"Ettinsmoor? Is that what we're calling it now?" Imira asked.
"Better than 'the northern lands the Ettins inhabit' don't you think?" Peter asked in return.
"I suppose it's catchy," she agreed. "So what do we do now?"
Peter looked around the room...
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"It has been five days and the Ettins haven't made a move, how much longer are we going to wait?" Imira asked Peter, eyes on her sword as she worked on it with her whetstone. She loved that sound, that shink her sword made as the whetstone travelled down its length. It was familiar, comforting, oddly peaceful, exactly what she needed after restless nights of waiting to get ambushed and exhausting days in the heat and humidity of the marshlands. How she hated the marshalnds.
"We are–"
SHINK
"We will–"
SHINK
"Will you put the whetstone down?" Peter asked, louder than he intended.
Imira's brows shot up, but since she had been interrupting him on purpose, she obliged. She put the sword down too and stood.
"We are attacking tonight," Peter said.
"Alright," Imira said, tired but relieved things were finally moving forward.
"But you are going home," he added.
Imira pushed up. "What do you mean I'm–"
Peter pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket, a letter, and handed it to her.
Imira eyed the letter warily before taking it.
"From Susan," Imira read the first line and she worried the letter might be conveying the news she was indeed accepting Prince Rabadash's matrimony offer. She held her breath and read.
"Oh, she's not marrying him, that's a relief," she sighed and smiled and kept reading.
But the further down she read her smile faded turning to a worried frown until it settled on an angry one.
"That desert snake!" Imira exclaimed, the letter crumpling in her fist. "I told you I didn't like him. Didn't I tell you I didn't like him?" Imira said almost shouting.
"You told me. Repeatedly," Peter said rather calmly. Too calmly.
"We should have never invited him to Cair," Imira said, pacing before him. The news about Prince Rabadash's treason had her blood boiling and her hand itching for her sword and someone to stab. Preferably the Prince.
"I can't leave," Peter said, hands sliding into his pockets, knowing she now understood what he meant moments earlier.
"You can't but I can," Imira stopped and looked at him, chin high. "I'll go; right now. Join Edmund and the others. He won't get past Anvard," Imira vowed.
"I can't spare many soldiers," Peter said.
"I don't need many soldiers, I only need one," Imira smirked.
Peter knew her smiles and smirks. Could distinguish the sweet from the kind, the polite from the perfunctory, the sarcastic, the sardonic, the seductive, the mischievous. But this one... this one was almost cruel. This was the look Edmund called murderous, the one that seldom showed but promised a world of pain for her enemies and reminded him this woman he married was not one he wished to cross in or outside the battlefield.
