AN: /!/ Warning /!/- some slightly suggestive mature content in this chapter (nothing too bad-I don't write THOSE kind of stories-but this is a T-rated fic). On a different note, I think the next chapter will be the final chapter in this fic.

"It can't be," murmured Lucy. She had already ruled out the possibility that it was somehow Edmund Philippe; but that was his voice! She would have known it anywhere.

The figure that was her husband reached up and pulled his hood back, revealing himself to her in the lantern light that lit their small cabin. A face every bit as familiar as the voice was; memorized since childhood. A perfect match. Dark haired and slightly grave-mouthed, he was just as she remembered him. Either this was her Edmund, come back from the dead, or else it was a man as like as two peas.

"Lucy," said her husband, speaking softly still, reaching into the pocket of the doublet he wore under his cloak and pulling something out.

As if she had seen a ghost (and she very nearly had as far as she knew at the time), Lucy trembled and retreated, pulling her legs further into the bunk, edging away from the miracle even though all she wanted was to throw her arms around him and never let him go. She wondered if she was dreaming, for though she could believe in a great many things that other girls would have considered nonsense by her age, this was stretching the fine line a bit too thin. How could he be standing in front of her? Everyone knew he was dead. Everybody was well aware that Edmund Philippe had been executed as a traitor. They'd even all seen...

Wait, what had they seen? Nothing, Lucy realized, thinking back on what she knew. No public beheading, no funeral because of his 'crimes', and a cremation that no one seemed to know any details about. So, other than Caspian-by his own tale-no one had seen him die or seen his corpse afterwards, not even his ashes. Indeed, even if they had, didn't all ashes look rather alike? The remarkable thing was that Prince Rilian himself probably knew as little about the traitor's remains as the lowest commoner in all of Narnia did.

Goggling at her husband, Lucy watched as he placed something down on the bunk beside her. She touched it gingerly and lifted it up as if she was afraid it would melt away into dust. It was the seed-pearl necklace with the dagger pendant. The peppermint and the pendant, a man who looked exactly like Edmund Philippe staring at her with expectant concern, it was him!

"It's you," wept Lucy, finally coming out of her shock and more or less flinging herself into his arms. "Oh, by the Lion, how? How Edmund? I thought you were dead."

"No," said Edmund, clinging to her. "He spared me, Lu."

"But he told me he beheaded you himself," she murmured, pressing her cheek against his ear.

"I thought he was going to," explained Edmund, pulling away just a little bit so that he could look at her while he spoke. "He took me into the room for it and everything. Lucy, I swear I wet my tights when he picked up that sword."

Lucy winced, imagining the whole scene in her mind. Edmund on his knees, Caspian's hands-perhaps shaking ever so slightly-wrapping around the hilt of a strong sword, ready to do the job.

"But he didn't," Lucy marveled. "What happened? Did you say something to him?"

Edmund shook his head. "No, I just looked at him, and then he looked at me. I shut my eyes, I knew he was going to..." -his voice trailed off- "...but then I heard the sword strike against the wall. I opened my eyes; the king had cried out and thrown it across the room."

Lucy felt a smile slowly creeping up onto her face, replacing her grimace. Caspian had been a kind husband, in this merciful way as well as in all others, she was sorry she hadn't been able to love him as much as she loved Edmund-it would have saved everybody a lot of pain. At least the new queen would have the comfort of being looked after by someone as compassionate as the king of Narnia.

"Then he said that he had lost everything; two queens, his country's stability, and his belief in loyalty. I was waiting for him to walk across the room and pick up the sword again; instead he glanced at it out of the corner of his eye and shook his head. Finally, after a while, he asked me if I still refused to tell him the truth."

"What did you say?"

"That he wouldn't believe it, that he hadn't believed it all along when you tried to tell him." Edmund shrugged his shoulders. "Somehow I ended up telling him about the Lantern Waste and how close we were, and about the time you almost drowned because I pushed you off the wall into the brook, and I saw something-I don't know what, but I saw it-change in him. Although, to be honest, I don't think he believed me when I told him nothing happened between you and me in your chambers, not even then. And he said-I already knew it, though-that I didn't deserve you. Then he told me this whole plan about sailing for seven years on the Dawn Treader and threw a cloak at me. He smuggled me out the back water-gate through the apple orchard and I've been hiding out at the docks, waiting to leave Narnia, ever since."

"Oh, Edmund, I'm so glad you're all right, you don't know-" blurted Lucy, her eyes growing watery for what must have been the hundredth time since things had begun to go wrong in her life.

"Shh, everything's better now, you don't have to cry anymore." Edmund wiped a couple of Lucy's tears away and lightly caressed her cheeks and the upper part of her neck.

"Ed, are we really husband and wife now?" asked Lucy, as if she could scarcely believe it.

"Yes," said Edmund, slipping his arm down from her neck where his hand was resting so that it wrapped around her waist.

How strange it was, Lucy thought to herself as her husband began to kiss her lips repeatedly, lingering more each time he pressed against them, that one moment things could seem their bleakest and most horrid; and the next everything could be like a sort of dream, something so wonderful that it felt like it couldn't really be happening. But it was happening.

"You know," Edmund murmured in-between kisses, "there was something I wanted to say to you that night the Calormene Prince and the Lone Islanders walked in on us."

"What's that?" she whispered.

"I love you, too," he told her. "I always will, Lucy-lu. The strongest light in the world-the lamppost-could flicker, Narnia could over-turn itself into fire and water, the whole world could go mad, and I'd still love you."

Lucy leaned forward and kissed him. Slowly she started to lower herself backwards so that she was lying down in the bunk more than she was sitting on it. She felt herself bringing Edmund down with her, though she barely knew what she was doing.

He didn't seem to mind; he stretched out across the small space, sighed deeply, and went right on kissing her.

For a few minutes Lucy rested under him while he showered her with displays of affection, until finally he sighed again and lifted up his head, looking down into her face a little sorrowfully.

"Edmund?" said Lucy, concerned, noticing the distant expression that had suddenly come onto his face.

"I was just thinking," said Edmund, "that there's one thing you were never given, and it hardly seems fair."

Lucy's brow arched slightly, confused.

"You were never given a choice, not even once."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, first your family forced you to marry King Caspian. Then I acted like an idiot and got us into a whole lot of trouble. After that, Caspian took you off the throne and made you marry me, a supposedly deceased traitor. I mean, you never had a chance to decide what you really wanted. You should have had a choice, not been booted into thrones and titles and then out of them."

Lucy considered this, gazed up into Edmund's brown eyes, and softly replied, "It doesn't matter anymore. Peter was right, he knew all along what-and who-I would have chosen. It isn't treason to say it now, that I knew all along in spite of this mess, that I would have been with you. I meant what I before my wedding to the king."

"So you aren't sorry that you now have to sail for seven years with a condemned treasonous nobody?"

She reached up and cupped his chin and the lower part of his face with her hands. "No, I don't wish things were different, not now, not when I'm with you."

"Oh, my sweet Lucy." He carefully and gently lowered himself back on top of her again, and put his lips to her forehead. He knew he didn't deserve a woman like the little girl who had run all over the western woods with him was growing into, but at the same time he thanked the Lion that she had-in her own way, actually given a choice or not-chosen him.

Feeling a warm sense of security she hadn't felt in so long, Lucy moaned softly as Edmund began to feel a little more free with his hands, putting them in places he wouldn't have dared before, and let him pull her under the blankets.

Morning dawned pure and golden; the sun shining on the sea-water reflecting on the other side of their cabin. They danced like thin rippling lines of silvery gold and made all four walls, even the three they did not directly cast light on, seem bright.

Lucy's eyes followed them lazily as she laid sideways in the bunk, Edmund's arm around her waist (he was still asleep). She didn't want to get up, but after a few hours, knowing the morning was ticking by, she squirmed out from under her husband's arm and wandered over to where a small wash-basin was so that she could splash some cool water over her face.

A few seconds after Lucy had gotten up, Edmund must have felt the bunk move and woken (either that or he had been partially feigning sleep so that he could hold her a while longer, which was quite likely). At any rate, he sat up in the bunk and watched his dear sweet little wife, wearing one of his night-shirts to cover herself (her clothes from the day before were crumpled on the floor at the edge of the bunk), wipe the sleep from her eyes and sigh happily.

"Good morning," he said after taking her in for a few moments.

She turned and looked at him. "Oh, I thought you were asleep."

"I was," said Edmund, a little defensively.

Lucy fought back a giggle, not sure what it was exactly she suddenly felt like laughing at. Maybe it was simply that everything felt so different this morning, like there was a tremendous weight off of her shoulders.

Climbing out of the bunk, Edmund noticed a red smear on one of the under-blankets. He had wondered, since he hadn't been there when the announcement was made, exactly what grounds Caspian had been able to annul his marriage on. He figured, though it secretly vexed him greatly-thinking of how such a claim made poor Lucy look, that the king had used supposed infidelity as his excuse. But he might as well have used non-consummation, instead.

"He said both," Lucy told her husband.

Apparently, Edmund had spoken his last thought out loud without meaning to.

"I see."

After a slightly awkward pause, Lucy asked, "How did you know that we never...I mean, I never told you if..." Her face went a little red, thinking about what she and Ed had done the night before and how it had been her first time, and how she hadn't really been sure of what she was doing. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No!" exclaimed Edmund, rather indignantly, plenty thrilled that he was her first just as she was his. He wouldn't have had it any other way. "Of course not!" He coughed pointedly into his palm and gestured at the blankets.

She saw the stain. "Oh."

Suddenly a little insecure, now that the subject was brought up, he asked, "Did I?"

Lucy's face was practically crimson. "I wouldn't know...I mean, I don't think...no, I don't think so."

"I didn't hurt you at all, did I?" Edmund put his biggest concern into words, not caring if it happened to sound stupid or not; Lucy wouldn't hold it against him.

"No, you were perfectly gentle."

Looking relieved, he handed her his cloak to wear over the night-shirt and asked if she wanted any breakfast. "I'm more or less captain of the Dawn Treader now, I can order the crew to get us some eggs-we've got poultry on board."

"Sounds good," Lucy told him; "I'm starving."

"I'll go and tell them, then," said Edmund, heading for the cabin door, but turning around to look at her one last time before leaving. What he saw made his grin widen more than he'd thought possible; Lucy was reaching behind her neck to fasten the seed-pearls back where they belonged.

"What is it?" She noticed him looking at her with a very dreamy expression.

"Nothing," said Edmund, biting back the remainder of his smirk and walking over to her. "Let me help you with that." He moved her hair out of the way, fastened the necklace, kissed her neck so briefly it tickled, and then went back to the now ajar cabin door to go out and make the proper arrangements for their breakfast.

Late that afternoon, Lucy stood on deck, leaning just the slightest bit over the Dawn Treader's railing, looking out to sea. It was as smooth as a turquoise stone, little white scuff-like marks for waves.

A few crew members greeted her as they walked by. They didn't seem either to notice-or care-that she was wearing her husband's clothes; boy's tunic and tights over a simple white shirt. She had her own luggage somewhere on board, but she didn't feel like rummaging for it at the time, even if Ed's clothes were a little big on her; she was too dazzled and joyful to bother. It was true that life hadn't been easy up until then, and Lucy figured there would be hardships to come (anything could happen seven years at sea), however, it felt so good to be free. She was no country's queen, no king's child-bride, no knight's so-called lover, no pawn in a political matter, no daughter of an offended count; Lucy Philippe was a free woman, married to what the royal court considered a dead nobody, and she was ready for whatever came next.

Edmund, freed for a couple of hours from his captain-like duties, walked over to his wife, stood behind her, and slipped his arms around her shoulders.

"Nice view, isn't it?"

"I've never felt so free," whispered Lucy; "or so warm." She leaned against his arms.

"Not scared I'm going to push you in?" he teased, muttering in her ear.

"Does it matter? I know you'd jump right in after me and pull me right back on board."

"You're pretty sure of yourself," chuckled Edmund, his friendly-battering knowing no bounds at the moment. "Everyone knows I'm a traitor."

"Edmund Philippe, don't you ever use that word about my husband again, I'm sick of hearing it."

"Sorry, my love."

Lucy twisted her neck to grin up at him. "I don't think you've ever called me that before."

"You like it?"

She nodded and blushed.

"Then you'll hear it often, Lu."

Lucy gazed out at the sea again. It was one of those afternoons where the sun set early, and she could see the warm pinkish-orange glow falling over the blue of the water.

How wonderful it is, thought Lucy, to be in love and have the freedom to admit it.

AN: Reviews are welcome, as always.