If the country of Arendelle thought the Westergaards of the Southern Isles punished Hans Westergaard for his dastardly behavior that one summer, they were in for a rude awakening.

Of course, that depended on what one considered punishment.

Hans definitely considered what he had to endure punishment, even if it wasn't the corporeal one that Anna Agnarrsdotter had deemed fit to give him.

Hans had twelve older brothers; he thought it laughable that two sheltered princesses sought to punish him by the public humiliation of parceling him back home in handcuffs with his tail tucked figuratively between his legs. Granted, they were no ordinary princesses; they were dangerous sorceresses wrapped in a thin veneer of social etiquette, kept isolated from the rest of the world by virtue of their geography. Hans had suspected that there was something wrong with the small country with its complete lack of an army and navy, the latter despite being surrounded on all sides by water. The instant descent into chaos the moment catastrophe struck was a telling sign of how much of their governance was for show only.

A fool he to try to gain control through a small window of opportunity and inadequate strategy.

Any humiliation they could think of had already been perpetrated to him in any variety of forms throughout the years. Truly, ignoring him and pretending he didn't exist had been the kindest trick his brothers pulled on him throughout his childhood-and thus the story he thought sanitary enough to share.

Of his twelve older brothers, six were no longer residing in Fuurstenberg, the capital of the Southern Isles:

Karl Walter, the King's other namesake, who had rescued a princess far away and had not returned in years;

Hermann, the younger twin;

Gunther and Johann, the sons of a previous marriage by the King's second wife, who also was the widow of King's cousin;

Dieter, the second Queen's first son to the King;

and Stefan, Hans' full brother by the same mother, the third Queen.

Wilhelm, who acted as Prince Regent ten years ago the King had a sickly spell and now acted as though he were bound to secede to the throne at any time, was the only one married and still in Fuurstenberg.

It was a constant full-on battle in the Palace and the surrounding grounds, and Hans could only blame the tranquil atmosphere of Arendelle for wreaking havoc with all he knew of court politics.

His father, King Walter Wilhelm the Third, was a bear of a man with appetites to match his size: he played hard, he worked hard, and he fucked hard-witness his multitude of sons and not a single girl among the geese, or so the legend went. The king had himself been the third of five brothers, son to a man with seven brothers. Hans had always known he wasn't special in any sense of the word, but by god, he wasn't going to let it end there.

The King's first wife was his second cousin by an arranged marriage, and Helga Van Hoensbroeck was a particularly homely, large woman with two large moles on her face. Rumor had it that the King had actually put a scarf over his wife's face on his wedding night to bed her.

His sons by her, Wilhelm, Karl Walter, and the twins Herbert and Hermann, all resembled her to a nicety. Wilhelm was fat and pompous, Karl Walter Hans remembered as harmless but similarly wide in girth, and the twins he could just about tell apart by the placement of the profusion of moles on their faces, although that was no longer difficult now as only Herbert remained in Fuurstenberg.

When Queen Helga was recovering from her birth of the twins, the King began his torrid love affair with his cousin's wife, who visited from the South East. Yasmin had slanting green eyes and masses of dark hair and her culture to explain her very suggestive clothing. She was a nobody, but the King noticed her bounteous figure and the fact she had birthed two sons to her husband. Tales passed down through the years had it that she adopted Otto in some sort of an attempt to show the King just how maternal and suitable she was to replace his wife.

She succeeded.

The King pulled a codicil from some aged texts and took a second wife. To appease his new and far more attractive wife, he built for her the Flower Palace, a place that rivaled Queen Helga's abode, which was just the Anterooms, a guesthouse of sorts, although it boasted some fifty rooms and was no meager estate in its own right. Queen Helga stayed secluded for the rest of her days, which only lasted for five years, which was how long it took for her opiates to kill her.

Queen Yasmin later gave birth to two boys, Dieter and Friedrich. Friedrich was lame, and Dieter was the wildest man to have walked the halls of the Palace. From a young age, he had no mercy on anyone weaker than he. Some said that Friedrich was made lame by his hands, and many a time did a pet disappear only to be found with its neck wrung or drowned or set fire to in suspicious circumstances leading back to Dieter. Even the King sighed in relief when he left on a quest to his mother's homeland and never returned.

After her marriage, Queen Yasmin disregarded her sons of her previous marriage, Gunther and Johann, both of whom were now married and had left the country long since. And Otto, her adopted son who was Hans' favorite brother growing up, was relegated to being a sort of poor relation. He was, as far as Hans could tell, the only brother not aiming to become King, at least not of the Southern Isles, because he was the only one without royal blood.

Queen Yasmin was so dissatisfied with her two sons by the king-the ones who could rightly ascend the throne through direct bloodline-that she tried all manner of tricks to birth more children, even, eventually, turning to witchcraft. It didn't end well for her, as the King, never one to be faithful in the first place, had her stuffed in a bag and dipped into the ice cold North Sea until she drowned or died of exposure.

Hans' mother was Brigitte Castell. She was the daughter of a courtier who caught the King's eye and as she was of aristocracy, soon parceled off as the third Queen, fifteen to the king's thirty-seven. Hans' older brothers were Stefan, Peter, and Georg, and he didn't like any of them. They had all been taken in by his mother's relatives when young and uninteresting to the King, so Hans wasn't close with any of them.

He was the youngest and was kept close to his mother. Whether because of jealousy or unfamiliarity, they all despised one another. Hans could, however, say with some pride that he negotiated the Court much better than any of his full brothers, having grown up there.

This was not to say that Hans hadn't known the second Queen in his lifetime. He had. King Walter Wilhelm was never one to overlook his possible options and once aware of the codicil on having two wives, he immediately set to work in making Lady Brigitte his third wife. Hans was only around eight years old when Queen Yasmin died. Queen Yasmin was only thirty-seven years of age.

Clearly, the Southern Isles was not a place of longevity.

Three days after he returned from Arendelle, the King had called for Hans to appear before him.

Not for the first time, Hans was glad that Johann, Queen Yasmin's second son from her first marriage, was long gone from the kingdom. That had been the reason his name was shortened to Hans in the first place. With thirteen royal sons (by birth or otherwise) running around the place, and a difference of seventeen years from the oldest to the youngest, names were bound to not be the only thing to run out.

Hans surveyed his father dispassionately as he waited to be addressed. The king was sixty-seven years old this year, a momentous age. In fact, he had been the same age as Hans was right now when he first married Queen Helga, rest her soul. His riotous living had not left him unmarked. The king was riddled with gout and pox and a bad inflammation of the lungs that left him immobile most of the time. His worst illness had been that bout ten years ago, when Hans was fifteen, the year when several of his brothers had conspired to make losing his virginity into a public affair.

Now that he thought about it, he had indeed given Anna a highly sanitized version of his life.

It was a rite of passage for all of them, the losing of their virginity. It coincided with other rites of the Southern Isles, including riding through the Dark Forest on a full moon, swimming across the Forbidden River with a necklace strung of fresh meat, and scaling Schwelleheilege, the Sacred Mountain, with a torch of fire.

Hans was indeed incredibly fortunate to have twelve older brothers. So far as he knew, the rites of passage hadn't been so difficult for Wilhelm, the firstborn. At the time, riding through the Dark Forest on a full moon was already considered the pinnacle of bravery. By the time Hans turned fifteen, however, the rites had been steadily increasing in difficulty and danger until he got the brunt of the worst possible tasks.

That was how old he was when he decided to visit the White Witch. At the time, he had thought surviving a distant hope and death of charges of witchcraft a piddling risk in exchange for the certainty of life.

But that was a tale to be reviewed at another time.

The king beckoned him closer, nodding to his council, who trooped from the chamber to leave father and son alone. The Ring of the Southern Isles had been moved from the first knuckle of the king's pinky finger to his forefinger, a clear sign he had lost weight. He had gained weight steadily his entire life until the past year, when the pounds melted away. The doctors had no idea why and ordered more foods to tempt his royal appetite. Herbs to reanimate his male needs. Revive his failing spirits. Nothing worked.

It was a temporary "resting of the body," they said.

Hans-and most of the inner Court-knew better: the king was dying.

Despite his failing health and age, the king's light blue eyes surveyed him shrewdly.

Hans knelt before the throne and kissed the ring.

The king waved him upright.

"You did not succeed in your quest of wooing the Queen of Arendelle," his father said flatly.

Hans did not speak. Nor did he quiver and shake in his boots. If he were sentenced to death, then so be it.

But somehow he didn't think such a thing would be happening.

"They dispatched a letter to inform Our Royal Highness of the treachery perpetrated in their country," the king continued. "The reason we have allowed a private audience was to learn of your deeds, in your own words."

"The Queen of Arendelle is a sorceress," Hans said flatly. "That is the reason behind their isolationism."

The king was silent. "What proof have you of this?"

"None, save eyewitness accounts," he replied. "Mine own eyes bore witness to her sorcery."

"And she has the country in her thrall?"

"She has mastered her sorcery. My guess is she lost control of her powers at her coronation and ran to the North Mountains to ask for guidance. While there, she has since become the greatest sorceress I have ever seen."

"What powers has she?"

"After coronation and receiving the crown and scepter of Arendelle, the Queen refused to entertain a diplomatic pact between their country and ours. When pressed by Princess Anna, the Queen lost control and caused the entire peninsula to be encased in snow and ice.

"The Princess Anna was completely unaware of her sister's sorcery and begged me to stay in charge while she pursued the Queen to the North Mountain. At the townspeople's behest and a certain Duke of Weselton, I led a troop up the mountains to confront the queen. The quest was successful, though she summoned a giant snow demon to rout us. Back at the castle, the Queen was kept in chains in the dungeon while the council deliberated.

"All were keen to depose the queen but without the fortitude to do so. I was appointed the knight errant to rescue their small country and handed the Sword of Arendelle to do so. Princess Anna also returned, seemingly having been cursed by her sister, but clearly intent on putting me under a new enchantment." Hans' jaw worked as he recalled the scene in the drawing room.

He could still remember the horror with which he had surveyed Anna's clearly otherworldly demeanor. A strand of her hair had been white since they first met, but this new and strange Anna was almost completely white-haired. It had been right in front of his nose, glaring him straight in the eye, and he had ignored it, because he had been taken by a slip of a chit. Enchanted by her lack of artifice when he had been surrounded by it since an early age.

He should have been more aware from the beginning, but he had been blinded. That charming and klutzy demeanor had been the artifice.

Kiss me, Hans. Kiss me now.

She started to ramble on about kisses, how he must, must, must kiss her at that very moment, pulling his lips to hers ever closer.

He had been about to do it too.

But every warning bell resounded in his head as everything in his brain sought to reject what was before him.

Sorcery, something had urgently whispered to him. Don't trust anything she says.

He had been misled by witchcraft before, been promised the world and discovered the treasure ephemeral. Hatred for sorcery did not begin to describe his feelings.

Even now, something inside him seized up as he recalled that moment and what had followed.

He hadn't killed her.

Why not?

To this day, he couldn't face up to his cowardice in that last moment.

He had rambled about his childhood for no reason. He meant to tell her about the name they gave him, the name that made him synonymous with heroism in his country. He was fairly incoherent. In his mind, he considered the possibility that Anna was only one of the Queen's pawns. It was possible. She was sweet and innocent. She was no match for Elsa. Still, it was something that he would only know when he destroyed the Ice Queen.

To this day, he couldn't remember the rest of his conversation with Anna in the drawing room.

Hans forced his fist to unclench and continued talking at his father at an even tone.

"I refused, and set off to execute the Queen, when the Princess somehow appeared and broke the sword with only a touch of her fingers before becoming completely encased in ice."

As expected, his father's eyebrows flew up into his hairline. "Broke the sword?"

Hans' teeth were clenched in the memory. "Shattered it." If ever he had doubted Anna incapable of witchcraft, that was the moment his doubts were laid to rest. He was not called the Witch Killer of the Southern Isles for nothing.

"It is indeed sorcery," his father said, giving his head a little shake as if he, too, could hardly believe this tale. Hans could not, even though he had been there and had run through the memory again and again in his mind.

"You did not execute the princess, then," said his father, and it was almost a question.

"I did not," Hans replied, and stated the same reason he had been telling himself during the entire trip back. "The winter suddenly ended, as soon as it started, and the Queen-demonstrated remorse."

The king frowned, and Hans knew that his father found his leniency weak. He continued: "As soon as the en masse saw the thaw, they too were inclined to forgive their monarch."

The king waved a hand in acquiescence. He understood well the political pressures of being a public figure. There was nothing more powerful than the masses.

"This younger princess," the king said. "She must be even stronger than her sister in power. After all, it sounds as though she were the one who finally brought an end to the Queen's Winter."

Hans had not wanted to voice this thought aloud, so he did not speak.

"What then?" asked the king.

"It is clear to me now," Hans said slowly, "that the two princesses had some sort of falling out prior to the coronation. I was but a bone of contention between them," he said, unable to help the bitter tone in his voice. "When the younger princess encased herself in ice, the Queen voiced her sorrow. Then Anna-Princess Anna returned as pristine as ever. Unharmed."

"An amazing tale!" the king said, adjusting his seat and looking as exhilarated as he did when seeing a beautiful woman. "She encased herself in the ice. The younger princess."

"I was myself stunned as anything. I had believed her-innocent and at worst a pawn for sorcery."

"And she was unharmed?"

"Emerged from the block of ice as though a butterfly from a cocoon. Even the Queen was shocked to tears at this show off powers."

"Was that when they denounced you?"

"Oh, the council did that," Hans said with a mirthless smile. "With the two reunited and the Ice Queen back on her throne, what choice had they but to throw all blame on the hastily named regent and ban him from their shores forthwith? I was dragged immediately to the dungeons. Were it not for the celebration afterwards to proclaim the princess's powers, you would not have a thirteenth son today."

"I would not believe a word of it, except that tales of the Great Freeze has reached even this far south. Our trade relations with Pellandia and Roechesling has suddenly ground to a halt because half their fleets were decimated in the North Sea freeze, which has never happened as far back as anyone can remember. Especially not in the middle of summer."

"Yes," Hans said faintly. "As you say."

"And they did nothing further than lock you for the duration of your journey back," the king mused.

"They are not-a well-regulated country. Only a few dozen guards at the castle and most of the staff for the coronation were seasonal workers from the village. It seems to be only luck that they have survived without attack thus far." Or, of course, something far more sinister.

"What advice do you have for us regarding Arendelle?" the king asked, having regained his composure.

"Kill them," Hans said, steeling himself against a pair of bright blue eyes the color of a cloudless summer sky, a laugh that felt like a warm breeze on his skin, and a touch that made him crave what he shouldn't. He looked down at his hand and forced his white knuckles to unclench. "If ever they breach our shores."

"So be it," the King of the Southern Isles proclaimed. "For it shall be known that we do not countenance sorcery, nor foolish accomplices to sorcery, whether out of fear or otherwise. So shall it be that any citizen of Arendelle is to undergo an immediate trial on grounds of witchcraft if they attempt to breach our borders and summarily executed if found guilty."