Author's Note: Chapter eighteen is finally here! I have a feeling that this story wont have as many chapters as my first one did, but I'm going to try... ha! I'm sorry that it's been so long since the last update, but I've been really busy with school. I've been preparing for the talent show that our school is having so... XD Just thought I'd throw that out there... :) Well, enough about my life.. It's time for you to read about Narnia, since that's what you're here for. So, go read the story and don't forget to leave a smiley face! :D

Song for this chapter: Be My Escape by Relient K

Edmund felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. Just as he was about to let himself fall to sleep, a cold chill swept up his side and he felt a stabbing pain in his stomach where the small round scar was. He had only ever felt that pain on the anniversary of the day that he was given the scar, and even then it was much worse. For the entire day, he would be forced to remain in bed. He was cursed with cold chills that nothing could cure. And even on the coldest of nights, he would have to be wrapped in layers upon layers of blankets to keep him warm.

He cursed under his breath and gently laid Ari down, making sure that he didn't wake her up. He then raced out of the room to find Peter. Something was wrong, and whatever it was, it wasn't good.

=XxX=

"Wait..." Caspian said as he looked wide-eyed at the Witch. "This isn't what I wanted!"

"One drop of Adam's blood and you free me. Then I am yours, my king." Said a chilling voice. Caspian felt as if the wind was knocked out of him by a strong gust of cold wind.

"No!" Caspian yelled, trying to step out of the circle to get away from the cold. The werewolf grabbed his arm and held it out. The hag took a knife and cut his open palm. A long slit of blood poured out. The Witch stuck her hand out of the ice toward him and smiled. He stopped struggling, though he didn't know why. His head felt foggy, as if he had been drinking.

"Stop!" Yelled Peter as he, Edmund, and Trumpkin ran into the room. Each of them already had their swords drawn and went to the three different targets.

The werewolf crawled over the Stone Table and attacked Edmund. The werewolf leaped at him, and Edmund swung savagely, cutting the beast's shoulder open. The werewolf howled in agony. Edmund turned and raced the other way. The creature followed. Edmund vaulted himself up and jumped. In midair, he turned and brought his sword swinging down. It split the werewolf's head, killing him on contact.

Nearby, the hag knocked the sword out of Peter's hand. Peter kicked her in the head, cracking her skull and killing her. She flew backwards into a pillar and fell to the ground in a heap.

Nikabrik stood over Trumpkin, holding his sword at his neck. Nobody noticed that Lucy had entered the room, and she held her dagger pressed closely to Nikabrik's neck. He twisted her arm around and she cried out in pain. Nikabrik looked at Lucy and hesitated. In that one moment a blade was pushed into his back from behind. He fell to the ground, gurgling blood. Trumpkin held a blade with Nikabrik's blood on it. Lucy nodded her thanks before rubbing her wrist.

"Come on..." The Witch said as she reached out towards Caspian. Peter barreled forward and knocked Caspian out of the circle.

"Get away from him!" He lifted his sword and pointed it towards the large ice block. The Witch retracted her hand into the ice, standing up straight as she looked down at Peter.

"Peter dear." The Witch said in the same sickly sweet voice she used to trick Edmund. "I've missed you. Come. Just one drop." She reached toward Peter. "You know you can't do this alone."

Peter lowered his sword a little. The Witch gave an evil smile before she tensed up. She shuddered as a blade pierced the glass, and the ice wall shattered. As it fell away, the daze that had captured both Caspian and Peter fell away with it. They both looked up and saw a furious Edmund standing behind where the ice wall was. He was holding his sword over his head. He looked at Peter and sent him a glare. Then he said a simple sentence that had Peter's insides churning with shame.

"I know. You had it sorted." Edmund said, his peircing eyes boring holes into his brother's. Peter flinched as Edmund stalked out of the room, knowing all too well that his brother's calm and stoic demeanor meant that he was furious and trying not to lose control. Peter and Caspian both looked up at the carving of Aslan. They heard footsteps leaving the room and turned around to see Susan's retreating back. Peter was glad that he couldn't see the look on her face, because it couldn't have been good. Peter dropped his sword to the ground and sank to the ground next to the Stone Table. Caspian left the room.

A few minutes later he found himself sitting outside of Aslan's How on a ledge. He stared across the open field that was most likely to be a battle site at some point in the next week. He sighed as he heard someone come up and sit beside him. He really just wanted to be alone. He didn't even need to look up to know who it was. The silence alone spoke volumes.

"Why didn't you tell me about my father?" Caspian said to Cornelius after a few minutes of silence.

"My mother was a black dwarf from the northern mountains." Said Cornelius. Caspian gave him an odd look. The elderly man explained. "I risked my life all these years so that you might be a better king that those that came before you."

"Then I have failed you already." Caspian said, hanging his head.

"No. Everything I told you, and everything that I didn't..." Cornelius paused to think of how to word things. "It was only because I believe in you. You have a chance now to become the most noble contradiction in Narnian history."

"And what might that be?" Caspian asked doubtfully.

"The Telmarine who saved Narnia." Cornelius said simply. The two of them sat in silence for a while before Caspian got up to search out a certain redhead. He thought that if anyone could give him advice, it would be either her or Edmund. But quite frankly, the Just kind intimidated him. It wasn't long till he found her, out on the training field.

She was moving swiftly with her fighting knives waving around her. It was like a dance. She darted in on an unseen enemy and danced back out, twirling and spinning. She was quite agile for someone who was within an inch of death the day before, but he guessed that it came with having a dose of Lucy's cordial, but he didn't want to be in need of it. She turned on her heel when she heard his footsteps and pointed a knife straight at him, ready to throw it at a moments notice. Caspian froze. Ari relaxed when she saw the familiar face, but he could still see the muscles in her legs tensed, ready to run. She sheathed her knives and walked toward him, her now short hair blowing in the wind behind her as she walked.

"What brings you out here?" She asked, dropping to sit on the dirt.

"I just felt like I needed someone to talk to that might relatively understand what I'm going through. It was either you or King Edmund." Caspian said lightly. "To tell you the truth, your husband scares me sometimes."

"Well, talk away. I'm a good listener." Ari said, giving him a comforting smile.

"I feel like everything I do is a mistake." Caspian said, for once getting his thoughts in the air.

"I felt like that when I first met Edmund." Ari said, laughing to herself. Caspian gave her a strange look.

"You weren't always friends?" He asked, confusion etched on his face.

"Heavens no! We hated each other so much that Peter had to declare a law that we couldn't be in the same room alone." Ari laughed. "He made that law because I literally almost chewed Ed's ear off once. He still has the scar."

"But you two seem so much in love!" Caspian said, astonished at the thought that the two had previously hated each other.

"We are. But we weren't always." Ari said, sighing. "Sometimes, things that seem so wrong at the time, end up being the best things that ever happened to you."

Ari fell silent after that and Caspian pondered her words. Everything seemed to be going wrong. The raid. Gaining Peter's respect. Killing his uncle while he had the chance. Maybe, just maybe, these mistakes were pushing him forward, and he just didn't realize it yet. He had a feeling that one day in the future he would be able to look back on these dark days and say that these events were what shaped him for who he would become.

What Caspian didn't know was that Ari's words had a double meaning, for her at least. She was thinking about the child that she lost back in the Telmarine castle. She felt like breaking down every time the thought crossed her mind, and several times she had suffered traumatic flashbacks already. But, as she and Edmund had agreed, it was best that only Peter knew besides them. Other people would pity them, and that was one thing that she didn't need right now. Not if she wanted to keep a grip on reality. If everyone knew, they would be coming up to her to tell her how sorry they were, and that would only cause her to think about it even more.

Caspian eventually stood up and walked back towards the How. As soon as he was out of earshot she let the sobs shake her body once more. She curled herself into a ball and rocked back and forth, tears pouring out of her eyes. Memories flashed behind her closed eyelids from the gruesome beatings she had suffered in the Telmarine castle. She could almost feel her own bloodcurdling screams again, bounding off of the stone walls as blow after blow hit her.

The tears stopped flowing so freely and she just wrapped her arms around herself, like she was trying to keep herself together. She didn't know how much longer she would last before she slipped up and fell to pieces in front of people, but it wouldn't be long until something along those lines happened. There was only so much a person could handle before they did something drastic. She didn't know what she would do though. Certainly she wouldn't do anything like the first time she had ever miscarried. She knew now that if she was hurting herself, she was hurting Edmund, and that wasn't something that she would ever do on purpose again. Seeing his appearance when she woke from the coma was enough to show her that. She let a final tear trickle down her face and she fell back into the soft grass, watching the clouds overhead.

A shadow came over her face and she looked up to see Edmund standing over her. Without a word he sat down beside her. Words weren't needed. Edmund pulled Ari close and they just sat there for the longest time. Edmund's buried his head in her shoulder and she could feel her dress become wet with his tears. A few moments later Edmund spoke.

"I'm so sorry." He croaked. Ari turned around in his arms and stared at him as if he had grown another head.

"What are you sorry for? You didn't do anything wrong." She said to him, choosing her words carefully.

"Yes I did! I didn't do the most important job that I've ever been given." Edmund cried.

"What job would that be?" Ari asked quietly, already knowing the answer. She didn't want to hear, but felt that she needed to.

"Protecting you! When I married you, I took an oath that I would protect you no matter the cost. I didn't do that! If I had protected you back there in those woods, then the baby-" Edmund cut himself off as he saw the tears pricking at Ari's eyes once more.

"Say it. Say it Edmund." She said, blinking to hold back tears that threatened to spill over. It was futile, and she knew it.

"If I had protected you like I should have, then the baby would still be alive!" Edmund shouted. There was a long silence between them where they just stared at each other. Without a sound the tears fell. Ari wrapped her arms around Edmund, and he wrapped his around her. They just held each other and cried until there were no more tears to cry.

"You did the best you could, Ed. That's all you ever did, and it's all I can ever ask for." Ari said quietly, leaning into him. Edmund didn't respond.

It was times like these were the only thing there was to do was keep each other company. Words didn't need to be said to understand what the other was feeling. They just laid there in the warm sunlight until in the distance there was the sound of marching feet. The two sat up and looked at each other, already knowing what it meant. Like lighting the two were sprinting towards the How.

Back in the Stone Table room, Peter sat in front of the cracked slab of stone and stared intently at the carving of Aslan on the back wall. Lucy quietly entered the room and sat beside him, laying a hand on his arm in support to show that she didn't hold what had just happened against him. The two of them just sat in silence.

"You're lucky, you know." Peter said after a few moments.

"How so?" Lucy asked, arching an eyebrow in a way that only she and Edmund could do.

"To have seen him." Peter said, still staring at the carving of Aslan. "I wish he would have just given me some king of proof."

"Maybe we're the ones who need to prove ourselves to him." Lucy said after a pause. Peter gave her a weak smile before running footsteps broke the silence. They looked up to see Ari running towards them. She looked quite a bit healthier than she did earlier, but she was still out of breath from just a little bit of running.

"Peter, you better come quickly." She said, a look of alarm in her eyes. Peter and Lucy looked at each other before they followed Ari out of the Stone Table room.

They all met and walked outside. Ari sucked in a breath and grasped Edmund's hand tightly as they saw rows upon rows of Telmarine soldiers marching out of the forest. There seemed to be no ending to it. At the front, in full armor, rode Miraz. There was a collective sinking feeling as they realized that they had very little chance of survival against this army with their broken troops. Things were not looking good at all.

Author's Note: The ending isn't the best in the world, but...oh well.

I know I put a lot of emotional scenes in there with Ari, and Edmund, and some things are repeated, but... Yeah. I really wanted to show that they aren't invincible. That they are vulnerable, and that sometimes what people see isn't always what's going on. Ari puts on a smile, but really on the inside she's falling to pieces, as this chapter shows. Edmund blames himself for what happened, and there will be more to come on that subject. Just later on... probably just before Caspian's coronation, but it will be there.

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