Chapter Text
“Oh, beautiful Lady,” said the faun, who was most certainly making doe eyes at her instead of rifling through the archives like he had been assigned. “Might you dignify me with your gracious presence at the revel tonight?”
No. The answer was no. He was in the process of making Daphne’s life much harder. What was his name? Janus? Ah, yes, she recalled now—one of the many, many sons of Silvanus, son of Pan himself. A lesser scribe, nominally in the High King’s service in the project of renewing the Cair Paravel archives—but it was known that while Peter had been the one to commission the project, sorting through several-hundred-year-old documents half-rotted from the Winter and smeared with a healthy layer of dust and dumb mouse droppings would make him lose his mind faster than he could kill a giant (which was very fast).
“Master Janus, have you procured and prepared the census data from Swanwhite’s reign?”
There was a subtle, but extremely guilty, shuffling of hooves. “... No.”
“Then the answer is no.”
“Oh, good Lady, can you not truly revel in Bacchus’s presence for a day?” Janus’s voice was picking up a higher pitch. Oh, dear, her rejection had made him angry… for some reason. “He has not been sighted in our fair Narnia since—well, for many years! My fair Daphne, of the Western beauty that rivals the many stars in the sky, will you not join me in great appreciation of our fair Narnia?”
The soliloquy was punctuated by a flourishing bow from him, but Daphne remained unamused. “One would think you have been reading too much Calormene poetry,” she grumbled.
And the final straw: he put his arm on her shoulder. While this may have been meant for his own youthful folly, for he was but a faunling, one of many born after the Winter, Daphne only seethed. Her arm jerked at the sudden touch, and her quill pen—which was already a foreign accessory to her, as their use had only recently been imported from the Lone Islands—slipped, splotching a great mass of ink onto the report she had been drafting.
The door stirred as it opened, the dead wood scraping dully against the castle flagstones. Thankfully, blessedly, Janus fell silent as soft Human footsteps—for they were too soft to be of any other bipedal beast—echoed into the room. In the Cair, barring the Four and any foreign embassies that overstayed their welcome to linger during Narnia’s Midsummer Festival, there were only a handful of humans in residence at a time. Fewer, still, did they linger into the library archives. Daphne automatically said, “King Edmund, I must apologize that I have not yet prepared the last Swanwhite census report—”
“I am not my royal brother, Regent,” said the cold, feminine voice of Queen Susan. Daphne nearly jumped at the surprise of it. Several emotions hit her at once: surprise, dread, and an apprehensive loathing. Oh, so we are using formal titles now? Was she not even dignified with a ‘my lady?’ Or perhaps a ‘my fair Daphne,’ as a certain faun had been daring enough to say?
“Good morning, Queen,” Daphne said, chillingly. She did not turn around, nor dignify her Most Audacious Majesty any kind of magnanimous greeting except clutching her quill a fraction tighter.
There was a very tense silence for a moment in which Daphne could hear Susan tip-tapping her heels against the flagstones and slowly approaching. Janus, despite failing to understand the definition of the word “no” inevitably sensed that he would fare much better anywhere else in the castle. Or perhaps, the entire kingdom. “Er, the Swanwhite census records await my arrival! Please, ah, p-pardon me, fair Daphne. Your Majesty.”
He shot them both a nervous look, hooves trembling against the floor, and fled.
They languished in their uncomfortable tense silence for a count of ten. Daphne tried to concentrate on the text in front of her, but the words had become strangely blurred; she could only trace the swirl of the decorative borders at the edge of the paper with her eyes so many times before they ought to have bored holes into the pages.
“‘Fair’ Daphne?” Susan, who had long since mastered the perfectly blank loathing of royals, finally broke the silence. “A fortnight has not yet elapsed and you seek to forget everything already?”
“Oh, leave off,” Daphne said snappishly, surprisingly. Rarely did her temper flare, but she could feel it fizzling out from her roots and staticking up into her hair. “To what do I owe your magnanimous presence, Queen? I do hope your idea of a hobby isn’t baiting your subjects when they have real work.” As if it would reinforce her point, she jabbed a finger into the text of the page. “I ought to be rewarded for my due diligence! While Janus the faun and your Most Gracious Majesty dally with Bacchus, I hopelessly count half-rotted census records while entertaining interruptions from the most gracious queen of the east! Why, I believe you would be suited fine within the Tisroc’s halls of those beautifully brainless Tarkheenas!”
The moment those acerbic, senseless, and frankly instinctive words came out of her like a shockwave, regret flooded her mouth, tasting strangely like acid. All of those words held a granule of truth to them, but together they formed the damning portrait of the vain barbarian queen who cared not for the good of Narnia. They were the picture of a distinctly un-Susan-like figure, ones better left unsaid.
“Is that all?” Susan’s voice was icy. Daphne could’ve sworn she heard it quaver.
“Why, I am but a loyal subject of Narnia.” In a split-second, she had reared back her head, spinning out of her chair faster than breathing. “I wouldn’t dare interrupt the royal brooding of the royal solitude that our Gentle Queen deserves!” She was closer to Susan than she had been in a fortnight, so close that she could hear her unsteady breaths and squint into her pallored skin. Since when did she have eyebags that held the entirety of the Narnian treasury and their tax revenue for the next three seasons?
“Is that all you are? A subject of Narnia?”
Of course not. “I am also unwelcome here, as it seems. Far be it for me, humble lady of the aspen, to stand in your way of your litany of disdainable suitors. My apologies! They are but the most honorable men of the world, ready for you and your virtue while this humble dryad cannot do anything but watch! If you are so serious of seeing this to its completion, so be it.”
Daphne dropped the quill she had snapped onto the desk, heedless of the ink it spilled on her oh-so-carefully procured census records. With ink-stained fingers, she fumbled for the gold seal ring that was pressed under her shirtwaist. At some point, it had begun to hurt and wear angry red marks into her skin. The aspen tree was wrought in gold, its leaves set in emeralds for the brilliant green foliage of the western woods, and intertwined with the pen. It had been a gift from Susan and her siblings for their five years, the personal signet of the lady regent of Narnia. She had thrown it against the walls of her rooms the night of the explosive argument and screamed bloody murder, only to guiltily retrieve it from the soft green rugs and string it on a chain against her chest.
Now, she hurled it onto the table with the force of a veritable waterfall of fury, where it settled to a stop next to the pooling spill of ink.
“Your beloved Prince will never love you as much as I did.”
Like Janus, she turned heel and fled the room before she could hear Susan’s reply. All she could see in front of her was Susan’s frozen expression, perfectly blank, and the accompanying quaver in her voice.