"Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, you are hereby charged with high treason against the kingdoms of Arendelle, the Southern Isles, and Weselton."
The shackles were so cold against Hans' wrists. The words of the king of Arendelle settled, lifeless as snowflakes, into the silence of the prison cell.
"Your Highness, I wish to see Princess Elsa," was the only thing Hans said. It was the only thing left to say.
The king's hands tightened into fists, and for a moment Hans thought that he was going to strike him. But then he shook his head, and his eyes glazed over with pure regret.
"No. My daughter will not be seeing you again."
In the end, Hans was forced to admit that it had been executed brilliantly.
The morning after his imprisonment, his father had had him brought before the royals of Arendelle to listen as he told them all about his smart but unstable youngest son, to whom he had always given either too much or too little attention; who had never been the same since his mother's untimely death; who had taken some important legal documents from his brother, boarded a ship, and sailed to Arendelle one fine day, with his concerned father following him just out of sight. Hans had seen the disbelief in the king and queen's eyes, amusement even at this old, fat babbling man, and he had dared to hope.
But that was before his father brought out the evidence.
A letter to an assassin, considered to be the master of his art in certain circles. A contract for just one job: the death of a princess. It was written in Hans' own handwriting, using the sumptuous blue ink he enjoyed using, and bore a perfect replica of his signature. Every detail had been perfect, from the sweeping way he crossed his 't's to the almost invisible dot he always put in the top right of his signature. His father had even managed to find someone to play the assassin – a sinewy young man with three fingers and all his teeth missing, limping between two prison wardens and bleating the words he had been taught to say on the rack with deranged animal eyes.
Yet not even the 'assassin' had unnerved Hans as much as the marriage contract.
"Unfortunately," his father had explained with all the delicacy he could muster, "my son has committed grave crimes not only against his own kingdom and yours, but also against the kingdom of Weselton. For you see, by seeking your daughter's hand in marriage, even if it was for the evil purposes you have just witnessed, he violated a contract that I made with His Majesty the King of Weselton after the war ended: that my youngest son would marry his eldest daughter, Princess Rosalind."
Princess Rosalind. She had been a willing playmate for Hans – and an even more willing research partner for certain unmentionable experiments which Hans had wanted to perform after he first realised that having a girl touch him really wasn't as gross as he had once thought. She spent hours every day working her hair into gravity-defying curls, wrote poems about things she didn't quite understand, and squeaked like a mouse when startled – utterly endearing, and utterly boring. Hans had not seen her for two years, for there had been more interesting women to occupy him closer to home, but this...
"It was the best match the girl could have hoped for," his father had said, "what with the war and all. Of course it is but a trifle, but due to its delicate nature, it should be handled by the parties involved—"
"I wish to object." Hans had barely been able to force his teeth to unclench. "Until today, I had no idea of this contract's existence."
His father had looked him in the eye and laughed.
"So that's your defence, is it now? You didn't know? I bet you didn't know you were going to murder Princess Elsa either?"
"You're lying, Father." Hans had wondered why his voice sounded so calm. "Look the king and queen in the eye and tell them that you're lying. Tell them who forged those contracts for you. Tell them how you tortured an innocent man into madness. Tell them how you sent me here to seduce Princess Elsa, to leave a little something growing in her belly as though we're nothing more than dogs in heat, tell them—"
His father had slapped him.
"You swine! You lying swine! I should've pulled out of your whore of your mother when I had the chance!"
Hans had wanted to scatter his father, the king and queen of Arendelle, and all the guards as though they were nothing but a pack of cards. He had wanted to scream with laughter and claw the soft wobbling flesh of his father's throat into bloody strips. But the shackles had been so cold and heavy around his wrists...
Only when the king and queen had allowed his father to escort him to the dungeons had he finally forced himself to ask "Why are you doing this?"
His father had paused with his hand on the door, looking Hans in the eye for the first time that day.
"One day, you'll grow old and rich and fat. You'll learn the trick to sending a thousand men to their deaths in the morning and sleeping like a baby all through the night. You'll go through so many queens and whores, you won't be able to tell the difference anymore. You'll watch them pop out more children than you ever wanted and bring them to you like they're doing you a favour. And then you'll understand that life really isn't as precious as you once thought. Not your own. Not your thirteenth son's."
The door clanged shut, and Hans found himself in darkness.
"Your Highness." The guardsman's voice echoed through the throne chamber. "Queen Elsa of Living Snows and Burning Skies."
The snowmen fighting on the ice-slicked floor stopped and turned their heads stupidly towards him.
"Small man in the way!" the enormous one crouching by the throne roared. "Small man leave now!"
Enveloped by the gargantuan ice throne she had built in a fit of boredom, Elsa rose to her feet. The guardsman had put her in a good mood by using her favourite title. Even though she might never see Arendelle, she supposed she still had to be Queen of something.
"Relax, Olaf," she said, patting the snowman's huge head. "He wouldn't interrupt if it wasn't urgent." She waved her hands and a glittering cage trapped each of the fighting snowmen, causing them to growl in indignation. "Tell me, Guardsman, why have you come to me at this hour?"
She never bothered learning their names. Her father would not have approved – but he never came to see her anymore.
"Your Highness." He started across the throne room floor, slipped, fell against a cage containing an exceptionally large snowman, sprang back in terror, and somehow managed to regain his balance. "There is... a visitor for you outside."
"A visitor, eh? What is he, a spy? An assassin? I could really do with a spy or an assassin right now. I'm getting so awfully bored..."
"No, Your Highness. He came here alone and demanded to see you. He bears the banner of the Southern Isles. We tried to convince him you weren't here, but he wouldn't be convinced..."
"Bring him in," said Elsa, without really understanding why.
In his cell under Castle Arendelle, Hans sat on his bunk and thought.
When he could think no more, he got up and walked, measuring out mile after mile by the cold stone walls.
When he could walk no more, he lay down and slept.
And when he could sleep no more, he punched the walls until his knuckles were too slick with blood to continue.
How stupid; how naive he had been! A child who fancies himself a man when given a wooden sword with a blunted edge! How could he not have seen that his father would predict every last thing he would do? Loving plots and intrigues, but not being able to see beyond your own childish pride?
The first pawn moved in a game of chess is never the one destined to become a queen, he thought bitterly. The first pawn is nothing but a sacrifice. A lamb whose blood is spilled to mark the path of greater pieces.
But who were the greater pieces?
What game was the Mad King of the Isles playing?
The guards did not mistreat him. They brought him his meals – which were decent, he supposed, by prison standards – twice a day, and when he asked for a pen and paper or water to wash his face, they never refused.
But, just like the king, they would not let him see Elsa.
Hans knew that he could not let himself stagnate. Pressing on the rough floor, feeling almost horrified at how malformed his handwriting looked, he wrote Elsa a letter. He explained how his father had framed him. He reminded her of the dinner in the rose garden and the ride through the mountains and how the wind had whistled through the birches when he told her that he loved her. He even managed to make an envelope and seal it with a few drops of dirty white candlewax.
He gave it to the guard who came with his breakfast. The man nodded and marched out of the cell, locking the door behind him. Only then did he dare to raise the letter to the bars, take a box of matches out of his pocket, and set it alight. His eyes were cold, almost sorrowful, but he knew that Hans could only watch, and that knowledge pleased him.
Don't cry, Hans told himself as he watched his hope flare up in orange tongues and flutter in grey ashes to the ground. If you cry, I'll scratch your goddamn eyes out.
"Let me see Princess Elsa," he told the guard who brought him another meal (he could no longer tell which one it was). It had become a mantra to him; a prayer repeated by a dying man even when he no longer understands his own words. "You can't hide her from this world. She will be Queen someday. She needs to learn to handle cases like this by herself."
"It is not the world we wish to hide her from," said the guard. "It is men like you."
God, how they love their little girl...
The next time his cell door opened, the man who entered was not a guard.
"Peter," he said, not sure if he was dreaming and not quite caring. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, Hans. I wish I could ask you the same thing."
Peter was the seventh son. He was not very much older than Hans, and he was the only brother whom Hans had ever considered to be a friend. He had been born into a position where he knew that some had it worse than him and some had it better, and that had almost, but not quite, made him kind.
"Well, Pete, unfortunately I can't offer you a chair, but do sit down on the bed. So tell me, why are you here? Did the whole family come out to watch little Hans and his circus?"
"No, it's only me and Alfonse. I know you and him never got along, but rest assured, he won't be coming to see you.
Hans laughed bitterly. "Of course Alfonse came. He wouldn't miss a chance to see my face get rubbed in the dirt for all the world. But you, Peter? I'm disappointed in you."
Peter did not smile as he sat down beside Hans, dusting the filthy sheets with a look of disgust.
"Actually, Father didn't want me coming down here either. I came to help you."
"Help me? If you really want to do that, just open that door and let me walk out. Otherwise you're wasting your time."
Peter sighed. "I'm afraid I can't do that. But what I can do, is offer you a few words of comfort. In two days' time, you will have your trial. The royals of Arendelle and Weselton will be there—"
"Wait. You mean to say that Rosalind will be there?"
"Yes, she will be, but—"
"Damn it!" Hans groaned. "And what will I do then? I do feel sorry for the girl, I really do, but—"
"Hans, listen to me! I don't have much time. The point is, you won't have to do anything. You will most likely be found innocent. And even if they do find you guilty, I promise you that by the time that trial is over, you will be a free man. And after that, you will live like a king for your troubles."
"Live like a king? I'm sorry, but I just can't see Father even considering that."
"Of course I can't make you believe me, Hans. I wish I could just tell you exactly why you're imprisoned here. I wish I could tell you what will happen at that trial. But I just can't. Too much hangs on all this. One day, you will believe me when I tell you that this is the beginning of the biggest event you or I will likely ever see in our lifetimes..."
"Oh, so you say I'm making a noble sacrifice for a cause I don't even know about?" It hurt unbearably to clench his fists, but Hans did it anyway. "Damn you, Peter, for once in my life, I actually had something! Is that really so much to ask? Does it really make Father feel that good when he takes it all away? And you, you're just as bad as him. I bet he sent you here. Or was it Alfonse? I know how much they love to see me squirm. So here's my challenge to you: stop speaking in riddles, and tell me exactly why all of this is happening. I'm a big boy. Heaven knows I can handle another boot in the face better than you or Alfonse or Father."
Peter's voice sounded genuinely sad, but his eyes were as cold and distant as Elsa's had been on that first day. "I'm sorry, Hans. But that really is all I can tell you. Just hold out for two more days. You will be rewarded, I swear."
"Well, I see how it is then." It was odd, what effect pure rage had on the mind. Hans felt like a blade tempered by fire. "Solve the puzzle and win the right to be part of this goddamn family. I'm sorry, Peter, but I'm not going to play like that anymore. If you have nothing more to tell me, get out. And if you don't, I'll make you wish that you had."
As he looked at the door and then at Hans' fists, crusted with dried blood, Peter seemed to deflate. He suddenly looked even younger than Hans – a lost boy who had come to offer another lost boy too little, too late.
"Hans... I'm your brother, I don't mean you any harm..."
Hans threw his head back and laughed.
"Brother? I'm sorry, Peter. But I'm sure you'll understand when I say that that word doesn't mean anything to me anymore."
The man Hans had once loved turned away, and left him alone with the silence.
Elsa could barely resist climbing onto Olaf's shoulders to get a better look at the man walking towards her throne.
The icy floor of the cave was treacherous. The snowmen sniffed and roared from inside their cages, dislodging the icicles that always grew on the ceiling. Two guards marched on either side of him, their halberds aimed at his throat. And yet he strode on, never turning his gaze away from her.
He was tall and sinewy, not old but not young either. He moved with graceful deliberation even when trying to find his footing, and the lines of his face and his brown hair were pure order. He must have been handsome in his youth, and he still would have been, if not for the furrows in his brow and the creases under his eyes brought on by the constant need to command. In his hand he held a golden flag with two blue lions locked in combat – the emblem of the Southern Isles, Elsa remembered from somewhere.
"I must say, stranger, I admire your courage." Elsa liked how her voice echoed through the chamber, making the icicles clink together and the snowmen growl and shake their bars. "Those who came before you thought they could take me by surprise. I would suggest that you ask them if I was merciful, but I'm afraid they're in no condition to answer."
Meanwhile, the stranger had crossed the floor and begun his ascent of the ice steps leading to Elsa's throne. He had a stately gait, just like a king's; just like her father's. Perhaps her father would have liked him – in fact, she could already picture the two of them sitting in the King's study, drinking dark wine and pushing tiny wooden armies this way and that as they made terrible world-weighted decisions. And yet, as he mounted the platform on which her throne stood, she could almost feel him trembling with fear. It was strange, Elsa thought, to see a man so like her father so afraid of her. The people of Weselton; their king in his smashed golden carriage; the guards she had executed and the spies she had tortured to death had also been afraid. But this one's fear was different...
"Princess Elsa of Arendelle." Blue and white reflections glimmered in his eyes. "I am Prince Albrecht, heir to the kingdom of the Southern Isles. I have searched for seven years, and now I have found you. God have mercy, I have found you..."
Olaf growled and cracked his knuckles. Elsa felt herself shrinking back into the throne, and for just one moment, she forgot to be the Queen.
"Why? Answer me, or I'll release my children!"
"To give you this," said the stranger, and laid the blue and gold flag at her feet.
A/N: So sorry about the long delay! Work got pretty hectic, and after that, I was having lots of problems with the site. I promise not to stop writing until I finish the story. And you know, it's pretty close to the end already...
Next chapter will have a lot of Elsa to make up for the delay.