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Prunaprismia, daughter of Glozelle and Marguerite, marries Miraz on a summer day. She wears the bright colors of her people and carries the flowers of her maidenhood, and when Miraz takes her hand he is smiling, bright and beaming as the sun, the light falling on his crown like a halo.
They are not granted a child, yet. Miraz holds her at night when she sobs, rubs her back and whispers reassurances.
“When it is time, my love. We have so much of that.”
It grows harder to see Caspian in his childish laughter and learning each day.
During the day their court is filled with grace and grandeur. They welcome dignitaries, throw banquets, hear petitioners. At night she helps him with his correspondence before they go to bed. He has never been one for the quill, and she is softer spoken and quicker of tongue. She reads his drafts and he laughs when she frowns at him and shakes her head, but sits next to her and listens as she shows him how it would be better phrased. He shows her how to shoot a bow.
“Every queen should be prepared to defend her castle,” he says, and it is as serious as it is a kindness.
And finally, one day, she knows that she is with child, feels the soft kick of the feet against her belly. Miraz is silent as he rests his hand against it, too struck with awe to have words, but his eyes have tears in them and his smile is so tender. She covers his hands with hers.
Their child is born on a long moonlit night, healthy and screaming. Miraz, someday to be the Second.
In a kinder world, one where her story has a happy ending, they present him to their court at high noon a month later, red faced and squawling. She and Miraz hold hands, watch their son anointed as heir of their throne, and that night they return to their chambers and watch him in wonder as he squirms and reaches out his tiny little fingers for theirs.
This is not that story. That story never happens.
Instead Miraz comes to her chambers every day as she recovers, more and more often in his battle armor, and he smiles and holds his child’s hand but his eyes are more tired every day.
“The Narnians I can defeat,” he assures her. “But I fear the council is not truly behind me. And I cannot fight a war against enemies both inside and out.”
“Surely with an heir, they would not dream -” and then she pauses, looks at the way his face changed, how he glanced away from her. “An heir they could control. Through me.”
Miraz puts his face in his hands, suddenly. He has never failed to meet her eyes before.
“My father.”
“I have no certainty. Only suspicions and whispering. I do not seek to turn you against him, Pris. I only fear - I fear for our future.”
“Stay with us, tonight. You and our child, you’re all I desire.” He looks up at that, that small half smile back, and rests his hand on their son’s forehead for a moment before he leans to kiss her, gentle as always.
“I must go, my love. I’ll return. I give you my word.”
It is the last promise Prunaprismia will ever believe.
+
The soldiers arrive at the castle before the conquerors - or at least the less wounded do. She sits with her advisors, her child in her arms. Miraz, dead. Her father, dead beside him.
“And where will I go, if I leave?” she asks, and a silence falls. “To Archenland? They have never been friends of ours. To Calormene, to become a concubine of the Tisroc while they raise my child to be their weapon against Narnia? No. I will not. I will greet them at the gates.” There are few left to question her. Those left perhaps do not have the courage to.
And so it is that Prunaprismia, Queen of Narnia, welcomes her enemies to the gates of her castle. They are giddy and wild, some of them clearly drunk, but she stands her ground. Caspian dismounts and comes to her immediately.
“Aunt, you should be in your rooms with your child.”
She forces her voice not to tremble. “I thought we should meet whatever fate has designed for us sooner than later.”
He pauses, consternation on his face, and a dark haired young woman joins them a moment later, takes Prunaprismia by the arm.
“My lady, we will return to your chambers. No harm will come to you or your child by any Narnian’s hand.”
It is a kindness.
The castle sounds so very different than she has ever heard it before.
The dark haired woman stays with her for a little while. Girl? She seems so young, and yet also not at all. She fluffs the pillows, rallies the maids into helping Prunaprismia change into something more comfortable. And she never asks to hold Miraz, makes sure he is always within Pris' reach. When things seem to have settled, she takes her leave. "I'll make sure they send you something to eat soon and please do eat. You must keep your strength up, no matter how grim things seem." And with a flutter of skirts she is gone.
+
Miraz is five years old when Caspian departs on his voyage. Prunaprismia says farewell politely, joins the party on the docks that sees him off.
Caspian leaves the castle under the supervision of his people, of course, and her appointed house is hardly lavish or wealthy, but she still knows people. Dinner parties at her house quickly become a more entertaining option for many than the rare formal dinners the castle must still put on for foreign dignitaries. (Few and far between, these days, especially with the reigning monarch off on some foolhardy quest into the unknown.)
It is a favorite destination in particular of those Telmarine lords and ladies who still remain. Some left, of course. Walked through the door (a rare few), or took what they had and what was left to them and found refuge elsewhere - perhaps the Islands, or the desert, or wherever they were able to find somewhere that would take their coin. Those who remain are of sterner stuff and more stubborn stock. They know, as she does, that a young king with no experience is not always long for a throne. Their conversations are quiet, circular, dancing around the truth.
Miraz grows tall already, they say. So like his father.
He was born ready to rule, she says.
Other conversations, longer ones, happen late at night once the dinner itself is over and only a few remain. Loyalty is promised. She never believes it, but she takes what she is offered with both hands and moves forwards. Discontent runs through those who were once in control like a river. It has power by itself, but shore the banks and widen the channels and it gains in strength.
Caspian returns to Narnia on a bright summer’s day. It’s earlier than she would have liked, before her plans are cemented. Some aspects will have to be tabled for years. She has patience, though, and Miraz is still young. She has time yet to give him what he has always been owed.
That he brings back with him a bride - that is a more difficult thing to stomach. A bride means the prospect of an heir begins to loom on the horizon, and that will bring with it complications should it come to pass.
Liliandil is beautiful, filled with a wild hope and grace that Prunaprismia thinks should not feel so very foreign to her already. Surely, only a few brief years ago (a decade now), she had glowed like that at her wedding.
Well, perhaps not quite like that. She is only human, after all, untouched by the magic that suffuses Narnia these days.
Their first conversation does not go how she expects. On her side it is a courtesy, only, congratulations on their betrothal. To Liliandil, it seems to be something else entirely. She is eager and bright, attentive.
“Perhaps, my lady, you would consider returning to the castle for a time? I am afraid I know so little of how - well, all this works.” A light gesture of her hand to their entire surroundings, a laugh that is so warm and honest that for the first time in years Prunaprismia feels her heart soften at the sight of something that isn’t her son’s smile. “I lived on an island with just my father, you see. The duties of a Queen, the responsibilities you have towards your subjects and how to run a castle - these are all things I am terribly unfamiliar with. Caspian tells me you have a great deal of knowledge in these things.”
It is a compliment. It is kind, and well meant, and there is a part of her that wishes to accept it simply as such, to know that this young woman means her no ill will.
The ever-stoked fires of her heart will not let her, the embers of glowing rage flaring. Because it is my right, she does not say, and she is sure her smile is more strained than it should be.
“I do not desire to move back in, my lady, but it would be my pleasure to sit with you some mornings and teach you what I know.”
It will not. It cannot be. She does not know how she will be able to bear sitting in her old council rooms, seeing them populated by others and ruled by this child before her. A girl raised alone on an island, with no knowledge of diplomacy or castles or supply lines -
She cuts her thoughts off, forces them down. The rage is for when she is alone, unseen. The anger, the bitterness, those are for when Miraz is in bed and she is unattended in her room late at night, contemplating which black dress she will wear tomorrow.
Did Liliandil notice? She cannot say. Something bright burns within the star child, turns her every word and smile and airy gesture into something just a little unknowable.
“I would be honored, my lady.” Liliandil does not call for a servant, as she should. Instead she stands and steps out the door herself, returning a few minutes later with a tray of tea things. “Here we are,” she says, setting them down between them. “Do you take sugar? I find it a little much, myself, but apparently it’s quite common here. Another thing to accustom myself to. Milk?”
“One sugar, no milk,” Prunaprismia says, and she hopes this smile is more sincere.
Perhaps, in some small ways, she can pity the many lessons that will come for Liliandil over the next years. She would like to think that she still is able to feel that much.
She is not sure that is true, though.
+
Miraz is eleven years old when Prunaprismia is summoned to Caspian’s private study. It is mid-afternoon when they arrive. She puts down her quill and stands, slowly, glancing between the two guardsmen. They seem uncomfortable. He would send Telmarines for this, of course.
She wonders who it was that gave away their plans. Which of those who had pledged their loyalty to her and to her son had turned that information over. Perhaps they had gained a new Lordship out of it, perhaps one better than the one they had lost when the Narnians took over. Perhaps they had simply had too weak a will to continue.
“Where is my son?” she asks, the only question that truly matters, and one of the guardsmen bows his head to her briefly.
“He is with his tutors, my lady. King Caspian seeks only to speak with you.”
It is not a comfort enough, but it is one she will take for now.
One of the great Cats that have become Caspian’s personal bodyguards is in the room when she arrives, curled in an altogether too casual sprawl between where she is gestured to sit and where Caspian is behind his desk.
“I hope you and Liliandil are well, my lord.” He doesn’t meet her eyes at first, chin resting on one hand as he gazes at the documents spread across his desk. From where she sits she cannot see them, but she knows that she can guess. She had always urged against writing things down, but she knows that as the web grew there were those who did not listen to her guidance. It was a risk she had had to take.
It seems it has not paid off.
“I love your son as if he were my own, Prunaprismia.” Caspian’s voice is heavy, tired. They have not spoken much in years, and it is strange to hear him like this. “I have never sought to undermine you, nor to take him from you. I have ensured that his schooling includes insight into all of those who now share Narnia. I have funded your household.”
“I have appreciated all of that, Caspian.”
He continues almost as if she had not spoken, his voice slowly more heated.
“And yet I find, in the house that I pay for, under the cover of the respectability I have allowed you to retain, you have plotted against me and my queen, have sought the return of the throne to Miraz. That you feel it is his right, though your husband killed my father and attempted to have me killed.”
“Allowed me to retain?” She rises from her seat, the faint growl of warning from the terribly alert Cat enough to ensure that she does not take the steps forward that she wishes to. “I am the rightful Queen of Narnia, no matter what you have taken, and I have built my respectability for myself. Nobody ever gave me that.”
He looks up at her at that, and for a moment, the smallest of flashes, she can see her Miraz in his face. Can see the determination and settled surety.
“Prunaprismia, formerly Queen of Narnia, mother of Miraz, you are hereby convicted of treasonous acts against your King and Queen. Your sentence is exile, to begin without delay. You will depart the city tomorrow. A place will be furnished for you and supplies will be sent monthly. You may take what staff desire to accompany you. All correspondence will be monitored. You may see your son before you depart, under supervision.” It is a script, but he means every word of it. His gaze doesn’t waver.
“As you command, my lord.”
There is nothing else to be said, in the end. Her plans had reached far and delved deep, but they did not include anything like the ability to retrieve her from armed guard in a day. Perhaps, in several years time, she will be able to determine which of those who had promised her their protection had broken it and which had not and be able to start anew, but if she has been compromised she can only imagine there are others already under far harsher punishment than hers.
Caspian rubs his hands over his face, and then stands and comes towards her, against the quiet protest of his guard, who slinks around his legs. He takes her hands, tries to meet her gaze.
“I wanted better for us, Aunt,” he says. “I hoped for better. Please, believe me when I say that your son shall never want for anything, nor fear for his life here. I only wish I could trust his mother to remain with him.”
She shifts her eyes to meet him at the last, tilts her chin up.
“I do not disbelieve you, Caspian. I only wish I could have succeeded. For his sake.”
“I am not your husband, Aunt. I would not kill a child for the crime of having a claim to a throne.”
She falls silent. There is no rebuttal to that, in the end. Had Miraz tried to do that? She will never know. He had never said as much as to her, and she had always believed herself to be his closest confidante. The evidence -
It is too late now, to think of such things. To regret anything, or undo anything.
“Where shall I stay tonight?”
“You may return to your house. Under guard. Ask if any will accompany you, pack your things. Miraz will stay the night here with us. He will not find that strange. We will tell him you have to take a journey, and in the morning you may say goodbye. We will determine best, over time, how to tell him what has happened.”
The night is very quiet. When the morning comes and the carriage arrives, she has not slept at all. Miraz leaps out into her arms and she holds him against her as hard as he will allow before he squirms down, too old and dignified for a mother’s embrace.
“How far away are you going, Mum?”
“Far, my love, and I think for quite a long time. I might not come home any time soon.” He frowns, confused.
“You don’t go anywhere, though.”
“No, my dear. But this time I find I have to. I hope, later, as you grow older, you understand why. And I hope someday I’ll return to you.”
“Mum? Of course you’ll be coming back?”
“I don’t know, my love. I don’t know. But I will always, always love you.”
He lets her hug him again, at that, and she can tell he is uneasy, unsure of what is happening. Caspian and Liliandil have emerged from the second carriage, and after a long moment she rises.
“I know you will keep him safe.” There is a fire in Liliandil’s eyes that burns as radiant as the one in Prunaprismia’s heart.
“No harm will ever come to him that we can prevent.”
“Goodbye, Miraz. Write to me.” She hands him to Liliandil, and then turns and faces the carriage. A deep breath, and no more goodbyes.
+
She takes her meals in solitude, here on the edges of the world. They are plain affairs, though her tiny staff does their best to find creative uses for the meager supplies that they are sent each month. At first she had invited the others to join her, as the distinction of ranks seemed foolish to continue in exile. They had turned her down, gently.
“I have come with you because I believe you to be my rightful queen, my lady,” Mira had said. “I cannot eat at the same table as my queen.”
Prunaprismia understands. It is a way of making exile mean something, for them. Still, sometimes when she has finished dinner and is sitting alone at her desk, she hears the soft murmur of their voices from the kitchen as Mira and Alain and Rebekah eat together and feels a sense of loss. She shuts it away, in the same place she has placed her hopes and dreams for her son and her memories of her court and what it had felt like to wear a color that wasn’t black.
There is little for her to do these days. She would help maintain the household, but they refuse that for the most part as well. Picking herbs and flowers, or helping mend frayed clothes - these are things that they can accept a queen doing. But there are only so many herbs to pick, and only so many clothes to mend, and her old duties of household management take very little time for a place so small with only four residents.
So she reads, more than she ever has before. There had used to be little time in the day for it. Miraz had sat with his council and Prunaprismia had sat with hers, and while Miraz’s work was visible and in the open hers had been no less taxing for its quietness. Seating arrangements, menus, the careful positioning of diplomats rooms and entertainment, the daily accounting ledger, a thousand small things that meant the castle continued to run. She wonders how the daughter of a star is faring with the endless intricacies of day to day life in a castle. Does she have ink stains yet, or do those simply refuse to blemish the skin of someone from the heavens?
Now she reads instead.
Her mail is checked before its arrival, but this is one indulgence Caspian is all too pleased to grant her. Indeed, he not only permits her to request books to borrow from (once hers, now) his library but sometimes sends her books himself. They are always Narnian books - histories only now being written, novels featuring talking horses and laughing naiads, cookbooks of Narnian food. It is done out of hope, she thinks. He does not hate her. He never has, even if he has as much reason to hate her as she has for the venom towards him that will never fade.
It is a kindness, nevertheless, and she always sends him her thanks.
Her son sends her letters every week. She gets all four of them at the end of the month. They rarely have a great deal to say, but she treasures each one, keeps them in a special box in the back of her closet. Sometimes in the middle of the night she wakes up and pulls it out and burns a candle to reread them all.
Aunt Lil has had a baby, he writes one day, and she only keeps herself from crumpling the letter in her fists by the scarcity of what she has to hold from him.
Did you know Black and Red Dwarves have extremely different ideologies?
+
She had not known that. These days she devours Narnian mythology with a purposeful intent. Miraz was allowed to visit her after his eighteenth birthay. He came twice. The first visit had been awkward, at best. He had wrapped her in a hug and she hadn’t even known what to do with it at first. It had taken her several moments to remember how to hold him in return, especially as he was now taller and broader in shoulder.
They sit and talk, awkward and uncertain. He has many stories of his new cousin to tell. Rillian learning to walk, learning to evade his nurses, Rillian a delight of a child. She bites her tongue. Eventually, when the pleasantries over dinner have ended, a silence comes.
“Why did you do it?” Miraz asks, finally. “We would have been all right. Caspian and Liliandil, they weren’t going to hurt us.”
She is silent for a long time, her hands gripping his.
“I wanted better for you,” she says finally. “And I wanted - I want - your father’s memory to be honored. He was a good man. A kind man. I know that’s not how they frame him these days, but it’s true, and I want it honored.”
He doesn’t answer, but he does lean forward and hug her after another long moment of silence. This hug is easier.
When he leaves the next morning, he is valiant and stalwart as he mounts his horse and rides off into the bright sunrise. She goes back inside to her mirror.
There is silver in her hair. It only makes her look stern and bitter. Miraz would have looked distinguished with it, wise and settled in his reign. Perhaps she would have too, in the world they both lived to that age.
The second visit comes much later.
+
It takes time to piece together the information she needs. Fragments come from different books, from different correspondences. They all seem as if she is simply learning about Narnian culture, so they all slide by.
There is a colony of dwarves nearby, and she reaches out to them herself. Her servants protest, but they don’t question her over much. Black Dwarves, who might know of the place called Bism that some of the books speak of.
She brings them a basket of the herbs and vegetables from their garden, and asks to speak to their leader.
It is begrudging, but they bring her to him.
They speak of Bism, then. They speak of something deeper beneath the earth, something that might not ever be quite known. They speak in quiet words, soft phrases, things that might not ever be quite true but can be learned.
She learns something deeper than she had been prepared to know.
And one day, when she has exhausted all other options, she comes to the crack in the earth they told her of and she descends into it, step by step, until she reaches a small chamber with a fire raging under it.
She made the runes herself out of what she could find, and she places them on the ground, measures from place to place how they lie. And when she has placed them all, she takes a step back and she speaks the incantation she has been given.
Something emerges from the undersides of the chamber, slithering and cold. It coils around her legs and she stays steady as she can, swallowing down all the fear like she has swallowed everything for so many years now.
It retreats to the runes, shimmers, spreads itself into something that is not quite a human but not quite a snake, unsettling and uncomfortable.
“I can bring you into this world,” Pru says, spreading her hands. “I can give you access to it. But I must have your promise first.”
A hiss, nothing that has words to it.
“I will give my blood, and you will give my blood satisfaction against those who have failed it.”
A step forward, and she raises her hand and the knife.
A slither forwards, a moment of something that is almost a face.
It is not a promise, but that does not matter anymore. She has not believed a promise in twenty years.
She cuts the vein on the side of her wrist, watches the blood trickle onto the runes one by one. The face becomes more human, moment by moment. The world seems to stand still. The woman comes to meet her. Not a woman, not quite. Something else entirely, something not anything Pru has ever met before.
The witch’s fingers tilt her chin up. The witch’s eyes meet her gaze.
“What a world I have returned to.”
Her lips on Pru’s are sweet and gentle, and then gone.
She never sees her again.
+
The second time her son visits her is years later. Liliandil is dead, she knows. A snake killed her. Rillian is gone.
The letters have stopped. What she knows has faded. Whatever closure Miraz had received from coming to see her the first time, it had not given him any desire to continue their correspondence beyond perfunctory brief missives that give her only the vaguest idea of his life. Any of her other correspondences ended long ago. Caspian no longer sends her books, though she is still welcome to borrow from his library. She hadn’t thought stars could die. Perhaps Caspian had not thought they could either. Is it pity she feels for him, or is she simply tired of being angry? No matter.
Had Liliandil known she could die, that woman with fire in her eyes and air under her feet?
Miraz takes her hand briefly, bows to kiss it.
“I go in search of my brother,” he says, courteous, gallant, as brave and as able as his father.
“Miraz, please, do not,” she says, and he takes her in his arms.
“I must do my duty. I could not do less for those who have raised me. I will see you again.”
Prunaprismia, daughter of Glozelle and Marguerite, wife of Miraz, mother of Miraz, knows that promises are not to be believed.