The morning light in Cair Paravel is soft and golden, casting a warm glow over the stone chamber walls and catching in the rich folds of the gown draped across your shoulders. It’s deep green velvet, embroidered with silver thread in winding patterns of stars and leaves—something gifted by the centaurs of the Western Wood, regal and unmistakably Narnian. The sleeves are long and fluted, trailing like ivy when you move. The corset is structured with boning carved from river pearl, laced up the back with moon-gray ribbon you’ve tried and failed to reach yourself.

You stand before the mirror, holding the bodice to your chest, lips pressed together as your fingers fumble at the laces behind you.

“Edmund?” you call, without turning. “Would you lace me up?”

There’s a pause. Then, the quiet thud of the door closing behind him, and the soft hush of his boots across the floor.

“I shouldn’t,” he mutters, half-hearted, more amused than truly reluctant. “But if I leave you to do it yourself, we’ll miss the whole council.”

You smile faintly.

He steps behind you and brushes your hair aside with careful fingers, lifting it gently over one shoulder. The back of your dress gapes open—bare skin between folds of velvet—and he exhales, almost silently.

One ribbon at a time, he begins to lace the gown closed. His hands are sure, steady, tugging each cross in place, fingers brushing the curve of your spine. He doesn’t rush.

“You know,” he says quietly, voice right at your ear, “you could ask one of the handmaidens.”

You meet his eyes in the mirror and raise a brow. “But then I wouldn’t have an excuse to keep you close.”

Edmund doesn’t answer. Not with words.

He finishes the last loop and doesn’t step away.

Instead, he leans forward—warm breath ghosting over your skin—and presses a soft kiss to your bare shoulder, reverent and slow. The velvet settles around you like a promise, but it’s his lips that linger.