Author's Note: Wow, I am lame. I really meant to update this sooner, but as always life got in the way. You can be reassured that the next few pieces are close to or completely done, so you shouldn't have to wait as long for them... I hope.

This piece is written to the second movement of The Planets, which is a slower, calmer piece than the last. You'd think that it would be a happy, quick tune, but I feel it's far more solemn and subdued. It's a peace that comes directly after war, and you can hear that in it.

---

Venus, The Bringer of Peace

---

The sun was setting in the west, but I was gazing north.

We won here today. That should be enough to cheer any king, and indeed it was enough for many of my subjects, who would soon be celebrating over a raging bonfire. They needed the outlet. Small patrols were working their way through the hillsides and cleaning up, but truly the battle was over. Peace had been returned to Narnia.

A peace that had its costs.

Everything does, of course, battles simply more dramatically than most things. I had been learning to deal with this fact since we came to Narnia, and I suppose I would always be offered lessons in it.

Ed...

Unlike me, my subjects rarely seemed upset at the costs of war. They understood what was asked of them and I could that after the long winter of Jadis's rule they were proud to have a Narnia once again worth sacrificing for.

Still, I could not help but wish for what could have been. My mind mulled over what I could have done to prevent this battle, though I knew that nothing less than the battle we'd waged would have turned back the Ettins. They'd lurked at Narnia's borders for months, and their repeated intrusions into our land were growing increasingly bold.

I knew the names of each soldier we lost. Tomorrow morning we'd hold a small ceremony for them. It was Narnian tradition to honor the dead at the beginning of a new day. It was supposed to symbolize the new beginning for those who had passed into Aslan's realm, and to take our our mind off of the life that had been lost.

Still, I could not shake the feeling that I was mourning something more than just the loss of soldiers. This sorrow was too deep, too profound.

"Peter?"

I turned to see my brother walking up the hill, slower than he normally would and paler than I liked to see him, but alive. I frowned. "You should be resting."

He reached me gave me a level look, "So should you." His words were quiet and shallow, another reminder of his injuries.

He'd been thrown from Phillip during the battle and his head was bandaged from a small cut along the side of his head. He'd just missed losing the top of his ear. I was also glad to see that he'd changed his tunic. He'd suffered a long gash across his stomach that our healers assured me was superficial, but looked positively horrible. He'd tried to joke with me about how Phillip would never let him live it down, but I wasn't much for the banter after seeing my brother's steed anxiously pacing outside of the healing tent, nearly inconsolable.

For me, I'm afraid that the sight of Edmund lying on a battlefield with blood across the front of his tunic will never be far from my mind. Today, seeing him lying in the tent pale and still, it was as if my worst nightmares had come to life.

How long would it be before they actually did?

"You should join the troops, Ed. You lost a lot of blood and this exertion can't be healthy."

I could see his mind working behind dark eyes. The sun's last rays worked to give a little color to his ashen face, but I knew that he was in pain. He nodded and began to turn away, but stopped. "Peter," he started, paused, and forged ahead. "Please do not dwell on what could have been... or even what may be. Content yourself, for now, with what is." I could hear something in his words that made me think they weren't his own, but I paid it little attention.

"Go eat dinner. I'll be fine."

Tonight my people celebrated, but as their High King I could not.