17 - Frost Heart

Asha sat in a nest of blankets on the floor of her chamber. She had long ago replaced the bed that had once been there with a thick mat. A dryad preferred to sleep close to the ground. Her husband might have wanted more comfort, but there had been blissfully little time for words. Yet.

Edmund stood at her writing desk, shirtless, running his fingers over a vine-carved box containing his many letters to her over the years. "Yours are probably still in my box at home," he said softly.

She stood, and as she did so, her dress formed around her. She approached him and laid a light kiss on his shoulder, regretting already that they must return to the business of war.

He turned around in her arms, with the same regret in his chestnut-bark eyes. She reached up and touched a finger to the graying hair at his temples. "The wand is changing you," she murmured.

He drew her fingers to his lips. "Not so much."

She traced the knife scar on his belly. He gave a soft chuckle and flashed a boyish smile at the ticklish touch. She gave a brief answering smile, then frowned as she touched the stab scar on the other side of his stomach. The scar felt cool, nothing like the warmth of the rest of him. She wondered if it would always plague him—he complained of it in private sometimes, paining him—but he said nothing now. "I wish desperately that you could get rid of it," she breathed.

"If the wand turns my whole body stark white and ice cold, I'll bear it, as long as I have the cursed thing and she doesn't." He cupped her cheek, and Asha savored the touch like tree roots drinking deep from fertile earth. She met his gaze, willing him back to the pallet of blankets with her eyes, needing more time with him.

His eyes softened and he rested his forehead against hers. "I have to go," he murmured, apology in his voice. "We have too much to do." He took her hands and brought them to his lips for a lingering kiss.

"She's not even here, and she strikes at me," Asha said mournfully.

Edmund pulled her arms around him. "She's closer than she ought to be. And if Kamus was telling the truth, Aslan isn't far behind. If we're to help him, we need to turn our energies to—" He grinned and kissed her again, fiercely. "—less important things."

She sensed as much as saw the mischievous spark in his heart, and reveled in it. The pain of losing their daughter lingered, but instead of consuming him as it had for months, it now fueled that oaken resolve she had always known of him. That Jadis had never broken him still amazed her. She wondered if anything could.

He grinned wider and stroked her cheek again. "I love you, too." He retrieved his shirt, tossed heedlessly over a wooden bench, and pulled it on.

Someone banged on the door. In one move, Ed thrust her behind him, scooped up his sword where it had rested on the writing desk, then ripped it from its scabbard and tore open the door.

As soon as he saw their visitor, he lowered the sword. In the doorway stood a miniature version of Edmund, a boy who looked twice as old as the few years he really was. Already, Silas was half Edmund's height.

Silas's eyes went from frightened to round as saucers. He searched for Asha, and the relief when he found her was evident. "I s-saw a ship. I saw The Phoenix." He looked back to Edmund, gaping. "Father ... ?"

Edmund stared. The longing on his face and in his heart pulled at her. "You're ... huge."

Asha smiled and stepped around Edmund to beckon Silas farther into the room. "Dryad children grow fast," she said. "You should see him travel."

Edmund didn't even have the chance to respond. Silas threw himself at Edmund, who grunted and staggered back. His sword thumped to the blankets on the floor, and with a desperate gasp, he crushed Silas against him in a ferocious hug.

Teary-eyed, Asha slipped out of the room to let father and son have their time together. Talk of war and battle provisions and reinforcements could wait a few more minutes.

She sagged against the wall and wrapped her arms around herself. She'd been granted precious little time with Edmund. She wanted to be selfish with it, wanted to spend it all secreted away somewhere with him, not talking. But Selbaran, Narnia, indeed the whole world, could not afford her selfishness.

How much had they sacrificed to their countries? She thought longingly of their days in Ettinsmoor, when she and Edmund had first met. The only time she had ever had him to herself ... and she hadn't known until much later what a gift that was. They belonged as much to Selbaran and Narnia as they did to one another, whether they liked it or not.

With a sigh, she gathered her strength and made for the old armory, where she'd locked all her records on the movements of Jadis and her allies. The armory was housed outside the castle proper, beside a barracks that had been built to house the humans of Selbaran's army during her parents' time and in her own youth. Back when humans ruled here, and when dryads were kept prisoner in their own forests.

Asha had ended that when she claimed the throne. Her people needed her, as Narnia needed Edmund. I go where you will, Aslan.

She hurried down the halls and outside, grateful that she met with no servants on her circuitous route. She produced the sole key (the reason she'd chosen this place—most of the keys, and even the desire to approach the armory at all had been destroyed in the rebellion) and entered the old building. Dust tickled her nose as she turned down a hall. Then she heard a light, clipping step behind her, almost in time with her own footsteps.

Warning flashed through her. She spun around, beginning to transform into a shower of leaves as she turned, but even as she did so, the sound of a flute reached her ears.

A faun stood in the passageway behind her, with the flute to his lips. A man and an enormous ogre flanked him. The flute's music swelled, tugged at her, pulling her will to change apart thread by thread. Too late, too late, I should have scented them ... Asha's consciousness faltered, and she slammed to the floor with sparks of pain, unable to move.

"Take her, and let's go," grunted the man in an accent Asha had never heard. "The weasel will surface quick enough, once he finds his mate missing. Then we'll hear his allegiance from his own lips."

The ogre hesitated, scratched his bald head. "Then what?"

The man approached her and crouched over her, angling his head as if to study her with icy, pale eyes. "The youngest will be with him, yes? We shall have both at once." He angled his head the other way, and smiled such an awful smile that Asha prayed Edmund would sense her terror. "And then there were two."