Nightfall

Elsa slowly opened her eyes. The muscles around her eyelids ached in the attempt. She looked at her hands, touched her face, patted down her body. Her head rung with the residue of cracked glass against the cavern of her ear canal.

I'm…. I'm fine. I'm ok. I'm not hurt, I'm not dead, I'm not—

The structure around her was frozen solid. Sheets of thick ice covered the glass walls and dome ceiling. And in the center where there had been the small pile of fine powder…

By the Gods…

As the ringing in Elsa's ears began to subside, she heard the faint echo of a different sound.

A sound of music.

The Von Trapp castle was positively alive like it had never been before. A cacophony of a full orchestra mingling with the roar of sophisticated party goers from all over the lands. The gilded ballroom was bright with the colors of dresses swirling next to the outstretched arms of stiff-backed noblemen.

Anna leaned against the doorway that led from the ballroom to the outside entrance of the hedge maze in the garden. She decided to wear the blue dress that Baroness Elsa had picked out for her. Her twin tails dangling down the front of her chest accentuated the soft blue with their vibrant crimson countenance.

Well, they said it was going to be a party, but this is absolutely dead. Maybe mother never wanted to have formal balls because she knew they would bore her to death. Everyone's just kinda swirling around in circles. There's no passion, no emotion anywhere, no… Omf!

The children were adorned in a uniform of traditional dress as they awkwardly milled about their chaperone, as out-of-place children are want to do at an adult party.

Some of them were keenly observing the intricate dances of the various aristocratic guests. Kurt decided to be the bold one and tap Anna on the shoulder to ask for a dance of his own.

"I'd be delighted," Anna said as she curtsied to the much shorter child in his formal shorts. "I'm afraid I don't know any Ostarreich dances though."

"That's ok fräulein. I will show you the ländler. It's an easy folk dance to learn."

After they bowed and curtsied toward each other, they began to hop and skip their way across the courtyard amongst the tall hedges and imported marble statues. Kurt, being shorter than Anna, but really not by much, found it challenging when it came to the moment when both dancers had to rotate their bodies whilst holding on to each other's hands. Their backs coming together as he strained to match her longer arm span.

The children giggled at his futile attempts at leading the dance when the distinctive clicking of heels drew Anna's attention away from her diminutive dance partner toward the door that she had been leaning against moments before.

Baroness Schraeder stood in the doorway, practically glowing in an elaborate golden dress that looked as if it was peeled off the intricately gilded walls of the ballroom.

"Children, why don't you run along. I think your father is looking for you."

Anna and Kurt ended their dance with a final bow and curtsy before all of the children dispersed into the castle to rejoin the party; leaving the two women alone amongst the labyrinth.

"Is there… something I can help you with, Baroness?"

"Oh yes, darling! You can save me from this dreadful affair."

Anna gave a genuine chuckle. "Save you? Isn't this party for you?"

The Baroness looked toward the crowd on the dancefloor.

"Yet there isn't a soul here that interests me. Save for one, perhaps."

That hunger returned to her eyes as she looked back toward Anna, who stiffened and nearly choked as she swallowed her tensity.

"Say… shall we go find the good ol' Captain then?"

Anna knew she wasn't talking about the Captain. She knew it even before the Baroness started to move toward her. She knew before those crystal water eyes reflected that insatiable thirst.

"Fräulein Anna, would you honor me with a dance?"

This is bad. This is very bad. This is so totally, royally bad. Making out with Punzie in the privacy of my bedroom is one thing. Dancing with another woman, an older woman, an insanely gorgeous, sophisticated woman who clearly wants to have her way with me…. At a public party! With other nobles and who knows who else around! This isn't a dwarven tavern for crying out loud. It's practically a royal ball and she is asking me to dance?!

"I… I'm sorry, Baroness. I don't know any Osterrer dances.." Anna's voice was weak and timid. A desperate attempt to subtly dissuade the advance without directly addressing the growing weight of the atmosphere in the courtyard.

"Come now, fräulein… I'm sure there's one Osterrer dance that you know." The Baroness stepped closer still. She stopped merely an arms-length away before she placed one arm behind her back and the other stretched out toward Anna. A clear invitation to someone well versed in a royal lifestyle.

"In fact, I will even let you lead… Your Highness."

Well, Crap.

The music started.

Anna, now her own arm behind her back, reached out and took the invitation by the tips of her fingers. Confidently, she slipped into the role of lead. She led her new partner a few steps as their feet met the rhythm of the orchestra.

They turned to face one another, hand in hand, bowed and curtsied, and promptly placed their arms around each other in a well-rehearsed and classical dance position.

Despite her comfortability in the dance, Anna was visibly rigid as she led the two bodies in a melodic swirl around the stone dance floor.

"Come now, darling. Relax. Yes, I know that you know how to waltz. I know that you are, in fact, that runaway princess from the Norslands. Do not worry. I have no intention of calling down every bounty hunter in the land."

"What do you want from me?" Anna's heart was beating fast as their bodies pulled away and back toward one another. The heat rising in her cheeks each time the Baroness's body pressed against her.

"Why, I don't want anything from you darling. It's what you want that I am interested in."

Baroness Elsa suddenly changed the form of their positions. Breaking the traditional lock between their hands to bring hers up, bent at the elbow. Without missing a step, Anna matched the new movement. Her wrist gently resting against the other woman like two swans greeting on the lakeside.

They swayed back and forth. Their wrists never leaving until Anna grasped the Baroness's fingers, signaling her to twirl underneath Anna's outstretched arm only to return to their swanlike embrace.

"I want to know what happened to the other governesses."

"That is why you are here, but that is not what you want."

The dance took on a more intimate flavor. Baroness Elsa spun until her back rested against Anna's arm. Her face turned until their eyes met over her bare shoulder.

"And you somehow know what it is that I want?"

Anna's body moved on its own. Her limbs were in full embrace of the music as they twirled and dipped the Baroness at their will. The taller woman was submissive to all of Anna's unconscious commands. Before she was aware, her freckled hand had led that delicate swan around her shoulder and placed the fingers atop the soft skin of her neck. Their noses practically nuzzled between their gaze.

"You want love, darling. Love like you have never felt before. A love desperate to be given and longing to be reciprocated. A love constantly denied. Unobtainable yet more desirable than anything in the world. I can give you that love, Anna."

Anna dipped her, golden hair glistening as it caught the faint light from the braziers. She cradled her, pulled her up, and spun her away from her shuddering body until her unwilling mind was convinced by her more than willing arm, beckoning the golden-clad socialite to spin back into her embrace.

Chests were pressed up against each other. The thunder of Anna's heart blocked out all other sensation. A heat rose from within, a kindling crackling under the growing desire. Anna's arm had traveled behind Elsa's back, fingers finding the delicate waist and pressing it toward her.

Anna could taste Elsa's breath on the edge of her lips. A haze began to fill her eyes, like the waves of heat radiating off a sun-baked beach. She looked up into the glossy visage of a golden angel, the air between their lips tantalizingly mingling just off the surface of their flushed skin.

"I am yours, Anna. All you have to do…

All you need to do…

is take it…."

I have to find Anna. I have to get her out of here. She isn't safe—

Elsa ran toward the castle. A soft glow warmed the surrounding grounds from the party inside the walls. She crashed through a wall of green. Thick hedges barred her path only to be cut through with icy precision as she quickly made her own way through the maze.

Between the leaves, she spotted something that halted her advance. Two figures, standing alone in the dim firelight. Unaware or uncaring of the marble statue eyes watching as their bodies slowly melted into one.

The red hair was unmistakable.

Elsa raised her hand to intervene, but she could not summon the power. She would not summon it. Her mind begged her to move forward but her eyes could not look away as lips met under the glistening light reflected off a golden dress.

It's so warm… So… different. So confident, aggressive, and just… so much… fire. God, I could die with Elsa's lips as my last meal.

Oh, Elsa…

El…

Oh shit, what am I doing?!

A sudden force welled up within Anna before she pushed the Baroness away, sending the older woman several steps back toward the hedges. Anna's chest was heaving, her ears still filled with the sound of her racing heartbeat.

She barely managed to catch her breath before exasperatedly saying "I… I'm sorry Baroness. I have to… I have to go. I have to go and… check on the children! Ya! I will go do that. Now. Alone. Thank you. Good evening. Baroness."

Anna fumbled her curtsy before shuffling into the castle at a speed not shuffled before.

The Baroness was left standing in the stony-floored courtyard alone. Her fingers brushing across her lips as she watched Anna leave her sight.

"Curious…" the Baroness whispered into her fingers.

As Anna disappeared into the party through the glass doors, a sudden sheet of ice erupted. It rose from the floor and reached up to the top of the ballroom windows. Seemingly cutting off the outside from the rest of the castle.

"Most curious…" The Baroness whisked her hand away as she pivoted around to look back toward the maze.

"You can come out now. Unless of course, you prefer just to watch?"

The temperature in the courtyard began to plummet. Frost began to form across the smooth skin of the marble voyeur statue, lingering on its pedestal. The hidden figure made her way around the corner of the hedge, every footstep stamped a fractal on the stone floor leaving a growing web of intertwining snowflakes in her wake.

"My, my… aren't you stunning."

Elsa had no patience for flattery.

"What did you just do to Anna?"

The Baroness turned to look back toward the castle and the newly erected frozen barrier between her and fleeting desire.

"Clearly nothing. I assume she has you to thank for her protection?"

"Anna has her own protection against magic. I felt it surge around you. You are a witch."

Laughter erupted within the courtyard.

"I am no witch" the Baroness exclaimed as her laughter subsided. "Actually, I take that back. I was a witch after a fashion, but not of the type that you are thinking of. Not one such as yourself, gifted with magic. I am more of the variety that your dear Anna belongs to."

"Anna is no witch" Elsa spat out in reflexive disgust at the accusation. "And I can feel your magic even now."

"Tis' not my magic you feel, I'm afraid."

Elsa was confused, perplexed, and her brows showed it across her forehead.

"I don't understand. Then what are you?"

The Baroness had walked over to the marble statue standing to the side of the courtyard. She brushed her finger across the exposed knee of the marble woman clad in her toga and gently rubbed the thin layer of frost between her fingers before it vanished into the air.

"Your power feels… somehow familiar. As if I have met you before although I know I haven't. It's almost as if… your power speaks to me. Tell me, when you look at me what do you see?"

Elsa looked at the older woman from head to toe. "I see a woman in a gold dress with golden hair."

"Your eyes show you what you expect. Look with more than just your eyes. I know you went to the gazebo. I know you saw it."

A flash of vestigial pain streaked across Elsa's skin like a sudden wind cutting across her body. She winced and held her arms around her body. All it took was a moment. An imperceptible blink of the eye blocking out the visage of a woman and leaving a ghostly afterimage burned into the dark space between her cornea and eyelids. She blinked again and again until they started to water and sting from a rising smoke in the air. She attempted to wipe the tears when the coughing began. Desperately trying to clear her vision, she swiped at the haze in the air until the blurry afterimage that glowed in the darkness of her blinded vision began to focus. And standing before her in the middle of the courtyard was no longer a woman in a gold dress.

Elsa gasped and coughed and gagged in equal measure.

Pristine white skin had been charred. It blistered and cracked and oozed off the bone which was itself scorched to black. Sinew and muscle melted and tore, hanging off the body like tattered clothes. Any trace of the vibrant golden hair had been singed off the peeling skin of her scalp as it flaked like dried paint. Amongst the burning flesh and exposed cheekbones, one thing remained of the woman that stood there before.

Two brilliant crystal eyes stared back at Elsa from within the eternal inferno that wreathed her slender form.

"You're— *cough* you're an aptrganga… a specter. That was your pyre I saw in that place. You were burned alive and your soul was trapped here. Why? Why would someone do such a thing?"

"You see, darling…" It was strange hearing that same husky voice leave the now lipless mouth of the corpse standing before Elsa, seemingly unaffected by outward appearances. An almost comical, if not a tad grotesque, site. "The fate of a witch is to meet the pyre. And a witch is a woman who is damned. Whether or not she is damned by magic, damned by mind, or damned by love. Anna, the dear sweet thing, is like me. She… is damned by love. And if she is not careful, she will meet her own pyre. That is why she was sent here. That is why they were all sent here."

The undead Baroness gestured all around her. As the smoke from her fire lifted, Elsa saw a similar pile of grey powder on the courtyard floor. First just one which led to another, and another, and another. Until she was surrounded by the ashes of unlawful love.

"Why… Why do you do it?"

The Baroness looked at each grave, her eyes heavy with regret.

"They are drawn here. They are drawn to me and I to them. I have no control over it. Once they arrive, the trap is set. This façade of a castle. The illusions of children and a lonely captain. All a mirage. A mirror of what once was, being reflected and replayed to the same conclusion. My final dance destined to continue on with each new partner…."

The Baroness looked back toward Elsa. Elsa stood there, horrified by what she was hearing but she did not move. Something sparked within the Baroness. An ember of hope kindling within.

"You…" she said as she pointed a segmented bony finger toward the other woman. "You entered this place, yet you were not lured. You found my pyre. It called to you just as I am called to you now. Your power it… it sings to me. I can feel it on my bones, I can feel it in my chest."

She began to walk toward Elsa. Her steps leaving behind footprints of peeling skin and sinew sticking to the floor. Her hand began to reach for Elsa's face. Elsa's mind told her to run away. It told her to fight back, to freeze the ghostly woman, to find Anna and leave and never come back.

But Elsa stood.

Something within her told her not to flee. Not to flinch or wince or cower. She opened herself up even more and could now feel the raging inferno of magic enveloping the woman's soul. Two distinct presences. One small and entirely consumed by the other.

Elsa wasn't sure why she did what she did. The scream that still lingered in her ear from the pyre grew as she saw it reverberate through the sadness in the woman's eyes. She wanted to flee, but more than that she wanted to reach out toward that flickering soul… to touch that thread of corrupted desire even as it pulled her deeper into the entangled song.

She raised her hand and cupped what would have been a plump cheek. Her thumb caressed the splintering bone below the sad eyes as they stared at her in shock. A breath escaped the woman's mouth. What seemed like the last yet simultaneously the first breath that she had ever taken. Newly formed eyelids closed around those same eyes as a wave of cool washed over her body like a flame being doused by the frigid northern sea.

Elsa poured her power into the woman caught within her chilling song. The foreign flames recoiled in sudden fear and panic at this new force purging them from the last remnants of a withered soul.

The Baroness opened her eyes as the last licks of ember tongues left her body and her blonde locks fell around her shoulders. She stood within the soothing embrace of the mysterious woman from the north, her smooth skin no longer crackling for eternity.

"What… what did you do to me?" the Baroness asked, heavy and breathy and full of wonder.

"I don't know…" was all Elsa could say, her chest heaving against the other woman as she caught her own breath from the unexpected exertion. The Baroness closed her eyes again as she succumbed to the fatigue of countless years fighting against the curse placed upon her soul. As her body relaxed, Elsa gradually felt the weight recede from her arms. She watched as the figure of the older woman began to fade, slowly into the aether.

Elsa Schraeder opened her eyes one last time and stretched her intangible hand toward her savior. Her last breath had already left, leaving no vessel for the words to be carried as her lips moved in silence. But Elsa caught the phantom from her lips just as the Baroness finally departed into her much deserved slumber.

They sat atop a delicate white flower that bloomed in the middle of a final resting place.

"Thank you."