Cair Paravel.
1010.
Eve of the New Year.
The Tenth Year of the Golden Age.
Asura.
The one thousand and tenth year of the Narnian calendar was almost done.
The war was over.
The sorcerer had been defeated.
Narnia was safe once more.
And Asura had lived.
Barely.
The moon was high, gleaming through the clouds and lighting the courtyard with its soft wintery glow, shining on white stone walls and high-arched windows and snow. The storm had ebbed into nothingness; the silence as pure as the wintry blanket that covered turrets and parapets and kept the merry-makers inside where the fires burned bright, and the wine flowed endlessly.
She just needed a moment before she joined them once more.
Her morose feelings had no place in the hall where the court celebrated the turning of the year.
The world was still, save for the occasional groan of the trees shifting beneath their frosty armour and the distant caw of a lone raven. It was as if time itself had frozen, allowing her that moment of solitude and reckoning.
She turned her face upwards, letting the snowflakes fall upon her face, so cold yet so gentle. It put her in mind of the northern lands, the lands of her birth. The lands that she had told herself she had hated; that she would never return to willingly. A smile touched the corner of her mouth, watching as those delicate creations fell to the ground – each and every snowflake, in its playful swirl, appeared to glow from within, as if each had its own burning light.
Asura exhaled slowly, the warmth of her breath dissolving into the icy air, and her eyes traced the patterns of the snowflakes landing on her sleeve. Each one was unique, intricate, and fleeting—a reminder of the fragility she understood all too well.
And yet, there she stood. Alive. Breathing. The second chance she'd been granted felt like both a gift and a weight.
The snow continued to fall, softening the harsh edges of the world around her. She felt small, insignificant.
She had kicked her boots off haphazardly beside the frozen fountain, her feet sinking into the snow – though she felt no chill. She tilted her head back, her lashes catching the icy flakes as they melted into drops that rolled down her cheeks like fleeting tears.
Through her magic, she felt the snow—each flake a shard of water reaching out for her, a part of the great cycle she was bound to. It was a song only that only the naiads could hear, a melody in the falling silence, and it pulled at her essence with a familiar ache. Her fingers brushed against the air, and the snow seemed to respond, swirling gently around her in an intricate dance. She could not control it, not like the frost fae, but she could feel it.
The connection calmed her.
She closed her eyes and let herself sink into the rhythm, the quiet assurance that no matter the chaos, the snow would melt, the streams would flow, and the water would always find its way back to her and she to it.
The snow embraced her, a thousand crystalline promises whispered on the wind.
She'd not yet resumed her duties, though she was sure King Edmund would resume his role as Captain of the Royal Guard; she did not have her full strength yet – as if her stream were still thawing out after a long and hard winter.
But her strength was returning.
She touched her fingertips to her neck – though she knew there was no mark there where the sword had sliced through flesh and tendon. She barely remembered what had happened, but she remembered the pain. She remembered her own blood spilling down her tunic, cold and wet; she remembered the strange feeling of feeling embraced as she'd slipped into unconsciousness.
It was Peter who had finally told her what had happened.
Arianna had stolen the water from the body of her attacker and used it to save her, leaving her attacker a dry husk – to keep her alive until she had been placed in the waters beneath the witch's castle.
Peter.
Her liege. Her king.
He had been her first thought when she had awoken in the Healing Pools. In the waters of the north that had healed her.
Asura exhaled.
Her dreams from her restless healing haunted her still – she had been trapped within her own mind, unable to move as the first waters mending her body. The sweet, dark fog had enclosed her mind, suffocating her as she saw the deaths of those she loved over and over and over.
Peter's death had been first. In a place and time that she did not know – the murky scene had stretched endlessly in the murky twilight of her dream; the air thick with the acrid tang of burning and the muffled murder of a restless crowd. She did not recognise the faces, nor the outlandish clothes.
A low rumble began beneath the feet of the crowd, faint at first but growing, until it consumed the air itself. A screech tore through the air – desperate and unyielding, as sparks fettered through the fog, bursting like dying stars. And the screaming grew louder. It wasn't slowing. It wasn't stopping.
And then the world fractured.
She forced her eyes open, unwilling to revisit that part of the dream. It was far to easy to recall, far too vivid.
Peter was alive, she had to remind herself once more.
Her king was very much alive.
And most likely inside dancing with a beautiful dryad or stealing kisses from a very willing courtier from Archenland or even Calormene. Or perhaps dancing with another naiad, for they had been far more willing to show their faces since 'Queen' Arianna had taken up temporary residence at the Cair. They followed their slave-queen wherever she went.
Much had changed in the year passed.
And for all her big words and strong convictions, most of the year had simply happened around her. Just like in her dreams, her presence had no effect on the outcome.
If you aren't changing, you are choosing, Peter had told her once when she had first arrived at the Cair.
She had not even been there for the battle that had decided Narnia's fate.
She had not been there to protect any of them.
She had always prided herself upon the skills she had grown, on her ability as Edmund's second-in-command.
But she had not been strong enough.
She had never felt so lost.
…
Peter.
He fastened the fur cloak around his shoulders as he stepped out into the brisk midwinter air. He was sure he'd seen Asura slip through the throng of dancers and through the door that was half-hidden behind pillar and tapestry. Had he not been watching her the moments before he would not have noticed when she disappeared from sight entirely.
There had been something off about her, her eyes did not hold their usual spark.
The snow-covered path wound gracefully through the gardens, a serpentine ribbon of untouched white threading through a dreamscape of frost-kissed beauty. Towering hedgerows, their once-green leaves now encrusted with delicate crystals, lined the way like silent sentinels. The bare, gnarled branches of ancient oaks reached skyward, their skeletal forms draped in shimmering layers of ice and snow, casting soft, intricate shadows on the ground.
Here and there, stone statues rose from the snow like ghosts of the past, so life-like as to have been turned to stone by the White Witch herself — weathered knights, stoic maidens, and mythical creatures frozen in time. Snow had softened their features, giving them an ethereal quality. The air was crisp and still, filled with the faint scent of pine and the sharp purity of winter.
High King Peter the Magnificent could appreciate the beauty of the snow, of the softness it leant his land – but by Aslan's Mane, he did not enjoy the cold.
Each step on the snowy trail crunched softly underfoot, the sound carrying like a whisper in the tranquil garden. The muffled quiet of the winter cloak made the world feel smaller, intimate, and so far from the celebrations inside the Cair.
As he rounded a bend near a frozen fountain, his feet halted, as if they had taken root in the ground.. For his acting Captain of the Guard stood there, her face turned upwards to the heavens, and a smile upon her face. She had unbound her hair, and it fell about her, the same winter-white as the snow that fell on her lashes and cheeks. Never before had she looked so beautiful, and never before had she seemed so far from him.
Her beauty did not come from the deep cerulean velvet brocade gown she wore, nor from the silver and golden threads woven through it. Those threads could not dare to mimic the sparkling pigment that danced around her eyes and dusted across her delicate nose.
There was a stillness about her, a quiet grace that seemed to echo the serenity of the garden. For a moment, she was not merely a naiad standing in the snow—she was the embodiment of winter itself, breathtaking in her beauty and untouched by the burdens of the world.
Peter's breath caught. He had faced battlefields, navigated treacherous alliances, and ruled over thousands, and yet, in the quiet of the garden, he found himself disarmed. He wanted her to open her eyes, to show him those naiad-blue eyes that near-glowed. He wanted to chase away the sadness that he had seen lingering in them.
She was pale still, from her healing – more pale than even when she had first arrived in the Cair all those years passed, when they had found her running for her life.
He took a step towards her, his arm reaching out without a conscious thought, as if it had a mind of its own. But he caught himself, forcing it back down to his side, to rest his hand upon Rhindon just as she turned, her lips parting into a smile.
He forced a smirk onto his face, quelling the butterflies that danced in his stomach. "Quite dressed up aren't you, Captain."
She rolled her eyes at him, offering a small smile of her own. But still, it did not quite reach her eyes. "It's a one-night only thing. My breeches would be back in the morning."
He chuckled, he could perhaps count on a single hand how many times he had seen her in a dress. And though it was a beautiful sight, he much preferred her in breeches and a tunic, for she looked so much more comfortable. "Will you come back inside?"
Peter stepped closer, drawn by something he couldn't quite name, something that tugged deep within him that he didn't dare to name. His fingers curled against his palms, aching to reach out, to bridge that small space between them, but he didn't.
He couldn't.
"The Court will wonder where you've gone," Asura said after a long silence, though she did not move. She did not brush away the snowflakes that collected in her hair and in her eyelashes.
"Let them wonder," Peter murmured, his voice carrying a note of defiance he hadn't intended, nor did he regret. A tone he knew Edmund would call him out on had he heard it.
Asura's eyes met his, something unspoken lingering in her naiad-blue eyes, too blue to be human – a question, a hope, perhaps even a longing that mirrored the king's own.
"Dance with me, Asura."