Kings & Saints ➢ Peter Pevensie [3]

Chapter XXV - The Haunting

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"Take the very, breath you gave me

Take the heart from my chest

I'll gladly take her place if you'll let me

Make this my last request."

Don't Take the Girl

Tim McGraw

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Chapter XXV - The Haunting

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Edmund had no response. I called out for him again. He blinked but said nothing. The surrounding medics glanced our way but did not stop what they were doing. I slid forward in the bath, ice scattering around me as I reached for him.

"Edmund, are you alright?"

A drop of water dripped onto his skin before my fingers brushed his wrist, and he attacked. Both hands wrapped around my neck and forced me under. My lungs screamed, instantly attempting to expel the water. It was a feeling I wished to never know again. My hands desperately grabbed the sides of the basin, trying to pull myself up into the oxygen-rich air.

At my peak fitness, I could have matched Edmund's strength. After a thousand three hundred years with no nutrients and softened tendons, I was equivalent to a toddler in his hands.

I'd started kicking my feet the moment I was forced under, making a great deal of noise and disturbance. Why wasn't anyone helping me? Hadn't others seen the events going on? I saw Edmund through the bubbles and waves, his face filled with hate and determination. I dug my nails into his wrist. The water in front of my eyes began to streak red. Nothing changed. I screamed in panic. The only thing that changed was the blackness starting to take over my vision.

The first time I inhaled water in the river, all I remember was how cold everything was. My skin, my lunges, even the metal on my neck. I was so panicked the idea of inhaling water seemed natural.

The second time, I was blacked out. Truthfully, I remember nothing beyond causing the explosion and then waking up to find my father waiting for me.

Now the darkness came to swallow me whole, I forgot that I had powers at all. I was the frail girl that fell into the river and needed a human body to save her.

This would be the first time I truly remember the act of drowning and the pain of inhaling water because my body would not allow me to hold my breath any longer. A reaction I didn't know your brain forced in an attempt to find any source of oxygen. Similarly, as the darkness crept in my brain searched for light, erupting into a flash of lighting. Sizzling through the water almost instantaneously.

Edmund's hands released and I shot out of the tank. Using every bit of my energy to throw myself out onto the floor. Despite wanting nothing more than full lungs of clean air, I had to be relieved of the water in its place first. I landed in a wet puddle, throwing up all the water onto the ground. Then I inhaled so deep my eye burned. My limbs were too weak and oxygen deprived to hold myself up so I laid on my side, throwing up water again.

That fact, despite my agreement with the temperature,  my blood felt cold.

I hadn't even known I was crying. The water absorbed all my tears as it would have absorbed me.

I laid on my back letting my head fall to the side, to see Edmund who was unconscious on the ground. I had no control over that bolt of lighting. Its strength could have been anything from a single volt to the full strength of a thunderstorm.