AN: Here we are, the last chapter. Remember the fairytale Edmund wouldn't read at the bonfire in chapter eight? As implied in the chapter before this one, here's where you find out what it was.

Lucy awoke because she thought she heard rain. Rain, here in Charn-where it was almost always either sleeting or snowing?

Blinking and rubbing her eyes, she strained her ears for the familiar tap-tap sound, sure she would hear the drops against the window any second.

She heard nothing; the rain that had woken her wasn't real, it was only the remainder of an already forgotten dream. All lost, except for the rain, which she had taken to be real.

Realizing her mistake, Lucy sat up; she couldn't fall back asleep now. Beside her, Edmund dozed soundly, for the first time in a long while he could enter into sleep without fear of the white, cold, vengeful hands of his own personal ghosts and demons, the old lingering nightmares, reaching out and grasping him in his slumber. He had been having less and less bad dreams since their wedding night. They would never fully go away, but they couldn't hurt him anymore.

There were no actual shadows in the room now because the room itself was cast into a single shadow-or, rather, it looked as if it was the shadow-all except for the sliver of moonlight seeping in through the bay-window. The curtains had not been drawn all the way and the moon was full.

Had Edmund, who had come to bed long after she'd already been asleep, forgotten to close the curtains, or had he left them that way on purpose?

Regardless, Lucy felt compelled to slowly rise out of bed, careful not to wake him.

On the desk by the window, right under where the light of the silver-white moon fell, was a book, a faded leather journal. Lucy had seen it many times before, though not recently. It was Edmund's, the same one he had once written and crossed out the names of betrayed demistars in, the same one she'd taken with her on her journey to Charn to find him.

This book lay open, the smell of semi-fresh ink still hovered in the stale air around the table.

Edmund must have been writing something new on one of the blank pages, she realized, before he came to bed.

Somehow, perhaps because it was left open, right where it could be seen, Lucy got the idea that she was meant to see whatever it was he had written. She had the nagging doubt that maybe he'd just been letting the ink dry, but there was something in her that insisted this was not the case.

Creeping over, each footstep light but impossibly slow, like cold molasses spilled over the edge of a dinner table, Lucy approached the book.

When she reached it, she bent over it and leaned forward to read the sharply scrawled letters her husband had left on the page.

Lucy, I thought it was time I made up for refusing to read a fairytale out loud at that village bonfire so long ago.

The story you would have had me read was 'Sun and Moon, and Talia'.

Truth is, I couldn't do the one in that book justice anyway, and it made me feel sad and angry.

I have my own version, and here it is.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who got a poison splinter in her finger. She was put in a chamber room that was locked, I don't know why. And an embittered Traitor broke in and raped her while she lay unconscious.

She had a baby. The scoundrel who sired it didn't know, he was long gone. The baby wasn't anything like the sun or the moon, he was dark-headed and dark-hearted and, more importantly, he was hungry. And there was no one to feed him.

He sucked helplessly on his mother's finger.

The woman awoke.

She was disgusted with herself and absolutely loathed the baby. She rarely spoke to the baby, she only half-looked at him most of the time. But he grew, and somehow or other he learned to recognize his name, which the woman somehow found time to give him.

The baby lived maybe four years or so trying to stay out of her sight. Of course he wasn't a baby anymore; he was a bitter, pig of a boy, and a bully besides. He would have punched you and bloodied your nose if you suggested he was lonely. But late at night, though you'd never imagine it of him, he would cry to himself because he knew you were right. You had a bloody nose, but someone who loved you would clean it up and comfort you. No one would come in to comfort him or even to punish him for using his fist in so violent a manner.

One morning the former baby is taken for a morning walk after breakfast. He doesn't want to go and tries to make the time as difficult for his mother as possible. As usual, she doesn't notice.

Then she takes him through an iron gate to a painfully well-manicured lawn, in front of a new, crude stone mansion.

She drops his hand like it's a hot coal and flees.

He is alone.

Something snickers.

He is not alone.

There is another little boy there, playing on the lawn, younger than he is. He doesn't need to be told this fair-haired toddler with a smug narrow face and pompous arched light eyebrows is his cousin, he just knows at once.

The cousin thinks he can be the boss. It's his house after all, his lawn. There are dozens of ways to give people a bad time when you are in your own home and they are just guests, he thinks.

Unwanted guests, at that.

But the boy isn't going to have any of that. No, he is the alpha dog (later, wolf) in this lawn, whoever it belongs to.

Growling like an animal, the boy pushes his cousin down and bites his right ear as hard as he can.

The cousin whimpers.

The boy grins triumphantly. He knows he's won. He's secured an ass to work under him for the rest of his life. His cousin will never abandon him as his mother did, but he will not ill-use him either. No, the cousin won't try that again; he isn't so stupid as he looks.

Green mist swirls around the boy and the cousin with teethmarks and visible blood on one ear.

There is no cook come to save them, offering up dead lambs in their place.

They are swallowed up completely.

Lucy looked over her shoulder at Edmund. What did this story mean? Was this an actual recounting of how Edmund had become a traitor for the white witch after his mother abandoned him? Or was it merely his interpretation of the old fairytale he'd refused to read aloud mixed with his own, possibly dimming, earliest childhood memories? And why was this one story he choose not to tell her verbally but, rather, to write out?

It didn't matter.

Sighing, she crept on tipped-toes back to the bed and pulled herself close to him. Planting a little kiss on his temple, she whispered, "Even a traitor may mend, I've known one who has."

In his sleep, Edmund's expression grew very thoughtful.

AN: That's all folks! It's been an awesome four months writing this and getting your reviews/comments. Feel free to leave one last review on your way out if you like.