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"I'm tired of being what you want me to be

Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface

I don't know what you're expecting of me

Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes."

Numb

Linkin Park

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Chapter II - Rumors

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You may never know it, but trees are incredibly nosey. Constantly eavesdropping in on conversations by wandering unsuspecting creatures. Wildfire spreads fast and yet, it doesn't even compare to the spread of gossip.

"Any new information for her majesty?" One of my mother's loyal dwarfs, Remi, hostilely questions a full-grown fir tree in front of him.

The tree begins moving its branches in various positions explaining endless details of little value like a beaver anniversary and the birthday of a young faun.

A slight smirk comes to my face. Not many people had the courage to anger my mother's dwarfs or any dwarfs for that matter. Though this complete waste of time was getting on my nerves, and I wasn't the only one.

"You know what I mean, firewood." Remi spits aggressively, "Anything important."

The trees were known to be resilient of my mother. Which was understandable because my mother took over the land they quite literally lived in. They didn't have anywhere to go. Hiding like many Narnians wasn't really an option as a 17-meter tree.

"Come on, let's just get this over with shall we?" I urge, rolling my eyes.

The trees have helped me keep secrets from my mother for years. In recent years it has become more of a mutual alliance. Before the burning of Loxoly village, some might say we were even friendly. Whether it was a friendship built on pity for me or purely in spite of my mother, I would probably never know. The tree Remi was questioning, named Harlow, was one of the many who sided against my mother.

Harlow turned to me signing in the language of Arbor, native to the trees, "He deserves it."

Benvolio and I were taught by one of the oldest trees in the forest as children. Of course, my mother wouldn't approve of the lessons we snuck into the woods for, so it just became another secret that we kept.

Remi looks at me narrowing his eye, probably wondering if I understood anything the tree said. I just roll my eyes again pretending to have no clue of the tree's message.

"This is pointless. Let's move on." Remi orders, turning away from Harlow.

This gives me enough time to sign back, "If you give us something useful we can all get on with our lives."

I am about to walk to meet Remi when a branch pulls at the bottom of my shirt. I turn back to see Harlow signing quickly like it was very important for only me to see. We don't have much time so he knows he needs to hurry. He quickly fills me in on the newest development through the trees.

"I know the witch will be displeased if you come back empty handed."

"The Queen." I correct with a glare.

"Nonetheless, I ask one thing of you, keep my friend out of this." He signs leaving me with nothing but confusion.

"What are you saying?" I sign quickly and discreetly.

The tree comes to a standstill. I let out a sigh, "You will have my favor and my protection for your friend. Don't make me regret it."

This ends his hesitation and he begins signing, "A Daughter of Eve in the Western Wood. Not too long ago today. She was with a kind faun named Mr. Tumnus who kept her hidden until she just disappeared."

"Humans are fictional, Harlow. That's why gossip is usually unreliable." I sign back, brushing off the situation and heading in the opposite direction until a branch curls around my wrist.

"This is not just gossip, Princess. Haven't you felt it? The temperature is rising. The Narnians are regaining hope. Change is coming." He signs faster, knowing we are running out of time.

"Is he saying something?" Remi interrupts harshly.

"No, we're all finished here, Remi," I reply to him, deeply considering what Harlow mentioned.

It was faint but there definitely was a change in the atmosphere. For some reason I never thought it was just the temperature, it has been bitterly cold in every day I can remember. It just seems like something more.

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I find myself running through the open decadent halls made purely of ice. I slipped slightly, quickly regaining my composure as I come to a stop before my mother's throne room. I take a deep breath before pushing open the doors.

I take soft steps into the room knowing full well I should not interrupt her. She stops talking to Maugrim and turns to me, motioning for me to speak.

"It has been rumored through the trees that a Daughter of Eve has made an appearance in the West Wood," I inform with the hope of impressing my mother.

"And yet you come empty-handed." She snarls standing up from her throne, all while maintaining her deathly gaze down on me.

"Mother, she was gone before-" I start before she cuts me off with her heels hitting the floor coming straight towards me.

"Don't talk back, child," She shouts and with a wave of her staff, I felt the sharp pain like glass cutting the skin of my cheek, "Stop making excuses child. You mean to tell me that the very person that wants to steal my- our kingdom slipped through your grasp. What is a future queen if she cannot defend her land."

"My apologies," I say weakly with my head down to the ice floor.

"Was she alone?!" She demands emotionlessly.

I feel all the air in the room get thick from for that moment, "Yes. She just wandered around in the snow."

I lied. I pray that it was convincing enough. If she found out I was lying this would only get worse. Why did I even bother lying? It only created troubles for myself. I have never met Mr. Tumnus. I owe him nothing. What's wrong with me?

"She was only a child." I say softly dabbing the blood from my face with the back of my hand, "What did you want me to do? Kill her?"

"Anything to stop the prophecy." She replies emotionlessly without another thought my mouth part in aw a bit, "Now, like always, I have to fix that you failed. I leave you in charge of one section and yet you still cannot get control of that."

"The trees loyalties lie with me. No disruptions have been heard in months. I'd say that the Western Woods is well under control." I remark letting my arms fall to my sides, "Half of the dominion doesn't even know who I am after all these years! How do you expect them to follow someone they don't know? I am a rumor."

"There you go talking back again! And was as that even a bit of sass I heard in your voice? You better watch your tongue, child. When the time comes all of Narnia will know your name and not a minute before." She spits rising above me, "Guards send her to the icebox for the night. Maybe she'll remember her duties through the night."

"Get off of me, Wolfie!" I scowl, pushing every guard away from me, that wasn't the best idea since it only angered the larger than average wolf.

"Mother! Don't do this!" I plead as the wolf pushes me along again.

The icebox was my mother's personal Tash for anyone that went against her. I was the only one who has come out of it alive. Everyone else is frozen still in the middle of whatever they were doing before the power took over their bodies.

"A princess should never beg, after all these years I still don't know if you will be ever ready for the throne." She sighs disappointingly, "How could I raise someone as powerless as you."

My sadness deepened with every word she spits as the guards dragged me out of the room. My eyes just seconds ago could threaten anyone without a word, now felt the weight of tears. Nothing I could do would please her. Never good enough for her. As if it were my fault I wasn't born with the ability to cause a relentless winter over a whole land. I could never be her and every day she reminded me of it.

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"Ready the reindeer, we will leave at once to search the forest. There will be no return until the human is apprehended." I order to the dwarf next to me as soon as the doors shut behind my disgrace of a daughter.

To think that someone so weak could be my heir. Training her through the years just as I was as a child. She could be considered above average. She needs to be better. She still has many lessons to learn. She still holds onto humanity, her weakness. No doubt from her father. It is my job to raise this young lady into a proper queen. You must be strong to lead. Everything I do involving her is to benefit her.

I grabbed a cloak in the way out of the door leading to the outside world of my creation. Nothing but pure white for miles. Everything remains quiet and still. Order has met an unmatched level under my rule and it shall stay until my last fighting breath along with my daughters. She will eventually learn to rule but there are many hard lessons she needs to learn before them. It is my duty as a queen before a mother to teach her those lessons by whatever means possible. I will not let her crumble everything I have created. Especially not at the hands of a descendant of Adam and Eve.

The prophecies have never failed Narnia and it would be foolish to dismiss them as fairy tales. It must be taken into my hands to change destiny.

I lead the search through the night and the following day with no signs of any human. It isn't until the second morning out that creature was spotted from my sleigh. I immediately order them to stop. The dwarf pops out of the sleigh to discipline the creature for trespassing on my land.

Whiny screams came as my dwarf pounced on top of it, "Leave me alone!"

"What is it now?" I ask annoyingly.

We didn't have much time to find the daughter of Eve before Aslan gets to her. Wasting time on a weak link wasn't going to help us find her or the Narnian keeping her from me. The criminal must be handled at once.

"I didn't do anything wrong." The voice squeals again.

"How dare you address the queen of Narnia." The dwarf spits in the face of the creature.

"I didn't know!" The voice says struggling under the small but stumpy build of the dwarf.

And that's when everything clicked. Any Narnian would know full well the extent of respect to the queen. More importantly, they would know who I am. This voice didn't belong to a Narnian, but an outsider.

"You will know her better hereafter!" The dwarf threatens ready to dead his life without a second thought.

"Wait!" I order sternly to him as I stand up from my sleigh to see if my assumptions were true.

As I look down I find that they were completely correct. He stands with a human, a young boy, under his grasp afraid for his life.

"What is your name, Son of Adam?" I ask the boy still on his back in the snow.

"Uh, Edmund." He stutters clearly still shaken up by everything that Narnia has newly introduced him to.

"And how, Edmund, did you come to enter my dominion?" I push forward with more questions.

"I'm not sure." He answers slowly regaining he bearings as he stands up, "I was just following my sister."

"Your sister? How many are you?" I question, dreading the thought that they could actually be the people in the prophecies.

"Four. Lucy's the only one that's been here before. She said she met some faun called Tumnus." He replies.

My chest fills with rage. How dare a faun protect a human against direct orders. And now could Ashton let the Western Wood fall so far from her grasp. Even faun's are disobeying orders right underneath her nose. That stupid faun will face punishment.

I motion for the dwarf and whisper my orders to find and contain the faun to him. He knows that must be done now as I turn back to the boy. I take a deep breathe trying to keep my calm trusting appearance towards him

"Peter and Susan didn't believe her. I didn't either." Edmund tells me and I can see the look on the Dwarf's face that he recognizes the similarity to the prophecy as well.

Peter and Edmund, the two Sons of Adam and Susan and Lucy, the two Daughters of Eve. It was not a coincidence his boy stumbled into Narnia, this was the prophecy. His destiny. I now had to rewrite destiny.

"Edmund, you look so cold." I say urging him towards my sleigh with my cloak held out for him, "Will you come and sit with me?"

He remains hesitant for a moment before nodding slightly. I need to gain his trust. The dwarf grunted as he helped the human onto my sleigh right beside me. I faked a warm smile and wrapped my cloak around his small shaking body.

"Now, how about something hot to drink?" I offer, keeping the same smile.

"Yes, please, Your Majesty." He responds warily.

I let a drop of my secret enchanted potion into the pure white snow. In only a matter of seconds, magic morphs into a tall sterling silver glass filled with warm hot chocolate. It has taken me decades to perfect this mixture. Creating something from thin air does not happen overnight.

"Your drink, sire." The dwarf snarls as he picks up the cup from the snow and hands it to Edmund.

Edmund pays no attention to him as he marvels that the cup that just magically formed inches from him. He then looks to me with wonder swimming in his eyes, "How did you do that?"

"I can make anything you like." I smile.

"Can you make me taller?" I laugh warmly at him. His childlike innocence made me wonder how four humans, not even out of their childhood could take Narnia from me.

"Anything you'd like to eat." I correct, plastering my smile back on.

"Turkish delight?" He asks surprising me with his greed.

Nonetheless, I let another drop fall into the snow for the same process to happen again but with a silver container filled with thirty Turkish delights. Edmund begins to devour the Turkish delights getting powdered sugar all around his lips. One of the most fatal flaws in a human is unrelenting greed. The boy before me proved that was true.

"Edmund?" I begin while taking the hat from the dwarf's head to wipe the sugar from the young boy's mouth, "I would very much like to meet the rest of your family."

"Why? They're nothing special." He scoffs.

I'm surprised by his annoyance towards his siblings. Even just the mention of them seemed to make him hostile. No doubt there was bad blood, which only made Edmund easier to manipulate.

"Oh, I'm sure they're not nearly as delightful as you are. But you see, Edmund, I have one child of my own. A daughter, not much older than yourself." I tell him and he stops eating to look up at me as I continue,"My daughter needs a suitor. And you are exactly the sort of boy who I could see, one day, becoming Prince of Narnia. Maybe even King, right alongside her."

"Really?" He asks surprisingly.

"Of course, you'd have to bring your family," I reply, laying out the bait for the other three children.

It was easy to promise two children of something that would never happen for either of them. Both so young and naive.

"Oh. Do you mean, Peter would have a chance at your daughter's hand as well?" He asks seeming suddenly saddened.

"No! No, no." I say throwing my head back in a laugh, "But a king needs servants."

He smiles evilly at the idea of his siblings as his personal workers, "I guess I could bring them."

Perfect.

"Beyond these woods, you see those two hills?" I stay pointing above the treeline, "My house is right between them. You'd love it there, Edmund. It has whole rooms simply stuffed with Turkish delight."

"Couldn't I have some more now?" He asks greedily.

"No!" I yell in a fit of aggravation, startling Edmund with my lapse in fake kindness, I quickly regain my smile helping him up from the seat, "Don't want to ruin your appetite. Besides, you and I are going to be seeing each other again very soon."

"I hope so, Your Majesty." He responds exiting the sleigh.

"Until then, dear one. I'm gonna miss you." I say warmly before turning to look ahead.

The dwarf that had found his rightful spot in the front of the sleigh takes my signal to trug on. The whip crosses the reindeer backs immediately thrusting us forward away from the young boy left in the snow.

"Pardon me, your majesty, I don't mean to question your judgment, but why didn't you just kill him now?" The suspicious dwarf asks seeming a bit confused.

"Killing one would leave three, three that could still execute the prophecy." I explain, "I refuse to leave the possibility to lose everything due to underestimation. I want them all, all four, and that boy will begin them all to my doorstep. I have done nothing but prepare for the arrival of the Children of Adam and Eve since my reign began. Nothing will stop me from ending all my worries. As soon as Aslan's prodigy is unveiled they will die right alongside the humans."

"Of course, my Queen." The dwarf agrees to avoid any more disrespectful inquiries.

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Tash is basically the Narnian version of hell and the opposite of Aslan's country.

I realized a lot of fanfics skip over the Witch's and Edmunds part of the story and I liked that I could add a bit of a spin on it with the queen using her daughter as a pawn. This shows her carelessness for her daughter's opinions and feelings. This will also lead up to a few interesting conversations in the future.

Also please understand that Ashton has had a dark past that comes with an even darker reputation. This reputation and the events that created it lead to her confusing emotions. It will all come together soon. ;)

B