This is Home

Estella opened her eyes slowly to a bright tent that was not hers. It took a few moments for her memory to flood back into her mind. She tried to move her hands and found them tied together with strong ropes; she suddenly found herself struggling to be free.

“What is going on?” she asked, her voice tired and weary.

She looked around the tent, and there must have been about ten soldiers surrounding her. Her breath caught in her throat. This wasn’t good.

“You are awake.” The voice belonged to Felix. He was dressed in Telmarine armor, and he paced only a few feet away from Estella. His voice was eerily calm, and it sent shivers down her spine. This wasn’t good. Felix couldn’t have found her. No, this was all just a bad dream and later Caspian would wake her and kiss her and tell her that it was all right.

“Let me go! What… what have you done to Caspian? Where is he? Where am I?” Estella spat out words, hoping to get all her answers at once.

“You,” Felix pointed at her. “You will never see him again. You are to come back to Telmar with me and we are going to be married.”

“I refuse. I refuse.” Estella glared at him. “I am already married.”

“To who?” Felix laughed. “Oh, is it your Prince friend? The one who ran away? No matter. He will be dead in a few hours.” Felix drew his sword.

Estella had seen swords before, but there was something so threatening in the way that Felix had pulled his out of its holder, that it made her shudder. There was a small, thin ray of sunlight that filtered in between the flaps of the tents, and it caught right on the metal of the sword.

“Your friend,” Felix pointed the sword at Estella, “Your husband, whatever you wish to call him… He will be here in a few hours to rescue you, no? And he won’t be smart enough to bring any of his army with him. It will be a stupid impulse decision that he will regret.”

“He’ll kill you,” Estella sniffed, tears in her eyes. “He won’t let you go through with this.”

“And then Miraz will kill your high king,” Felix laughed. “And your kingdom will be ours. And how nice it will be when our children—”

“Stop it!” yelled Estella. “Shut up. I won’t hear any more of it from you. Caspian will come; I know he will.”

Felix just laughed at her again.

* * *

Caspian was pacing in his tent, still holding the crumpled note in his hand. He wiped his eyes. Now was not the time.

He thought about going to Peter, but he knew that he was too engulfed in his duel with Miraz. And then he thought about going to Cornelius, but how would he help? And then he thought about going to Glenstorm the centaur, or Reepicheep and his army of mice, but it wouldn’t make any sense. Estella was now his, in a way, responsibility.

He grabbed his sword and snuck out to find his horse, only turning back to look at the How before riding off into the woods beside the Telmarine camps.

* * *

“Has anyone seen Caspian?” Cornelius came into the How, looking around. He was only met with some mice, a few dwarfs and Edmund and Peter.

“No, we thought that he might’ve been with you, or setting up some practice, or…” Edmund shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t really seen him since this morning. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Estella either.”

“They’re probably off doing married-couple stuff,” Peter snickered.

“Maybe,” Cornelius replied. “I just wanted to see. I do not want to be rude and go check on them in their tent… I guess they will appear when they want to.”