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Edmund hates Turkish Delight, now.
He hates how it represents the White Witch to him now. He can feel her magic in him still. It swims in his veins like a particularly delighted thing; curling around the crooks of his elbows, and he swears he can hear her laughing at how he recoils. It bears down on him and talks to him about his betrayal and makes him wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just die.
He thinks back to Lucy's face when he'd denied Narnia.
That was a long time ago. Her face has never left his dreams. Night after night after night he dreams of the oncoming battle. He dreams — the sickening sensation of plunging a sword; Aslan's fiery, furious mane; Lucy's face, sad and betrayed and broken as she leans over him; Jadis laughing, cruel and high; Aslan's deafening roar.
Edmund is not scared of the battle that's coming. But the dreams still make him sick, and he lies awake in bed, tortured mind and tortured blood.
(Sometimes, at night, she croons to him. He hates how he almost turns to listen.)
The battle day approaches. Edmund walks around the faithful Narnian camp in the early throes of the morning. He doesn't know why it feels like he's saying goodbye, but he's made his peace with it. If a traitor must die to prove himself to Narnia, not only would he die, but he would water Narnia's soil with his blood and his last words. He'd give Narnia his all.
The Empress laughs in his head, and her magic rests heavy on his heart.
The battle is waging.
His sword clangs against her dagger. Weak, weak, weak, her magic thrums, weak little human boy. And he is tiring, sweat beaded on his brow and his arms aching. He's just a boy trying to be a man.
Jadis snarls and he rears forward at the sight of her teeth, all jagged edges and glints in the cold, sharp sun. He parries, he dodges, he misses the way Narnian ground curls up by his feet and tries to make sure he doesn't fall.
(Narnia knows her king, even if her king does not know himself.)
Alas. What mortal good is a mortal boy against a demon witch?
She plunges her dagger in and Edmund feels the tear even as stumbles and falls back onto forgiving moss.
And then there is a roar; an earth-shaking roar; a roar so furious that even Narnia trembles, along with Edmund's heart, and both hold onto each other like land and king and mother and son and father and daughter. Aslan leaps over and covers the distance between the battlefield and a cavern all at once, and then it is him against the White Witch and sun is blooming with warmth again.
Edmund is dying.
His coughs are hollow and his chest won't rise properly. He knows he's dying. He's content to die on Narnia, in Narnia. He only wishes the faint magic and the bitter taste of Turkish Delight on his tongue would die before he did.
Somewhere, Jadis falls.
And Edmund gasps, in pain, then in grieving joy at the searing burst of light in his heart. Jadis' chains fall apart. For the first time in weeks, Edmund's heart can breathe.