˗ˏˋCHAPTER FOURTEENˊˎ-

***

IT WAS HELL. And Wren hated how she didn't know how long all of this had been going on. By the looks of the scene in front of her (a husband chasing after his wife, who was being pulled away on a cart) it had been going on for a while. Her wrists burned from where the handcuffs had rubbed against her skin, and she lowered her head against the wall with a sigh that made her cough due to the lack of water in her system. They were in the middle of a bloody desert, and yet no liquids had been presented to them to quench their thirst.

Wren continued to watch the action unfold, feeling completely useless, and she squinted once the clouds began to darken, and thunder cackled in the distance as the boat with the civilians was pushed onto the water. Green fog began to cover the ocean, and she could feel her eyes widen in confusion. Soon, the longboat was covered with the mist, and shouting could be heard, before everything went back to normal, except for the fact that the group of people had disappeared into the fog.

"Get them up," a man commanded, and they were all lugged to their feet, and Wren tried her best to wiggle out of her restraints, but to no use. She could barley lift her arms up at that point, she was too weak, too hungry. Lucy was the first one to be put onto the stage. Wren shifted anxiously on her feet. Surely Caspian and Edmund had come up with some sort of plan? She had tried to think of anyway out, but there was none. It was up to them now.

"I bid sixty!" A man yelled from the crowd.

"I bid eighty!"

"I bid this is absolutely disgusting and ridiculous," Wren muttered.

"One hundred for the little lady!" Another hollered.

"One hundred and twenty!"

"One hundred and fifty," another bet.

"Any more bids?" The seller asked, and when nobody said anything, he hung a sign that read sold around her neck. He shoved Lucy to the side, and then grabbed Eustace. "And now, for this spine specimen. Who'll kick off the bidding? Come on, now. He may not look like much, but he's uh, strong."

"Yeah, he's strong all right," a familiar voice said from the crowd, and Wren immediately perked up. It sounded like Rynelf; one of the crew members who had helped her with sword fighting over the course of the past three years. "Smells like the rear end of a minotaur."

The crowd laughed as Eustace's face scrunched up. "That is an outrageous lie! I won the shook hygiene award two years running."

More laughter. "Someone make a bid! If not, this pretty lady is up next. Stop trying to escape," the man sneered in her ear. "My baton's got your back."

"How about you stick it up your arse instead?" Wren snapped, before she was roughly thrown onto the stage next to Eustace.

"Get them both, then!"

"I'll take them off your hands," another familiar voice spoke up, and Wren knew that one belonged to Reep. Her eyes scanned through the crowd for him, but she could barley see over the top of the seller's head. "I'll take them all off your hands! For Narnia!"

Ten men in cloaks suddenly pulled off the cloth, revealing crew members from the Dawn Treader. Wren instantly relaxed, but the feeling didn't last long as a battle broke out, and she was in the middle of it with no way to defend herself.

Something hard pulled her to the side, and she realized it was the seller. She kicked at him, only to wound up being smacked across the face. Anger bubbled up in her stomach, and she went to knee him right in the crotch, before a tanned hand was placed on his shoulder, and he spun around.

"Get your crudding hands off my wife."

With one swift fist in the face, the seller fell to the ground with a sickening crunch, and Caspian immediately stepped over him to check on Wren, who was staring at him, stunned. "You just said wife."

"No I didn't, I said fiancé."

"You said wife!"

"I said fiancé!"

"Did not!"

"Look, it's definitely not the best time, Wren," he pointed out, gesturing to the fighting, which had dialed down a lot, they were clearly winning. He gently lifted her hands up to undo the cuffs strapped around her wrists. He quickly picked the lock, and glanced up to meet her surprised expression. "What? I've just picked up a few things from you. Come on."

She smirked proudly as he lightly took her hand, and the two of them reunited with the others to walk to the ship. People clapped and cheered as they made their way back to the to the docking station, but a particularly loud pleading voice caught Wren's attention, and she turned her head to see a man she vaguely recognized rushing up to them.

"Your Majesty!" Drinian went to block him. "Your Majesty! Please, my wife was just taken this morning. I beg you to take me with you."

"I want to come!" A small girl in a pink dress declared, and she clung to her father.

"No, Gael, stay with your aunt." He turned back to Caspian. "I'm a fine sailor. Been on the seas my whole life."

Caspian shot a look to Wren, who nodded her head, and he turned back to the man with a grin. "Of course. You must."

They continued to walk, before an older man with a long grey beard shouted for Caspian, and Wren glanced to her king in confusion. He offered a sword that was crusted at the hilt, and silver at the blade, engraved with an ancient saying that was just barely visible. "This was given to me by your father," he said, and Caspian grimly took the weapon. "I've hidden it safely in the cave all these years."

"That's an old Narnian sword," Edmund realized.

"It's from your Golden Age. There are seven such swords, gifts from Aslan to protect Narnia. Your father entrusted them to us. May it protect you."

"Thank you, My Lord," Caspian said. "And we shall find your lost citizens."

***

Sleep did not come easily to Wren that night. With Caspian using one of the cots on the lower deck so Lucy could sleep in their bed instead, she found it awfully difficult to drift off without his arms tightly secured around her. Lucy's kicking didn't help, either.

So instead, she leaned over the edge of the boat, watching as how the stars danced in the reflection of the dark water, which stirred as a fish jumped out of it, distorting the white flecks of light momentarily, before disappearing completely.

"Couldn't sleep?" Caspian's voice asked from behind, but she didn't bother to turn around, he only appeared next to her shortly after.

"No," she was too tired from the day's activities to come up with a sarcastic response. "You couldn't either?"

"I was sleeping," he shrugged. "But then I heard these loud, obnoxious footsteps stomping up the stairs..."

She rolled her eyes. "I do not stomp."

"Well..." He started to argue, and Wren lightly smacked his bicep, the two of them snickering. "You do, sometimes. When you're mad."

"You're the only one who makes me mad enough to stomp, so it's your fault."

"Yeah, okay," he laughed. "Blame it on me."

"Why didn't you just tell me you didn't want to get married?" Wren asked suddenly, the question shooting from out of her mouth before she could stop it. "I would have been fine with waiting. It just feels like you've been leading me on this whole time."

"I didn't mean to make you feel that way," he admitted gently. "And I do want to get married. I just get...really nervous thinking about it, and whenever you brought it up I would just think of all the relationships that ended when they got hitched. I didn't want that to happen to us."

"Why didn't you just tell me that?" She breathed. "You made me think that I was like...not worth marrying or something."

"Wren," he turned to her, very seriously. "You're not like any girl I've ever met. You made me want to enjoy my life again. You're witty, brave, and you're the only person who hasn't treated me like I'm different because of my title, as if I really am a person too, regardless of my line of royalty. You've shown me from day one that none of those things matter to you. It's why I fell in love with you in the first place."

She grinned cheekily up at him, teasingly knocking her shoulder against his. "You loooove me?"

Wren saw him swallow as he gazed intently into her eyes. "I'm mad about you."

"You're really attractive when you get all sappy."

"Way to ruin the moment."

"I did no such thing. So what changed?" She asked after a moment of comfortable silence.

"What do you mean?"

"You said you didn't want to get married in fear that our relationship would fall apart. What changed?"

"I could see you," he started, much to her confusion. "From the cell we were in earlier. Standing on that stage. For a while there I really thought that was the last time I'd ever lay eyes on you. We had no plan. No weapons. No way out. I genuinely thought I lost you forever, and I hated it. I hated that I couldn't save you and that we could've never gotten married. When we were brought out, I realized that nothing is promised. I could've lost you then and there, and you would've thought I didn't want to marry you, but that wasn't true at all. I needed to make sure that you knew how I felt about you, and that's why I think I'm finally ready. That's what changed."

Wren stared at him in utter shock, not being able to form a singular word or thought in her brain. Caspian's lips lifted up into a handsome grin. "Have I actually made you speechless? That's a first. Normally all I hear is yapping from you-"

Wren didn't let him finish, instead, she hastily brought her lips to his, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck as he placed one hand on the side of her waist, and the other on her jaw as he tilted her face upwards to deepen the kiss.

"Oi, you two!" Someone yelled, and they sprang apart to see Reep staring at them, shaking his head in disapproval. "Some of us are just trying to patrol."

Wren frowned. "You're not on duty tonight."

"Uh-uh! None of that. Back to bed! Both of you."

Caspian chuckled, and Wren stuck her tongue out. "Fine. Dad." The two of them headed back downstairs, but she caught the sleeve of his shirt before they went into their temporary separate rooms. "I want a spring wedding. And the color scheme is going to be lilac and white. Also, the cake is going to be three feet high with a line of icing that has the shape of flowers drawn on each layer."

"Planned all this out already, have you?" She felt her face flush, but luckily it was dark, so he couldn't taunt her about it this time. Caspian brought her hand up to brush his lips against it. "As you wish."

"Good, because if you said no, I would've stomped off to bed."

"You're going to do that anyway."

Wren tried to hide her laugh with a scoff. "Bugger off."

authors note

wren said lemme pull an octavia blake rq

hi it's me, your host, karrigan, and today i'm coming at you with some poorly written romance scenes !!! this was a CORNFEST you're welcome.