I don't own Narnia or the Pevensies.

When Lucy arrived – well, "arrived" might have been too gentle a word – when she was jostled into the Great Hall by the shoulders of the people around her, Lucy was immediately struck by the size of the crowd that had gathered. It seemed every servant in the castle had been summoned to the Great Hall, which meant there were a few hundred people lining its walls. Though she couldn't see the dais from where she stood in the crowd, she quickly shifted around a side and towards the front so she could, to see why they had been called here.

But she saw only an empty dais, the two thrones backed by a few guards but otherwise unoccupied. The altar and the cup still stood, silent premonitions of a fate Lucy hoped to avoid. The crowd was murmuring confusedly. Lucy glanced around a few more times, trying to spot any familiar face, but none of the people she'd encountered the night before, whose names had been on Danya's list, were present. Frowning, she turned back to the front of the room.

A moment later, a door behind the thrones opened, and the guards as one sank into a respectful bow. Immediately, the room copied the gesture, and Lucy found herself curtseying awkwardly alongside hundreds of others as she assumed the king entered the room. When she looked up, she saw he had – and he was holding a piece of paper in his hand. The crowd hushed immediately as King Valin stepped around the thrones and the altar, out to the front of the dais, looking out over them all.

"Good morning, citizens," he called out into the room, his voice booming unnaturally loud – Lucy suspected the magicians had something to do with the amplification. "I trust you're keeping busy preparing for the feast later this morning. I expect you will prepare the best for my guests."

He was pacing in front, his eyes still combing over the paper. Every so often he would walk too far to one side and Lucy would lose him beyond the head of someone taller than her, but she could see him for the most part, stalking back and forth, waiting to choose his next words. Abruptly, he stopped pacing and looked up and over the crowd.

"However, it has come to my attention that some among your number have not been preparing as diligently as possible," he said, his words dripping danger and threat. Even from a distance, Lucy could see the muscles at the corner of his mouth twitching beneath his moustache. He lifted the paper up so that the crowd might see it.

And Lucy felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as she realized: It was Danya's list.

"Under our very eyes, in this very castle, treachery and rebellion stew amongst the basest of us," Valin growled to the gathered servants, holding the paper out in front of him as if it were offensive unto itself. "Thankfully, these rogues misplaced their trust in one who remains true to his throne and his country, or perhaps we never would have learned about this appalling plan, this atrocious scheme to make an attack on my very person! We have weeded out most of the disloyal among you, but to ensure you understand the gravity of the situation, I thought we ought to make a lesson out of this…unfortunate incident."

He gestured to the guards behind him, who opened up the doors in the back. Out marched a short line of people, people Lucy recognized from the night before, a few the others who had been planning to aid in their scheme. Their hands were bound behind their backs but they looked for the most part steeled and unrepentant. Danya, though, was not among them; Lucy still couldn't see her anywhere. Panic reared briefly in her stomach but she squashed it down and tried instead to think clearly. Who were the ones who were actually going to perform the attack? Roche, she knew, and a few others in the stable and in the armory. Were they among those captured?

Lucy's eyes scanned over the figures on the dais hurriedly. Her stomach jerking, she caught sight of two men and a woman who had indeed been in on the plan. How much did Valin know? There was a chance he knew only of a vague plot and a list of names. She prayed for this to be the case, but what if he had tortured them as he had done her brothers? Not everyone could be as silent as Peter under such treatment…

"Would anyone else like to join these noble dissenters?" Valin called out to the gathered servants, his voice heavy with scorn. The crowd hung in a vast, queasy silence. Turning back to his prisoners, the king laughed mockingly. "Such friends you have. Or perhaps they, unlike you, know the value of loyalty."

Lucy had a feeling she knew what was to come soon, but she couldn't bear to watch it. She began to move back in the crowd, trying not to draw attention to herself. She had to get away, to find Danya, to fix this – how had it gone wrong? Who had reported them?

She heard the ring of a sword being drawn but she'd moved behind a tall, stout woman, and she couldn't see, but the crowd tensed as one entity, every person seeming to hold their breath at once.

Then there was a strange whistle from somewhere up above, and a sharp scream from the dais, and a collective gasp from everyone around her, and sudden chaos. Lucy struggled to see again, but all of a sudden people were moving very quickly, milling around and blocking her path and bumping into her; she tried to push her way through to see what was going on but suddenly Valin was also booming out orders to his guards, orders that were amplified by whatever made his voice so loud in the first place.

"Take forty men and block all the ramparts!" he was shouting to one of his commanders. He sounded as though he, too, were moving quickly, perhaps even a little panicked. "No, leave him, go! I don't care! I order you to go!"

When Lucy broke free of the crowd, she could see Valin holding one of his prisoners in front of him like a shield as one guard writhed on the dais with a short shaft in his chest – a crossbow bolt. Her head jerked up, trying to figure out where it might have come from, who might have shot it. The angle at which it had come in meant it could not have come from within the room, which left the windows; someone must have shot through one of them and into the room. Who had they been aiming for? But of course, who would they have aimed for but the king?

"Get back to your duties!" Valin barked at the panicked crowd as he moved back towards the door out of which he'd come. "I will have everything perfect!"

People began to swarm out the doors, but Lucy wasn't ready to go. She pushed forward again, wondering if in this confusion, she could do something to help the prisoners; the guards were rushing out the back doors to apprehend whoever had made the shot, and Valin himself looked ready to follow. But just when she was about to rush up and seize the wounded guard's belt to cut them free, Valin turned, saw her down below, turned away in disinterest, and struck.

She remembered as the man's body hit the ground that his name had been Iren, that he had worked in the castle smithy, but the hands that curled limply upwards would never again hold a hammer. In rapid succession, the others followed, their lives ending without so much as a glance from the retreating crowd, except from Lucy, whose eyes marked them in horror. She turned and fled before the last body fell, but the sound of the impact wrenched her stomach and the instant she had run to and thrown open an outside door, she was violently ill.

Far off and above, she could see guards swarming up onto the ramparts, and knew her plan had failed.