artificial now, and the deeper they moved into the impossible abyssal vista, the more the thought rooted itself in Lucy's mind that this really must be real.
Caspian's ethereal figure strode ahead of her, silhouetted in the scattered haze of distant daylight and flickering like some elusive spirit in and out of shadow, Jill a fae creature of the underworld at her side, hovering in a timid half-tiptoe stance as she hopped over narrow gaps in the stone, and they passed at last beneath the shadow of a tower, a solid pillar stretching immeasurably up into the silver haze.
Caspian broke into a sprint and Lucy bolted after him, draft lashing her face, heart leaping with the burst of energy until the structure rushed up and her hands slapped cool granite, Caspian laughing as he leaned back against the stone.
The echo of his laugher spread contagious into her own throat before she even knew why, as if she'd been set alive by something in the stale air, laughing at the impossibility of it all, at the sheer mass of the stone beneath her fingers that nearly reduced her to trembling at its base.
Jill caught up a minute later, skirting the structure just as Lucy's chirping giggles stopped long enough for her to catch her breath.
She trailed her fingertips along the tower's edge, smooth as marble, inky as charcoal, run through with seams of moon-white ore she couldn't name.
"You're mad, you two are," said Jill with a side eye and a shake of the head, but Lucy couldn't help but smile, the thrill still sinking in, and Caspian grinned as he turned to keep moving.
"I wonder what this place really is," said Lucy, dragging her eyes from one tower to the next, none seeming to bear windows or doors, hewn in geometric patterns as if they existed solely to impress.
"Maybe a temple," said Caspian, dreamy distance creeping into voice as he gazed up. "Or a courtyard… or a cathedral…"
"Cathedral," echoed Lucy, "I like that."
Chasms gaped on either side of their path now, and in the darkness below glinted shapes she'd almost glimpsed several times before but which now she caught in full; pillars, stretching down into the abyss as if reflecting those that stretched up toward the surface world, the very ground upon which they walked held up by monuments plummeting who knew how far down into the earth.
Bridges of stone stretched over stilts the size of skyscrapers, the magnitude of space above and below them nearly incomprehensible.
"I suppose these are only the shallows," she murmured, unable to tear her gaze from the void, "compared to… whatever's down there."
"Yeah…" Caspian trailed off. "What was that place called? Bism?"
Lucy glanced at him. "What, you think you'd find gnomes down there?"
He smiled, half joking, but somehow in this place nothing seemed quite out of the question. "Or maybe salamanders, speaking riddles out of living flame."
Lucy grinned, and a tiny shadow moved on the nearest pillar just close enough to catch her eye. "There's a salamander for you."
He glanced up just as the lizard scurried deeper into shadow, and sighed. "Well, that's… rather underwhelming."
Lucy giggled softly.
Caspian grabbed her wrist and she jerked to a stop an inch from the edge, a glassy pebble dislodged by her boot skittering down into the massive chasm, noise echoing until it faded into nothingness, never landing.
Her heart skipped a beat and she stumbled back to grab Caspian's arm, their path falling off abruptly before them and picking up a hundred yards away.
Caspian let out a low breath.
"I hate this place," muttered Jill shakily, and for a moment Lucy's mind flew back to another cliff as Caspian turned slowly away from the ledge and led the way across an expanse of stone parallel to it.
Their detour took several minutes, walking silently save for the crunch of their footsteps until they'd rounded the next pillar and spotted a set of giant stairs that came nearly up to Caspian's waist, a suspended pathway arching over the chasm that might once have been a street.
Caspian boosted himself up to the first step and turned back to offer Lucy his good hand, pulling her up beside him, and then Jill. And so they proceeded over one goliath bridge and then another, scrambling over unnatural angular terrain that stole the breath from Lucy's lungs and ached in her core and rubbed off black like soot on her hands, minutes dragging into hours as they pressed on.
"It looks more solid over there," panted Caspian at last, jumping down from the last step of a narrow walkway and rejoining the girls on flat ground.
Lucy looked to where he pointed, across to the far wall where a pinprick of dull green hinted for the first time at a cave or a tunnel low in the rock.
"That's nice," deadpanned Jill through heavy breaths, "Can we sit down for a second?"
"We just sat down twenty minutes ago," said Caspian.
"Yes, and I'm sure that's all well and good for you." She plopped down onto the stone and eyed him up and down dryly as she massaged her calves. "My legs are killing me."
"Something else might kill you if you slow us down any more," said Caspian, though he didn't quite hide his smirk as he rolled his eyes.
"You mean you? Or something el—" Jill bolted to her feet again and Lucy stiffened, the girl's wide dark eyes trained on the pillars lining the opposite side of the cathedral.
"What is it?" asked Caspian, glancing between her and the distant towering shadows.
"Something's moving over there."
Lucy squinted, but caught no movement. "What, a lizard?"
"No, over there." Jill pointed to the third pillar from the far wall, the towering structure something like a quarter mile away,
"How can you even see anything over there?" asked Lucy, furrowing her brow and squinting again, the faint dread that it might be some kind of Capitol engineered mutt creeping up for a moment before something moved in front of a pillar and she blinked.
It looked… human?
"Edmund," said Caspian, and Lucy and Jill glanced up at him. "Has to be, he's the only other one down here."
Lucy nodded slowly, and glanced back just in time to catch the figure disappear again into shadow.
Could he see them, too?
"Must have gotten here before us," she muttered, "From another tunnel."
"I guess so," said Caspian distantly, eyes lingering on the shadows.
Lucy glanced at him, then back at their path toward the distant cave. "We should probably move, in that case."
Even Jill didn't argue this time, and they picked their way across the stone, glancing across the cavern every so often, though the shadows remained unchanged.
Lucy didn't much like the idea of being followed once they got to the other side, but before she could voice this, a deafening crack exploded through the cavern and she jumped halfway out of her skin.
Caspian whirled back and Jill gave a little squeak, glancing wildly around for the source of the noise still ringing through Lucy's body as everything for a single instant stood still.
Then one of the pillars behind them began to lean, and for a second it seemed as if the earth itself were tilting, the impossibly gargantuan tower groaning slowly off-balance from its base.
Lucy almost lurched with the vertigo and grabbed Caspian's arm like a vice, horror striking down to her core as if watching the sky fall, and in slow motion the colossal pillar plummeted across the cavern, blotting out dim light halfway between their position and the tunnel from which they'd come.
Every muscle in Lucy's body braced for impact just as Caspian leapt into action and yanked her by the jacket toward the nearest pillar, scrambling over debris-scattered ground away from the chasm's edge, a terrible rumble reverberating Lucy's chest before the earth lurched beneath them and an ear-shattering boom snapped through her bones as her knees struck the floor and Caspian grasped a ridge in the stone.
Jill clung onto Lucy just as she glanced over her shoulder and watched the shattered pillar crumble through solid stone, slabs of marble splitting and tipping and caving in as the sheer power of its vibrations sent spiderweb cracks through nearby pillars, shatter-lines lashing glossy black stone.
Giant staircases broke away and plunged into the abyss, the jolt of every crack singing through the stone beneath her hands, and then just over the din Caspian shouted "Run!"
Lucy snapped back to reality and bolted to her feet, a burst of adrenaline thrumming through her veins as she charged a few unsteady steps and leapt over a gap that might have given her pause before but now she barely noticed, landing hard on the other side and flying forward with the momentum.
She swerved to miss a heap of rubble as Jill's footsteps landed behind her, blocking out the noise and aiming for nothing but the nearest patch of open stone.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught a distant shape moving in the same direction, but the significance of such a thing flew straight out of her head as another boom shook the cavern and Lucy pulled up short to keep her feet, not even glancing back as Caspian skidded and almost fell and sprung back into action a second later, leaping over scattered stones and clambering up giant steps to tumble down the other side.
Blood pumped, time slipped out of meaning, the distant green cave crept up ahead yet only ever felt further and further away, and Lucy had almost lost all sense of her own body before she lurched to a halt at the top of a set of giant stairs.
The stone bridge ended abruptly at her feet, chasm gaping between herself and the next patch of stone, and Caspian stumbled beside her, holding out an arm to stop Jill.
He stepped back several paces, chest heaving, and then charged the gap and leapt across before Jill could even choke out whatever warning rose into her throat, crashing to the other side and stumbling back up to his feet.
The girls glanced at each other.
"You next," gasped Lucy.
"What?"
"Go! I know how you are with heights and I'm not moving til you're on the other side!"
"But—"
"Move!"
Jill's eyes flew to the chasm, and just when Lucy expected another argument, she took a step back, then another, and another, braced herself, took a deep breath, and ran.
For one second she floundered in the air before one boot connected with the opposite ledge and Caspian grabbed her waist, hauling her onto solid ground.
Lucy stepped back just as a deafening crack split the air and glass stone shattered beneath her feet.
The bridge shifted and she scrambled backward unthinking, stumbling down over massive steps as they tilted and lurched and she leapt the rest of the way, crashing hard to her shoulder.
The backpack broke most of her fall but she barely noticed, ground shaking as she braced herself to fall away with it.
When at last she pushed herself shakily to her hands and knees, a gaping hole stretched behind her, bridge gone, nothing but the abyss now separating her from Caspian and Jill on the other side.
And before she could even properly take this in, a crack and groan drew her eyes to a pillar on the right hand side of the cathedral where they'd been running only minutes ago, beginning to lean just overhead.
"Lucy!" shouted Caspian, and she hauled herself to her feet, driven by the panic in his voice before her own head could catch up, before the terror seeping into her veins even knew where it came from.
She bore down as hard as her boots could pound along the edge of the gap without looking back, white hot survival flashing through her skin as Caspian and Jill bolted in the corner of her vision and another figure grew vaguely closer up ahead.
A dozen yards away the gap narrowed, jagged black glass jutting out just far enough that she might reach it if she jumped, and then the other figure flashed in front of her and leapt across as the rush of impending weight overhead closed in with a groan and the clatter of shattering stone, and Lucy veered to take the leap.
One boot left the edge just as the earth-shattering crash of impact erupted behind her and she pitched into the abyss, grasping out with a shriek and catching fabric as she slammed into jagged obsidian and locked both hands around a slippery synthetic sleeve.
Its owner crashed to the edge with a sharp cry and her grip redoubled, dangling over yawning blackness as the world shook and panic ripped through her blood, terrified whimper drowned out by deafening thunder as she glanced desperately up to lock with Edmund's dark eyes.
"Please," she choked, her own voice foreign in that moment, rasping, almost a cry, "Please."
Panicked adrenaline pounded through her chest cavity, wide brown eyes staring down at her in terror as Edmund grabbed her wrist and pried it off.
She shrieked again and snatched his hand before she could slip, locking her fingers around his in a death grip as he struggled to pull free but she only squeezed tighter, and another thunderous crack echoed above them.
They both looked up as the nearest pillar on the left side shattered to life and groaned directly overhead.
With a surge of power Edmund hauled her up, gasping at the effort as Lucy got an elbow and a knee over the edge and loosened her grip enough for him to spring free and burst away, tearing over debris as she clambered up to her hands and knees after him and followed in a stumbling blur.
She sprinted over flat black stone, jagged cave outline looming up ahead, boots pounding, tower leaning, legs almost giving out as she forced one foot in front of the other and lurched at last onto grey-green rock beneath a gaping archway, crashing to her knees as the earth shook and black glass flew.
She glanced back just as Edmund crashed into the cave and obsidian shuddered and slipped and cracked apart from grey stone, falling, thunderous, as the glittering black vista collapsed in on itself.
Lungs aching, skull pounding, body trembling.
Edmund collapsed against the wall and two sets of footsteps pounded across the cave as Caspian skidded to one knee and grabbed Lucy by the shoulders.
She clutched his arms and at last their bodies gave out as she collapsed back against the stone, gasping for air as Caspian just barely held himself up on his elbows and watched the destruction over his shoulder, equally breathless.
Thunder echoed at the edges of her consciousness, body buzzing with ebbing adrenaline.
Several eternities passed before the roar quieted to a rumble, to a crackle, to a distant clack of stone tumbling over cliffs into the distant world below, fading at last to a heavy silence screaming in her ears like a suffocating siren.
Slowly, the heavy smog of exhaustion swirling thick inside her head began to dissipate, a beacon of clear thought piercing through the mist.
She winced as she moved to prop herself up, and Caspian hauled himself to his knees.
"You okay?" he breathed, and she groaned in reply, not at all convincing.
"Fine. Bruised, maybe. You?"
He nodded with a sigh, and Lucy glanced over his shoulder to Jill who shot her a thumbs up and leaned back against the cave wall.
A few feet beyond the soles of Lucy's boots, dull stone dropped off into gaping nothingness, save for a few pillars still intact at the edges of the cavern, just barely visible in pale shreds of daylight; but the ancient cityscape had vanished, not even the barest island still standing in the haze of filtering dust.
Rigged, she thought, and almost said aloud, though Caspian had certainly already thought of it, too.
A trap set by the Gamemakers—perhaps explosives, rigged in the base of every pillar to topple them.
A world unfathomable now sunken into the deep.
A cathedral no more.
Caspian moved to stand, and a shift against the wall reminded Lucy suddenly that Edmund was still there, too, leaning against the stone, clutching his side.
He straightened sharply and Lucy's eyes flashed between them; Caspian's towering figure, hand ghosting the knife in his belt, Edmund's pale face, straight nose half shadowed in the tunnel's faint green glow, brown eyes flashing beneath a mess of thick black hair hanging loose over his forehead, the darkened rim of a bruise she'd entirely forgotten about still edging his cheekbone.
He squared his shoulders, hovering with his weight on his toes like a bird about to take flight, the gaping abyss at his back as Caspian's fingers closed around the knife.
Lucy's chest tightened.
Edmund braced himself, caged like so many kids she'd seen before in back alleys and empty classrooms.
"Until we get out of here," she said abruptly, voice echoing down the tunnel as Caspian froze, "wouldn't it be better to travel together?"
She blinked, surprised by her own words, and sucked in a sharp breath as Caspian's eyes snapped down to her at the same second that Edmund's did.
"What?" asked Caspian, cold with shock.
Lucy struggled to her feet to stand properly on his level, but just as quickly averted her eyes from his invasive black stare, feeling suddenly very stupid, only to find Jill watching her evenly from the other wall.
"I mean…" She glanced at Edmund and his eyes stabbed through hers, as if reading her, calculating her, but not in the same way Eustace had done, something more cunning than intelligence behind his eyes now, something animalistic, a ragged quality that had not been there in the training center.
The knife clutched in Caspian's hand burned in the edge of her vision.
"If there's a wasp in the room, I'd like to be able to see it."
Edmund cocked his jaw, gazing down his nose at her. "Likewise."
Caspian took Lucy by the arm, lowering his voice as if threatening, just above her ear. "I really don't think this is a good idea."
The shocking venom in his tone dripped corrosive like a shiver down her neck, and she pulled back, staring bewildered at him for a moment before she managed to find her words.
"Do you have a better one?"
"I don't know, maybe not hanging around with the kid who tried to kill me as recently as yesterday morning?"
"This is the arena," said Jill dryly, "everyone is trying to kill everyone."
The words came out so blunt and Eustace-ish that Lucy's eyes flashed to her in surprise.
"Well," said Edmund at last, "looks like you lost that vote."
Caspian's black glare pinned him again like blades of ice, but Edmund only stared him down with cruel amusement, and again Lucy second-guessed herself.
"Lead the way," he drawled, raising his eyebrows in challenge, and Caspian shifted on his feet, energy trembling through the blade of the knife. "What? You're not scared of me, are you?"
Lucy glanced at Caspian, his knuckles turning white on the hilt, until he glanced back at her and his expression worked indecipherably for several moments before heaving a deep sigh.
He let go of the steel and turned away into the tunnel. "Feel free to get lost," he snapped without glancing back, "I'm not your babysitter."
Edmund scoffed what might have been a derisive laugh. "Where's the fun in that?"
Jill eyed him distastefully as she moved after Caspian, but said nothing, looked away, and walked deeper into the cave.
Lucy stepped subconsciously away from the edge, scanning Edmund's body suddenly for any hint of a weapon as her wits caught up much too late for comfort.
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned them inside out. "You really think you'd still be alive if I had a knife on me?"
She nodded toward the tunnel, acutely aware that even while smaller than Caspian, Edmund towered over her. "Hurry up."
Why exactly did you think this was a good idea, Lucy Pevensie?
What's wrong with you?
Edmund smirked dryly, and eventually moved to follow Caspian and Jill, Lucy trailing at the back of the line.
Rough-hewn walls hung with the same ghost glow that for a moment it had seemed perhaps they'd escaped, and she glanced back into the pitch black cavern until they turned a corner and the greenish stone overtook her senses altogether.
The tunnel branched eventually into different paths, but most of these seemed only to connect back into each other, all twisting and snaking in vaguely the same direction, and after an hour or so their trudge began to slant decidedly uphill.
Whatever relief flickered inside her at this realization, however, drowned in exhaustion, and Caspian never stopped to rest no matter how Lucy's limbs ached for it.
She couldn't even reach the watch to check the time.
Her weary slog broke only when Edmund looked suddenly to the side and Lucy caught the flicker of a lizard's shadow on the wall.
He snatched a stray pebble and threw it just as the figure scuttled away, tiny pincers clicking over stone.
Caspian glanced back. "Do you mind? We don't need any more enemies down here."
"They're not alive," snapped Edmund.
Lucy furrowed her brow, head hazy as she paused for breath. "What? What are you talking about?"
He bent to grasp another small stone and sent it sharply after the shadow's movement, bouncing off its target this time with a little metallic dink. "I know what a scotopic lens looks like, I'm not stupid."
Lucy blinked. Caspian and Jill just stared at him.
Edmund rolled his eyes. "You know, cameras?"
"Those things are cameras?" asked Lucy, glancing back at the wall though the lizard had disappeared.
"You sure do catch on quick." He glanced up at Jill. "Hey, Three, aren't you supposed to be Technology or something?"
"I…" She shrugged, shaking her head defensively though her voice fell to a mutter. "I don't know, I thought they looked weird, but… I'm not the robotics expert, okay?"
Edmund smirked, and Caspian turned without a word to keep walking, the rest following one by one.
But now Lucy kept her eyes on the walls, Edmund tossing stray pebbles into the shadows whenever they moved, and every once in a while Lucy caught the red glint she'd noticed but not understood yesterday.
So that was how the Capitol had been watching them down here.
How many lizards had crept up on them completely unaware? Watching them sleep, listening in on their conversations?
"Gosh," she muttered, "there are more of them the more you look."
"Honestly," sighed Edmund, "how do you people even survive? No wonder they all show up when I get here, you lot couldn't keep an inebriated slug entertained."
"Oh, shut up if you're just gonna be obnoxious," snapped Jill.
"Hah! That's rich, coming from you, as if you did anything but cower and whine all through training. Though I suppose you've got your guard dogs to protect you now."
Lucy almost snapped back, but Jill snapped first.
"You've got some nerve calling me a coward! I never once asked for an alliance, but it sure seems like you did. Some good your amazing mentor's done you now. What, did she finally realize how pathetic you are too?"
"Shut up!"
"You know, you really should be able to take a couple shots, but I guess none of those little kids in training ever fought back, huh?"
"How would you know? You never came out long enough to care. Real Grade A tribute you are, couldn't even stand for the interviews let alone the Games."
"I've lasted well enough so far, no thanks to you."
"What's it got to do with me?"
Jill spun on him, eyes feral, and even Caspian pulled to a stop. "What's it got to do with you? I don't know, Six, maybe if you weren't such a pathetic suck-up we wouldn't be trapped at the bottom of the earth with no food and no light and no decent company to speak of. Maybe if you hadn't been hunting Caspian in the first place you wouldn't be all the way out here without a weapon, at our mercy; they might never have dropped a city on our heads, we might never have needed to escape, Scrubb might still be alive right now!"
"Well in that case I'm glad I did it, if that's what it takes to rid the world of that ugly git!"
Jill's hand flew before anyone could react and the smack of palm against cheek split the cave as Lucy's adrenaline spiked and she jumped up between them, grabbed Jill, pulled her behind her back.
"Talk about him again," breathed the girl in a dangerous, shaky whisper, "and I'll kill you myself."
Lucy's hand tightened around her wrist.
Edmund blinked, lips parted slightly as something almost like genuine surprise flickered across his face, but the steel snapped back so quickly Lucy almost thought she'd imagined it.
"Oh, you are a frightful bully," she spat before he could get a word out, "And what have you got to show for it? I thought killing you might have been tasteless after you inadvertently saved my life, but perhaps I won't make the same mistake twice."
Edmund took a sharp breath but Caspian caught his arm before he could raise it, the boy's flesh-melting glare turning onto him instead.
Caspian's churning black poison never wavered, however, and several moments later Edmund yanked his arm free and stepped back, glowering at the ground.
"Jill," said Caspian, "up here with me."
He turned back and reached out to guide the girl a little ahead of him, tears shining silently in her eyes as she swallowed hard and walked away.
Caspian glanced back, eyes locking with Lucy's for a second before flicking to Edmund and looking away.
Her stomach sank, swirling as if she might be sick, and she swallowed hard against a dry throat.
"I didn't save your life," spat Edmund under his breath. "I saved mine."
Lucy flicked an exhausted glare to him. "Then you won't mind when I don't bother about it again."
He snorted. "You're not some kind of hero."
"Now's not the time to be a hero," Eustace's words echoed back to her as Edmund turned and trudged after the others and Lucy followed, gaze falling numbly to the backs of his boots as they walked.
Ironically, it was Edmund they'd been talking about then, too. The boy who'd been so needlessly cruel from the beginning, yet still she jumped to his defense.
For what?
As if she couldn't handle a bit of blood. As if she'd never seen Caspian kill before. As if she were just a little kid again.
Since when had she ever gone queasy at the sight of a knife?
Perhaps the depth and the dehydration were getting to her.
Perhaps she should've shoved him into the abyss when she had the chance.
Hours dragged on in deafening silence until her vision grew fuzzy and a dull headache pounded at the back of her skull, and at last they stopped in a dead-end tunnel to camp.
Lucy collapsed against the wall and dug out her water bottle, taking a single swallow that did nothing for her cracked lips or scratchy throat.
Caspian sat beside her and she passed the bottle to him.
When he passed it back, only the barest lukewarm drop sloshed at the bottom. "May as well just finish it," he murmured, and she didn't have the willpower to disobey, swallowing the last pathetic drop and stuffing the now-empty bottle back into her bag with no food to follow it.
They sat wordlessly as they caught their breath, Jill's canteen empty now too, Edmund leaning against the opposite wall with his eyes closed.
"I can take first watch, if you want," said Caspian.
Lucy looked at him in the dim, pearly glow, any hint of that dangerous, accusatory vitriol gone from his face as if it had never existed, but guilt crawled into her throat again anyway.
"Okay," she breathed, head pounding too hard to argue, too hard to say I'm sorry. "Wake me when you're tired."
She shifted to curl up with her head on her bag, but Caspian didn't move, leaning back against the stone beside her.
She reached up and clicked the watch band.
A blinding 8:10 PM pierced her aching eyes.
"S'not even late," she mumbled.
Caspian took his wrist back and pushed her hair over her eyes, blocking out the green glow as she waved him off half-heartedly.
"Just go to sleep," he murmured, and she remembered nothing more after that. Not until he squeezed her shoulder and she groaned in protest, shoving her curls out of her face to squint up at him.
"Sorry," he said, voice heavy with exhaustion, "I can't keep my eyes open. Pass this on to Jill when you wake her."
He handed her the watch and she took it, fumbling, clicking it on to stab herself in the eye with a shining 12:51 AM.
"Ow."
Caspian flopped to the ground, breathing out as Lucy sat up, aching all over, head splitting, desperately thirsty with no way to wet her dry tongue.
Jill hugged her thighs in a little heap on Caspian's other side, the boy rolling over to bury his head deeper into the crook of his arm, and Edmund slept with his forehead on his knees against the far wall, soft breaths filling the tunnel.
"Lu? Are you in there?" Bridget Jackson's young voice echoed unbidden in her mind, drifting up from the depths where she wished it had stayed buried. "It's just me, it's Biddie."
Go away, thought Lucy, but her six year old self buried her face in her skirt, blotting the heavy tears from her eyes where she sat huddled against the bathroom sink, cold tile carving grooves in her soft knees.
"Come on, Lu, I won't tell anyone, you can let me in."
She sniffed, her tiny voice coming out in a small croak. "Promise you won't tell?"
"I promise."
Lucy crawled up to her knees and fumbled with the stiff lock, turning it with stubby fingers and plopping back down the moment it opened.
Biddie slipped in and closed it again, kneeling gently on the floor and wrapping an arm around Lucy's trembling shoulders.
"Oh, Lu, you know he's just a rotten boy, you needn't listen to him."
Lucy sniffed again and took a shuddering breath. "I didn't mean to— just wanted to h-help." She swallowed a hiccup and blotted her eyes again.
"Some people don't like help, sweetheart," Biddie murmured sadly, words too old for her mere nine years. "Not everybody is nice like you, they don't understand."
"You're nice," choked Lucy, and Biddie smiled.
"Can I see what they broke?"
Lucy dug into her dress pockets and pulled out two shattered halves of a small clay figure. "My kitty." She swallowed, fingers grazing sharp edges where Spotty Sorner had shattered it against the wall. I don't need your stupid toy, Pevensie, mind your own business!
Biddie took the pieces and turned them over, fitting them together where they'd broken. "Oh, that's a very nice kitty, Lu, it's a lion! Do you know what a lion is?"
Lucy shook her head, copper curls bouncing against the older girl's shoulder.
"It's a very big kind of kitty that lived a long time ago, in the Old Country. One was a very great lion indeed, and he protected the whole world."
"He did?"
"Yes, he protected little girls from nasty boys, ate the rascals whole he did, if they were mean enough."
Lucy giggled, a choking little sound, and another fat tear rolled down her cheek.
"When I'm sad, I think about him. Huge and yellow and warm. He makes me feel safe."
Lucy reached for the broken toy, and Biddie offered it back to her, laying it into her chubby hands as she clutched it tight and held the pieces together, studying the simple, blocky features in chipping yellow paint, one ear broken off, tail half missing. "I like lions," she sniffed.
Biddie squeezed her shoulders. "Me too."
In the dull green glow of the cave, Lucy traced the outline of the folded page in her pocket.
How many nights had it been since she'd last seen him? Three? Four?
She closed her eyes against the ache in her skull, the ache in her limbs, the dim and the damp and her swirling stomach.
Let us get out of here, she thought. If you ever loved me… if you ever loved her, please, let us get out.
But only the echo of sleeping breaths answered her plea.
And she sat with the rough stone wall digging into her back, fingers tracing the page until her fuzzy head grew numb and reality blurred.
She clicked the watch.
3:47AM.
She hauled herself to her knees, crept over to wake Jill, passed the watch, and collapsed back onto her bag, burrowing into the darkness.
It felt like only another few seconds before Caspian woke her again.
"Come on," he murmured, "We need to keep moving."
She would rather have died right there, but somehow, through sheer force of will, she hauled herself up, clock already ticking inside her head.
"You okay?" he asked, though he didn't sound much better than she felt.
"Yeah," she croaked, and he clutched her arms to help her up, a strength and sturdiness she missed the second it left her and she had to balance on her own two feet.
"Get up," said Caspian more sharply to Edmund, who watched them from the ground as Jill stood, working small hands through her messy hair, and Lucy didn't even bother about hers.
Jill brushed past them into the main tunnel, never once glancing at Edmund, but Lucy watched him out of the corner of her eye as she pulled her bag over her shoulders.
He got his feet underneath him without so much as a quip or an argument, and steadied himself against the wall. But she didn't miss the tremble in his hand before he clenched it and breathed out, squeezing his eyes shut for a second, leaning heavily against the stone, swallowing.
Not until Caspian and Lucy moved to follow Jill did he straighten up and trail a few paces behind them, eyes on the ground as the trudge claimed them once again.