Work Text:
5th April 1946
England
Peter’s skin itches.
He heaves even breaths through his nose as he leans back to avoid the sloppy punch Easton throws at him, and stops himself from going for the throat for the third time in half as many seconds.
This is the fourth fight he has gotten himself dragged into since term began on Tuesday. It is Thursday today, and Peter’s blood pounds in his ears, through his limbs and his flexing fingers as he holds back; doesn’t hit hard, doesn’t go for the liver or the heart or the head, does not give into the bloodlust that whispers siren songs of battle and blood-covered blades in his ears. He stops himself, clenching his fists and dodging the abysmal hits from the three boys that surround him, and refuses to lift a hand against these insolent children.
He is a King.
He is a boy stuck in a schoolyard brawl he did not start.
Peter’s skin itches.
He wants to claw it off. He imagines that this is what snakes must feel when their body gets much too big for their scales, and they have to go through the painful process of shedding their outer layer and come out stronger and larger. He suppresses a grim twist of his lips as he kicks out— harmlessly, wrestling against the lust that sings a song of death in his ears— at that idiot Michael’s knee to send him sprawling to the ground with a yelp, and thinks that what he went through was rather the opposite, really. He grew up, and then was forced into a body too unfamiliar, too awkward, too inexperienced. Too young.
He was a King.
He is a boy stuck in a body too unscarred to be a King’s.
Kenneth lunges forward to try and grab him around the waist. Peter easily steps out of the way, the part of him that is a seasoned warrior clawing to the forefront of his mind simply to scoff at the graceless flailing of limbs that these children call fighting. Lucy could do better.
Lucy did do better, eleven years ago. Or maybe it was four years ago.
The timelines blur together, in his mind; he can no longer tell whether he is in England or Naernia. He is wearing his school uniform and he is wearing his royal garments, he is walking the halls of Westbrook County Boarding School and he is walking the halls of Cair Paravel. He holds the blunted school practice broadsword in his smooth hand and he holds the razor-sharp Rhindon in his calloused hands, he is a boy and he is a King.
“Fight back,” Easton snarls, dark brown hair falling out of its previously carefully styled place, and Peter thinks of how he has seen scarier Mice dig their teeth into the throats of Minotaurs and suck them dry of blood. He blinks, and the image of him sinking his own teeth into Easton’s throat flashes across his mind’s eye. He blinks again, and he’s back on this makeshift battleground where the mice are gone and his sword is gone and he is in clothes too uncomfortable and the skin is stretched taut over a body that is not really his—
“Fight back, Pevensie, you coward!”
High King Peter the Magnificent of Naernia, Commander of the Armies, Emperor of the Lone Islands, the Dragon Spirited Warrior King, Protector of the People, wants to grab him by the throat and shatter his jaw into a thousand pieces for that grave insult upon his character. Instead, he laughs in his face and sticks out his tongue, like a small child.
He is eighteen, and he is thirty-three. He is not a child, in either world.
Sometimes, he wishes he was. Sometimes, he wishes he was thirteen and in his mother’s home, he wishes he had never left for Professor Diggory’s mansion.
Most times, however, he wishes for something he has almost given up hope for, something he was forced to give up four and a half years ago. He wishes, oh so dearly, for a faithful sword made of mithril in his hand and a heavy crown woven out of golden flowers on his head. He wishes for one last chance to step out of this world that was once his but no longer is, and into a world where he was once High King Peter the Magnificent, Commander of the Armies, Emperor of the Lone Islands, the Dragon Spirited Warrior King, First of the Beloved Four, Protector of the Naernian People.
Easton yells as he lumbers forward, and Peter, too embroiled in old memories, does not see the punch coming until it is too late. The loud smack of knuckles against flesh echoes through the school courtyard, and the impact of the heavy fist on his cheek is like an electric shock to his senses.
For a second, he blinks dazedly. And then his brain registers it properly. The pain flares, and with it so does blinding hot bloodlust.
‘Fine,’ he thinks as he lifts a hand to wrap his fingers around Easton’s forearm in a death grip, a high-pitched whistle echoing in his ears and red creeping into the edges of his vision, and he zeroes in on the many weaknesses in the three boys’ defenses. ‘You want a fight? You’ll get one.’
It takes him four seconds to get the three imbeciles on their backs, one howling in pain from a dislocated shoulder, the other because of a broken nose and the third from a bruised kidney. His fingers flex around the hilt of a sword that he no longer owns, and he reminds himself that he is not allowed to kill, not in this world where he is not a King and does not lead wars.
He stares down at Easton, the image of a blood covered sword and a slain warrior at his feet flashing behind his eyelids when he blinks. He opens his eyes and the boy stares back, hand clutching his shoulder and face becoming paler and paler the longer Peter holds his terrified brown gaze.
“Don’t bother me again,” he says flatly to the three of them, and turns away, ignoring the teachers that are hurrying across the lawn with yells of his name tumbling from their lips. He lifts his gaze and locks it with Edmund’s for a second, brilliant blue meeting identical brilliant blue, before both of them turn away. One royal brother melts into the crowd of students without a whisper, and the other stalks off towards the dorms with blood on his ever-bruised knuckles and memories of a different world singing through the veins of a body that is too young for the mind it contains.
He is a King, celebrated and honoured for his services to a hallowed land.
He is a mere boy sitting on the roof of the boarding school, fingers flexing around the hilt of a sword that no longer belongs to him, nothing more than a memory he cannot let go of: a memory he refuses to let go of even after four and a half years.
—————————
Susan’s cheeks hurt.
She smiles at the boy as he throws an arm around her and winks, and she feels the muscles of her face ache with the effort of holding a smile for hours and hours on end. She wants to shrug off the black-haired boy’s arm, wants to tell him to piss off and not bother her again lest she ask Peter to ensure his distance from her with violence, but she simply smiles at him.
She straightens her spine and smiles.
She ignores the glares her female classmates are throwing at her from all corners of the classroom. She is beautiful, she knows she is, but that does not mean she enjoys being the nectar to the bees that are the hormonal, idiotic boys of Westbrook. She has never enjoyed being known for her beauty, for it has always been nothing but a miserable curse— three wars had been fought for her hand in marriage over the course of twenty years, and Edmund has sometimes called her Helen of Troy for her troubles.
She hates that fucking name.
Her cheeks hurt. Yet, she smiles her most charming smile as she subtly leans away from Raymond— she has heard of the way he treats girls, and she has no interest in being one of his thrice-damned conquests. She has no interest in being a challenge, a trophy to be earned, a thing to be owned. She is to be respected, dammit, she is smart and keen-eyed and knowledgeable. Heaven’s sake, she is a Queen—
She breathes. Pushes the thought out of her mind. Maintains her smile.
Raymond smirks back, dull greyish blue eyes glinting like a broken steel sword in the sunlight that streams in through the windows, and tries to draw her closer to him using the arm that he has around her shoulder. Susan does not deign to move. She does not bother to pretend that she is not stronger than this arrogant youngling, this boy playing at being a man, and simply sits there, unmoving and seemingly oblivious, until he furrows his eyebrows and stops trying to move her without her permission.
Her cheeks hurt.
“C’mon, Pevensie,” he leers at her, and she stops herself from lifting a hand to her back. Four and a half years and countless desperate attempts, and she still hasn’t forgotten the phantom presence of her quiver full of arrows, her bow made of the finest wood covered in intricate carvings.
“Say yes, darling,” he says, and she smiles so that she does not try to stab. “The party would be boring without the prettiest girl in school there.”
Susan has heard that compliment fall from the lips of powerful Kings and lovesick fools alike, and she has never been affected by it. Raymond falls into the third category of the people who have called her pretty, the one where they simply want to be known as the one who broke the prettiest girl’s heart, who claimed the love of the Beauty of Naernia—
She breathes in. Pushes the thought out of her mind. Maintains her smile.
“Well, I don’t know about that, Raymond,” she says in the smoothest, most convincing one that she can muster, and she does not fail to notice the way boys and girls alike sway towards her just to listen to her speak. She ignores the way her heart hums at being listened to, a song she has tried (and failed) to forget for four and a half years. “Parties aren’t really my fancy, you see.”
Raymond waves a hand lazily, and Susan wants to scoff at how far the action is from the effortlessness she is sure he wants to portray. He is an arrogant airbag of a boy with an inflated sense of importance playing at being a powerful man. “Oh, now we both know you’re lying, my darling.”
Susan feels the sudden urge to cut off his tongue, for daring to refer to him as his darling. Instead, she folds her hands in her lap and laughs softly, notices the way the students gathered around laugh with her as if following her lead. Her throat feels tight and her eyes burn, and she pushes both feelings away.
“No, I’m telling the truth,” she says, laughter colouring her words in just the right amount that tells everyone that they are welcome to laugh along and sure enough, they do. They do not take their eyes off of her, and follow her unspoken command by laughing along. She ignores the strange warmth that settles behind her heart in her chest. “I get too tired at parties, they’re too much for me.”
She loves parties. She has loved parties for ages and ages, since she was a child and she dressed up to let her father take her and mum out for dancing, and then a thirty-one year old Queen dressed in the finest silks and talking circles around Princes enchanted by her beauty and Kings madly in love with her—
She breathes in. Pushes the thought out of her mind. Maintains her smile.
Raymond’s arm tightens around her shoulders. Susan’s fingers twitch, but she forcefully presses her hand into her lap to stop herself from reaching for the quiver that no longer hangs from her back. There is no quiver. There is no bow. She is a schoolgirl, not an archer. She has textbooks in the bag that hangs from her back. She is a schoolgirl. She is a schoolgirl.
She is a schoolgirl.
“Oh, be a sport, Pevensie,” Raymond scoffs, and Susan wants to rise to her full height and demand that he treat her with the respect she deserves. “It’s just one party, and it’s the first party of term. C’mon, you can even be my date.”
Susan ignores the way the glares are once again aimed at her, ignores the disgust that roils in her stomach, and masterfully stops her smile from curving into a disdainful sneer. An arrogant boy playing at being a powerful man, who wishes that she would clamour for his love. Ha. She has seen many thousands of men just like him.
Many thousands of men trying to seem more important than they are, vying for her attention, looking to claim her, looking to to own her, aiming for her throne and her kingdom—
All of them learnt to fear her over time.
All of them learnt over time that she was not just Beauty. They learnt that she was not just respected for her looks. They learnt, over time, that she was Beauty and Brains and Brawn. She was beautiful, she was the peacekeeper, and she was the most talented archer in all the known lands. She was a dangerous enemy to make, and despite her preference for non-violence, would not hesitate to hand out gruesome and painful deaths if needed.
Susan is Gentle, not Harmless.
Men learnt over time, in Naernia, and so will Raymond learn it in England.
She straightens her spine and gently shrugs off Raymond’s arm. He tries to move it back to its former place, and she stares at him with a smile she knows looks too wide and too sharp, making him stop halfway through his movement. That is one good thing that comes out of being truly beautiful— Beauty, true Beauty, is terrifying. It is deadly. It is something that a simple human cannot help but be bewitched by, and Susan knows this. She has known this for decades. She has successfully used this piece of knowledge to her kingdom’s benefit time and again.
Raymond does not try to throw his arm over her shoulder again, and Susan makes sure her smile goes back to its most charming as she engages the rest of the students.
“I will have to decline your.. generous offer,” she says, laying the sarcasm on so thinly that only Edmund would have noticed.
Alas, her dearest younger brother is not here to witness her exercise her power over her classmates. If he were, he would have enjoyed watching them move to her word like mice moved to the Pied Piper’s tune. He is absurd like that, but who is she to deny him his entertainment?
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she sighs as she pushes herself off the desk and stands to her full, impressive height. She brushes her hands over her skirt, takes her water bottle from a boy with a soft smile that has him blushing bright red, and waves to everyone. Without saying a word more, she walks out of the classroom with her head held high and her shoulders pulled back.
Her cheeks hurt.
She walks in silence, ignoring the students that mill around in the corridors of the school. The girl’s bathroom is on the floor above, and it takes her barely a minute to reach it; people clear a way for her, moving out of her path as she walks with measured and careful steps. They do it almost without noticing that they are, almost like a force is making them do it.
Susan locks the door of the bathroom behind her, takes a good look around to make sure she is alone, and bursts into silent tears.
She drops her bag to the floor and leans her back against the door, screwing her eyes shut and letting the tears run down her cheeks and drip off her jaw. Her chest heaves with quiet sobs, and she sucks in shuddering breaths as she slides down to sit on the floor with her head buried between her knees. The warmth behind her heart turns into a painful burning sensation, and she chokes on her tears and emotions that she cannot fully understand.
She is Susan Pevensie, a school-going sixteen year old daughter. But that is not all that she is.
No matter how much she tries to bury her memories, no matter how much she tries to forget, she knows what she is. She knows what she always was, and what she always will be.
She is Queen Susan the Gentle of Naernia, the Eagle-Eyed Marksman Queen, Second of the Beloved Four, Defender of the People.
—————————
Edmund stalks into the debate hall, and the room falls into a hush.
The students cease their muttering, their eyes tracking the lanky, too-thin boy as he walks with far too much grace for someone who is fourteen-almost-fifteen years old and has yet to get his final growth spurt. His limbs are too long for his blazer-adorned torso and he is not yet old enough to put on muscle, and still he moves with thrice as much control and precision as the royalty of the country.
Edmund remembers the months After.
He remembers stumbling and falling and breaking bone because he was a twenty-nine year old man in the body of a ten year old boy, falling till he got sick of it and asked Susan to help him learn to walk again, remembers tear-soaked cheeks and trembling callous-less hands and bitten-off screams after being woken up by a nightmare in the middle of the night, feeling too thin, too short, too young, too weak, too cold Peter, please, it’s too cold, help me—
Never again, he had told himself.
He feels their stares settle over his strange unscarred skin like a layer of cold gel, and he ignores them in favour of holding his head high and walking towards the desk with his name tag on it. He relaxes into the seat as much as he can, back straight and shoulders pulled back and breathing even, and then moves his gaze to meet the eyes of everyone that is looking at him.
Most students hurriedly look away, flushes staining their cheeks bright red out of the embarrassment of getting caught staring so blatantly. A select few stare back, holding his gaze for a couple of seconds before they, too, lower their eyes and turn back to their conversation.
It both does and does not feel like the Royal Court that he once presided over.
There too, conversations used to stop when he entered the Throne Room. There, too, people used to follow him with their eyes as he moved towards his throne beside Peter’s. There, too, he used to keep his back straight and roll his shoulders back and breathe evenly to prepare himself for the approaching war of words that he was certain he would win.
He lounges in his seat like he’s lounging in his throne, and watches the faculty walk into the room and take their seats. He does not bother to stand up like the rest of the students do, and ignores the disapproving looks Professor Jasmine throws at him for his supposed insolence.
What do they know of debates, he thinks with a hidden sneer.
He was the one that sat with bloodthirsty Kings and Warlords, manipulative Queens and Bandit Chiefs, and aided his older sister in hammering out treaties and ceasefires and surrenders from their enemies’ lips without having to lift a sword. He wrote the laws for his world and presided over the Supreme Court of Justice of his kingdom, solved internal disputes and planned war strategies and invented new tactics for external conflicts. He was renowned for his excellence with double swords and double-edged words alike, in Naernia.
In Naernia, he was King Edmund the Just, the Serpent Tongued Diplomat King, Third of the Beloved Four, Representative of the People.
Here in post War England, he is just Edmund Pevensie, with sharp glares and sharper words, as dangerous with his tongue as his older brother was with his fists and his older sister with her smiles.
Unlike Peter who swings between two worlds without control over his thoughts and memories, and Susan who tries (and fails miserably) to not think about their world at all, it is comparatively easy for Edmund to maintain the two different worlds as different experiences. For him, Naernia exists in one part of his mind and England in the other— separated from each other by a solid stone wall that Edmund has built up and strengthened over the four and a half years that have passed since he and the others fell out of that thrice-damned wardrobe, in bodies that were no longer theirs.
And yet, his nail beds itch.
He remembers the feel of digging his nails into flesh, remembers the feel of blood welling up under his fingers as he dug deeper, remembers the feel of being older, taller, stronger, wiser. He remembers being powerful.
Around him, the debate competition begins. He dimly registers the names of the students from the seventeen participating schools as they are introduced, and recognises more than half of them.
He treats debate competitions in schools just as he did political meets back when he used to be King. There are always three things one must know— the topic that you are to speak on, the questions that you may be asked, and the people who will be attending. About the people, you must know their agendas, their strengths and their weaknesses, and how to use that to gain what you desire. As simple, and as difficult, as that.
Here, he recognises twelve out of the seventeen opponents, and feels his lips curve into a small smirk. The participants seated on either side of him lean away from him, and it only makes his smirk grow wider, more vindictive.
He misses attending and holding Court. He misses the gratification in verbally ripping apart nobles and bloodthirsty warlords alike, he misses the satisfaction he felt while sinking his two swords into flesh on the battlefield in case the peace talks went wrong. He misses being covered in blood after a victory, misses the annual Royal debate competitions, the mock arguments he had with Susan and the members of the Royal Court of Naernia, the vindictive smugness he felt when he put the fear of the Naernian Royalty in the hearts of warlords seeking to destroy his kingdom with nothing but his words and occasionally his swords.
Here, Edmund has to remind himself that he is arguing with children.
He has to remind himself that the people he is debating with are not warlords and power-hungry rulers out to conquer his kingdom. He has to remind himself to not turn into the Serpent Tongued Diplomat King, to keep that vicious and twisted part of him safely locked up in the Naernian part of his memories. He has to keep the whole of his true self at bay, because he knows that they will not understand his metaphorical bloodlust when it comes to the art of wordplay.
He knows that they will not understand what it is like, to be an adult in a child’s body forced to pretend to be something he was not.
However, he thinks as the debate competition commences and a girl in a smart navy blue suit walks onto stage and starts giving her speech, he can allow certain attributes from his Kingly self through into his teenage self. In controlled amounts, he can allow himself a little ruthlessness, a little edge to his words, a little confidence, a little dignity and grace.
He can allow himself to indulge a little, to employ a few of his Kingly attributes into his teenage identity so he can get through secondary school without being given as hard a time as normal teenagers are.
That is one benefit of having been King— he might not have grown up in this world, but he had grown up before. As uncomfortable it was to grow up again, he knows what to expect this time.
He is better prepared than he was last time.
He leans forward and notes down a question for a statement the girl makes, and he feels the stares of the students on his back again. The vindication rises in his body; he is a force to be reckoned with and his opponents know it, and Edmund revels in the effect he has on them, revels in the way they cannot meet his eyes properly without having to look down. It almost feels like he is King again and they are his enemies— forced to bow to him after being defeated time and again, forced to grudgingly admit that he is superior to them.
The debate progresses, he gives his speech, gets asked questions and answers them as best as he can. He scratches his itching nails over his palms as he listens to the rest of their speeches and asks them questions, and sits back with his dissatisfaction very visible on his face when he does not receive the answers he was hoping for.
In the end, he lifts the trophy up with fingers that despair for the feel of his swords gripped in them, a satisfied gleam in his piercing blue eyes and a badge that proclaims him as the first ranker pinned to the front of his school blazer. Dozens of eyes follow him as he steps off the stage and strides out of the room, and he lets them settle on his proud shoulders. Lets them turn into the weight he once carried in the form of a silver crown.
Let them see, he thinks viciously. His nails itch, and he wishes to sink them into flesh and rip it apart. He wishes to drench himself in the blood of his enemies. Let them be witness to merely a fraction of the power I used to possess. Let them understand that I am dangerous, and not to be underestimated. Let them see that I am not a mere child.
He is a boy arguing politics, ethics and war tactics with professors in his free time, rumours of being a genius following him around like obedient dogs at their master’s heels.
He is a King, shackled and hidden in the corner of a mind that belongs to a too-lanky teenage boy halfway through puberty.
He refuses to reach too deep into the memories. He refuses to forget the memories. He refuses to let himself sink into his own mind. He refuses to forget himself, and he refuses to be his entire self.
He will not. He cannot.
—————————
The boy reaches out with a lewd grin, and Lucy’s blood burns. She turns around, grips the boy’s arm and moves.
A second later, he is on his knees at her feet, her fisting a hand in his hair and twisting his arm behind his back. Her lips pull back into a wolf-like snarl as Howard lets out a yell, and she twists his arm harder with fingers smaller than she is used to having, vindictive pleasure coiling in her gut when his breath hitches with an even louder sob.
“YOU WILL NOT,” she roars with all her might, ignoring the way her voice is not as loud and commanding as it used to be, ignoring the shocked gasps and astonished stares of the rest of the students of the school, “TOUCH ME WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!”
The other boy— James, she remembers the teachers calling him— comes at her with his fist raised and a yell on his lips, but she kicks him in the back of his knee, hard enough that she feels something crack under her Mary Jane shoe. He lets out a pained scream and crumples like a can of soda would under her foot, and her snarl turns into a too wide grin, just on the wrong side of feral; it is a move Peter had taught her eleven years ago. Or maybe it was four years.
She never bothered to separate her home world from this one.
Her blood rushes through her veins like fire, and she pulls on Howard’s hair till his neck is bared, and her eyes zero in on the beating pulse under his jaw. She can almost feel the way the crimson life flows through his body, the way it would flow over his skin if she had her dagger. She would drag the blade over his flesh in a vicious, vengeful slice for the slight upon her person— he dares touch her?
He dares feel entitled to her presence? To her affections? To her body?
She is Queen Lucy the Valiant of Naernia. She is the Lionheart Spymaster Queen, the Fourth of the Beloved Four, Lover of the People. She is greater and more powerful than he could ever hope to be, and he dares commit the crime of touching her?
She bares her teeth at the thought and twists his arm till she feels his shoulder pop out of place. Her canines elongate and dig into her lower lips even as her blood boils and bubbles, clamouring for punishment to be given and for vengeance to be taken in the form of his lifeblood.
He dared to touch you, Naernia whispers in her ear, tempting her with the fantasy of letting his blood colour her hands crimson. Punish him for his grave mistake, my Queen. Make him pay for this transgression.
There was a time when she would have killed him within seconds for having the audacity of trying to slap her behind. She would have made an example of him for the world to see— she might be young, but she is neither foolish nor meek, and she refuses to be disrespected in such an appalling fashion. If not her, then her siblings surely would have rendered him nothing more than a stain on the ground for daring to try and dishonour the youngest of the Rulers of Naernia.
She breathes in. Blinks. An image of her fingers curling around the golden hilts of her daggers, of burying them in the enemies’ guts and letting herself bathe in the spray of their blood, flashes across her vision. She breathes out, and blinks again. She is in the middle of the school courtyard, fingers wrapping tight around Howard’s forearm and twisted into his short and coarse golden locks.
She is not in Naernia.
She fell out of that wardrobe with her siblings four and a half years ago— she is thirteen and her blood still burns her insides at the reminder that she is not twenty-eight years old. It still scorches the inner lining of her blood vessels at the reminder of not being in her home country, of not being with Mr Tumnus and the fauns, of not running through the forests with her daggers at her sides and her network of espionage agents at her beck and call.
She breathes through her nose and lets go of his arm only to reach for his neck and grip tightly, feeling a sick sense of gratification when she feels his breath hitch fearfully under her palm, and feels the pumping of his blood through his jugular against the tips of her fingers. She tugs harder on his hair, and revels in the whine that echoes in his throat as she straightens up and rakes a narrow-eyed glare over the gawking students.
“Hear ye!” she calls, lips curling into a vindictive smirk when people stiffen their spines at the fury in the little teenage girl voice that is not hers, that has not been hers for decades. It rings with the royal Naernian accent that neither she nor her siblings ever managed to lose, and she lets the accent get stronger, she lets the lilt of the Naernian magic carry her voice over the courtyard.
“Consider the following as both a warning and a threat,” she announces, and her voice echoes strangely through the air, like she has a microphone held in front of her, “henceforth, any unwanted contact with my person will be met with the most violent of retaliations. Either it will be me, or my eldest brother Peter who does it, but know that blood will be drawn.”
The mention of Peter has most of the boys quailing and looking away, shoulders curling inwards and cheeks flushing at the reminder that Lucy has an absolute beast of an older brother— over six feet and built like a bull, with wide shoulders and a face permanently set in a grim expression. Peter’s fencing skills are legendary, and he is infamous for hitting till bone breaks. It makes Lucy smile a vicious little smile; her royal brother is terrifying, and she is proud to be Queen next to him and their other siblings.
It also makes her blood beat an outraged tune against her pulse points— she is no less terrifying than her oldest brother, and it is high time that people learnt to respect her for her strength and status. She is Queen just as much as her brothers are Kings and her sister is Queen, and she deserves to have her titles acknowledged. If they refuse to do so, then she will force them to their knees and make them do it.
She finds Peter easily when she looks for him; he is sitting in a tree with Susan and Edmund, hidden from the rest of the world, their trademark Pevensie blue eyes all gleaming wildly with pride and encouragement. Edmund grins sharply and whispers something at her, and she hears the lilting Naernian in his voice even though he is too far away for any normal human to be able to hear him.
Ruen’hi narsi, he has always called her fondly, much to her eternal amusement. Blood-covered lioness.
“LUCY ANNE PEVENSIE!”
She breathes in and out through her nose, and turns calmly towards the advancing form mistress, clenching her jaw at the anger etched into the wrinkles of the old woman. She resigns herself to the one month of detentions, but her blood burns.
Her blood is like liquid fire as it pounds in her ears, outrage bubbling in her gut and showing in the flash of her blue-eyed glare as it pans from the yelling form mistress to the rest of the students and then finally on the two boys at her feet. They still haven’t stood up, in too much pain to do anything more than groan in pain and wipe their tears and snotty noses on their sleeves.
They should be falling at my feet, she thinks savagely. They should be on their knees begging for forgiveness, for mercy. In fact, the school faculty themselves should also be at her feet, begging for forgiveness for the audacity of raising their voices at her and her siblings.
How dare they deem themselves capable of handing out punishment to a King or Queen of Naernia? To all four Kings and Queens of Naernia? Who are they to try and punish her, Queen Lucy the Valiant? Who are they to deem themselves appropriate authority to discipline the Lionheart Spymaster Queen, Fourth of the Beloved Four?
Lucy’s blood burns, but she lets herself be dragged to the headmaster’s office, taking one last glance at her siblings. The sight of their gazes fixed on the two injured boys makes her mouth stretch into a feral smile even as she bristles indignantly at the form mistress’ grip on the shoulder of the body that has not been hers since she first stepped into that wardrobe.
Naernia hums in her ears, a sweet siren song of bloody vengeance.
That night, when she sleeps, she dreams of gripping the two idiot boys by their hair and ripping their throats out with her teeth.