"Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire."
― Dan Brown
~O~
Chapter 9: Chasing Fear
~O~
Though Lucy has insisted on a number of occasions that she would be perfectly fine taking care of a kingdom on her own, she had always thought the transition would take a glacial pace and she would have had plenty of time to prepare.
Now, Peter is in the North, Susan is in the South, and she could only hope with dead reckoning that Edmund is heading in the right direction.
Now, all alone, only then did she see the gaps in her confidence, the insecurities she harbored as the youngest—something Peter always kept at bay. Peter always kept her grounded, and without Peter, it seemed as if the moral compass she had was missing, and no matter where it pointed, she was lost.
But even when Peter left, she had Susan to keep her out of trouble. Susan navigates difficult conversations with grace and delivers hard news with compassion. It was what made her a great host and an expert at diffusing tension. While Susan dismantles trouble, Lucy had trouble getting out of them.
Now when Susan left, she had Edmund to keep her company. While Peter always does what needs to be done and Susan always says what needs to be said, there's one thing Edmund does like no other: he shows up when it matters.
Edmund is always there to give credence to her reasons whenever Susan doubts them. Edmund always takes the blame when Peter reprimands her. Edmund always keeps her on her toes, and he always gives the best advice and the soundest of judgement. He is there whether she needs a sparring partner, comic relief, or a chest to cry onto.
But they're all gone now.
Edmund has only been gone two sunbends. Susan an entire sen-night. She hasn't seen Peter for a full moon.
Lucy tries not to let it muddle her thoughts; that perhaps they were right – she may not be built to stand on her own, for the slightest fissure in her pillars and she finds herself collapsing without grace.
Today, she's going to make repatriating Bane on top of her priority list; if she cannot find him a proper abode, she would at least make him feel at home—and it was no easy task to do alone. She heads to the hall adjacent to war room, where her siblings would spend days on end strategizing border security, bolstering allies with treaties—all done with the heightened fear the Calormen would attack, that an enemy would slip past and cause the ruin of their kingdom.
Lucy never tried to cross her siblings; she knew she was far too young to understand the complexities of such delicate constitution. If they chose to resort to war, Lucy could not object.
Bane is already waiting for her the moment she arrives. "Good morning." She greets him and he responds with a courteous bow.
-O-
"How are you settling in, Bane?" Queen Lucy drops to her knees to speak eye level with him. Bane found this a remarkably kind gesture.
"It's good to be home," he says weakly, and though a fragment of it was true, he never considered home to be anything other than where family is.
"On top of that, we will make sure you have all the support you need starting a new life here," Queen Lucy assures. "You will have a community, Bane—full of those who understand what you've been through."
Calla knows what I've been through. Yet she abandons me.
He's not sure if there was something in his expression that belied his thoughts, but the Queen somehow backpedals her enthusiasm. "But we don't have to do it right away. You could stay here in the castle, for as long as you need to until you find these four walls utterly suffocating."
He tilts his head and blinks in appreciation of the kind thought. "Where I used to live as a slave, I wasn't even allowed to sleep inside something with a roof and walls," Bane says with a smile. "It should take me a while to find it utterly suffocating."
"Simply utter the word when you're ready to talk about it," The Queen assures him, and for a brief moment, he forgets having a plan, having a scheme, and feels as though he just had a two-sided conversation where he was heard.
He hates the way things had ended with Calla, but she was still family, and she might still come back. And things might go back to the way they were. If only he has a plan.
Bane politely nods. "There's just some things worth waiting for."
The Queen is about to leave when a small, winged creature lands and perches by the window. Bane doesn't even think twice and pounces on the Raven, and mid-air, the poor creature squawks as it was pinned down on the floor.
The Queen cries out, "Bane, don't! That's our messenger!"
Bane replies by lowering his jaw and releasing the Raven with a thud on the floor.
Bane tries his best to sound apologetic. "Forgive me, I had assumed you weren't a Talking Beast. I've never been surrounded by so many."
"Yes, I'm sure you haven't." The Raven wobbles away from the fox's slobbery grasp, comically flapping its wings to get rid of drool. Bane is embarrassed and decides to step away from the scene as the Raven takes a step forward in the Queen's direction. Only then did he see that it was a courier bearing High King Peter's standard.
The Raven makes his declaration by first ruffling his feathers. "I carry with me the most urgent message."
Bane pauses.
"What does my brother need?" The Queen drops down, offering her hand for the Raven to hop onto.
The Raven shakes its head. "Make no mistake, my Queen. There are traitors amongst us."
Bane feels his entire stature to be frozen. Bearing a close resemblance to a species of tricksters and sly dispositions, Bane had never been given the benefit of the doubt—it was precisely why he stayed so long as a slave, carried place to place in a cage and looked at by merchants who would take one look and scoff. It was only when Calla came by in Calormen one day—head cloaked, knife hidden—that he begged her to end his life. If he wasn't to be sold soon, his life would surely meet a violent end by these slave traders, that he would rather have this complete stranger kill him than die by the same hands who already took the better part of his life.
"Martyrdom? That's your plan?" He remembers her first words to him.
That day, Calla used her knife to dismantle his cage and set him on another path. She convinced The Guild that he would be far more useful than any hunting hound they had. And prove it, he did. Bane used his keen sense of hearing to spy on conversations, providing much-needed intel to perform the most difficult of operations and heists. And for a moment, he thought his skills a gift—until a new realization dawns on him what those skills will bring into his future—and the realization was as clear as the light on an executioner's axe, as imminent as the chopping block he may be facing well soon the moment he slips up.
He never should have told Calla about this job. His entire predicament could be construed as his own fault.
"What do you mean, traitors?" The Queen probes further, and Bane almost feels dizzy, almost feels his distress up until his neck.
"It's the Prince of Archenland, your Majesty. He kidnapped and nearly murdered the High King."
Bane shakes his head and looks up, the twist catching him by surprise.
"How could he?" The Queen's hands travel to her temples. "Was my brother hurt? Pray tell, he's alright!"
"He was able to escape and return to camp. His soldiers have tracked and captured the prince and his accomplices. They are on the way here, so they may face their sentence."
"Face their sentence?"
"My Queen, you should be well aware of what befalls those who commit treachery."
Bane notices that the Queen's shoulders deflated, leaning against the desk to support herself where her knees appeared as if they were about to give. She regained her posture after a moment, with a look that seemed as if she were suddenly born with a brand new resolve.
"No." She finally speaks, though it comes out as a croak Bane barely manages to hear.
The Raven is taken aback. "But it is your prerogative to abide by the laws of Narnia—"
"If the same sentence would have befallen my brother, would it have lifted the hundred-year curse?" She asks. "Would you have the freedom you enjoy now, noble Raven?"
Only when the Raven looks down in defeat did the Valiant Queen, as Bane finds her name more fitting than ever, finally look at him.
"I understand the fear in your eyes, Bane. That you should think you've found yourself in another barbaric country. One that disposes wayward subjects in this way—it breaks my heart."
She shakes her head and looks out the window overlooking the sea, almost as if she finds the clarity of her thoughts in its peaceful waters. "We cannot be cold in the manner we carry our punishments. For it is not the severity that deters crime but the certainty. We will resort to such drastic measures when there is need of it." She declares with a definitive tone that had little room to accommodate other opinions.
Bane finds himself warm in her gaze, finds it striking that her conscience was so bolstered by an infallible compass of truth and compassion, yet he finds his predicament uncomfortable for having received the empathy he had been craving at the moment where he was not deserving of it at all.
The Raven finds no other course of action but to bow. Bane finds his ears flattening as well.
"Make no mistake," She adds, not to explain but to make her point certain. "These people will answer for their crime, but to a higher law—to a deeper Magick. Not to the arbitrary demands of flesh and bone. We did not end a reign of terror in Narnia to start another one. Not today."
"Surely, Your Majesty. We must make this known to the Just King and the Gentle Queen." The Raven inquires.
The Queen nods. "Though, why haven't we received a letter of his arrival in Anvard? He should have been there by now."
"I will see to the other couriers immediately, and return if I have news of his safe journey."
"Please do. Our decisions rests on the messages of couriers."
Bane, at that moment, found his purpose, and decides he will do whatever it takes to sabotage their line of communication.
~O~
Both the cold and the smell of saltwater clings onto his skin and overwhelms all his senses.
Edmund tries to muster the energy to gather his limbs splayed on the sandy shores, immensely exhausted from having swum more miles than he had bothered to count. Not to mention it was all done in the middle of a tempest, one with winds that kept them from going the direction they wanted. Somehow they came to shore, but that was already beyond his prayers. Edmund internally thanked the Emperor-Over-The-Sea for watching over him, for having drifted over a piece of wood in their general direction so they could do further with pedal-assisted swimming, albeit the method still had exhausted him so much he could not find it in himself to stand up.
He had the strength, however, to crane his neck over his shoulder to check if any dinghy was in pursuit of them. The sun had not peeked over the horizon, so there was plenty of time to cover their tracks before their trail became distinguishable. Once he had deemed the general vicinity to be cleared from danger, he lets his head rest in the sand once more, letting his eyes fall over the equally exhausted woman next to him.
Calla was not moving. With her head facing the sky, he could see her eyelids are fluttering open but never fully. Her eyes more apparently sunken, and her cheeks disturbingly hollow. And he could hardly surmise if she was breathing at all. Then he looks at the sand, notes the faint trail of blood that had been glazed over by the fingering grasp of the shoreline waters.
Instinctively, he lifts himself up on his elbows, and checks her for wounds, as he would any fallen soldier on the battlefield. The moment he lifts the band on her shoulders, he finds a slight laceration beneath her collar bone, running even until he stretched the fabric right above her chest – he stops at that point and wraps her shoulder with his head cloth to somehow stop the flow, using the drawstring on his pants to knot it taut.
He remembers the fear in her eyes when he came towards her in the boat, recognizes the same fear long ago in Narnian creatures before being stabbed frozen with a wand—as he stood by and watched.
As he stood by and watched.
He will not be party to that same crime again.
Edmund doesn't know what comes over him, but he finds some semblance of strength to put his feet back under him so he could plant Calla's own over the ground. She doesn't protest when he makes the gesture to scoop her limbs, so he does what he could to drape them over his shoulder and they begin their downtrodden march to whatever refuge they could find.
Dawn had already broken in by the time they were limping out of the shores.
Edmund's eyes keep skimming for any hope of shelter, but he was already amiss with their own whereabouts, and had his reservations seeking for help where there may be those seeking his throat. His mind immediately thinks of what he could have done to prevent this; if he simply went with Peter so they could have solved the border conflict sooner; if he convinced Susan that Rabadash's offer had been a ruse all along; if he only stayed with Lucy, so he would not be over-wrought with dismay for her safety now that he can't guarantee his own.
With all four Pevensies scattered on different hemispheres, Edmund decides his best plan is to return back alive—and he is determined to do the same for Calla.
Between the two of them, someone should be able to get home.
Finally, they stumble on the edifices of decadent stone houses—structures that were evidently once called home, but the half-opened doors, the toppled-over barrels, and unruly bundles of hay had implied the owners had long left since.
The carelessness of such an abandonment only gave the indication that it had been forsaken with haste—left with a worried glance over the shoulder. It is that very thought that unsettles Edmund as they follow the winding, snaking paths that were littered with an unseemly mesh of stone houses overrun with untended foliage, molding once more back into the very soil they belonged to.
Then he sees what confirms his theories; he finds each door they had passed to be be marked with blood in the shape of an X.
"We need to leave."
But he only heard the sound of groveling, only finds Calla clutching at the pit of her stomach.
Much to his horror, two silhouettes appear from the shadows of the houses they passed by, and two more behind them.
"Look at what we have here: two good-for-nothing pirates." One bellowed, swinging an axe.
Edmund staggers back, Calla's weight shifts almost entirely to the responsibility of his own standing.
"Come to take slaves again?" Chimes another, an old woman with a torch. "Even as Zalindreh has been ravaged enough already by the plague?"
Upon realizing they are in Calormene territory, Edmund finds the situation far more escalated and tries to devise a plan out, but his mind is riddled with fatigue and mind-numbing adrenaline; that he has to fight for his life once more with no respite.
"We're not thieves—I'm a King!" Was all he could muster.
"And what exactly is the difference?"
Edmund knows when there is no room for dialogue when the demand is clearly blood. Even without words, he only had to take one look at each of their faces, reading clearly that their intention was not simply to give them a hard time.
"Perhaps we shall turn our tables when we have blood atonement."
The gathering, which trickled from a few to a modest crowd, grew their cheers, their morale, as well as their thirst for retribution.
Edmund could not fight this many. Not without his strength. Not with the life of someone else on his shoulders.
The moment one of the villagers takes a step forward, Edmund disarms their approach and sends a sickle and torch flying to the ground. The torch flies to a foliage that immediately ignites, the dried, broken flints of wood serving the ember it needed to engulf a dead tree and restore its canopies bright, blistering glory.
Edmund uses the smoke as his subterfuge to carry Calla and place as much distance from the villagers as possible, but the commotion only attracts even more within the vicinity. Edmund switches and alternates paths each time he hears the crowds gather near—their chants of claiming his life, claiming his blood as their property, ringing in his ears ad infinitum.
Calla staggers and drops down at the speed he was going, and Edmund does not know how much further he could go.
"Over here!" A hoarse whisper makes Edmund's entire body pivot. He locks eyes with a child peeking through the curtains. "They won't look for you here."
A quick glance at the bloodied mark on the door elaborates the reason. Edmund decides he had no other choice; he scoops up Calla's legs and brings her inside.
At a moment's passing, the villagers came flooding into the street, but the animosity immediately wafts in the air the moment they spot the doors. Edmund keeps his back to the wall, so still as though he felt one with it.
"This is the most infected parts of the village."
"I'm not going in there."
"They shall die soon anyhow. Best not to involve ourselves any further."
With that, the bitter grunts and faint bustling had subsided, and Edmund unglues himself from the wall and slides down in exhaustion.
The little girl that had beckoned to them sits down near the fireplace. "You are cold and wet. There are some spare clothing in the room upstairs."
Edmund blinks in suspicion.
"Your friend. Her color does not look good, and she may not make it through the night."
Realizing there was little sense in deducing the child's intentions, Edmund helps Calla up to her knees. She is barely present, and the moment he moves her to take a step forward, she collapses.
He gathers her up in his arms again, grunting as he makes every effort to climb the stairs and into the first door and only door he encounters. The room smelled of herbs and remedies that he could only suspect was a remnant of someone's attempts to heal their own disease, at which point, they had already given up.
Edmund sets Calla on the bed, and only then does he find the apparent blood rising from the side of her chest. Unable to bring himself to tend to the extremities of her wounds, he clambers down the stairs where the little girl is sitting next to the fire, and pleads with desperation.
"Please, I need your help."
~O~
Calla wakes with the weight of something on her forehead, and though she realizes it's a wet rag of cloth, she feels it with the weight of a boulder, keeping her moored on the pillow.
She finds movement below her chest, where her ribs and the rest of her upper body is exposed.
A flood of memories rushes back—the sensation of hands on her body makes her jerk in response the moment fingers brush her torso.
"Keep away!" She cries, legs gathered to her chest. Her vision focuses on the sight of a little girl startled, her hands holding a bowl of what seemed to be a mesh of poultice that resembled the odd color of something filling the gash on her shoulder down to the middle of her breasts.
Calla reels back, realizing she is not in danger. Still, she squirms away, the exposure of skin giving way to insecurities.
"You almost made a waste of this poultice that nice man had mixed for you." The little girl says. She grabs the pestle and grinds the paste into the mortar even more, then proceeds to flush the inflamed tissues with a tonic, applying the poultice around the laceration.
"Who—who are you?" Calla scrutinizes the girl's appearance—from the thobe she wore that resembled a sack-like fabric, and judging by the lack of embellishment at the end of her sleeves that was close-fitting to her wrist—she was a lowly desert-dweller.
She is home. They must be somewhere in the Calormen territory, but a region much further from the capital.
"My name is Sheba and I'm in the middle of cleaning the cut on your chest. Now, be still. He promised to leave a handsome reward to treat your wounds strictly under his instruction and medicinal advice."
"Who?"
"The man who carried you in."
Calla hesitantly allows more poultices applied—the cooling ingredient of what seems to be peppermint relieves the prickling pain.
"He spent half the day creating his own mixture from the herbs in our garden. I see he is quite skilled. Is he a healer? Perhaps if he had come earlier, he could have saved my mother."
Calla tries to make sense of who she seems to be referring to. The Just King? Surely, he could not be bothered to learn the ways of an apothecary—not when he was known to be a murderer and traitor that The Guild's intel had inculcated her with?
"No healer would come to Zalindreh. Not when we're plagued without hope of a cure."
"What is this disease you speak of?" Calla finally asks, inhaling sharply through her teeth as a jolt of pain rises from the contact.
"No one knows." The child's eyes darken. "All we know is that to catch it, is to die from it."
Calla bows her head. "I'm sorry you lost your mother from it."
"No, my mother was not killed by the disease. She was murdered by people who thought she'd caught it," the girl spoke softly as she offered Calla a cup of water. "I suppose fear is a far more contagious and terrifying disease."
It's what keeps us alive, Calla thinks to herself, as she had always been taught. Doubt and mistrust keeps her on her toes. The world is broken and couldn't be trusted. There was always a subtext in every act of kindness, an ulterior motive in every promise made.
The Just King may have saved her, but if he had the knowledge and capacity, why didn't he treat her himself? He begged the help of a child—all so he wouldn't have to touch her? Did he deem himself so high and mighty that his hands would be contaminated as if she were also a disease to be avoided?
Calla believes it to be beyond logic that Sheba should render the Just King—an imperial—with a favorable bearing on his character.
He would not have done so if she came to Narnia without Bane; Narnians only looked out for their own, only acted out of self-preservation. Getting Bane involved extended to her their kind nature, but she was absolutely sure that without him, the Just King would not have granted her hospitality. He is not capable of such a thing.
~O~
Edmund could hardly believe his eyes. He lifts the veil of the head cloth to cover his nose; the smell of burnt skin was revolting.
Cloaked in Calormene clothing, he scuttles in the shadows and reaches a somewhat still-populated area of the village—and witnesses horrors beyond belief.
He does not realize there was even a plague of this magnitude affecting the country; Susan made no reports of such a thing, spoke of no diseases in her letters. But the piles of corpses could not be missed, as well as the several pyres erected where they will burn.
The little girl, Sheba, had told him more about the pale pestilence. How it had spread so quickly with no trace and killed with no distinction. All the ports had been blocked by the Tisroc, who refused to let anyone leave, and that anyone who attempts to do so will be charged with treason and hanged.
The night after, a mass murder had occurred. Anyone remotely caught with a symptom was executed on sight—a drastic measure to contain the disease.
Overcome with grief and shame that he was unaware as a king, Edmund stayed that day to create concoctions—healing tonics that he learned from a Centaur in Cair Paravel who knew the mixtures that could fend off a disease.
He could not offer a cure, but he could offer comfort at least. He unravels his satchel where he approached a dying man in the streets, chilling and perspiring with fever. He kneels and wraps the aromatic pomander over his head—a remedy he made with some musk, civet, and ambergris. He also gave him a tonic to ease the pain. Sheba had helped Edmund gather the ingredients, and he was more than grateful for her willingness to cooperate.
"No, I must thank you for offering your help when no one would. The monarchs of Narnia had cut off the trading routes. We could not get a steady supply of medicines. My mother had to sell all her belongings so we could buy them off the pirates."
She had told him, and Edmund could not bring it within himself admit that his fear as a monarch was the indirect cause of her mother's death. Despite his desperate need to get to Anvard as soon as possible, he feels the burgeoning responsibility to stay and rectify what he's done—and perhaps earn the courage one day to tell her the truth.
After tending to as many sickly as he could, he turns to Sheba's home where he finds Calla awake, wearing a dry set of Calormene clothing, clad in a long, box-like tunic that disguised her womanly frame. It seems that Sheba had just replaced the bandages on her wounds and is about to leave the room.
Edmund thanks the little girl as she exits the door, promising her that they would be off soon and would leave her the payment she was due. Once they were finally alone, Edmund is left standing awkwardly at the door as Calla gawks at him from her seated position on the bed.
"I trust that Sheba has treated your wounds well." He informs her, his one hand thumbing his fist in anticipation. When she doesn't speak, he elaborates further. "The herbs we used are certainly not as quick at treating your wounds as my sister's cordial, but I have a tonic made that should numb the pain anytime you feel it to be unbearable. Let her know if you need help, and she will be of assistance."
"I understand. A King's hands shouldn't be tarnished."
Edmund's brows knit, taken aback. "I—pardon me?"
Calla uses the headboard of the bed to assist with her standing. "I see the pity in your eyes when you look at me. A woman—defiled, beyond repair. Too filthy to be touched." He sees her wince in her position, despite her best to manage it with a stiff upper lip.
"You gravely misunderstand. I simply did not think it appropriate that I should tend to your wounds."
Calla's forehead contorts, in what seems to be unreasonable anger that Edmund could not justify.
"Had my wounds been serious, I suppose you would have left me to die for fear of sullying your hands."
Edmund blanches. "No, that was not my intention. How could you render me accountable for such a thing? I was only trying to be careful." He says with disbelief, and though he was trying to diffuse the tension with the logic of his intentions, he feels her anger rising.
"Of course. Royals have the luxury to be careful, to avoid, to hate. For some of us, we can only afford the will to survive."
"I cannot unearth where your grievance towards me has taken root."
Calla only huffs, even though he's certain he made clear his eagerness to listen. "You monarchs, all holed up in your castles that you won't even grace the margins with your presence. It should come as no surprise if you were aware of such a plague in this region and chose to remain willfully ignorant of the people's plight."
"You blame me for incompetence of the Tisroc?"
"I shall even go as far as calling you an accomplice. With your determination to keep your country protected, you have forsaken all else. You are responsible for Sheba, who had a mother one day and found herself wanting the next."
Calla gestures to the empty bed next to hers, to the weight of her absence. She continues on, pointing to his satchel of medicinal concoctions.
"And now you hope to feel better after bringing comfort to the very people you deprived of it. Let me inform you that they don't need the aftermath of your pity. They need your involvement to prevent it, your Majesty." Calla says his title, not in the way of veneration but almost with a tone of mockery. "You are called the Just King. But to be wealthy and honored while there is injustice happening here—that, in itself, is a disgrace." Her tongue was scathing, but how it painfully resonated with something deep in him, only proved that it was true.
Instead of retorting, Edmund restrains himself, finding that in the delicate constitution of this matter, it may be more sensible to be agreeable than to be right.
"I admit, I find myself at fault for the consequences that branched from a decision made out of fear," He confesses. "My siblings and I have much to learn in governing, and it would greatly please me to have proper dialogue about these matters, so we may mitigate the damage. I assure you when I retrieve my sister, I will do what I can to provide aid to these people. And further pressure the Calormene government to allocate the necessary funding for their rehabilitation."
"And also, you must tell Sheba the truth. She deserves to know, at least."
"You have my word." Edmund nods earnestly.
Calla looks down in satisfaction. Pleased that he was able to provide the solution she wanted to hear, he asks one more thing.
"And what of you?" He finally asks. "What do you require of me?"
"You say it as though you will grant me anything."
"If it is within my power, I shall."
Calla approaches him in a few long strides. She looks up at him, a few inches from his face, and stares at him long and hard. Edmund feels himself stop breathing in anticipation of her request.
"Are you capable of a toothy smile, your Majesty?"
The request comes out so peculiar that Edmund was not prepared for it at all and he bursts out laughing, and it somehow dissipates whatever tension there was in the room.
"So he is." Calla observes. "You had made me so uneasy this entire time with your seeming inability to produce an expression of joy. I trust that you find your release extremely cathartic?"
"I—I had not afforded myself the privilege of smiling as of recent, since we have busied ourselves with cheating death," Edmund explains, almost embarassed.
"All the more reason to indulge in a bit of amusement."
This makes Edmund tilt his head. "I suspect you live quite the callous life if you abide by such a principle."
"And you certainly have not your fair share of mischief." She quips back, and Edmund blots guilty when he chuckles as a response.
"You should know that I find you most strange and intriguing, Calla, and I am completely, utterly wary of you now."
Something about it surprises her, makes her raise her brows in curiosity.
"That's the first time you have called me by my name. I had always assumed you had forgotten, what with being your Majesty and all your more important affairs of the mind."
"Then you can call me simply as Edmund." He offers, if the gesture meant reaching her halfway. "In these parts, I'm not a king to these people, and certainly not to you. My authority will be what you will say it is."
"Edmund," she repeats, and he's not certain, but he finds a bit of mirth to her eyes—as if his name was a secret that he uttered and it was a revelation she found amusing.
"And you must allow me to insist firmly that I never saw you in the way you perceived I had." Edmund adds. "My hesitation to touch you stems purely from the innocent fact that I am a man to be engaged, and you a woman."
The left corner of Calla's mouth lifts slightly. "You're the embodiment of a virtuous man, is what you're saying?"
"What I mean to say is: if it weren't for the controversy it would have earned you for being seen with me, for I have scarcely made your acquaintance, I would have undressed you myself," then Edmund hears it. "—your wounds!—that is—if the situation had been grave and called for it, I would have certainly treated you myself—is what I meant."
Even with his regal stature, Edmund bites his lip like a schoolboy, inflamed that he spat out such a ridiculous notion at such close proximity to Calla, eyes as wide as a newborn deer. She steps back after his blubbering reply and nods, and he is almost thankful that she does not verbally acknowledge his mistakes. He rubs the nape of his neck, partly to give himself an excuse to look away as he feels his face burn hot, unsure of what to do with the air that suddenly filled the room.
It is Calla who breaks the silence. "Well. I am sure you are looking forward to your prosperous return from Archenland, with a Queen and another to be made as one. Narnia surely has no shortage of successors."
Edmund simply nods. "And you must be wanting some rest. I shall leave you to it." He declares ultimately, before that rampart tongue of his spells more destruction. Calla bids him goodnight on his way out, and he spares her the briefest of his acknowledgments.
He nests himself on the stairs, lets his head rest on the incline and stretches out his legs on the descent. He thinks of the revelation that he has made on this island, thinks of Calla's solid defiance to him that earned her an uptick of his vested interest.
But one thing that puzzles him the most was the inexplicable feeling that something about Calla is decidedly wrong. That she resembled an image you could look at a thousand times but a different angle would produce a different story. That she seemed perfectly normal save for the small instances—be it a sideways glance or a wayward comment—where something about it does not line up. Like watching two people sharing the same body; one fronting when he's around, the other on the verge of cracking open the moment he leaves.
Edmund shakes it off when he realizes he has let his ministrations dwell too long—not when he is on a journey to be betrothed. Edmund lets himself drift off to sleep, convinced that it was solely his suspicions of Calla that has led him to think of her last.
A/N: Posted a much longer chapter for having made you all wait so long. I hope you enjoyed it.