Chapter 1

A cool autumn breeze swept off the ocean into the recuperating kingdom of Arendelle. A hooded stranger walked off a gangplank on to the docks. People stared if he didn't wear the hood. As he stepped off, he slowly raised his head to look towards the castle. This was his last chance. If this didn't work, he will have failed his mission. The stranger's stiff legs started towards the castle, with the constant thud of his boots on the cobblestones to accompany them to the end.

"Can we go work on our ice fort now? It's gonna melt by time we get out there." Anna had been pestering her sister for the past half hour to take a break from work so they could go work on an ice fortress they were building.

Elsa gave a tired chuckle. "It can't melt silly. It'll stay there until I'm done going over all these." Anna huffed and flopped back down on the couch in the study. At the age of twenty-one Anna's love of playing with her sister in the snow still hadn't diminished. One of their favorite things to do together now whenever Elsa had time, which was less these days, was to build ice fortresses. The fortresses had started as quite small and crude constructions first made of snow, since they used their hands to build them. Over time and with practice though, they had become larger and more intricate and were now made of ice that they sculpted. For the ones they wanted to save, they had a spot on the North Mountain close to Elsa's ice palace where Elsa would recreate them.

Thinking of the dwindling time she had to build ice forts made Elsa look resentfully at the seemingly endless stack of papers she had to go over. After the Great Thaw, there had been a time of peace in Arendelle, in which Elsa had reappointed most of the council to help establish ties with other countries. Arendelle had needed help standing up again after so many years in isolation. Everything had gone well. Arendelle now had agreements of peace and trade routes set up with several kingdoms, some of which had offered support to invade the Southern Isles. Elsa and the King of the Southern Iles however, had already come to terms of peace; both agreeing that the crime of assassination fell solely on Prince Hans, not the entire Southern Iles. Elsa had been encouraged that several kingdoms saw potential in her reign of Arendelle. Not only did positive official business take place during the year of peace, but some family business had also transpired. After Kristoff had proved he wasn't a member of Clan Jerkface like Hans and had gotten to know Elsa, Anna and Kristoff did indeed get married. And Elsa thought planning Anna's birthday had been stressful.

The peace, however, did not last forever. After about a year of smooth restoration, the peace was broken by an attack from Weselton. It had come unexpectedly but did not surprise anyone once they realized who had attacked them. It had been a short war thankfully, due to the help of some other kingdoms who had been cheated by Weselton and wanted justice. Still, it had been disheartening to everyone to receive an attack so soon after crowning a new leader. Elsa had been afraid of going into a war so soon with so little experience and it had apparently shown in the first few speeches she had given. Many people doubted Elsa could pull Arendelle through and some families left. This had done nothing to raise Elsa's or anyone else's spirits. Through many pep talks from Anna, however, and the support of the other kingdoms, Elsa ended the war and had the families retuning with their heads hung in shame. After the war, extra trade agreements had been proposed by the supporting kingdoms to help resupply one another, and were what the pile of papers now stacked on Elsa's desk were.

Elsa's expression darkened at the thought of the war. There had not been very many deaths in Arendelle, but that had been at the cost of a personal moral sacrifice. The hardest part of the war, for at least the royal family, was when Elsa and the council had decided that sending snowmen out on the battle field would be the best strategy and save more lives. It had been one of the few times that Anna and Elsa had had a real fight. Anna had thrown a book at Elsa when she had told her the decision. It had been a long and tiring fight that neither had come out of it in good spirits. The decision didn't change though, and Elsa had sent an army of snowmen to fight for Arendelle. Almost worst was when the survivors had to be melted, for they would have been dangerous to keep around.

Elsa sighed. She needed to step away from these memories. She got up and started to pace the study. Anna looked up and smirked as she watched.

"It works doesn't it?" she bragged. Elsa rolled her eyes.

"You didn't even mean to come up with it." A few weeks earlier, Anna had insisted that Elsa at least let herself have a long enough break to walk around the room twice. Elsa had argued and, in hindsight, probably lost more time arguing than if she had just done what Anna asked. To add insult to injury, it had helped Elsa recollect her thoughts and given her a minute to breathe. She had used the trick several times since and Anna had held it against her ever after.

When Elsa sat back down, she looked at the stack of papers and decided she'd had enough depressing flashbacks for that day. "Fine," she reluctantly resigned. Anna squealed with delight forgetting to be arrogant.

"I'll go get my stuff! Meet you out there!" She dashed out of the study. Elsa chuckled again. Nor had Anna's energy level diminished at all.

Anna was already working on the fort when Elsa arrived at the fjord. Elsa had created a peninsula of ice on the fjord behind the castle for them to make their forts. This fort was close to complete and they were adding finishing details now. Anna, due to her joy in making these forts, had taken an interest in architecture. She had taken such an interest in it, that she had taken a course in it and was now working with other architects to design some new additions to the castle and in Arendelle. Who knew? Her previous teachers certainly hadn't predicted it.

They drew the plans for the forts first now, so they could more easily see what they were building and Elsa could create the starting block in the right shape and size. This one was two stories high, the second story being a balcony that looked down onto the first and had a dome roof.

"Oops!" An ice scraper fell from above making Elsa look up. Anna was leaning over the railing where she had been carving out diamond patterns in the rails. "Sorry, could you hand that back?" Elsa sent the scraper back up on an icy wind. "You're getting better at moving things without blowing everything away," Anna remarked as she got back to work.

"You still need to work on not dropping things." Elsa smiled as she turned to a pillar in the wall and started experimenting with different snowflake patterns.

"Hey, at least I didn't drop the whole bag of tools this time!" Anna reminded her. Elsa laughed remembering the look on Kristoff's face when the bag of tools had almost landed on him and Sven who had come to see their progress.

"Where is Kristoff?"

"He's with his ice harvesters getting one more big load of ice before it gets to cold." Anna, Kristoff, and Elsa had decided to keep the ice harvesting going even after revealing Elsa's power to make ice so the ice harvesters would still have a job. And to be honest, Elsa didn't really want to be making ice cubes all day on top of going through endless piles of paper work.

The girls were still working on their fortress into the evening, when a servant came rushing down the hill.

"Your majesty," he gasped "someone is at the gates. He wishes an audience with you." The servant bent over trying to catch his breath.

"What's the hurry? Is something wrong?" Elsa asked in confusion. The servant stood up and Elsa caught him glance at her hands.

"It's complicated. You'll have to see for yourself." Anna and Elsa looked at each other, each face a reflection of the other's confusion. Nevertheless, they followed the servant back up the hill and into the courtyard. When they arrived at the gates, a few guards stood by a hooded figure.

"What's the matter gentlemen? Is this man a criminal?" Elsa addressed the guards standing by the hooded stranger. The man didn't look like he was trying to go anywhere.

"No, your majesty. Well, we don't know actually," one of the guards replied in uncertainty. Elsa turned her attention to the man in question.

"You requested my audience?" The man said nothing, but started to lower his hood. The sisters gasped. Under the hood was hair as white as snow and a face deathly pale. The eyes like shards of fractured ice stared into Elsa's.

The stranger then spoke in a voice devoid of all emotion, "I'm freezing. Can you help?"