Cair Paravel.
1014.
The Fourteenth Year of the Golden Age.
Asura.
The sea wind hit her first – clean, sharp, and sun-salted – as she crested the final rise of the cliff path. Below her, Cair Paravel rose like a dream from the edge of the world.
The white-stone palace gleamed in the mid-morning light, its towers catching gold where the sun struck their spires, its high banners snapping in the breeze like rippling fire. Seagulls wheeled above the battlements, and beyond the walls, the sea stretched out – blue and endless, alive with light.
She'd seen it a hundred times. Marched beneath those arches, bled in its name, defended it from storm and shadow.
But it never failed to stir something in her chest.
Home, though it was never truly hers.
Her boots were dusted with ash and pine needles from the Shuddering Wood. Mud had dried and cracked along the hem of her cloak. Her braid was still damp from the river crossing. She didn't care. There had been no time to wash, no time to rest.
The guards at the gate straightened the moment they saw her, one of them stepping aside without a word to lift the heavy iron latch. They knew her by gait alone.
"Captain," one of them murmured, barely masking his relief.
She nodded without slowing.
The palace opened before her – high halls and white marble staircases, archways carved with old Narnian runes. The scent of lavender and sea salt filled the corridors, mingling with warm air from the sun-soaked courtyards. Courtiers passed her in velvet and silk, their chatter dying as they turned to watch the naiad striding through the halls like a ghost summoned from the north.
She was escorted not to the war room as expected, but to the royal parlour.
Odd. Informal.
The steward offered a bow and pushed the door open, announcing her name in the clipped tones of protocol. "Captain Asura of the Royal Guard."
She stepped inside.
The parlour was warm with late light, its windows thrown open to the sea. Gold-gilt mirrors reflected the soft blue of the sky, and rose-quartz vases held blossoms from the southern gardens. It smelled of tea, parchment, and something beneath – something colder.
Peter stood near the hearth, the golden light catching in his hair, turning it to burnished gold. He had always been handsome – annoyingly so, Asura thought, with that sun-blessed kind of face that made people want to trust him. Broad-shouldered, tall, with the chiselled ease of a warrior and the bearing of a king born rather than made.
But it was not the lines of his jaw or the warmth of his eyes that held her attention.
It was the way he stood.
Too still. Tension gathered in the set of his shoulders, coiled tight through his spine like a bowstring drawn but not yet loosed. His arms were folded across his chest, but the gesture wasn't casual – it was protective. Contained.
And his eyes – summer-blue and usually alight with some boyish spark – were rimmed with the faintest trace of shadow. Like he hadn't slept. Like he'd been carrying something heavy, alone, and for far too long.
She knew that look. Had worn it herself.
Duty made flesh.
Peter's gaze flicked to her then – sharp, assessing. And for a heartbeat, something flickered between them. Relief. A crack in the façade. Then it was gone, buried beneath the familiar mask of kingship.
Asura tilted her head slightly, her stance easy. But she saw him.
She always had.
He was the High King. But he was also a man who had grown up too fast in a world that demanded too much. And though his crown sat easily on his brow, Asura knew the weight beneath it could grind even the strongest bones to dust.
She'd hold no illusions.
It was not the same boy she had once trained beside, laughing in the old practice yards.
It was a man tempered by battle, war-hardened and world-wary – and whatever had caused the urgent summons, it had rattled him.
Queen Susan stood near the windows, half-turned toward the sea, her long fingers curled lightly around a porcelain cup she hadn't sipped from. She was the very picture of composure – still and poised, as if carved from moonlight and fine marble.
Even Asura, who had learned to read men's tells in the twitch of a sword hand or the flick of an eye, could never quite read her.
There was a mystery to Susan – deliberate, not incidental. The quiet way she watched, absorbed, remembered. Her face was beautiful, hauntingly so, like the heroines of half-forgotten ballads. Pale skin like winter porcelain, lips painted the deep red of pomegranate seeds, and her eyes – pale blue. Icy. Clear as frozen water and just as cutting. There was no warmth in them that day, only silence. She didn't need to speak to fill the room with presence.
Susan was not warm like Peter, nor edged like Edmund. She didn't lead with power – she was power. Subtle. Patient. Deadly, if she chose to be. And her beauty was no accident.
Her dark hair was swept into an elegant updo, not a strand out of place. Pearls gleamed at her ears, and her gown – storm-grey and embroidered in a pattern of silver-leafed branches – whispered when she moved.
Edmund was seated casually, as ever, a leg draped over the arm of the chair like he owned the entire room – and knew it. His posture might have looked lazy to someone who didn't know him, but Asura had trained beside him too many times to be fooled.
He was stillness embodied. Not the kind of stillness that came from hesitation, but the kind born of control. Restraint.
A different kind of handsome than Peter – where the High King burned with sun-gold brightness, Edmund smouldered with quiet intensity. His dark hair curled slightly at the ends, always just a touch dishevelled no matter the occasion.
His eyes – dark, fathomless, and clever. They missed nothing. The kind of eyes that weighed people in silence, that watched the edges of the board before making a move. They could be unreadable, cold, calculating – yet they gleamed with wit too sharp to ever be safe.
And when he did speak, it was with that dry, cutting sarcasm that left people wondering whether he'd just insulted them or given them advice.
Asura had sparred with him often enough to see the truth beneath the myth. He was fast – faster than anyone gave him credit for – and ruthless when pressed. He fought the way he ruled: precisely. Quietly.
Where Peter inspired loyalty through warmth and conviction, Edmund earned it through sharp edges, through logic and strategy and knowing exactly when to speak and when to say nothing at all.
And in that moment, his silence was louder than most men's shouts.
His eyes flicked up as she entered, their gazes locking just for a moment. He didn't smile, didn't move – but she caught the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
And beside him—
Arianna.
The Ice Queen.
Edmund's wife.
There was no trailing silk that day. No glimmering jewels or delicate fabrics spun to mimic ocean spray or icicles. She wore dark leathers, sleek and reinforced, moulded to her form with a fighter's precision. Her boots were salt-stained, her gloves fingerless. A pair of daggers were strapped to her back in a crossed harness – another at her hip, its hilt etched with the language of another world.
She looked like she belonged on a battlefield, not a throne.
Her skin gleamed a warm gold-brown in the light, like bronze pulled from the deep, and her dark curls were pulled half-back with utilitarian ease, still wild around her face. But her eyes – by Aslan, those eyes. Deep green, as dark and endless as sea caves, gleaming with something ancient and far too knowing. Like a cat watching something it already knows the end of.
She carried herself with an ease that made Asura's spine stiffen.
There was power in her, yes – but it wasn't the restrained, scholarly kind that crackled from a distance. No, Arianna's magic coiled beneath her skin like a blade half-drawn. She was the embodiment of water, but not the gentle kind. Not the streams and tides and rippling pools the poets loved.
She was the undertow.
She was the storm.
And as always, that vile, bone-deep urge surged within Asura like a riptide: the pull to go to her. To fall to her knees. To serve. It twisted her gut, something old and primal carved into her blood by the river gods that had birthed her.
Asura clenched her jaw and shoved it down.
She would not bow to a woman simply because her magic demanded it.
She was no simple naiad. No bound daughter of some stream to be called upon and dismissed. She was Captain of the Royal Guard. And she would not yield to any instinct that tried to tell her otherwise.
Not even if it came in the shape of a queen.
Especially not the queen before her.
Only one chair remained empty.
Lucy, the youngest of the sovereigns, was absent still – though not unexpectedly so. She was off gallivanting somewhere in the south, no doubt chasing after some tale of magic or mischief or both. Ever restless, ever golden, with the heart of a dreamer and the stubbornness of a storm.
Asura hadn't seen her in nearly a season, but she'd heard the rumours: a griffin-sighting in the Calormene borderlands, a cursed orchard that only bloomed for the pure of heart. Typical.
The others barely remarked on it. Lucy always returned – sunburnt, laughing, pockets full of strange trinkets and wilder stories.
But still, Asura thought, glancing at the empty chair, her absence made the room feel just a little less bright.
She bowed low, fists at her sides.
"Your Majesties."
Peter stepped forward, voice low and threaded with welcome. "You made good time."
"I rode through the night." Her tone was brisk, clipped. She didn't look at Arianna yet. "Your summons was marked urgent."
"It was."
He gestured toward the low table, where maps were unfurled beneath teacups and scattered notes.
"We've been invited to the Kingdom of the Merpeople. By the Merking himself."
Asura's eyes narrowed slightly. She stepped forward, boots quiet against the cool marble, and moved to the table's edge. There it was – the letter. Salt-stiff parchment, sealed with pinkish coral and pressed with a nautilus shell crest. The ink shimmered faintly, the curving Tideborn script undulating like water under moonlight.
She studied it closely.
It was beautiful. And unsettling.
"I've never met a mer," she said at last, her voice low. "None of us have, have we?"
"Not directly, though they sung at our coronation," Susan replied from where she stood by the hearth, arms folded, gaze sharp beneath artfully coiffed hair. "But I've found records – ancient ones. Texts from the old reign, before the Long Winter. They speak of the Coral Court and their ocean-bound naiads. Spirits of saltwater, born of reef and tide."
She paused, considering Asura with a cool intensity.
"You may be river-born, but you are naiad. And the magic in your blood may still echo theirs. That connection might be the key to opening the door we need."
Asura frowned, her fingers grazing the edge of the parchment. "I was raised in the north. My people speak in the hush of thaw and the groan of ice. The sea speaks in different tongues. I may not be what they expect."
Peter stepped beside her, the heat of him a quiet thing, like a hearth banked for war.
"Perhaps not," he said. "But you are what we trust. And that may be enough."
Edmund, seated with one leg over the chair's arm, added dryly, "Besides, I suspect they're not expecting any of us. If they've invited the sovereigns of Narnia to descend into the depths, they must want something. The question is what."
"And why now?" Susan murmured. "The mer have kept to themselves for centuries."
Arianna, leaning silently near the table's edge, offered no comment – but her gaze was fixed on the parchment with something in her gaze that Asura could not decipher.
Asura exhaled slowly. The invitation glittered like sunlight on water. Fragile. Enticing. Dangerous.
…
Cair Paravel.
Peter.
Peter said nothing for a long moment. He only watched her.
Asura stood just off-centre from the table, still in her uniform – Narnian red and gold over silver armour, the colours of the Royal Guard stitched into every line and seam. Her short sword hung at her hip, and her boots were still dusted with the dirt of the road. The journey had been fast, clearly urgent; she hadn't even paused to change. Her cheeks were flushed – not with embarrassment, but with exertion, and beneath the light her skin bloomed faintly blue along her high cheekbones and the curve of her neck.
Telltale signs of the river magic that moved beneath her skin.
Even now, even still – there was something fierce and untamed about her. Something coiled just beneath the surface, held in check only by discipline and sheer will.
She didn't shrink beneath their scrutiny. She never had. But there was a tension in her shoulders now that he recognized – not fear, no. But purpose. Readiness. A quiet intensity that came when a blade was drawn, or when a choice had to be made that couldn't be unmade.
He let his gaze linger for a heartbeat longer.
Not just a soldier. Not just a naiad.
His Captain.
Chosen by Edmund. Trusted by all of them. And yet, still, it was his heart that beat a little faster when she stood too close.
He cleared his throat softly and returned his gaze to the map, masking the brief moment.
Peter turned his gaze from the parchment to the woman standing in the shadows of the far corner, her arms folded across her chest. His brother's wife. The warrior queen of the Southern Reach.
"Arianna," he said, voice quiet but edged with intent. "You've had dealings with them before. What do you make of this?"
He remembered her speaking of the mer once – offhandedly, beneath the stars, during their long campaign in the north. She'd ridden beside him against the giants, cloaked in blood and frost, the wind howling through the passes. In those quiet moments between skirmishes, she'd told him pieces of her past – always carefully chosen, as though offering a blade hilt-first.
Now, her eyes glinted like polished emeralds. Her voice was sharp as obsidian.
"Do not trust them," she said curtly. "They are a ruthless, merciless people. They smile, but every smile is a test. Every kindness hides a hook."
Silence followed her words. He didn't miss the faint twitch of Susan's eyebrow, or the subtle tilt of Edmund's head.
Then, inevitably – Asura snorted.
Peter turned slightly toward her, but didn't stop her. Wouldn't stop her.
His Captain. His steel in the dark.
She didn't even try to hide her reaction. Arms crossed, eyes cool and unimpressed.
She had never made secret of her dislike of Arianna. He was more surprised they hadn't drawn blood. Yet.
Given how easily Arianna moved with a blade – how the daggers on her hip seemed an extension of her will – it was nothing short of a miracle that Asura still breathed freely.
A miracle… or a very deliberate decision on Arianna's part.
Still, the tension between them felt less like dry kindling now, and more like a fire waiting for the right breath of wind.
"Why did they not join you then?" Asura asked, her voice deceptively calm. "All those years passed?"
Peter looked at her sharply. He'd once likened her eyes to a frosted lake – an unusual blue, deep and reflective, a quiet kind of beautiful. But in that moment… they were frozen through. No sky above them. No warmth. Just the still, dangerous cold of water just before it ices over.
She was looking at Arianna with that expression. Still as carved stone. Cold as the rivers of her birth.
"They trade with but one currency – blood," Arianna replied, her tone dispassionate as she took a piece of fruit from Edmund's hand. She didn't even glance Asura's way. But Peter saw the truth in the careful angle of her shoulders, in the quiet restraint of her jaw. Saw how carefully she didn't look at the naiad.
He knew her well enough now to read the flickers beneath the stillness.
"They were my allies, briefly," Arianna continued, voice light as snowfall. "But it did not last long. Our… visions… did not align."
Asura stiffened, shoulders squared like she was ready to step onto a battlefield.
Peter saw it. Felt it like a ripple of ice along his spine.
"What did you do?" the naiad asked flatly. "Kill them?"
A beat of silence.
Then Arianna met her eyes, emerald to winter blue.
"Yes," she said, with the same certainty one might speak of weather. "I did."
The air in the parlour shifted – grew heavier. Tighter. Peter could feel the tension spool like wire drawn too taut. A log cracked in the fireplace, and even that small sound felt too loud.
No one moved.
"I think it would do us well to hear them out," Edmund said, his tone smooth but edged in quiet authority. Ever the diplomat. Ever the one who could find the seam in the stone and drive a wedge through it without force.
Peter let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He glanced at his brother, a flicker of gratitude passing between them.
Trust Edmund to step in before the frost turned to ice.
The tension in the room eased, only slightly. Arianna leaned back into the curve of her chair, still chewing the fruit slowly, watching the rest of them beneath half-lowered lashes. Asura shifted her stance again, still bristling but no longer poised to strike.
Peter nodded, folding his arms and looking down at the map once more – the curling lines of sea routes, the unfamiliar symbols of the Coral Court inked in pale turquoise. Salt-stiff parchment and the coral seal catching the firelight.
He would take three with him.
Lucy was gone – off somewhere in the south, near the mountainous border of Archenland, likely galloping through the wild valleys on some errand of mercy or mischief. There had been no time to call her back.
And Susan…
His gaze flicked to his sister, poised in her seat, her expression unreadable as ever, pale eyes cool and distant. The Queen of the Narnian court, flawless as snow on a still morning.
She would remain behind.
One of them must always stay.
Peter cleared his throat. "Edmund will go with me. So will Arianna and Captain Asura." He paused, waiting to see if either woman would object. They did not, though the look exchanged between them promised the sea voyage ahead would be far from quiet.
"Susan, you'll hold the court in our absence."
Susan inclined her head, smooth as always. "Of course."
"And the guard?" Edmund asked, glancing toward Asura.
"I'll handpick them," she said, her voice clipped. "Six, no more. And loyal."
Of course they were. If they weren't, they didn't last long under Asura's command.
Peter looked between the three of them – his brother, the battle-hardened queen, and the river-born warrior who stood like carved granite at his side. What a strange council they made.
But perhaps that was exactly what was needed.
The sea was calling.
And Narnia would answer.
…
Cair Paravel.
Asura.
The silence of her quarters was a comfort.
Near-empty, as most of the Royal Guard's lodgings were – but hers afforded a touch more space. A private chamber and study near the barracks, close enough to be summoned at a moment's notice, distant enough to keep her solitude. The stone walls were bare save for the mounted blade that had belonged to her first commander, now long gone. The single window was narrow and high, letting in a shaft of moonlight that glimmered across the polished wood of her desk.
Her armour lay neatly folded on its stand; the steel still damp with sea-salt from her ride. She'd scrubbed the worst of the grime from her skin. Changed into the plain tunic and trousers she preferred when not in command. She didn't need the weight of her title here, in this quiet.
And still, she could feel it.
Like the tide, always pulling.
She sat at her desk, elbows braced, a curl of sea-map unrolled beneath her fingers. The routes were narrow and winding – more suggestion than certainty. Few ships sailed the deeper currents, and fewer still returned with tales worth trusting. The Coral Court was not charted like the northern passes or the desert trails. It was hidden in the depths, cloaked in currents and salt-bound spells.
Asura traced the inked line of one proposed route with a fingertip, slow and steady.
She'd never met a mer in all her years. She knew the stories, of course – knew of their beauty, of their songs, of their revelry. But stories were illusions, and illusions got soldiers killed. She trusted steel and structure. Orders. Routine.
And this? This mission was none of those things.
Still, her presence had been requested. Needed, even. It was Susan who had found the old texts, who had spoken of the ocean naiads – of those who once served the Coral Court, bound by deeper laws and older tides. Asura had never felt their pull herself, born of river and rock, of fresh water that surged and danced its own wild rhythm.
Asura leaned back, exhaling through her nose, the maps rustling faintly beneath her.
And of course she had to come.
Asura's mouth twisted as she leaned forward, bracing her forearms against the edge of the desk. The maps crinkled beneath her, but she ignored them, eyes fixed on nothing.
Arianna.
A dark chuckle escaped her, low and bitter, curling like smoke from a dying fire. She dropped her head into her hands, fingers threading into the tangled white strands of her hair, freshly unbound and still damp. Her shoulders hunched, the pressure building across them like the weight of deep water.
The warrior queen. Daughter of the White Witch and somehow now beloved.
Though in the deepest part of her – the part she kept buried beneath discipline and duty – she could admit it was more than annoyance.
It was unease.
It was wariness.
It was… something else.
She didn't trust Arianna. Never had. Couldn't understand how the others failed to see the danger wrapped in her honeyed tones and sharp-edged grace. Edmund, especially – how could he not see it, when Asura could feel the shadows coil around the woman like a cloak?
She was too smooth. Too poised. And far too quiet about her past.
Asura clenched her jaw.
They called her loyal. Said she bled for Narnia, that she had died for them. But poison could flow sweet if one sipped it slow.
Asura closed her eyes, seeking a small respite from the thoughts that threatened to pull her under.
And then, in the darkness behind her closed eyes, it was as if something fluttered against her senses.
Soft at first. Elusive.
Like silk brushing over skin.
But then it deepened. Thickened. The world within her closed eyes shifted, as though she had stepped into a dense fog. It wrapped around her – cool and damp – until it consumed her, swiftly and completely.
A drop of blood, falling into dark water.
Golden bars, gleaming in flickering light, like the ribs of a cage.
A knife. Drenched in ink-black liquid.
Then – a vast, deep abyss. So dark it swallowed even thought.
Scales. A flash of iridescent pearl.
Jaws, opening wide.
And then—death.
She gasped, lurching forward, both hands flying to her head as if she could tear the visions from her skull. A groan slipped past her lips, unbidden, her body trembling in its wake. Her eyes snapped open, reality rushing back into sharp, jarring clarity.
The candlelight flickered once more.
The maps on the desk were undisturbed.
Her chambers silent.
But her breath came shallow, her heart drumming like war.
She wanted it to stop.
The dreams.
She didn't want to wonder if they were real or not.
She didn't want to think about whether they were past, present, or future. The blood. The scales. The death. She didn't want to keep seeing Peter's lifeless eyes, endless and staring, frozen in the depths of her mind, over and over again.
Her fingers curled into the edge of the desk, sharp nails biting into the wood as she held herself steady. Her heart still thundered in her chest. The vision was fading now, the images slipping through her thoughts like water through her hands. But the chill it left behind lingered, and it gnawed at her, refusing to be forgotten.
As a child, trapped in her small rivulet, she had dreamt of her mother's death. Over and over, it had come to her, each vision more vivid, more real. Her mother's absence had not been a shock when the spring had come after the Long Winter, and her mother was nowhere to be found, the riverbed run dry and cracked. No, young Asura had not understood it all – had not understood the terrible way the seasons had shifted – but she hadn't been surprised. Not at all.
And that, perhaps, was what frightened her now. That dull, creeping knowledge that the visions, the foretellings, they meant something.
They were not random. They were not nonsense.
It was why she had fled north. Terrified of the Everwinter. Terrified of its unrelenting death, of the frozen heart it carried with it.
Strange, Peter had called her, when they had first met. And then, in her own mind, she had thought of herself as cursed.
But cursed wasn't a word for soldiers.
And if she could pretend the images were nothing more than dreams, then perhaps she could move on. She had learned to wear her armour like skin, to drown out the whispers in the back of her mind. No king or queen wanted a damaged soldier who couldn't tell reality from the world of dreams.
But Peter's eyes… they still haunted her. The way they had looked, staring into nothing.
Asura closed her eyes, pushing the thought away with a sharp breath. She needed to keep her mind clear. There were tasks to be done. A kingdom to protect. She had no time for ghosts – no time to indulge in whatever vision the sea had chosen to show her tonight.
Her fists clenched around the edge of the desk.
But what if she couldn't outrun this? What if the dreams – no, the visions – were telling her something real? Something she couldn't ignore?
The blood. The scales. The death.
She exhaled sharply, forcing herself to rise from the desk. There was no use in lingering on what might be.
With one last glance at the map she had abandoned, her thoughts swirling with what she could not yet name, Asura turned toward the door.
Tomorrow, they sailed. Tomorrow, she would face whatever lay ahead.
She had no choice.