EDMUND'S POV
Y/N is falling. I told her not to go across, she didn't listen, and now she's falling. Forty feet down. Into deep, churning water. I cant move. I'm frozen. What am I supposed to do?
Jump in and save her you idiot!
Right, yeah. That would probably be the best course of action. I throw my sword out onto the cave floor, and grab the spell book to place it in my satchel, along with my torch. I take a shaky breath and run forward, pitching myself over the edge of the cliff.
I hit the water in a matter of seconds, plunging deep below. I kick myself up, up, up, but I never seem to reach the surface. I finally push up and force the air down my lungs, choking.
"Y/N!" I gasp out, "Y/N!"
"Edmund—over here!" She shouts from somewhere behind me, and I reel around to find the source of the sound. I squint into the dim light, looking for her. The water slaps onto the side of the cave walls, rolling back toward the body of water like waves. I finally spot Y/N and push myself forward through the water.
She yells something at me but I can't hear her over the roaring of the waterfall, and keep swimming until I reach her. She's fighting for air, struggling to stay above the water as another wave hits her.
"Are you okay?" I yell over the sound as I approach her.
"No!" She tells back, still choking. I pick up the speed and finally reach her side. Much to my surprise, she throws her arms around my neck, using me as an anchor. "I...can't breathe." She struggles, her voice right next to my ear.
"Okay, okay hold on. There's a tunnel that way. Can you swim over there?" I say and she She nods. "Okay so uh...let go of me then." She flushes despite the biting cold of the water, and releases her arm from around my neck. "Hopefully this tunnel will bring us back to the cave entrance."
We swim through the thick, cutting waves. It takes a long time, given that the tunnel is about twenty feet away and the water wants to carry us away from it. We finally reach it, and I pull myself up onto the slick rock, collapsing onto it and panting. I shiver and cough as Y/N pulls herself up next to me, gasping and choking up water.
"I think it's funny how I have to keep saving you, huh?" I say, rolling onto my back and looking over at her. Her wet clothes cling to her body and she manages to hold herself above the ground with shaky arms, forcing air into her lungs.
"No," She breathes out, "I don't think it's funny at all." She finally let's her arms give loose, and falls onto the wet rock. I sit up and take my drenched satchel from around my neck. I open it up and take out the spell book, the leather cover is dripping wet, but the pages are magically dry.
"I saved the book!" My eyes trail over to the torch, which is also drowned in water, "But it looks like we'll be finding our way out in the dark."
"Lovely." Y/N sits up too, reaching her hand into the back of her shirt and tugging on something. She pulls her hand back out and the bandages I placed on her last night are there, drenched and useless. She throws the wad on the ground with a disgusting slop and reaches into the pouch on her belt where her dagger once was. "At least we still have these," She smiles, taking out her hand full of dragon teeth.
"I told you not to go on that bridge." I wrap my arms around my stomach and force body heat into myself, the water is freezing.
"We got what we needed, didn't we?" Y/N asks, jaw chattering.
"Yes, but now we have to find a new way out. With no torch. And it's freezing." I stand up on shaky legs, still pumping on adrenaline. Y/N looks up at me with wide eyes, and I realize that the quivering of her chin isn't from the cold. She's scared.
She stands up and comes face to face with me, "I uh—thank you. That was so scary, I couldn't breathe, I thought I was dead." She stares at her shaking hands, and then she surprises me for the second time that day. Y/N leans forward and wraps her arms around my neck, "Just—thanks. Really." She whispers.
My hands feel numb as I place them on her back, and it's not from the cold. I try to blink away the dizziness in my eyes when her wet hair hits my shoulder, but to no avail. The things this stupid girl does to me.
"We need to keep going and get to that village, right? before it gets dark?" She says as she pulls away, still holding on to my shoulders.
"Yeah, probably." I refuse to even look her in the eyes, afraid they'll melt me. She releases my shoulders and busies herself with picking up the spell book from the ground and tucking it into the waistband of her pants. "Find us a way out of here, Your Majesty." She says, crossing her arms over her chest. As if none of this had any affect on her.
"Your Majesty? That's new."
"Don't get used to it."
-
It takes what seems like a very, very long time, but after hours of feeling along dark cave walls and arguing about whether or not we were going in circles, we make it out of the cave unscathed. Mostly unscathed.
"Ugh, why can't it be warmer out? I'm still freezing." Y/N says when we step into the fresh air.
"It's December."
"Since when?" I roll my eyes at her and puff hot air into my hands, she's right, it is cold.
The sun is beginning to set and we still have a little ways to go until we reach the village, so we find a quick path and push our horses to go as fast as they can. While the rest of the wolf is winding down for the night, the village is just waking up.
Lanterns light each corner, small bands play everywhere, and drinks are passed. While the only thing we want to do is go to our hotel and go to sleep, we feel it's only kind to indulge the people for a bit.
"Won't the new king and queen join us for a dance?" a tiny woman asks the two of us, upon our arrival.
Y/N looks between the two of us uncertainly, "How about some of those drinks?"
So we spend our night drinking and laughing and partying with a village full of very kind, very small people. The whole time, Y/N steers from the topic of dancing every time it's brought up, and so I decide it is the perfect way to get under her skin.
"Come on Y/N, just one dance?" I beg.
"Edmund, come on. You're ruining the fun." She laughs. A little too hard.
"I think you've had too many of these," I reach for her drink but she reels away, pulling her hand out of my grasp.
"Fine, one dance," she throws her arms over my shoulders suddenly, some of her drink sloshing out onto me. A third surprise. "But only one, Your Majesty."
"Okay, okay, only one. And...stop calling me that. It's weird." I frown at her.
"You're weird." she steps closer. Yep, definitely drank too much. I blink away more dizziness from my eyes as she raises her eyebrows at me, "If we're going to dance, Ed, you might need to touch me at some point." Ed?
"Wh—right, yeah." I ease my hands onto her waist, not meeting her eyes.
"There we go! Good job." She takes her hand which is holding the half-full cup back from around my neck and raises the drink to her lips, downing the rest of it. Great. She hands the empty cup to a random passerby who looks at her as if she's a goddess come down to Earth.
"Do you want me to refill this for you, Your Majesty?" The dwarf asks her.
"No! Definitely not." I respond before Y/N can get a word out.
Y/N looks at me and frowns, "You're still ruining the fun."
"Whatever. I'm just—" Trying to help you, is what I want to say, but I swallow it. She hates it when I say that.
She looks back at me as if she has forgotten what she was previously upset about, and then she slides her hand down my arm and grabs my hand.
"What are you—" I begin to protest, but then she's pulling us out onto the crowd of dancing Narnians. Nymphs, dwarves, centaurs, minotaurs, anything you could think of. She lures us into the swirl of things and starts dancing with me. Some band somewhere outside of the dance plays a song on guitars and banjos and drums, with lyrics I can't understand over the tumult of the crowd.
Y/N raises my arm into the air and twirls herself, but it doesn't exactly go as planned. She stumbles backward, into me and I catch her around the waist.
"Y/N, maybe dancing was a bad idea..."
"It was your idea." She looks up at me, "Now get your hands off my waist, you creep!" I blush and release her and she looks at me, all drunk giddiness suddenly gone, "I feel sick." She places a hand to her forehead and sighs. "Our hotel. We need to get to our hotel."
"Okay." I look around us, at all the dancing creatures, trying to find a path out of the crowd. "Here, take my hand. I'll get us out of here."
She looks at my extended hand in disgust, but reluctantly takes it. I realize, happily, that the crowd moves around us. We are their royalty, and they dare not get in our way. It doesn't take long for us to navigate our way into the clear. We walk down a dirt road, where the party spills out into the rest of the village.
"Can you tell me where the inn is?" I ask a red-haired dwarf woman.
"Yes of course, Your Majesty. If you go all the way down this road and then take a left, it's the second building on the right. Got it?"
"Yes, thank you, ma'am." Y/N and I follow her directions, not talking for most of the walk. The inn belongs to a sweet couple who shows us to our room quickly and leaves us alone.
"Ugh," Y/N collapses forward onto the bed, "Why did you let me drink so much?"
"I tried to stop you," I say, peeking into our room's bathroom, "Hey, they have a bath. Want me to run you one?"
She sits up and a smile tugs at the edges of her mouth, "Yes, please."
"How hot?"
"Like, boiling my skin off hot. I still haven't fully recovered from that cave water."
While Y/N is in the bathroom, I find something to keep my busy. I flip the the back cover of the spell book, one completely empty. I draw a map for Y/N, so she'll know the places I'm talking about when I tell her my stories. It's a map of England, with Finchley and Professor Digory's house marked. I also draw other places like my childhood home and my school, even the train station.
—
I guess while I'm drawing I fall asleep, because when I wake up our room is completely dark and I'm skimped back against the pillows. Something is resting on my shoulder, and it takes me a few seconds to realize it's Y/N's head. The book is splayed open in my lap, open to the map of England.
She was probably just looking at it and fell asleep, I think.
I close the book and lean into her, falling back asleep.