"There are two kinds of people in this world, son. Those who save lives, and those who take lives."

"And what of those who protect and defend? Those who save lives by taking lives?"

"That's like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can't protect by killing."

- Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

"Three?"

Calla repeats, almost as if to insist it was wrong.

"I, too, was worried he wouldn't make it," she told her. "You were all so fatally wounded. My brother, most of all. I didn't even check his wounds—only saw that he had lost so much blood that if I had spared another second and not used my cordial on him the minute I arrived, he surely would be dead by now."

Calla doesn't know what to make of the situation. She is torn between being relieved to be alive, or furious that he is. She has failed. And now that she's within enemy territory, she's ready to hear her sentence.

"My brother doesn't remember a thing—just that Calormenes had kidnapped him. The only thing that doesn't quite add up is how you fit into the narrative—why you were there."

Calla looks up in surprise. They've fallen for the bait. Though they don't see her as the culprit as of now, they had every right not to trust her… yet. It's time she tells stories.

"What would you like to know?" She asks, like an open book.

"Well, what were you doing in that forest in the first place?"

Calla tries to weave her story together and thinks of what they used to quote in the guild: lies are easiest told when mingled with parts of the truth.

"I was coming from Archenland with my companion, Bane. He's Narnian, you see, sold from slavery in Calormen."

Calla knew such sentiments made Narnians vulnerable, thus making it a point to start her story from there. "I came to return him to his homeland, but we took a shortcut through Owlwood. Looking back, that wasn't the smartest decision."

"Yes, a Narnian fox would have known the dangers of such a place," the Queen remarks. "But your fox had never stepped foot into our country, has he?"

"Not a peep," she replies, and pretends to take a sip of water to stall and run simulations of her story in her head. She finds one that seemed most plausible.

"While traveling through the woods, we came across these people on horseback, people with turbans on their heads and curved swords—and with them was a man tied up. Immediately, we knew they were slave traders, and I knew better than to intrude," Calla takes a sip of water as if to calm her shaky breath. "But dear Bane, sweet fox, he knew what it was like to be a slave— knew the cruelty under Calormene rule, and wouldn't let it go."

Calla does not fail to notice minute degree changes in the Valiant Queen's disposition, knowing full well that she has painted exactly the picture Narnians have always believed to a fault: that the enemy was out there, and not in front of them.

The entire plan, although frayed in design, had been woven in with threads to make a safety net: as long as it could blame the Calormenes, Calla—who looked more Archenlander than a Calormene—could feign her way to a Narnian's trust.

Narnians and their preemptive judgement towards the Southerners proved an effective distraction for her subterfuge.

She continues her story, "I don't know what we were thinking: two of us against four experienced killers, but before we could charge in—that's when the wolves came," Calla says in a more somber tone. "They attacked the horse carrying the man and he dropped on the forest ground. The slave traders made a run for it—didn't even look back. Bane and I held our ground to keep him safe but… they were too many."

She pauses and looks down, swallowing gall in her mouth.

The monarch approaches her and takes her hand in hers. "Thank you for not leaving my brother. I promise you those Calormene slave traders will pay for this atrocity."

"We're alive, thanks to you," she replies. "That's what matters."

It worked. The Queen thinks she is innocent—as long as she plays her cards right.

"If it shouldn't bother your Majesty, I would like to see Bane." She tells the queen straightforwardly, fighting the biting discomfort on her chest.

"You really shouldn't get up—"

"It's alright, I need to see him," she insists. Before they wake him up for questioning.

"Of course," Queen Lucy readily accepts, "He's only in the room next to my brother. Follow me."

As Calla limps out of the room, she thinks of her luck as unbelievably fickle. She's alive. But the only person who could compromise it is alive too.

She almost chokes at the flashing memory of his dying body at the mercy of his own weapon, but swallows the bitterness. Mercenaries weren't supposed to feel awful. She has credits waiting at her return. Only if she has good news.

Without a Narnian monarch's body to bring back, she cannot return. She tries to reel her worries in; she will find another way. From the inside this time.

"He's resting in here." Queen Lucy pushes the lever of the door and cranks it open.

Bane is sleeping on a Narnian quilt the moment Calla enters. At the sound of her footsteps, his ears shoot up with a sudden jolt, though his eyes were half open as though he had drunk an entire canister of poppy milk.

"Calla?" He sniffs, relying on his smell when his eyes could barely afford him clarity.

Calla runs to his side and scratches the fur behind his ear. "I'm here. I can't believe you're alive."

Bane melts in her touch and curls in her arms like a newborn pup with much enthusiasm."Well, it takes more than a wolf to kill me."

"It did take more than a drop of my healing cordial to revive you as well." The Queen chuckles from afar, gleefully observing the union.

Bane shyly rolls upright and feels shame enough to bow.

"Your Majesty," he says curtly, "I am humbled that you should spare your gifts towards an undeserving character such as myself."

"Oh, but the only way to be deserving is to be in need of it." She returns. "I would never ration my cordial. That is the only time it would be a waste."

Bane nods in gratification. "Indeed."

Calla deems it appropriate to return a gesture of politeness. "The moment Bane is all well, we will leave and bother you no further."

"No, please. You two make yourselves at home," Queen Lucy contends. "Here, you're honored guests." She offers them a radiant smile, the kind where Calla is reminded of such beauty and dimension that she usually disposes in her targets in an attempt to reduce them—label them as a statistic.

She tries to avoid finding her kindness mesmerizing. The moment the Queen leaves, Calla begins to plot again.

Edmund once told Lucy that security is the promise a monarch makes when they accept the crown—there is no room for vulnerability, for when a monarch is compromised, there is no better time for a kingdom to falter.

Edmund had nearly died last night.

That day, Lucy doubled the patrol guards, increased daily inspections and rotated posts for maximum security. She reduced her inner circle to a smaller, more trusted taskforce. She shut down ports and banned foreign trading ships from docking.

There is something brewing on her radar. She cannot be sure, but she fears the worst is about to come.

Lucy opens the door to the infirmary where Edmund is resting. Hearing the creak of the door, the Just King wakes up with a jolt, as if he had seen a ghost in his sleep. Upon flashing both eyes open to the safe haven of the infirmary, he sighs heavily in relief and buries his face into his hands. Lucy watches him as he then sits up on the bed and sets both his feet down to feel the wooden floor. He is frozen there, deeply reflecting and remembering what had occurred in his sleep that startled him so much.

Lucy notices there was something odd about the way he moved. His fingers kept fidgeting around the spot where a shard of ice once tore through.

"Edmund?"

He blinks harshly at the sound of her voice as if he snapped back to reality. Sitting up squarely on bed, he looks up at his sister and sees the frigid concern in her eyes, "Lucy." He breaths, almost inaudibly. She doesn't even have to ask if he dreamt of a nightmare. He never has anything otherwise.

Lucy grabs hold both of his shoulders, gently trying to shake him out of his dulled gaze. "What was it this time?"

He looks away and turns to the view beyond the confines of the window. It is a lovely autumn morning; the soft breath of the wind swiftly plucking the leaves from their branches, insinuating the arrival of a cold but heavenly beautiful winter. To him, however, winter is anything but heavenly. Winter is anything but beautiful. He doesn't hold grudges, yes, but he can't let go of memories. Especially the haunting ones.

"The same one." Edmund puts a hand on his chest where his heart is still thumping. "The same one every night since."

Lucy's face darkens with understanding. "The White—" she pauses to correct herself and sensibly rephrases her words, "Her. She was chasing you again?"

"Yes." He nods, "Only this time, she 'had' me."

"What do you mean?"

"I—I dreamt... " he sputters, feeling the words catch in his throat. "I dreamt I died, Lucy." He closes his eyes with dismay. "It never ended like that."

Lucy is tongue tied. Her brother is a man of strength and conviction. To see him petrified in his own pall of misfortune, she could only imagine what kind of struggle he is going through that could render such a resilient man helpless. Edmund points to his torso. "Even the scar. It hurt. Almost as if I had been stabbed again."

"Edmund, can you still not remember what happened to you last night?" Lucy asks, hoping to extract some kind of information to understand his sullen behavior. These past few weeks, he didn't seem so bothered by his usual nightmares and she wondered if they either disappeared, or he had just gotten so used to seeing them in his visions that he became sort of numb to it. Just when she had started hoping for better days the incident last night triggered the very worst thing.

Lucy watches him rub at his eyes as if he feels the image of his nightmares burn at the back of his eyelids and he wants to scrub them away. "Edmund, say something?"

Edmund retrieves his hands from his face to peer up at her. He wants to tell her everything. He wants someone like his beloved sister to make sense of these dreams and visions when he couldn't understand them himself. But when he tries to open his mouth and explain in full detail, the words seem to garble in his throat and he is forced to swallow the chance.

His nose scrunches up in frustration. He couldn't remember. He still couldn't seem to recall anything.

"All I remember is the silhouette of a Calormene coming towards me—maybe two or three—I can't be sure."

"They were slave traders, Edmund. They took you from our castle," Lucy tries to piece the puzzle together for him. "And two strangers had saved your life."

Edmund looks down. Something hadn't felt right.

He has fleeting visions, sightings of indistinct phantoms, but he couldn't seem to put any of them together in one coherent story. He doesn't want to spit out nonsense ramblings so he withholds them.

Lucy sits down beside him and lays her head on his shoulder. She holds his hand and rubs her palms against his to calm him down. "It's alright, Edmund." She assures him, and wishing everything would stay quiet as it is. "You're safe now."

"A letter for their Majesties!" a Talking Raven courier interrupts, flapping its wings to slow its perch on the window sill.

Lucy sighs at losing a brief moment of respite with her brother, but thanks the Raven anyhow for his service, takes the paper from his claws and dismisses him. She hacks open the seal with her thumb and unfolds it, eyes suddenly darkening as she skims through the letter.

"Lucy? What's wrong?" Edmund tries to probe the answers from his sister's eyes. "Is it Peter? Is he in danger?"

"It's from Susan," Lucy finally rasps, the color drained from her face. "Something's happened."

Edmund's eyes flit to the window that faced the Southern Kingdom. "What has Rabadash done now?"

"Something terrible," Lucy felt her legs give. "The prince proposed to Susan."

This cannot be good, Edmund thinks, knowing that any answer to that proposal yielded all the consequences Susan cannot be safe in. By the Lion's Mane, was Rabadash planning it this whole excursion?

That didn't matter for now. His sister may just be in danger.

And Peter knew nothing. If Peter is still out there at all.

"What did Susan say in the letter, Lucy?" Edmund dreads, feeling in the pit of his stomach that the answer would snowball into an avalanche.

"Edmund, she has fled Calormen."