Elsa's fingers worked deftly through her white-blonde hair, reforming the braid that she had taken out the night before. In the mirror her pursed lips reflected the stress of the last months. Though it was worlds better than the concealment of her powers, carrying the defense of Arandelle on her shoulders was a burden of its own.
It was only in the last week that she had come back to the castle. Arandelle had only now experienced a respite from assault by the neighboring kingdom of Dorian. Elsa had travelled to the eastern border, where she had turned back wave after wave of enemy soldiers with ice walls and driving storms. Finally, they seemed to retreat. Her generals lauded her as a hero, the savior of Arandelle. Never before, they said, had a monarch ever waged war with no casualties on her own side.
But Elsa was exhausted, and now that it was tactically safe to remove herself to her castle she had done so immediately. Ranks of soldiers guarded the ice walls in the east, and she was recuperating, collecting her strength.
Elsa hesitated, eying the rouge. How sunny it made her look; summery almost, like her sister Anna.
Anna had been married to Kristoff for two years now, and the two of them were enjoying marital bliss. When the invasion began, Elsa had persuaded them to go and stay with the trolls. The farther from danger her sister was, the better. Thankfully Kristoff agreed.
The candle on the vanity sat unlit, and she didn't light it. Perhaps her lonely years had grown in her an unhealthy tolerance for semidarkness. Or perhaps she feared fire. She wasn't sure. Fire was strange to her—a waking, living heat. It was the antithesis of her powers, and sometimes she wondered if it was a type of magic all its own. Strange how all of Arandelle depended on it for light and heat. Especially heat. Elsa had always found a sort of weakness in the idea of being dependent on heat.
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in," she said absently.
The door clicked and a maidservant entered the room, shivering from the chill. A new hire; Elsa didn't recognize her. Curly dark hair and a pouted lip were reflected in the mirror.
"Hello." Elsa nodded. "What's your name? I don't believe we've met."
"Lydia, your Majesty."
"Ma'am will do." Elsa lowered her brush to the table and reached for the rouge pot. "What have you come for?"
"I've come for your laundry, but… may I light this, ma'am?"
"I suppose."
Elsa kept an eye on the maid in the mirror as she approached from behind. How did she intend to light the candle? She wasn't carrying anyth… except a knife. Elsa whirled, unleashing a frosty blast from her palms.
Ice shards pounded the wall in a horizontal line. The assassin had staggered backward from the impact, but the shards only clung to the front of her dress. Under that bodice, no doubt, was something heavier.
"Give up now," growled Elsa. She could feel the fear, pushing the ice to her fingertips. It longed to escape—though she was able to control her powers now, they still had a life of their own, like a beast that could be tamed, but not caged.
The assassin sneered, again lunging forward with the knife.
An ice shield grew between them in the space of a blink, and the knife hit it with a thud, lodging in its surface. Elsa was standing now, holding on to the back of the chair. She could feel the ice veneer spreading across the floor beneath her feet.
The assassin tugged her knife free and crouched behind the glassy wall.
"Give up," repeated Elsa. "I don't want to do this."
"Fool," snarled the woman. "My orders are to kill or be killed." With a running leap she vaulted over the ice shield.
Elsa was barely out of the way in time. As she ducked out of the way she threw out icicles point up from the floor, but somehow the assassin avoided them and landed on her feet. In a nearly subconscious effort, icicles were growing from the walls and ceiling. Stalactites and stalagmites—for a moment Elsa feared she would impale them both.
She had put it off long enough. She must do what had to be done. Unleashing a forceful blast, Elsa drove the oncoming assassin backwards, against the icy spikes on the wall. They stretched out, as if eager to meet their victim.
Elsa closed her eyes, but she couldn't help hearing the woman's final strangled scream.
She struggled to calm her racing heart. In a state such as this, she found it difficult to retract more than a little of the ice. At the moment, her emotions could hardly be described as love.
Unable to melt the icicles, she opted to clear a path to the door with brute force instead. When she finally opened it, servants were standing in the hall. They'd been summoned by her attacker's scream, but now some of them stared at her like they were seeing her powers for the first time again. She looked down. Somehow her dress had become streaked with blood, and the assassin's body was visible through the open door.
Elsa ignored them, looking only for only one face. Finally she found it.
"Gerda?"
The matron nodded.
"I need to speak with my advisors."