Once again Anna found herself running through the castle in a haze of shock, ears ringing, not quite sure where she was heading. Only this time, Elsa was leading her with long, decisive strides. They stopped into her bedroom, but after lighting three candles and placing them in a precise triangle on the desk, Elsa led her back into the corridor, locking the door behind them.

'What was that all about?' Anna was so confused, 'The candles?'

'A signal.'

Where are we going?'

'Nowhere.'

'Nowhere?'

'The walls have ears, Anna.' Elsa looked behind with pleading eyes, willing her to understand.

They continued on light, frantic footsteps down the halls, down a flight of stairs, through the painting room - Anna glanced up at Joan on the wall, and resolved to stay brave, no matter what happened next - and into the library. She began to catch on when they passed row after row of old and new books, beelining for the back corner.

She'd always wanted to use the secret passage. As a child, in fact, she would beg and beg until her parents eventually relented and her Mama would run with her through the passage, whispering and giggling the whole time, to find her Papa waiting at the other end, pretending to catch her. The memory stung and she pushed it aside. Now wasn't the time to pick at that fresh, fragile scab.

The bookshelf slid aside easily as they unlatched the two tiny hinges and disappeared into the dark innards of the castle where inky black darkness enveloped them. Anna felt around for the candle and flint she knew would be stashed in the corner, lit it, and gripped it tight in shaking hands. The flame flickered dimly against the stone walls, the warm orange contrasted rather prettily against the cool blue glow emanating from Elsa's finger.

'You have two options,' Elsa said matter-of-factly, 'Go into hiding for a little while, or stay here and fight.'

'Stay and fight!' There was no question. She wasn't about to just throw her kingdom to the wolves, gift wrapped for a bunch of corrupt traitors! She had to see this through to the end. She owed it to her people. To her parents. To herself.

'Okay,' Elsa leaned against the wall and breathed out slowly through pursed lips, 'So, if that's what you choose, I'll stand by your side 'til the end. But there are things you need to know.'

Well, this was certainly not going to be good news.

'If we stay here...it's not just Hans and a few rogue councilmen we have to worry about.'

'What are you saying?'

'There's a whole network, infiltrating the castle, from the council to the guard, right down to the mailroom boys. All working together to put Hans on the throne and take control of The Empire.'

'Take control? No! We're only supposed to stand our ground against invasion and maybe negotiate to free the trade routes- wait, hang on…' Her brain went backwards over everything that had just been said, 'But why are they working against me? To put Hans on the throne? Why would they turn on us like that?'

So that's how it was, apparently. She'd lived her whole life for her people and they'd turned against her. Her face burnt with shame and rejection. She tried to think of some way this could all be a mistake.

Elsa wouldn't lie to her...But plenty of people would lie to Elsa.

'How do you know all this is true? Are you sure?'

'I'm so sorry,' Elsa's eyes were downcast and her words tumbled out in an anxious stream, 'I overheard him plotting with a servant boy. I heard everything, he admitted to all of it. And then he caught me! He caught me and he said he'd have you killed, just like he had your parents killed-'

'My parents…'

Of course… It made sense. Now that the fog of shock was lifting, it really was kind of unthinkable that some foreign spies had been able to infiltrate the Kingsguard, know exactly where her parents were scheduled to be, and to get away with their identities hidden…

Of course it was an inside job.

'Do you understand what this means?'

Did she? Anna had taken for granted, her whole life, that being the princess meant she would always be kept safe. The safest person in the kingdom, sequestered away in the heart of the keep, behind layers of stone and human reinforcements. But the older she got, the more she found that the assumptions she'd grown up with were completely back to front.

'We can stay and fight if you want to. But it will be difficult. And dangerous.'

Difficult indeed. The implications crashed over Anna, one after the other, like rough, stormy waves. They would have to figure out who they could trust. Possibly even use interrogation. Maybe even lock people in the dungeon. She couldn't afford to mess it up - that would make her enemies out of loyalists.

And there were certainly enough enemies already.

Elsa was willing to fight, to protect her, but that wasn't foolproof. Even Elsa would have to sleep, some time. She didn't have eyes on the back of her head. She could be tricked, distracted, startled. She would have to commit who knows how many more murders, sleep with one eye open, become a symbol of crushing monarchical rule and a figure of fear and hatred as they stamped out this network of traitors. She would be hunted, once again. Was it fair to ask that of such a gentle soul? Who had already suffered so much? Was it fair to ask of anyone? For a kingdom that had locked her up like a criminal and very nearly hacked her arm off for a war she stood to benefit nothing from.

A kingdom that saw them both as disposable, apparently.

'Anna?' Cool hands cupped her face, 'What are you thinking?'

Perhaps it was wise to take some time away. Nothing permanent. To be safe while they came up with a game plan. There was just one problem. 'But where can we go?'

'It's all taken care of, my darling. Just say the word. We'll get you out of here.'

We? Who else was involved in this elaborate counter-plot to smuggle her away to safety? How much subterfuge and treason and resistance had been going on right under Anna's nose while she had been lying around in bed, having imaginary arguments with her father and sniffing her mother's old cloak?

She took one last look toward the tunnel's entrance, 'Okay. Let's go.'

Everything was streamlined from the word "okay". They moved through dark tunnels to the centre of the castle, where the chime of the grandfather clock resounded from the other side of the wall, heralding five o'clock. Gerda appeared, right on cue, alerted by the candles in Anna's room. She carried two small trunks, a lantern and a cloak, and even in the murky darkness a tear glistened on her wrinkled cheek in the orange and blue light.

Enveloped in a tight, squishy hug, Anna tried to commit the moment to memory as tears formed in her own eyes. The familiar comforting scent of fresh laundry and warm baked bread. The soft but firm calloused hands gripping her own. Hands that had fed her and bathed her and wiped her tears since infancy.

'I'm going to miss you so much,' Anna tried hard not to sob.

'Then it's a good thing this is only temporary, hmm?

Anna just nodded, still baffled that this had all been organised so thoroughly and so quickly.

'Because you're going to come back to us. Once the dust has settled and you've got your battleplan. And your kingdom will be waiting for you. Put these on, now.'

Anna wasn't so sure about that last part, about her kingdom waiting for her, but she nodded and gratefully took the cloak, gloves and hat. 'Did you bring one for Elsa? She can't go out wearing that.'

'She certainly can't.' Gerda smiled mischievously, 'But I for one and just dying to see these ice clothes a certain someone has been bragging about.'

'Oh, right. I almost forgot.' Elsa looked down at herself, still clad in the surgery gown and blushed, 'I feel a bit shy now.'

'Go on, give an old lady a magical show before you steal away into the night.'

'Well...just for you, Gerda.' Elsa waved her arm from her knees up to her neck and a white blue sheen appeared over her legs first, fluttering outward into knee-length layered skirts and finally forming into a variety of loose shimmering layers over her chest that culminated into a hooded cloak held together at the collarbone with a snowflake pin.

Anna's jaw dropped open at the sheer intricacy of it, and she reached out to touch the shimmering fabric-like material. It was cool and surprisingly soft. 'That's amazing. How does that even work? I mean, ice is rigid but this feels so-'

'It's essentially really really tiny chainmail,' Elsa said, 'Now come on, Kristoff is waiting.'

Gerda unlocked an old abandoned servants' passage and led them down a tunnel Anna had never seen before, unlocking another door at the end to reveal a dense patch of forest - probably on the eastern side of the castle but she'd totally lost her bearings in that dark maze.

Kristoff was indeed waiting, with a single dim lantern and hard determination on his face like a soldier about to go to battle. A large wooden slat rested against his carriage. Elsa lay her trunk down in a corner then climbed into the carriage floor next to it, beckoning to Anna to do the same. 'Lie down flat,' she said, 'like this.'

Anna did so and her suspicions were confirmed when Kristoff heaved the slat board - a false floor - into place, on top of the two prone girls, encasing them side by side into the small dark space with nothing but their trunks, the scent of freshly lacquered wood, and each other.

It was bad enough lying under the false floor, unable to even bend her knees or lift her head. Anna felt like a corpse in a coffin. Like the air was running out. Like a miner trapped a million miles below the earth, forgotten and left to die. It got even worse when she heard the thunk of objects being thrown into the carriage on top of them, sealing them into their tiny, cramped prison.

She felt like she'd been buried alive. The darkness around her was suffocating, choking up her lungs, squeezing her throat, leaving her mouth parched as her body dissolved into hot, prickly fear. She reached around blindly for Elsa's hand and squeezed, clinging to the squeeze she received back like a beacon in a sea of endless night.

The carriage bumped and creaked over an uneven path and Anna strained to make out the noises all around, muffled through the wood but somehow more vivid against the complete absence of light. Guards' frantic voices in the distance. The clink of weapons. The clip-clop of Sven's hooves over cobblestone - they were back in the castle grounds now. The gate swung open with a metallic groan.

'Thank you for volunteering to help, lad. Are you sure you don't want somebody to accompany you?'

'I'm sure. Princess Anna trusts me. She'll come easier if I'm by myself.'

Wow. Kristoff kept his voice steady but with a believable amount of soft concern.

'Okay, well, take this. The witch is fast, precise and ruthless, so don't hesitate when you see her. Kill her before she kills you.' Something hard and metallic clattered onto the wooden surface directly above the girls' heads - it sounded kind of like a crossbow. 'The arrows are specially made. Deadly to any magical creature.'

'Understood. Thank you, sir.'

'Alright, best not give them any more of a head start. Good luck.'

The gate swung shut and they were out free. Anna clung to every sound and scent from the city night that managed to permeate their stifling dark confinement. The salty ocean air. Horse dung. Murmured conversations here and there. Laughter. Shouting. Bells ringing somewhere. A crowd of voices and the stench of ale - they must have passed a pub. The sudden incline indicated that they'd finally reached the edge of the city, and were headed up into the hills.

Once the distracting noises and smells of the city died down, the fear returned. The sense of being buried alive. The absence of light and sound and the inability to move left Anna's mind drifting, like a bodiless soul, trapped in an infinite void. She was quite sure they were running out of air, and not entirely sure she hadn't already suffocated and might now be dead. She wanted to kick and scream and move her body, and bust out of this tiny, cramped space, and the powerlessness, the helplessness of knowing that she couldn't until somebody else let her out was a whole new kind of terror.

'Elsa?' She whispered.

'Yes?' Came the whispered reply.

'I want to get out.'

'We will. Soon.' Elsa rearranged their hands so that their fingers were interlaced and gave another squeeze, 'Just… hang in there.'

Hang in there. Anna had said those very words to Elsa when they first met, down in the dungeon. She'd felt at the time they were inadequate, and this kind of confirmed it. That memory felt distant and dreamlike now. Like some other, easier life belonging to someone else.

Was this how Elsa had felt in that dungeon? Or in any of the boxes and cages and chains she'd casually mentioned being confined to in years gone by?

'I feel trapped. I- I feel like I can't breathe.'

'I know...I know.' Elsa didn't sound frightened in the least. Sad, but not frightened. 'But you have to try to just...surrender to it. It's the only way to get through it.'

'Surrender? What do you mean?'

'Embrace the fear. Accept the unknown. Give up control and just... try to let go.'

Those words haunted Anna and hurt her heart in ways she couldn't quite explain. They made sense, enough, on their own. But something about the flatness of Elsa's voice worried her. It matched the glassy, far-away look she got in her eyes around men like Hans and Hardier. An understandable response, but once she drifted off to wherever she went in her mind, they would both be alone. And that couldn't possibly be better than staying present together. 'Will you tell me a story?'

That worked. Elsa told her story after story, for what felt like an eternity in the darkness of the hidden compartment. Stories about young girls who ventured into dark forests to fetch fires from witches. Girls who confronted evils untold and solved puzzles. Stories about beast-men lurking in the dark and the children they corrupted, and how all of them found their way into the light, by first venturing deep down into the darkness. Into the earth. Into the womb where the earth began. She told stories of how the world began and stories of how it would end. Stories of other worlds beyond this one. Stories of giants who lay down to rest and became the earth. Stories about life and death and girls who returned to their homes transformed. Stronger and wiser than they were before. More whole. More powerful.

Anna awoke to birdsong. She was unsure when she had fallen asleep, but she had apparently drifted off in the whispered stories to find a few hours of fitful shut-eye. Tiny specks of light pierced through the cracks of wood in the carriage's false bottom and Kristoff's clumpy footsteps stomped around. One by one, he removed the objects from the carriage's false floor until finally he removed the whole thing, and the glorious rays of weak morning sun hit Anna's face.

She sat up and yawned, immediately grateful for the space and light and fresh air all around her. She felt quite ill and clammy, which was to be expected after being in that dank, dark space for so long. In utter relief, she gulped in a huge breath, feeling like a scrunched up, bewildered baby newly born into a big, bright world.

She threw her arms around Kristoff and thanked him profusely, feeling his large body slump weaky under her weight. The poor man's haggard face and bloodshot eyes clearly indicated that he hadn't slept all night. He looked like he was about to fall apart at the seams. She was lucky to have a friend like him. In the face of a kingdom turned against her, she was lucky to have a few people she could count on. She wasn't alone.

Once the overwhelming relief of being out of the stifling box wore off, Anna took in her surroundings. They were in a clearing, entirely surrounded by tall trees with a steep hill to one side. Somewhere nearby she could hear a stream running. Nestled against the hillside was a narrow, two storey wooden cottage with a steep, thatched roof and a slightly wonky chimney. Clearly it had been abandoned for a while - vines covered the walls and a tree branch had grown right through the balcony. But overall it looked structurally sound.

Anna was quite charmed. Walking up to the house, she passed what had once been small vegetable patches, now overgrown. An old chicken coop was rotting inside a small pen. A quaint little swing dangled from a tree branch at the edge of the clearing. She wondered who had once lived here. What happened to them? It seemed they'd had a happy life.

It was musty inside the house, and a few vines had snaked their way in through a hole in the wall here and there, but overall it was clean and mostly undamaged, though very bare. Only a couple of pots and pans hung on the wall by the hearth, and a stack of empty jars sat on the bench along with herb racks, wooden bowls, and a few mortars and pestles. A bathing tub was stashed away by the hearth - a tiny little wooden one like she'd heard poor people used, and under the kitchen window sat a basic wooden table and three matching chairs - two large ones and one adorable little one.

Kristoff collapsed onto the rickety old couch, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Anna covered him with her cloak and pulled the curtains shut to aid his nap, not that he seemed to need it, and tiptoed upstairs to give him some peace and quiet.

The second storey contained just one room. Between the double bed on one wall and the bookshelf on the opposite side, Elsa kneeled on the woven rug in front of a wooden chest beneath the window. The rays of morning sun cast her hair and skin in a soft, golden hue. Her icy cloak and dress shimmered iridescent in pastel pinks, greens, blues, and Anna still couldn't get over how cool it was. How etherial and mysterious and distinctly, formidably magical it made her look. Yet it was still her very own sweet, gentle, poetic, often awkward and sometimes straight up dorky Elsa. She felt a warm buzz in her chest and kneeled down, pulling her into a relaxed, sideways embrace and kissed her on the cheek. It felt surprisingly okay to have run away from everything she'd ever known to be here in an abandoned cottage with someone she'd known for only a couple of months. Elsa leaned into Anna's side and pulled one of the toys from the chest to inspect. A tiny, carved wooden reindeer. The chest was mostly empty but a small stack of musty fabrics and a few toys remained. All were crudely carved and painted in the same style. A peg doll. Some kind of puzzle game. A little drum with a strap.

It was heartwarming but also held a faint aura of sadness, and it was difficult to pinpoint why. She felt altogether jittery and uneasy. Perhaps it was hunger. She hadn't eaten since yesterday lunchtime. Hadn't even thought about food. She'd just accepted that her body and mind were going to be in a state of disarray, a reflection of the chaos all around her, until they made it to safety. But now that she stopped to rest and take inventory of herself, something was wrong.

Despite having not eaten for almost a day, the thought of food held no pull. In fact, it seemed kind of off putting. And despite the idyllic tranquility of this charming cottage, and the fresh mountain air wafting through the open window, and the knowledge that they were safe now, at least for a time, her heart still pounded a little too fast. So did her head, which was to be expected after a poor night's sleep. But the clamminess in her hands, the uneasiness of her stomach, that wasn't normal…

She should be coming down to equilibrium, not feeling worse.

'Elsa? I don't...I don't feel quite right.'

Anna tried not to worry just yet, but this would be a really bad time to get sick.

'Hmm,' Elsa raised one eyebrow, really not seeming quite as concerned as she should. She peered into Anna's eyes, one after the other, felt her forehead, and lifted one of her sweaty hands by the wrist to inspect it. It was trembling quite a bit, which Anna hadn't noticed before. 'Yes, we thought this might happen.'

'Thought what might happen?' Anna swallowed down a jolt of paranoia. Why were they expecting her to get sick?

'Your body's craving wine.'

Oh. Oh dear. She had heard of this happening to people. But not people like her. This happened to old men who drank bottles of whiskey and rum from sunup to sundown, who lay unconscious in gutters, babbling incomprehensibly, covered in their own vomit.

Anna didn't even drink that much. Did she? A glass of wine with lunch, another one or two with dinner had been normal since she was at least sixteen. Admittedly that amount had steadily increased in the months since her engagement to Hans.

'But we brought some with us, right?'

Elsa glanced out the window to the bright sky, back to Anna, and pursed her lips into an awkward, apologetic smile.

'Right?'

A feeling of dread settled in Anna's stomach.

'You might feel unwell for a little while. Hopefully not more than a week.'

'Great.' Anna sighed and lay down on the dusty carpet, staring up at the cobwebs on the ceiling. Elsa moved in to snuggle against her side. The bright sun outside and perfectly blue sky seemed to be taunting her. It was going to be a challenging week. But at times like this a person has to count their blessings. For the moment no one was trying to kill or maim them. And she wasn't alone.