I DREAM of Narnia most nights. Of the trees and the sweet scent of the rain and the symphony of birds and insects after the sun falls. Of my friends and the adventures we've shared. But mostly I dream of flying.

Flying from Lantern Waste to the Western Woods and Beaversdam and Caspian's Castle, over the Shuddering Woods and Beruna to Cair Paravel on the edge of the Eastern Ocean. Where old ruins stand among the apple trees and overgrown gardens. Where the Pevensies live ensconced in my memory, standing on the beach in their aged clothes and ancient weapons, four rulers returned to Narnia. Sometimes, they're waiting for me there. A blanket is spread out over the sand, Susan digging through baskets of sweet fruit and fresh pastries while Edmund watches Caspian and Peter spar and Lucy scours the beach for seashells.

Other times, I rescue Trumpkin from the Telmarines in the boat and walk with Edmund to the old treasury, asking him all the questions I never had the chance to ask. And sometimes, no matter how hard I fly, I just can't get to them. The delta and the Pevensies remain a silhouette balanced on the edge of the world. Unreachable.

I still wake up from those dreams thinking they're gone. I have to sit up and check the hammock beside mine, feeling my heart swell with reassurance when I see for myself that Edmund is still there, real as ever. Only this time, he isn't. That space where he should be is empty — not even a hammock strung between the posts.

No.

Panic sends my heart into overdrive. Had Aslan sent them back while I was asleep? Unable to say goodbye? My throat tightens. My body is shot through with adrenaline yet feels weighted with lead. He can't be gone; I just saw him for dinner.

Oh, I remember dumbly. Night watch. Tavros assigned Edmund the first shift when we were eating in the galley. That's where he must be.

I flop back into my hammock with a relieved sigh, muscles relaxing as my terror dissipates. Not a moment later, a soft caress reaches across the bond, worried and reassuring. Asking if I'm okay. I must've projected my emotions without realizing it. Over our weeks at sea, I've gotten pretty good at limiting what crosses the link, but this... there was too much fear to even think of controlling it.

I rub the velvet cuff of my sleeve between my fingers, worrying at the already-worn fabric, and slip out of my hammock. Caspian sleeps soundlessly in the next row over, unphased by the alternating snores of the crew and the soft echoes of my bootsteps.

Maybe feeling him call to me over the link has illuminated a hollow spot in my heart, but I'm suddenly aware of an emptiness yawning in my chest. It swallows any warmth so the chill of the midnight air seeps into my bones when I open the hatch. Something in me yearns for Edmund's reassuring presence, urging my feet one in front of the other to climb the stairs.

On deck, the stuffy smell of the crew's quarters is replaced with a cold, fresh ocean breeze. Scattered oil lamps illuminate enough to navigate the deck, but beyond the confines of the Treader, the darkness is so whole there is no distinction between the sky and the ocean. No horizon. The only indication that we still sail the eastern ocean is the familiar sound of water rushing against the hull.

I turn toward the helm where Rynelf stands, steering the ship through this infinite dark by the light of the half-moon and a million unfamiliar stars. He gives me a nod in greeting and points upward to the crow's nest, knowing exactly what brings me out this late. I don't miss his knowing smirk as I begin my climb up the ratlines.

It used to unnerve me how dark the world becomes out on the ocean. I hadn't believed Dusnun when he told me how everything vanished into one wall of immovable darkness. How his sealegs seemed to disappear without the horizon to steady him. I joined him on his next night watch just to see it for myself. I didn't last long. The illusion of sailing through nothing was horrifying. But, after almost nine months on the ocean and countless night shifts, I've gotten quite used to it.

I send a warning down the link, a gentle tug so Edmund knows I'm coming up and won't freak out. Immediately, the dark shape of his head emerges from the crow's nest above.

"Arryn?" He hisses. I don't know why he's whispering. There isn't a soul around to hear us — Rynelf is too far below.

"Move over," I tell him, climbing over the lip of the nest. He steps back, giving me space to stand beside him.

A single oil lamp hangs on the mast, casting the small landing in a flickering orange light. Without it, Edmund would be a black smudge against the starry sky.

The second my feet are on a solid surface, he reaches out through the dark for me. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. I just had this dream..." I secure a few rogue tendrils of hair behind my ear and change the subject. "What happened to your hammock?"

His face falls. "Shit, I forgot about that. Jemain was mopping belowdeck and fell into it when we went over a wave. Lucy was sewing it for me today."

I think of the burly minotaur with a mop and bucket stumbling around the crew's quarters and smile a bit. "We should have a few extras in the supply store."

The silvery light of the moon illuminates his crooked grin. "So that's why you had to come see me? Worried about my hammock?"

Edmund won't press me to broach the issue, but he'll tease, treading around the edge in case I want to address it. And, damn him, the teasing does help to lift my spirits.

I give his arm a shove. "I wanted to know who stole it before I could hide an egg under your blanket."

He laughs and reaches after me, grabbing my arm before I can snatch it back. "I can't believe you still have this," he muses, rubbing his thumb over the blue material, thin from age and constant wear. The same shirt he wears in my dreams before giving it to me on that beach.

"I can't sleep without it, sometimes," I admit. The soft velvet and the memories it holds kept me together on nights I thought I'd shatter into a thousand pieces. The nights when I missed him so terribly, or I feared I was forgetting him, having something tangible and familiar to hold onto was the best remedy I had.

Edmund peers down at me with eyes softer than the clouds, a glittering expanse of stars spread around him. "Why?" He murmurs. His thumb trails back and forth along my forearm.

"Sometimes I have these dreams," I begin. "Of you. And everyone else. And we're all in Narnia. Sometimes we're back on the beach where we met, or there's a picnic, or sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I just...can't get to you."

The wind batters itself against us. He listens to everything I say, stepping closer for warmth or to see me better.

I go on. "But the dreams aren't the bad part. When I wake up, I always have this moment where I think you're gone again. You're usually right beside me so when I see you it goes away, but I just saw an empty space...I thought..." My chest aches at the thought. "I panicked and I thought you were gone. I thought, before I could even say goodbye..."

Edmund draws me into him, arms anchoring around my waist. "I'm sorry."

"No," I say firmly. "None of it is your fault. I'm just..." Anxious? Worried? Going crazy? "I don't know."

"Scared." He supplies. "I know."

I press myself closer, feeling his steady heartbeat through the soft fabric of his shirt. The smell of saltwater that constantly clings to him fills my nose. I am scared and there's no hiding it from him. I'm scared that we'll sail into something we can't handle out here, that our friends will get hurt or even die. I'm scared I'll never find the chimæras or the people we set out to save. And I'm so scared that he and Lucy are going to leave again and there's nothing I can do about it.

"I'll never leave without a proper goodbye," Edmund declares. "I promise."

There are words there that neither of us can find the courage to say. They've stayed tucked away in the dark, unspoken and feared. We haven't talked about how he has to leave one day. Not once. I think him being here has begun to feel too permanent to ever be undone. After these months together, it seems impossible — wrong, even — that I might wake up one morning to a world without him.

I hug him tighter at the thought. And, as if knowing exactly what troubles me, Edmund shifts his arms to pull me impossibly close, allowing me to feel each quivering breath that fills his lungs. I'm positive he must be thinking the same thing.

"I'm scared, too," he admits in a shaky voice. I can feel his tension bleed across the link. It fills me with this gut-wrenching knowing; that we're both terrified of something neither of us can control.

Edmund takes a deep breath, chest expanding, and I feel his heart begin to beat faster. "I'm scared," he says quietly, "that I'll have to leave one day, and I'll regret falling in love with you."

I start, pulling back to look up into his adoring eyes.

His hands drift slowly, delicately up my arms. "But I'm even more scared I'll regret pretending I haven't already."

I stare at him, the lines of his face and the strands of his hair turned silver in the moonlight. Adoration blooms across the link, so pure and unadulterated I feel my heart ache. Susan's words echo in my ears like a forgotten dream. Edmund fell in love with you all on his own.

A nervous smile breaks across his face, eyebrows raising. "I'd really like to kiss you right now."

A disbelieving laugh escapes me. I seize his face in my hands and do just that.

Taken by surprise, Edmund stiffens. But a second later he relaxes and gathers me up in his arms, kissing me back like he's been waiting to since the moment he resurfaced in Narnia.

It's nothing like it was the first time. That kiss at Aslan's How was sweet yet desperate and impulsive and wrought with fear. It had unknown ingrained in every hurried moment between us. But this is entirely different. This is tender and deliberate, built upon years of longing. This kiss is whole and solid and promises more. A declaration.

My hands slide back into his hair, grasping at the strands that curl around the nape of his neck. I love the way it feels against my fingertips — silky and soft. The way his mouth moves against mine in gentle desperation. Like he can never get enough. I think I would've collapsed if he weren't holding me so close.

Breathless, I draw back, lift my gaze to meet his. Edmund is breathing heavy as well. His eyes are richly dark and hold me in place, seeming to say over and over again: you, you, you. Like there is nothing else to see.

My breath catches as he devours the space between us, kissing me with new fervor. The wind lashes at our clothes but I barely feel it. My heart pounds a fierce rhythm. Warmth burns through me, chasing away the cold bite of the night air. All the places he's touching me feel like they're on fire: my hip, my back, my mouth. Suspended in the dark above the water and the ship, we might've been another star burning amid the sky.

When Edmund pulls back the tiniest bit I instinctively hold him tighter, eliciting a flare of amusement across the link. I don't want it to end just yet. But he doesn't let that space between us grow anymore. He holds me against him, breath hot against my skin, and lifts his hand to curl around my jaw.

My voice is a whisper. "Ed." There's something I want to say but the words don't seem to come.

His fingers dance along my neck, drifting behind my ear and into my hair. This time, his kiss is so light it aches. He holds me with the sweetest tenderness, thumb brushing over my cheekbone. By the stars...

I sink into him, wishing I could live in this moment forever. But, like the tide, all things come and then they go. And after one last kiss, Edmund lets me go.

When I open my eyes and look up at him the corners of his mouth are lifted in a smile. I can't help myself. I laugh, breathless, and rest my forehead against his. I revel in this feeling. Of being so whole and content and full of love.

Love. Is that what this feeling is?

"Ed," I start again, finding the words I wanted to say earlier. "What you said before–"

"That I'm in love with you." He answers my question before I can even say it. "Yes. I mean it."

My smile is impossibly large. "I think I've loved you since that day at the spring," I tell him, pulling back to see him properly. "But I didn't know it. Since you came back...it feels more real, now."

A gust of wind looses a strand of hair into my face and Edmund smooths it behind my ear without missing a beat. He murmurs, "For me, it was when you jumped in front of that bear."

"Not one of the dozen times you saw me completely naked?" I tease.

He laughs and both of us grab the railing to steady ourselves as the ship rises over a large swell. "Definitely not. I was too nervous to think of anything except how my mum would've shouted at me for even looking at you." If there was proper light to see by, I'm sure his cheeks would've been red.

We sit in the crow's nest together for the rest of his watch shift, talking and looking at all the new stars in the sky. When Torruns arrives to take over, I reluctantly trudge belowdecks for the night while Ed goes to grab one of the extra hammocks for the night.

My head feels stuffed with clouds as I replay the kiss — or rather, kisses — endlessly over in my head. Nyssa will lose her mind when I tell her.

I nearly scream when Edmund appears soundlessly beside my hammock.

"What's wrong with you?" I hiss, sitting up to hit him.

He takes it with a soft wince and says, "the bloody box is nailed shut under thirty pounds of coiled rope, I'll wake up half the crew trying to get to it." He nods his chin at me, stepping out of his boots. "Move over."

Shocked, I raise my eyebrows at the unusually brazen request. "Really?"

"Well I'm not gonna crawl into bed with Lucy and Gael," he mutters snarkily. "Come on."

I point across the cabin, feeling particularly evil. "Eustace is right over there."

"I'll die first."

He says it with so much tenacity I have to smother my laughter. "Okay." I stop with my teasing and attempt to create space for him. "Don't crush me."

Edmund manages to fit into my hammock, wriggling around until we find a comfortable arrangement. I can't imagine what the men will have to say about it tomorrow morning, but for the moment, I don't care.

I snuggle my head into the soft space between Edmund's shoulder and chest, feeling quite pleased with how it worked out. The raised sides of the hammock kept pushing us inward so we didn't bother to fight it. I'd rolled onto my side and slotted myself snugly against Edmund, his shoulder becoming my pillow.

"Caspian's going to tease you relentlessly," I warn. I can already hear the king's endless quips.

Edmund releases a long, content sigh, brushes his thumb over my shoulder. "I don't care."

I fall asleep to the steady thrum of his heartbeat.

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author's note

AHHHHHJHAAJHSAJJAJ

EVERYONE SCREAM WITH ME BC IT FINALLY HAPPENEDDD

the L word not once but 7 TIMES in this chapter alone wowwww I didn't even plan for it to be so emotional and romantic and mushy but the ship sailed itself and I am not upset about it no sir

i think we all need to take a moment to appreciate the extreme level of slowburn here. edryn had their first kiss 27 chapters into the book and now, CHAPTER 50, they have finally kissed for the second time

so I'll see y'all for their next kiss in chapter 75 HAHA

I'm jk but these two (especially CEO of the prudes, Edmund Pevensie) are not very public with displaying their affection, so don't expect a ton of spice or even steam. they're very lowkey but still cute & super fluffy I promise ok don't be mad

but full disclosure on the kissing scene: I have never once been kissed, so if it sounded weird or inaccurate that would probably be why.. yeah idk what I'm doing pls send help lmao