Disclaimer: The Pevensies and all the characters and situations in the Chronicles of Narnia belong to C. S. Lewis and not to me.

STORM'S RAGING

She began watching him months ago, when he was at last more man than boy. He is young yet, she knows, still a bit coltish and gangly, but he's been a soldier as well as a King for nearly seven years. His muscles are hard and sleek, and he's nearly as tall as Peter now.

Peter would kill her if he were to ever know what she is thinking.

What she is planning.

She creeps up to the doorway to Edmund's balcony and watches him now. The summer storm lashes the trees, making them wave their heavy branches in a dance of wild abandon. The sea crashes recklessly against the rocks below, adding to the boom of the thunder and the moans of the wind.

He revels in it.

He stands there drenched, his nightshirt clinging to his body, his feet bare, his hands clenching the wet marble of the railing, all of them– nightshirt, feet, hands, marble– white as the lightning against the midnight sky. His hair is black, blacker than black, plastered to his head, to his neck with warm rain, and his eyes–

Oh, his eyes are dark, nearly as black as his hair, nearly as black as his brows and thick lashes beaded with water droplets. His eyes are endless depths of breathless, ardent youth, pools of the same vivid life that pulses in his young veins. Her breath trembles out of her, and she inches closer.

He catches sight of her then, and there is a little spark in those dark eyes. A spark of unrepentant mischief. A touch of uncertainty. No doubt he thinks she will scold him now.

She puts on a sisterly face, a motherly "you'll catch your death of cold" face, but he grins anyway because he can see she doesn't mean it. She gives him a glimpse of her own mischievousness, her own daring. She doesn't have to fake the flame in her eyes.

He is tantalizing.

With a girlish squeal, she scurries out into the storm and nestles against him, and laughing, he puts a brotherly arm around her. Unsuspecting. Innocent.

"What are you doing out here, Su?"

He has to shout to be heard over the storm, and she presses, still innocently, closer.

"Wicked!" she shouts back, and he squints at her, bringing his ear a little closer to her mouth.

"What's that?"

"Wicked. The storm is wicked, isn't it?"

He laughs again, turning his face up to the rain, letting it bead on his perfect, porcelain skin, on his full, luscious lips. By now she is as drenched as he is, her skin as white as his, her hair as black as his as it, too, is whipped into the wind's wild dance.

"You're not going to order me back inside?" he shouts, dark brows raised in surprise.

"Not tonight."

He draws those brows together in mock concern. "Who are you and what have you done with my sister?"

They both laugh, and she snakes her arms around his lean waist. When the thunder again booms and lightning cracks, she pretends to be afraid and presses her face into the curve of his neck, against the beating of the blood in his veins.

"It's all right," he soothes, his arms protectively around her.

He can be so snide, so satirical, she knows, but he is still so gentle, so . . . innocent. So beautifully and deliciously innocent.

She breathes deeply of him, tasting the raindrops from his warm skin, trembling again as she whispers something against the corner of his jaw, knowing he won't be able to hear her for the storm's raging.

"What's that?"

He turns his face to her, and she slips her arm around his neck and brings his mouth abruptly to hers. His eyes open wide in shock, and another flash of lightning shows him everything. He grasps her wrists, surprisingly strong, holding them at her shoulders, holding her away from him. Those dark eyes are wide, fearful, determined, desperate, but she knows he is no match for her. He is, after all, merely a boy. Merely human.

Eyes fixed on his, eyes that have mesmerized and ensnared and doomed more than one hapless youth, she forces him backwards, step by step until he is trapped against the castle's marble wall, trapped under the rain that pours off the roof, drenching them both again. Slowly, inexorably, she brings her arms down, bringing his with them until they're pinned at his sides and he is helpless.

Mesmerized. Ensnared. Doomed.

She brings her mouth again towards his, breathing the life from him, anticipating the innocent, copper-salt taste of that life waiting there in his veins. At last he is hers. At last–

She gasps, arching backwards as the blade pierces through her. She can see the sullied tip of it now under her rib cage, and as she falls, she sees blue eyes and golden fury above her.

She was right about Peter all along.

OOOOO

"Peter." Edmund's breath shudders out of him as he half-collapses against his brother. "I thought– thought she was Susan. She nearly–"

Peter wipes his sword on the swiftly decaying heap at their feet. "Not if I can do anything to stop it."

Edmund smiles, lips trembling. "How– how'd you know?"

"I was just with Susan. She and Lucy are having hot chocolate down in the kitchen. I looked up here an saw you with . . . that." He glances down, disgust on his face. "I knew she couldn't be with me and up on your balcony at the same time."

In just a moment more, that heap dissolves in the rain and washes away as if it had never been. The brothers look at each other and then turn at the voice from inside Edmund's room.

"What in the world are you two doing out there in the rain?"

Edmund glances at Peter, a sort of wild relief pouring over him as he runs to their sister.

"You don't know how happy I am to see you, Su."

Author's Note: Gentle Reader, I must beg your indulgence for this oddity. If you find it too unsettling, let me know, and I will promptly refund your money.

–WD