𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐘 || A Narnian Autumn Writing Challenge (Oneshot Book)

2. Eventide's Heir

cair paravel // year 2359
prompt: "early night"
word count: 1,191

xXx

The Queen of Narnia crept out beyond the flickering orange torchlight that marked the outskirts of the royal city, bare feet padding over cold stone onto the dark eastern balconies as if stepping over the edge of the world.

Rilian never told her where he was going, but her steps traced the path with dreamlike familiarity, the invisible sea crashing against cliffs far below in an eternal, swelling rush that lent a wildness to the bite of the fresh night air.

'Queen' had only been her title for a mere two months, but Cair Paravel had crawled its way into her bloodstream long ago.

The last tinges of the low western sunset edged the stone railing with a thread of pale gold, only just illuminating a single silhouette against the darkening sky beyond, broad shoulders and pale hair betraying him to her keen eye. Purple robes billowed like funeral silks around his figure as if he were carved of marble, as if he would have found himself at home amongst the tall white statues lining grand and lonely halls, as if he had always stood there, ancient as the stone and the darkness itself.

Her padding steps made no noise on the cold, flat stone, but he turned before she had come within arm's reach of his lonely figure.

A smile broke over his face, shattering the brief illusion of marble, eyes gleaming as if with the last drop of sunfire over an inky sea. "There you are."

"Were you waiting?" asked the Queen, a curious smirk creeping into her voice at the warmth of his tone. "You gave me no invitation."

"You always find me," he said simply, and took both of her hands in his.

She surrendered to the touch, half suspicious, watching her new husband's face for that flicker between mischief and mystery that always danced in its shadows. His curtain of loose hair, golden even in the pale dusk, his strong cheekbones, his heavily lidded eyes, the prominent ridge of his nose—a visage of untold glory and grief, shrouded in history as turbulent as the gathering clouds under which they stood, yet calm and clear as the evening chill.

"Do you remember that night we danced out here?"

There it was, his little game. As if she could have forgotten that night, so long ago now, neither of them any more than children; before his mother's death, before his own disappearance.

The palace had been lit all with lanterns for the queen's ball, tiny lights flickering like burning stars against the dusk, but Prince Rilian never seemed capable of staying where he was meant to be, and they had vanished out onto the balconies on a whim, youthful passions yet untamed in their wild hearts.

Even throughout those ten long years, had she ever truly gone a day without remembering how he led her out above the darkness of the sea? Without remembering how beautiful and young and foolish they had been under that brilliant moonlight?

"You asked me if I was afraid of heights," she murmured.

A teasing grin tugged at his lips just as it had back then, when no ghosts haunted his pale eyes in the mist of lonely mornings, when nothing but infinity lay at his feet. "You threatened to throw me into the sea if I pulled you one step closer to the edge."

This time it was her turn to suppress a grin, but before she could reply he spun her by one hand under his arm and clasped her against his chest at the edge of the railing, her skirts fluttering over the abyss and the crashing sea.

The breath rushed from her lungs in something between a silent shriek and a laugh, and she gripped his body for support in spite of the strong arm wrapped securely under the small of her back.

He grinned.

"Ril," she scolded breathlessly, though her own smile banished all hope of mustering any bite behind it, the thrill of the wind ripping through her dress far too real.

He eased one of her hands from his collar and steadied her, gently coaxing the tightly clenched fist open to thread his fingers between hers.

They swayed there at the edge, a breath of a dance, her heart still racing as he leaned down and pressed his forehead to her temple.

"Listen to the music," he murmured, his breath warm on her cheek.

She didn't have the voice left to call him a fool.

The pounding of her own heart and the rolling crash of surf far below drowned out any other noise for several moments, but when at last her chest began to calm, a strange, low note drifted faintly over the rush of the sea. And it stretched on, slowly mingling with others—the hollow, haunting notes of mersong, echoing as if from some distant cave, floating in with the tide, the melody of another creation, of black waters at the bottom of the world.

She breathed a deep sigh and looked up into her husband's eyes, free hand resting just at the base of his neck, his hair fluttering around her fingers, the last of the sun's weak haze vanishing at his back behind Cair Paravel's high towers.

His smile could have belonged to that boy she'd danced with under the moon, a youth with no care beyond basking in its glow, now inviting the shadows around his fingertips as if he ruled them, too, pricks of starlight glittering in his eyes even as the clouds shrouded his heavenly kinsmen from view.

Perhaps it was the star's blood in him that so loved the darkness, running pale fingers through the inky blackness of her hair.

"Beautiful night, isn't it?" he murmured.

A breath of a laugh broke through the awe flooding her chest. "Ril, I can't see anything."

"Mm…" His smile soaked into the golden warmth of his voice. "But it's still there."

And of course, who could have known it better? Who but the child of mingled darkness and light, whose gaze so often lingered in the mist-veiled east where his mother and father wandered distant shores beyond the sunrise. Who but the disenchanted prince who fell beneath the earth only to rise from that shadowy grave into the honest, brilliant Narnian night.

Into her arms like he'd never left.

Her King, who loved beyond anything the wildness of his country, the mystery buried in its every whisper. Who loved beyond anything the beauty beneath the surface, the waking after the dreaming, the tangible, the dangerous, the true.

He pressed his forehead into hers, breathing out in contentment, and she tilted her head up until their noses brushed, hanging in limbo for a long moment before their lips met—warm in the cooling dusk, yet it struck an icy shiver like a slap of sea foam down to her core, real and alive and wild as the night, a boy and a King and a gleaming star on the grey horizon.

"Yes," she breathed at last into the hush of whispered waves and mersong as they broke apart. "It is a beautiful night."

xXx

-fin-