Anna awoke encased in warmth, light breath on the back of her neck, a heavy arm draped over her middle. The gentle, comforting pressure of a soft body pressed against her back. At first she thought it was the remnants of some lovely dream. That she was a pearl resting inside a clam, or a bumble-bee napping in a flower on a sunny afternoon.

Then the events of last night came flooding back to her, vivid yet surreal like it had happened to someone else. Gerda, the wine, Elsa's elaborate story about the Baroness...then Hans, the magic, the struggle...

He had struck her.

Her fiance struck her. In the face.

All at once the sensations came rushing back to her, the lump in her throat, the heat in her cheek, the ringing in her ears and above all, the utter, crushing, crippling shame because things like this weren't supposed to happen to people like her.

Ideally, things like this weren't supposed to happen to anyone. But for certain people, poor, downtrodden, powerless people, it was sadly to be expected. She, on the other hand, was expected to be a leader. A rescuer. A paragon of strength, grace and dignity. What would people think, if they'd seen her put in her place like a stupid little girl? Her parents, the other noble girls, the servants, her subjects who cheered for her and looked up with pride and admiration in their eyes? How could she uphold their worth if she couldn't uphold her own?

How weak, how small, how dirty she felt.

How utterly unworthy.

Down the hall, the grandfather clock chimed. Seven o'clock. The sky was still bathed in murky indigo, half way between night and day. She needed to force herself awake, to rise and shine and smile and keep smiling. Soon Gerda would be at her door. She would notice that the door was locked. She would notice a girl in Anna's bed.

A girl in Anna's bed.

Before the day inevitably parted them, she rolled over to face Elsa, determined to steal a few more minutes in this blissful state of warm, tangled limbs and shared body heat and wonderful smells and general closeness. She reached around and traced the back of Elsa's neck, running her hand over soft skin. Down the curve of her spine and into the small of her back, pulling the sleeping body just a little closer to herself.

It was her own silent protest. Her sneaky little act of defiance.

Of course, there was nothing untoward about it. Elsa was asleep, after all. And Anna might be "afflicted" but she was no lecher. Besides, she felt far too fragile to even think about such things right at that moment. But the implications, the possibilities, the way it looked would have been enough to make her father have a stroke. And that pleased her more than it should have.

Footsteps tapped distantly down the hall. Out in the courtyard, gates were creaking open, slamming shut. Bells were ringing. Horses neighing. The day waited for no one.

She ran her hand through pale hair, brushing out loose tangles with her fingers, shaking Elsa lightly, regretfully, 'Hey, time to wake up.'

Elsa jolted awake, eyes wide open, breathing in sharply, 'What? Where? How far?'

Well that was one way to greet the day. 'Uh, good morning?' Anna said.

'Oh, uh...morning…' Elsa's startlement quickly dissipated as she sat up, smiled, and brushed Anna's cheek with the back of her hand, 'It didn't bruise.'

Anna pressed on her cheek and felt no tenderness, not even an ache. Just as Elsa had predicted. How familiar did someone have to be with violence to be able to accurately predict whether a strike was hard enough to bruise? Or to slap someone knowing it wouldn't bruise?

Anna pulled herself up onto her elbows and thought hard about this. She'd been so focused on her own shock and pain, so full of self pity and humiliation, so woe-is-me, she'd barely shown any care to Elsa whose arm was almost ripped from its socket. Who had clearly been terrified, even if she had composed herself afterwards, like the sun shining suspiciously brightly after a sudden storm.

'Sorry about last night.'

'What? Oh, Anna, no, it wasn't your fault.'

'No, I mean I'm sorry for…' How could she explain this, 'I feel like maybe I was over dramatic or something…'

That's what her parents had called her, after all, when she'd tried to tell them that Hans had frightened her in the carriage. Melodramatic. Overly sensitive. Always poking bears and getting surprised when they snapped back. Her father even had the gall to suggest that she was affected by her "ladies time." Her mother always hated it when he pulled that card and that's what had really set them both at each other's throats. Anna regretted saying anything in the first place.

'I mean, it was only a little slap, right? And you seem like you've experienced,' she searched her vocabulary for a way to soften the reality of it, but found none, 'a history of violence.'

'It's completely different.'

'Is it?'

'Yes.' Elsa got out of bed abruptly and began pulling her garments for the day out of the wardrobe. Clearly favouring her left arm. The right dangled weakly, abloom with purple bruising. Finger marks. Specks of dried blood crusted around the metal cuff that clung to her pale flesh like a parasite. 'Nothing prepares you for the first time. Nothing. The shock of it. It's just so...unmooring.'

Unmooring. That was exactly how Anna had felt the last few weeks. Like she was becoming unmoored. Moving further into the swirling, endless sea with each passing day. Further from what she thought she knew. Further from herself.

II

The sitting room was rather crowded. It wasn't usually used for meetings, but there was no time for a formal, sit-down meeting in their usual room. The small, huddled crowd of council members and military leaders were all due at the banquet already and Anna squirmed in between her father and Admiral Brage, deliberately avoiding proximity with Hans. She just wasn't ready to face him yet.

'How many ports?'

'Just the two.'

'The casualties are-'

'But we have no evidence that-'

'And they surrendered?'

'Thirty-two and counting.'

Everyone was speaking fast, cutting into each other. A messenger stood in the centre, flustered and red-faced, holding a stamped parchment and trying to answer the barrage of questions that were being fired at him. Agnarr held out his hand and the messenger handed the parchment over wordlessly. Obediently. Anna managed to catch the general gist of it before he passed it over to General Hardier. The alliance had attacked two independent city-states. Critical city states. Critical trade routes. Anna's mind started running through the list of imports that might be affected. Coffee, tea, fabrics, china, cotton, silk, the list was endless. The tariff increases. The businesses that would be choked. The subsidies the crown would have to dole out and oh, all the numbers, endless numbers they would have to sit through, argue over, count and recount. Her head was starting to hurt already.

They were soon ushered into the hall with an urgent meeting scheduled for the evening, but the uneasiness lingered in every cordial smile, every sip of wine, every curtsey, bow and hand-shake.

Droves of nobles had turned out. Some of them realistically not important enough to be invited to a pre-royal-wedding banquet but her parents presumably were making a show to Hans' family. Look how loved we are. Look how many important people have shown up. Look how invested they are in our internal affairs, how cohesive, how little they argue.

And look how many people we cater for, just casually, without a care in the world.

Look how rich we are. How powerful. We don't need you. At least, not any more than you need us.

There were people Anna hadn't seen in months, even years. Girls - women, now - who she used to play with were scattered around the hall, huddled by the desserts, laughing in the corner, making small talk.

'Hey!'

'Anna!' Katja and Nora's faces lit up as they turned around, curtseyed half-heartedly and went in for very contained, very polite hugs. 'Congratulations!'

'Oh, yeah,' That's right. This whole thing was a celebration. A celebration that she was getting married.

To Hans.

Who had slapped her last night. It was still so fresh in her mind, so vivid and offensive and she wanted to climb up on the table and scream it to the whole room. He hit me!

Instead, she said, 'Thank you. How's life in the hills?'

Katja sighed, 'Oh, it's fine. You grow used to the peace and quiet, actually. All that nature. It's really beautiful, brings out an inner serenity.' She had been married to a Count so insignificant Anna had actually forgotten his name, and shipped off to one of Arendelle's most supremely boring outer districts about a year ago. She was actually quite unhappy about it at the time. 'But I miss the hustle and bustle of the city. And our tea dates! Oh, but enough about me, Anna, you must be so excited!'

'Must I?' Anna's voice turned up at the end. Too high. Conspicuously high.

'Well I wouldn't say no to marrying a prince,' Nora said, as if she would ever be in such a position as to have the stability of one of the kingdom's most precarious and essential alliances resting on her shoulders, but whatever, 'Especially one who's so young and handsome.'

'And funny!' Katja chimed in, 'Did you hear his joke about the Swede and the tortoise before? It was so good, I nearly wet myself! You could do worse.'

'Could I?' Her voice went up so high, it was essentially a squeak.

'Oh, dear, Anna…' Katja was catching on. She dropped her voice to a whisper, 'you're not pleased with this arrangement?'

She wasn't pleased with the way he hit her last night.

The three once-friends, now honestly more like distant acquaintances, stood awkwardly. Anna opened her mouth but no words came out.

She sipped from her flute glass. Katja and Nora sipped from theirs. She had to say something. Her head was shaking. They were looking at her expectantly. She was so close. So close to just blurting out that no, she was not pleased with this arrangement. She was not pleased with the way he spoke to her like she was stupid and the way he pushed himself to the forefront of council meetings already, and he made her nervous all the time, and he nearly ripped the limb off the illegal mage she was harbouring...

'Oh! No! No, no,' That was too many, 'I mean, yes. Yes, I'm pleased, it's just that...'

'What is it?' Katja whispered, 'Are you nervous about your wedding night? Because I can give you some tips-'

'No!' Yes, but she was absolutely not going to talk about that, definitely not here, and not now, and not with them, 'it's just that…'

It's just that he hit her. He hit her in the face. And it hurt, and it was embarrassing, and it was scary, and it made her feel like a piece of trash.

'Well, sometimes he can become quite...angry.

'Oh, Anna. It's normal for couples to fight.'

'Men don't like to talk about their feelings, so you mustn't push him.'

'You do have a tendency to provoke people.'

'You speak without thinking.'

'And you can be quite sensitive to rejection.'

'Okay, okay!' That was just about all she could handle, 'Thank you for that insightful character assessment. All valid points and I will take them on board. I think I'd better be getting back to my seat now. Speeches starting soon.'

Anna turned on her heel and moved back into the fray of the crowd, blinking back the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, searching for a friendly face in the sea of pageantry and pomp, finding none.

III

After that dreadful night with the unhinged prince, I slept by the princess every night. She would sit there in the middle of her comically large and ornate bed, like a little boat, unmoored in a white, silky sea, and look at me with big, beseeching eyes. She didn't have to say anything. I didn't have it in me to deny her.

I would wake in the night to find her clinging to me. Tightly, stubbornly and possessively, like an anxious child clings to their favourite toy. It stirred a feeling within me that I couldn't quite identify. It was warm but sad and sweet but frightening and fragile all at once. A feeling that crept up on me like vines, tightly, ensnaring me, and I began to let it. I began to crave it.

I wondered if it was the corruption, causing her to seek my proximity each night. To push her head into the crook of my neck and slide her fingers between my own and drape her leg over mine. The magic and the promise of power that came with it that would always tempt the hearts of men, warp their minds. Even a sweet girl like Anna was, at her core, only human. And to be human is to lust for power.

But perhaps I was too cynical, if such a thing is possible. Perhaps I was being self-obsessed. Perhaps she was simply more like me than I ever imagined possible. Stifled by the cards she was dealt, unable to change what she was. Starved for touch and tenderness. Seeking any comfort she could in an unforgiving world.

I accepted that my feelings had grown into something no longer under my control when I found myself taken by daydreams, fantasies of ice spikes piercing the auburn prince, swiftly emerging from the ground and plunging through his gut. The look of indignation on his face and the slow horror of realisation as he touched his lip, enquiring as to the wet sensation, only to find his own blood coating his hand, pouring from his mouth. To stand above his limp body and watch the light leave his eyes.

I'd never been plagued with such violent inclinations before. Even the cruelest of captors had left me bitter, hollow, jittery as a mouse cornered by a cat. But never murderous.

I began to worry less about my own escape or what the council might be planning for me, and more about Anna's wedding night. My stomach tightened, my breath laboured, as though it was me staring down that barrel, and I began to wish that I could take her place.

In some ways, I was becoming unrecognisable to myself, so focused on another, so unguarded. The last time I let this happen, it ended so very badly. The last time I cared for another, I lost so much. So much that I would never get back. I vowed that I would never again be deceived by the foolish whims of the heart, never allow myself to be so compromised. But perhaps that was unrealistic. I too, at my core, was only human.

In some ways, it made perfect sense.

After all, I was destined for tragedy. It was written from the start, like the Greek myths Lady Sherington used to read to me. Doomed to fall, caught between two worlds, belonging nowhere. But if I was Icarus then Anna was the sun. So bright, so pure, so untainted with human darkness, like the first green buds of spring after the winter thaws, or a blazing campfire that you stand too close to, even though you know it's going to burn you a little bit, because the alternative is so cold, so dark, so desolate.