Prologue

359 18 40
                                    


"Hi!" Sanya Rainsford waved, as she walked to where her husband was standing.
He'd probably been waiting for a while, and she wanted to hit herself.
"Sorry for the wait-"

"That's alright. You look pretty." Edmund Pevensie grinned back, leaning in to peck her cheek.
Her cheek, that had bruises on it, with the skin around her left eye starting to darken.
She did look pretty, of course, but he would rather have preferred his wife to not be black-and-blue.
And, yes, he would have been extremely worried- if this wasn't an unfortunately regular happenstance. Sanya getting into fights was almost as usual as sunsets.
"Moonshine-"

"I'm alright!" She said quickly, knowing what he'd say. She really wasn't hurt- and, besides, her pain threshold was very high. It wasn't even a bad fight- she wouldn't have risked any harm coming to the star earrings she wore. "It's the last fight, I promise, husband. And you look very pretty, too-"

"Don't change the subject." He gave her a look- not as severe as it might have been, because it was quite nice to be called pretty. "You've been telling me it's the last fight for all of third form-"

"But I didn't say that I promise the other times." She answered back, smiling in triumph.
She leaned against the boundary wall of St. Finbar's Boarding School, because these conversations tended to take time, and she'd slept weird- the bed in her dorm was nothing like her bed back home.
Nothing here was like back home- and she had nothing here.
Except Edmund.
"This time, I do promise. No more fights."

He looked at Sanya for a long moment- he did believe her, but he couldn't help the rising concern.
"Who was it this time?"

"Um-"

"Please, for the love of the Almighty, tell me it wasn't someone older than fifteen."

Sanya weighed her options- tell the truth, that she, who had turned fourteen (again) less than a month ago, had beaten up two sixth-formers from Hendon House Boarding School, or lie and let Edmund be in blissful ignorance about the fact that she had got herself into a dangerous situation again.
"Alright, I won't tell you that."

Edmund sighed- he was not surprised. Even though part of him was worried- he couldn't help it- he knew full well Sanya could handle herself.
But he just didn't want her to put herself in danger. He had little idea of what she had been through during her thousand years of waiting- she still had not told him anything beyond where she had been- but he could tell that she had been through enough torture, enough pain, enough danger.
"Sanya-"

Eesh, it was always dangerous when her husband called her by her actual name instead of 'Moonshine'.
"Darling." She cut him off, making herself smile, and took his hand. "Happy Valentine's Day."

"I- I-" But his frustration quite melted, her hand warm around his, and he smiled back, "Happy Valentine's Day, Moonshine."

It was so lucky that Valentine's Day was on a Saturday, and they were able to go out.

For Edmund, at least- Sanya was perfectly happy to sneak out and run away from school, any day of the week, anytime.
But if it was dark, she would prefer having a torch.
Not that she would bring up torches, since she knew how Edmund grieved the torch that he had left behind in Narnia.

She was the one to kiss his cheek this time- she didn't even have to lean up much, since he hadn't yet hit the growth spurt that would catapult him to the height she had known him to be in Narnia. He had assured her, quite zealously, that he would hit it before he turned fifteen.
"Can we leave now?" She pulled her hand away, to fix the stray lock of hair that had fallen out of her ponytail. Technically, when the hair went past the shoulder-blades, she was supposed to braid it- but she did not know how to braid, and she did not care about stupid school rules. "I don't want to be late to- to the- the-"

Fairytale?Where stories live. Discover now