Chapter Twenty

Disclaimer: I neither own the rights to Disney, Frozen, the Disney universe nor any of its associated media, derivatives or products. I do not profit from this work.

A/N: Alright, folks, this is pretty long chapter; I hope you enjoy it! As a note, the song that the boys are singing in Agnar's memory is "Nul ar det Jul Igen," a common Danish children's carol. A video can be found here:

www. youtube watch?v=NVFLrv1ih1w

Also, the lullaby I originally imagined Kristoff singing was this one:

www. youtube watch?v=vSfkeTpXYhE

HOWEVER, I can't deny that I fell in love with the Northern Sámi version of "All is Found," so here's a video for that. Choose whichever one your imagination favors. :)

www. youtube watch?v=9yGMgR9XbJY

(Remove spaces for both; add in the dot-com-slash after "youtube.") Hope you all enjoy!

The castle was dead quiet, the walls lit faintly by the crescent moon outside the shuttered windows. Along the patterned carpets crept a lone figure, footsteps nearly silent and breath inaudible.

King Agnar took care to walk with precision, avoiding hardwood floors as much as he was able for fear of them squeaking and trying to step lightly as he passed by the guest rooms. Despite his caution, however, the greater part of his mind was devoted to thought.

This now was two shards collected; the second was a blazing crimson like his own, glowing so brightly he was almost afraid the pair would melt the little silver box from the inside out. The king was still not permitted to take use of the shard he had been lent, and this irritated him greatly. He did not enjoy being told when and how to use what was rightfully his. It was, perhaps, a habit; after all, until his father's death, he had been practically forced to beg from the king for even a few gold coins to use to his own amusement. His father was never a generous man by any means; strict and stingy he'd been, and loathe to let go of even a single copper øre. His mother, on the other hand, had been nothing but generous; unlike many of the court ladies, she had never been too proud to wear the same dress twice, and in fact rarely bought new clothes at all. Though the king had granted her a monthly allowance, Agnar couldn't recall a single instance in which she'd spent it on novelties or trivial matters; instead, she'd donated nearly every krone to feeding and caring for the poor of the area. She had been known throughout the Isles for her generosity and kind disposition, especially around Christmastide. It was, Agnar knew now as an adult, due to a weak-willed disposition...yet he could never quite bring himself to look down on his mother for it.

Christmastide…it had always been her favorite time of the year. A memory flitted itself through his mind, and a fond smile he could not keep from touching the corners of his lips.

"-Men det var inte sant

Och det var inte sant

För däremellan kommer fasta!"

The family broke into applause and laughter, Agnar included. His mother glanced back from her position at the piano and smiled, emerald eyes sparkling.

"Beautiful as always, mother," the crown prince said, standing to walk up beside her.

"Uh-huh!" a little voice piped up. Agnar glanced back and found he was looking at a pair of spring-green eyes. It was the youngest of his brothers, little Hans, who was sitting happily at the foot of the Christmas tree. "You play very good, Mama."

"You mean, 'you play very well,'" the queen admonished kindly. The boy grinned toothily and nodded. "Alright, what shall I play next?"

"Deilig er Jorden!" the cry was unanimous from the children, with the youngest of the voices the loudest. Agnar smiled as his mother flipped the pages of the old music book.

"One, two," his mother murmured, and then started in. "Deilig er jorden,

Prektig er Guds himmel,

Skjønn er sjelenes pilgrimsg-"

Her voice broke off oddly as she struck a strange chord, and Agnar glanced over. "Mother?"

The queen had ceased to play and was staring off disjointedly, her mouth open. Her hands were shaking on the keys. "Mother, are you alright?" Agnar asked, concerned.

Her green eyes flicked to his. For a moment, they locked, and then she let out a little gasp, and swooned backwards off the bench.

"Mother!" He caught her before she could strike the ground. Her eyes were closed, her skin felt cool to the touch. The prince hurriedly searched for a pulse, his own heart pounding. The others were panicking; they crowded around and shouted in alarm, unsure of what to do.

"Mama!" a terrified voice shrieked over the din. Agnar looked up and saw a frantic Hans kneeling across from him, grasping at the queen's wrist with white-gloved hands. "Mama, you're scaring me, wake up!"

Her eyes fluttered open, dazed. "Hans…?"

"Mother, what happened?" Agnar demanded.

"I- I don't feel well, I..."

"Helge, get Father," he ordered. "Gunnar, find the court physician!"

His mother gripped at his hands weakly, and Agnar found that he had to fight to keep his own from shaking. "It's alright," he found himself saying automatically, "You'll be alright, Mother, just hold on…"

The smile had faded from his face. Yes, that was the day she'd fallen ill. After that, she'd been confined to bed for weeks on end, until when, on the dawn of Christmas Day… His hands curled into fists. His mother had been the one bright spot in an otherwise unhappy childhood. And that one good thing, that one perfect part of all his life, had been stolen from him by a worthless, runty thief-

"Hello!"

He jumped about two feet in the air and whirled around, already reaching for his sword. A small, lumpy something was moving towards him. As it stepped into a chink of moonlight, the southern king let out a low sigh, still breathing like a bull. It was just the queen's strange snow-creation. "I'm Olaf, and I like warm hugs!" the snowman said with outstretched arms and a grin twice as wide.

"You," the king muttered, taking his hand off the hilt. "Don't you sleep?"

"Oh no, I can't," the thing—Olaf—said cheerfully. "I just sort of wander the castle at night, watch people sleep, that sort of thing."

The king raised an eyebrow. Creepy. "…I see."

"So! Where're ya headed, huh?"

"Er—out. To meet a friend."

"Oh, I have lots of friends!" Olaf said happily. "I'm friends with Anna and Elsa and Kristoff and Sven and Hans-"

"Hans?" Agnar interrupted, snorting condescendingly. "Who would want to be acquainted with him?"

"Well, I would! Hey," said the snowman, as an idea dawned on him. "Would you like to be friends, too?"

The king stared, and then said curtly, "No, I would not. Now if you'll excuse me." He continued down the hall.

"Oh," Olaf said from behind him, sounding a little hurt. "Well… maybe another time, huh?"

Agnar rounded the corner without answering, leaving the snowman to stand there, baffled.

"I must say, I'm impressed," the Snow Queen said. They had met again in the forest just outside of town, away from prying eyes and ears.

"That's two," Agnar said, as he handed over a brilliant scarlet glass shard. "I suppose now I'm allowed my part of the deal?"

"Patience, your Majesty, patience. It's a virtue, after all." She locked the shard inside an ice case and tucked it inside her white cloak. "One shard remains to be found. Tell me, how did you come across this one?"

"I felt my own burn and followed it. As to further reasoning, I cannot provide."

"Hm," she said pensively, arching a perfectly formed eyebrow as she studied the shard. "The magic is stronger. Perhaps your brother and the Queen have finally come at odds with each other. But you must continue with your efforts."

"Naturally."

"Good day, King Agnar."

"Your Majesty." At his farewell, she climbed into her icy sleigh, and within an instant had disappeared into the trees.

Agnar's face was set into a sneer. "One more shard," he muttered to himself. "And if she doesn't allow me my due then…" He stalked off through the trees, the night air silent save for the crackle of snow beneath his boots.

Breakfast in the dining hall that morning was anything but comfortable. Kristoff and Anna didn't speak or even look at each other, nor did Hans and Elsa. Silence reigned over the four like a different sort of curse, until finally Kristoff (who had been wolfing down his oatmeal in an effort to get out of the room faster) pushed his bowl away and stood up. "Okay, well, I'm heading out."

"Heading out?" Elsa said in surprise, looking up from her own hardly-touched bowl of oatmeal. "Out to where?"

"I, uh, I'm going to check on my guys in the mountains," Kristoff explained awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Thought I'd stay up there for a bit, y'know, since it's the last week of the season…"

"How long will you be gone?" the Queen inquired.

"Um, a few days, probably more like a week…" He shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

Any other time, Elsa would have seen the strangeness of this, but right then, all she saw was an opportunity. "A whole week! Well, that's- that's very interesting." She glanced over at Hans. "Perhaps you'd like to go with him?"

Kristoff's mouth dropped open, and he scoffed. "I don't think a pampered prince is going to want to cut ice for a week."

"Actually, I'd like to come," Hans said hurriedly. "I don't mind hard work; I think it would be a very, er, educational experience."

The mountain man stared between the two, confused. "You want to come harvest ice?" he said dubiously.

"I would be much obliged," the prince answered, with apparent sincerity.

"Yeah, well, I'm sure you can find something better to do," Kristoff said dismissively.

"Kristoff, can I please talk to you?" Elsa said, voice almost pleading. "Alone?"

Completely baffled, Kristoff followed her as she walked over to a corner of the room. "Kristoff, I need him out of the castle," the queen confessed. "I need you to take him with you."

"Why?"

"I-" She broke off, and then finished, "I can't tell you."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Please, Kristoff," she nearly begged, clasping her hands with a desperate wince. "I really need you to do this, no questions asked. As a favor."

Kristoff held out for another moment, and then sighed. "Alright, fine. But you owe me one, Elsa."

"Thank you," she said, with obvious relief. "And if you ever need a favor…"

"Yeah, I know." He turned back to the table, where Anna was still staring at her porridge bowl, Hans sitting there awkwardly. "C'mon," he grunted.

"Me?" Hans said, surprised.

"No, the other psychotic prince in your general direction. Yeah, you. We're leaving."

Hans quickly clambered to his feet. "I need to grab my coat-"

"Fine, make it fast. Meet me down at the stables." He walked—well, more like stalked—out of the room, Hans quickly departing thereafter.

Elsa walked over to Anna, who was still staring dully down at her oatmeal. The Queen noticed she hadn't taken a bite. "Anna?" she inquired, a little worried. "Are you alright?"

"What?" The princess looked up, startled out of her stupor. "Oh, um, yeah. Fine. Sorry; I'm just pretty tired."

"Oh." She offered her baby sister a smile. "Well… maybe you should take a nap?"

Anna nodded and stood up. "Yeah. Yeah, a nap sounds good…" She wandered out of the dining hall in a dazed sort of manner, leaving Elsa to sit alone. The queen rubbed her temples and sighed. He was gone, at least for a week. She wouldn't have to see his face until Sunday.

And some part of her hated herself for feeling depressed about that fact.

Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Clip… clop.

Three-thousand, six hundred and four. That was how many seconds had passed between when Kristoff and Hans had first climbed into the sleigh and where they were now, which was some distance from the town and surrounded by thick evergreen trees, by now covered in a thick, fluffy winter snow. Hans knew the number of seconds because they corresponded exactly with Sven's hoof-steps, which were the only sound that anyone, including the reindeer, had made since they'd set out on this little misadventure.

Great. He'd just lost count. Looked like he'd have to start all over again. One. Two-

"Carrot?"

He started at the sudden noise and looked over. Kristoff was holding out one of the carrots from the bag he'd brought along. "No, thank you," he said, looking back out at the trail.

"Aw, come on. I've got like a dozen of them."

Hans sighed a little, his breath freezing to fog in the air. "Fine." He took the carrot and bit off the end, before looking down. There were little dents in the vegetable. "What are the marks?" he inquired, frowning.

"Oh, Sven was nibbling on it earlier. Those are from his teeth."

Hans choked and spat out the bite he'd taken. Kristoff grinned, and the auburn-haired man scowled at him. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

"You bet." He took the carrot back and tossed it out in front. Sven jerked the sleigh forward a little to catch the carrot before it fell in the snow.

A little while passed again in silence, before Hans asked, "How far until we reach the river?"

"Eh, not too far now, maybe an hour or so. Why?"

"No reason." There was a reason, actually; he was bitterly cold. While he'd donned his heavy gray winter coat, he wasn't used to such frigid weather. The Southern Isles never saw this much snow, and in any case, he'd always hated the cold. The wind was picking up, as well, and he hadn't had the good sense to grab proper gloves before they'd left, which left his hands feeling more like one of Elsa's ice-blocks than a human being. But Hell would have to freeze over too before he'd admit that to Kristoff.

The mountain man glanced over and noticed the way the prince was curling his fingers in and out, trying to regain circulation. "Your fingers gone numb yet?"

"I assumed that was supposed to happen," Hans replied evenly, although in truth the parts of his fingers that hadn't lost all feeling hurt like the dickens.

"I wouldn't say 'supposed to.' It's pretty cold out. Those gloves look like thin leather; they won't cut the wind and their insulation's probably terrible. You need something that'll wick the water off."

"What do you suggest?" the prince said, trying not to let the edge of annoyance into his voice.

"I've got some extra gloves in the back," Kristoff said, sounding none-too-happy about lending the prince his clothes. "Grab those."

Hans did as he was told, reaching into the back of the sled and pulling off his white leather gloves. The gloves were fingerless leather choppers, coated in some sort of oily substance to stop the water from soaking through. Both were warmer than his provisions, and grudgingly he said, "Astute advice, Mr. Bjorgman. My thanks."

"Oh for crying out loud," Kristoff grumbled. "I'll never be able to make it through this week if you don't cut that out."

"Beg your pardon?"

"That! That right there!" he exclaimed. "Your- your ridiculous language or whatever."

Hans blinked. "Do you mean the way I speak?"

"Yeah, obviously. Just talk like a normal person, wouldja?"

"Oh." He considered this for a moment, and then admitted, "I'm not sure that I could."

"What do you mean?"

"This is how I've always talked."

Kristoff scoffed. "Oh come on. No one's born talking like that."

"No, that is to say- I mean, I was taught to speak like this, since I was a child. It was part of my education."

"Really?" he looked over, looking a little interested. "You mean they teach you at some sort of royalty school how to talk like that?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Hans said, a little pompously if truth were told. "I had a tutor."

"A tutor?"

"Yes, to learn grammar. I had another for arithmetic, another for science, one for etiquette, one for strategic thinking and one for swordsmanship. I had a few others who taught me foreign languages, as well."

"No kidding," Kristoff said, whistling. "How long did it take you to learn all that stuff?"

"Well, eight hours a day for twelve years or so would be…" He started to do the math in his head.

"No, don't tell me, I get it. Seriously though, eight hours a day? That must've sucked."

Hans raised an eyebrow. "Yes, it did 'suck.' My grammar teacher was by far the worst, however."

"Yeah? How come?"

"He spit."

Kristoff snorted against his will. "That's great. I mean really, that's fantastic."

"What about you?"

"Huh?"

"Did you receive any formal education?"

The mountain man shrugged. "My family taught me some stuff."

"Your family, the colony of rock trolls," Hans deadpanned.

Kristoff grinned. "That's the one. Besides, you don't really need the rest of it for my business. I learned how to read an' write, do math, that sort of thing. But I know the important stuff, the kind you don't learn from a tutor or whatever."

The prince looked confused by this. "Such as?"

"Oh, you know. Like if a river's iced over enough for you to walk on it and not fall through; which plants are poisonous to humans- and reindeer," he said fondly, smacking the reins lightly. Sven looked back and gave him a very reindeer-y smile. "How to haggle people up—or down—how to set prices, predict the floods, survive on my own in the woods or up on the tundra. I built my whole business myself, you know; a lot of these guys are fishers and sailors in the summer months, but not me." His face was proud. "I'd head north to the glaciers and bring back ice all the way through June. Get top price for it, too. I was juuuust about making enough to hire a couple more guys when I met Anna."

Hans said nothing for a moment, and then reluctantly admitted, "Mr. Bjorgman, I…must say I am impressed. Your business sense is…enviable."

"Surprising is the word you meant." Hans went red, and Kristoff rolled his eyes. "Yeah. I'm not just some dumb mountain man."

"I never said–"

"You didn't have to."

Hans flushed darker, and they didn't speak again for several minutes. But despite this, Kristoff eventually reached back into the bag and retrieved another carrot, this one without gnaw marks, and handed it to him.

Hans took it and bit into the vegetable. It tasted alright. Perhaps spending a week with the "mountain man" wouldn't be such an ordeal, after all.

The hour had unfortunately turned into two, due to a tree which had fallen in the way of the path and had caused both men to hop out of the sleigh to remove it before continuing on their way. They reached the iced-over river a little after noon. Kristoff pulled Sven to a halt and hopped out of the sleigh, raising a hand. "Hey!"

Several of the ice-harvesters looked over and shouted out their own greetings. Kristoff hurried over with a grin, Hans following at a distance nervously. "How're you guys doing?" Kristoff said, walking from man to man. "Hey, Ole; how's Per?"

"See for yourself; he came with this time," the other man answered with a chuckle, indicating a young, brown-haired boy at his side.

"Ah, learning the trade, huh?" Kristoff said with a grin, ruffling the kid's hair. "Heya, Morten. How's the wife doing?"

"Eh, well enough, well enough. I'll happy to get back to her soon. Just came up to see our ugly mugs, didja?"

"Nah; the Queen says there's a storm coming in and she can't send it away," Kristoff explained. "Be here by Sunday evening, next Monday at latest."

One of the men shrugged. "Probably for the better, anyway; the season's coming to an end."

"Yeah, and- wait, who's he?" the one named Ole said, nodding past Kristoff to the redhead standing some ways away.

Hans's mouth opened, but he wasn't sure how exactly to introduce himself. He didn't have to. Morten squinted and said, "Hey, isn't he-"

"Yeah!" one of the other said, voice angry. "He's the one who-"

"Tried to kill the princess!"

Hans didn't bother saying anything in his own defense, having realized that such an act would be futile and that he may have made a terrible mistake by coming with Kristoff that day. Several of the men (all of whom were very loyal to Anna and the queen who kindly kept the weather conducive to ice-harvesting) started towards him angrily, but Kristoff stepped in between them. "Alright, guys, hold on," he said, holding up his hands. "Trust me, I want to knock his teeth in as much as you do, but I'm sure Elsa doesn't want her fiancé coming back all black and blue."

Grudgingly they acquiesced to this, though Hans could still feel the glowering looks they shot him as they returned to their work. "So," the prince said, once he was fairly certain no one was about to attack him with an ice pick, "How do we do this?"

Kristoff had retrieved his saw, pick and clamps from the sleigh and was preparing to saw through the ice that had covered the river top. "Look," he said seriously. "This isn't a holiday; people who don't know what they're doing out here can get really hurt."

"Understood."

"Today I want you to watch everything the other guys and I do. Pay attention. If we say do something, do it. If we say stop something, stop immediately. Then maybe tomorrow I'll think about giving you a try. Got it?"

Hans nodded and retreated back to the sled, where he sat down on the bench and made a survey of the ice harvesters. They were all dressed similarly to Mr. Bjorgman, he noted, in heavy fur tunics and fur boots that turned up at the toes. They carried long jagged-toothed saws and tonged forks, and a team of fjord horses was tied up nearby next to waiting harnesses with plow-like saws attached. Mr. Bjorgman's reindeer was with them. Hans turned back to the harvesters and rested forward on his elbows, green eyes narrowed in concentration.

A great crack of fracturing ice split the air.

"Skapt av vinter kulde og vær og regn fra ville fjellet

Naturens kraft gir hjertefrost

All den isen vi kan selge

Del hjertet på langs kaldt og rent

Sag vekk frykt og kjærlighet

Skjær i blokker rett og pent tross all iskald blåst

Vi bryter hjertefrost!"

Over the course of the afternoon, Hans learned several things about the ice harvesters: not just how to do the work they did by also about the way in which they did it.

First off, they sang. Hans was pleasantly surprised by that development. The music was rhythmic and easy enough to learn, similar in tune and purpose to the sea shanties he'd learned during his stint in the navy, keeping them from growing tired or slow in their work. This was good, considering that as tedious as the job was, one could afford to waste no time.

Second, they were hard workers. The manual labor was clearly strenuous, but they kept at it all day and even past sundown, lighting greenish-yellow lanterns to help them work in the fading light. After first scoring the ground to mark off what part of the river they had to cut, the men labored tirelessly to remove the top layer of snow which had built up over the ice. This, Kristoff mentioned to the prince, would take all of the first day, and then this was only the first section of river. Once the snow had been removed, they could finally get at the clear, solid ice underneath.

Third and perhaps most importantly, they were fair and honest people. It had been clear from the moment Hans had arrived that any one of them would have loved to give him a nice shiner (or two), but that reflected their stout sense of justice far more than detracted from it. They listened to Kristoff and clearly trusted his judgment, and not another word was spoken about the prince; when dinnertime rolled around (long after the sun had disappeared behind the western mountains), Hans had been expecting some sort of reflection of their dislike for him in the food distribution—perhaps the cook would fill his chipped wooden bowl less than everyone else's, or someone would knock his stew to the ground to ruin it. Much to his surprise, no one attempted any such thing. When he sat down at one of the spots near the warm fires where the men ate their food and talked over the day's work, he found that, aside from the occasional dirty look, they weren't deliberately unkind to him, but rather ignored him. At one point this would have bothered the prince, but in recent months he had learned to count his blessings, and truth be told he really couldn't blame them for their silence. I probably wouldn't know what to say to me, either, he thought ruefully.

The men had all set up tents along the banks of the river, and with Hans's help Kristoff set up his own. The reindeer—Sven, he thought his name was—also took shelter from the elements in the canvas structure, separating two makeshift cots. The tent was crowded but surprisingly warm, despite the frigid night air outside.

Kristoff placed the lit lantern on the ground in front of Sven's nose, casting the tent in a warm, flickering glow, and pulled his fur tunic off over his head. He placed it at the foot of his cot and picked up his lute as Hans hung his overcoat on the back of the cot and lay down. For a while the iceman strummed the lute lazily, plucking the chords with no apparent correlation. As Hans listened, however, Kristoff seemed to be murmuring tiredly in a language the prince didn't recognize. "What is that?" he asked.

"Huh?" Kristoff stopped singing, startled. "Oh. It's just an old lullaby. My ma used to sing it to me."

"Is it in her language?"

"Uh-huh."

Hans sat up on the side of his cot, interested. "Do you speak it? Fluently, I mean."

Kristoff shrugged. "Yeah, most of it. I'm pretty rusty though; I don't get a lot of chances to speak it with anyone except Sven."

"Did your parents teach you?"

"Must've; otherwise I wouldn't know it, right? Ma did, probably. Like I said, she was full-Sámi; dunno if my dad knew it or not."

"You refer to them in the past tense," Hans noted carefully.

Kristoff looked over at him sharply, but when he saw that the man meant no offense, he nodded. "They, uh, they caught consumption when I was a kid," he admitted, looking up at the tent roof again. "So did I, but I recovered and… well, they didn't. The trolls took me in after that. I was—I think six or something, I'm not totally sure."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"I know a lot about them from the other harvesters. They were good people." The mountain man smiled unexpectedly, a sure sign he'd been unexpectedly roped into the conversation. Intrigued, Hans didn't stop him. "The others say I got Ma's business sense. My dad was a hard worker, but she was the one who really knew how to run a business."

"How do you mean?"

"Y'seen the fur coats they're all wearing?" Hans nodded, and Kristoff grinned, gesturing to his own at the foot of the bed. "It's called a beaska. She made one for my dad and when he got some compliments, she sold one to every guy on the crew. Could haggle against the devil himself, the others told me." His smile had grown reminiscent. "They were good together. Life was hard, sure, but together they always put food on the table, y'know?"

He saw Hans watching him and stopped short. When he spoke again, his voice was clipped. "But I suppose you aren't interested in common people like them."

It was clear that he thought the prince was of the same opinion as the rest of the Arendellian court regarding his bloodline and occupation. Hans tried to find some way of denying it without seeming insincere. "…My mother died of illness, too," he settled on. The mountain man seemed to relax at that, albeit not fully. "She was a good woman… she ran the town soup kitchens, while she was alive. If she'd been in charge of the kingdom instead of my father, I think she would have done better by our people. But of course, politics wasn't 'woman's work' in my father's view."

"Elsa would have something to say about that."

Hans chuckled. "I don't doubt it. Anyway…I was the youngest, so she often took me with her. Each morning, the town baker came in and gave us several of his rolls." He winced. "To be perfectly candid, the economic conditions in the Southern Isles are…shall we say, not perfectly level." Kristoff snorted. "It's not easy to be both a successful businessman and an honest one there. The man wasn't poor, but he wasn't exactly rich, either. He was the sort of person my father and brothers wouldn't ever have noticed or cared about. I'm sure helping us cost him, but every day, without fail, he brought the bread without asking for a word of thanks. My mother would always turn to me and say, 'Hans, ofte er skarlagens hjerte under reven kaabe—often beneath a poor coat there lies a royal heart."

Kristoff's mouth was open slightly in surprise. The green-eyed man nodded and lay back down. "Goodnight, Mr. Bjorgman."

"G'night," Kristoff said, leaning over to blow out the lantern. As the tent was once again shrouded in darkness, his face also changed, falling into an expression of dull, rueful irony. Hans probably hadn't meant to reopen a fresh wound, but that didn't mean it didn't sting.

A royal heart, indeed.

A/N: I hope you liked it; please review.