Part II
A short while after the hiss of the shower started, there was a knock at the door. The other door, from Elsa's bedroom to the hall.
Please don't be Anna, Marie prayed.
"Ma'am - ah, Ma'ams?" A tentative voice called.
Marie opened the door to the castle's housekeeper, with a bundle of fresh towels in her arms. The older woman took a half-step back.
"Gerda, good evening," Marie greeted her. She leaned against the doorframe - taking the weight off her leg. "Elsa's in the shower."
"Ah, that's good," Gerda replied with a small smile. Her eyebrows knit as she appraised Marie - a beat seemed to skip in her mind.
"You brought towels," Marie prompted her.
"I have," Gerda said quickly, "and your highness' garments are tucked inside."
"Thank you." Marie suppressed a wince at the formal address. The housekeeper surely meant it as a gesture of goodwill for Marie's redemption, as it were, but Marie would have preferred none at all considering what her official title was.
Gerda handed her the bundle, and Marie unfolded the top layer. Indeed, the two streetwear variants of her now immolated couture suit were there, along with the too-short nightdress she borrowed from the servants' stock the day before.
"I do appreciate you keeping them," Marie added as she thumbed through the silk and wool.
Gerda dipped her head. "I'll pass your sentiment on to Kai, he's the - "
"- The steward, I remember," Marie supplied, keeping her tone light.
"Of course." Gerda steepled her fingers and the lines in her smile grew taut. "Well, he's the one who made the decision to save your clothes, so I'll tell him."
Was he, now? That was… information Marie decided she shouldn't read too much into.
"There is one more thing," Gerda continued, with a professional briskness. She reached into her pocket and took out a nondescript cherry wood box, about the size and width of a pen case.
Oh, that better not be what I know it is.
"A supply of necessaries," Gerda confirmed. She cracked the lid open. Inside were dried protective sheaths, neatly laid lengthwise, like a sock drawer of old snake skins. "Ah, if indeed you find them necessary."
Marie mashed her lips together, using all her willpower to keep her body and soul from disintegrating on the spot.
The housekeeper watched her, eyes wide with frank curiosity, expecting a response - no, a reveal. Her offering, though tactful as a bonesaw, wasn't made in malice. She honestly didn't know what Marie may or may not need.
Well, Marie thought, why spoil the mystique?
She took the box from Gerda.
"It's been a long day, for both of us," she said, measuring her words. No lies, only controlled truth. "I don't expect we'll require these particular garments tonight."
Marie snapped the lid shut on, but didn't hand back the box.
"But thank you anyhow," Marie told the housekeeper, gesturing with the box like a ruler. "After all, anything's possible."
"So it seems," Gerda agreed. Her small eyes did a quick, dubious, flick over Marie's features, and then she backed out of the doorway. "I hope you and Lady Elsa enjoy your evening."
Marie closed the door on her - just shy of a slam. Clutching the towels to her chest, she put her back against the wood and sank to the floor, laughing. She had to laugh, because it was funny that after everything such a mundane little trial could sting her now. Fourteen all over again.
Belatedly, Marie noticed how loud her laughter sounded - how quiet the room was but for the soft patter of ash on the window. The shower had stopped. Marie glanced at the bathroom door, and saw the handle turning.
Just as the door opened, Marie shoved the box under Elsa's bed.
"Do you ever wear anything ordinary?" She asked, straightening up.
She flattered Elsa to distract from her own suspicious movements, but her awe was genuine. Elsa came out wrapped in a diaphanous lavender gown, with feathery white fringe along the train and sleeves. The whole unearthly concoction billowed and shimmered as she swanned in the doorframe, cheeks rosy under the lamplight and Marie's gaze.
"There is a normal bathrobe underneath," Elsa said. She swept out her arm like an ethereal wing as Marie approached. "I've just embellished on the base - "
"Using the seams, I see." Marie traced the path along Elsa's shoulder where cotton gave way to frost-spun silk.
"You know about dressmaking?" Elsa asked - captivated by Marie's captivation with her new design.
"Oh, not at all," Marie chuckled, having recently discovered the depths of her ignorance. "But I know far too much about tailory."
"You'll have to show me." Elsa's voice turned breathy on the "shh" sound as Marie ran her hand along her arm, skimming the sheer fabric. "I never even considered using menswear, before I saw you in that suit."
Marie hesitated before touching the delicate fringe. "May I - ?"
"Please."
Marie rubbed the fringe between her thumb and forefinger, pulling to test the strength. The minute ice crystals were patterned to resemble bird's down, but the texture was closest to a frigid tulle - fine, but stiff.
"It's like a cloud of mist," Marie marveled.
"I was going for steam," Elsa said, like she was trying to give her a hint.
Then Marie got it. The whole gown came into focus. Steam, sleeves like wings, ice feathered - like the feathery wisps of her own flames.
Now Marie's cheeks were the ones burning.
"It's a little abstract." Elsa lowered her eyes in coy, false modesty.
"It's everything," Marie breathed.
A long lock of wet hair flowed like a stream over Elsa's collar bone, down the gown's plunging neckline, clinging to her curves. In a simple gesture, Marie reached out and brushed the lock back. A shallow gasp left Elsa - not at Marie's direct touch, but the sensation of her own hair, trailing droplets on her chest. Marie drew the stream over her shoulder to join the rest of the blonde river, soaked silver.
"Oh, I'll give you steam." Marie murmured. She pressed her palm against the door frame, leaned in to nuzzle Elsa's temple.
Elsa caught Marie's chest - and tapped the plate of solid rock with her nails.
"Not before we clean you off, you won't," she told her in a raspy chuckle. "It's your turn."
"My turn," Marie sighed, her lips brushing Elsa's brow. She stepped back once again, rolling her eyes in a performance of impatience belied by her barely disguised grin. In truth, the only thing Marie found equal to the way Elsa looked in that gown was the way she was looking at her.
Slender fingers played the air. Vapors rippled like harp strings and raindrops fell like notes. As Elsa filled the porcelain pitcher, Marie held it steady over her blade. Hot steel cast ember red highlights on the crocus patterned enamel. Steam rose from the pitcher's lip, and Marie poured the water into a washtub carved from dark walnut wood.
Drawing a bath in the firelit chamber, their magic substituting for pipes and boilers, it seemed to Marie like they were performing some ancient rite. Like priestesses venerating a moon goddess - or witches summoning Lilith.
When the bath was filled halfway, Marie dipped in her hand to check the temperature. She stirred the surface, blurring reflections of ice blonde and burnt auburn, nimbus white and basalt black, rounded cheek and angular jaw.
"Is it too cold?" Elsa asked. They both sat on the edge of the tub, knees touching, but Marie couldn't feel more than a light pressure through her armor.
"Not anymore." Marie flicked hot droplets at Elsa, making her giggle.
"Then what are you waiting for?"
Marie eased into the bath - careful both for the sake of her leg, and to avoid scraping the hard wood with her armor. Seated, she submerged up to her waist. Warm water percolated through the fine cracks in the igneous rock, a relief to her skin underneath. A sigh went through her every aching muscle as she stretched out her legs, the bath kinder to her injury than dry air had been. She tapped the unused faucet on the opposite end of the tub with her toe.
She felt a nudge at her back.
"I need you to lean forward," Elsa told her.
Marie did so, folding her legs back up to her chest with a slight twinge on her calf. Then she felt a trickle that quickly became a rush of warmth over the crown of her head. She closed her eyes as the water fell, drenching her hair and spilling down her neck.
She raised her hand to brush the veil aside, and met the tips of cool fingers. Elsa combed Marie's hair back from her forehead. At first, her touch caressed, gathering loose strands that clung to Marie's eyelashes and cheekbones. Then, the strokes came deeper, bolder, lathering soap over the length of her scalp. Marie tilted back, letting the hands carry her. The sensation was so soothing, yet thrilling in its novelty - an intoxicating mixture. She inhaled a heavenly scent of violets and irises, anchored by sweet amber.
"Don't move so much." Marie felt Elsa's hands at her temples, holding her still. She heard her chuckle. "Did your mother never wash your hair?"
"No - oh, be gentle with those." Marie felt a tug at her sideburns. Elsa changed her tact, running two fingers down the loose locks, smoothing them out past the edge of Marie's jaw. "Is this what mothers do for their daughters?" Marie wondered aloud, without thinking.
The hands paused.
"Mine did, when I was very young," Elsa said. Her touch resumed, softer, gathering Marie's hair over the nape of her neck.
Marie breathed in, defusing a shudder threatening to rise in her chest. She knew if they dwelt on this subject a moment longer, it would be a waste of the violets. There'd be plenty of time to cry about their mothers after tonight.
"You said, earlier, that you'd never kissed before." A smile nudged the corner of Marie's mouth. "Have you ever wanted to?"
"Oh, I…" Elsa started to answer with reflexive dismissal, but caught herself. "A few times, I think."
"You think?" Marie echoed, her grin broadening. "You don't know when you want to kiss someone?"
"I didn't know it counted. That admiring another girl could be a type of…"
"Desire?" Marie prompted.
"It just seemed so different from what my sister calls romance, and I always knew that wasn't for me." A note of self-confidence came back, defiant. "But, yes, I'm sure of it now. I did want to."
"Tell me who."
"Lean back."
Marie did her part, and let Elsa guide her neck to rest on the cool rim of the tub. Marie heard light trickles quite close to her ear - Elsa rinsing her hair in a shallow basin bowl.
After a moment, Elsa began. Like a new spring out of mountain ice, her words came uneven - stumbling over lichen, and pausing at the edge of rocks.
"It didn't happen often, but, the one I think of most I met years ago - when I was still Queen. After the gates opened, I gave the order to expand the staff. She was hired to attend my bedchamber - draw my curtains in the morning, turn my sheets at night."
"And you admired her."
"No one could help admiring her, she looked like a living statue." Elsa's voice swelled with warmth. "She was tall, hair in thick ringlets. Her lips dipped in the middle, like this -"
She traced a bow curve over Marie's mouth.
"- she had dark eyes that were always downcast -"
Elsa's nail ran along where Marie's lashes met her cheek.
"- but it's not that she was shy. Maybe I imagined it, but I sensed there was this ache weighing on her heart. I used to think that if I were not myself, I'd like to - "
Draw her curtains, Marie thought, but held her tongue.
"- spend a day with her, or more. Be close to her, know the depths of those eyes."
To Marie, this seemed like such a domesticated passion. More suited to a blushing nun than a wild sorceress. But the bare yearning in Elsa's voice made her confessions more intimate than if she were detailing carnal ecstasies.
"Perhaps she was pining for you," Marie suggested.
"I doubt it. She married, and left the castle, before I gave her more than a pleasantry."
Marie sighed, so endeared by the tragedy. "And her mystery haunts you forever."
"I saw her once again, at the harvest festival last fall." Elsa's voice turned brittle. Heartbreak not as a dagger, but slow acting poison. "She had a baby on her arm, and she seemed happy. I remember looking at them and thinking, that's as it should be."
Marie felt a puff of cool air on her forehead, from a sigh or a laugh. She opened her eyes. A trail of water rose by sparkling magic overhead, dissipating to the steam clouds on the ceiling. She heard a clink from behind - the sound of a used basin bowl being set on the floor.
"Alright. Your hair's clean, I think," Elsa said.
Marie sat up, and ran a hand through her new sleek mane, her own fingers tracing over where Elsa's had been. Not a tangle or trace of ash.
"I couldn't have done better." She half-twisted around in the water and met Elsa's eyes. There was soap smeared on her cheek.
"What should I do next?" Elsa glanced over Marie's torso, lips slightly pursed.
"Well, the proper way to undress a lady is to start at her back." Marie brushed her hair off her neck - where the igneous rock tapered to rubble. Though she hadn't yet successfully worn a backlaced corset, the idea of removing the armour in the manner of one rather appealed to her.
"You are the expert," Elsa murmured. She compelled a river of water out of the bath, over Marie's encased neck, and down her shoulders. "Is there an improper way to do it?"
Basalt crumbled off the back of Marie's neck, broken down with a soapy sponge. Strip tease by erosion.
"With corsets, the other way requires a knife." Then, hearing how that might sound, Marie quickly added, "If the lady requests it, of course. For some, a bit of violence is all part of the romance, you understand. They want a dark prince to ravish them."
"No, I.. I see that."
Marie felt Elsa's breath on her bare neck, uneven, as if she were about to ask more. But then she went silent. She reached the tougher plates of armour over Marie's shoulder blades and abandoned the sponge. Icey nails slid between Marie's warm skin and the cool basalt.
Marie noted the new tension to Elsa's touch. More nervousness? Well, nerves were a given, but that alone couldn't account for the tightness in her tone, or her lack of hesitancy. Then, as the nails pried a particularly stubborn chip from her spine, Marie got it. Frustration. She glimpsed how her licentious exploits must come across to Elsa, after all she had denied herself.
"Look, the experience I have really isn't something to be envied," Marie told her. "You've only had fantasies for yourself - I've only ever been a fantasy, or a nightmare, for someone else."
"None of the women you ravished were good enough?"
Marie's exposed skin stung, as if from a light sunburn. She knew Elsa didn't mean to be spiteful, she just didn't understand.
"Nothing was wrong with them, it was… I could never enjoy how they enjoyed me."
There was a tremor to her own voice that Marie couldn't account for. She always used to confront her romantic failings from a posture of strength, revelling in how heartless she must really be. She wasn't failing at love; she was succeeding at wickedness. Of course, she saw the desperate self-delusion for what it was, now. But then why should those little tragedies affect her now - after that madness was finally over?
"What do you mean?" Elsa fingertips gently pressed on Marie, prompting her to bend forward - to present the lower half of her back.
"Of course I knew how people saw me, as a very attractive man." Marie rolled her eyes and hugged her knees to her chest. "And I didn't just wake up looking like that. I think I spent half my life in front of a mirror, doing push-ups, fixing my hair, smearing on foundation - "
"You wear make-up?" Elsa interrupted. She shifted her position, touching Marie's shoulder to get a better look at her face - as if any make-up would still be there after the bath and the volcano.
"Not as much, anymore," Marie chuckled. "Your coronation, actually, was the last time I bothered with a full face. Light rose blush, and lip rouge. Concealer, for under my eyes." She went through the old routine in phantom gestures. Elsa's brow knit, her eyes went half-focused, trying to recall.
"I never noticed," she admitted, and returned her attention to the armor.
"Oh, I should hope not - seamless perfection is the only kind. If anyone saw the effort I went to, they'd think I was a dandy. And wouldn't that be terrible?"
"Ruinous, I expect."
"Yes, truly." Marie wiped a bit of mirth from her eye. "But, to what I was saying. If I got it all right, and a nice girl would say 'oh, I love your physique', and want me to take her into my arms." Marie let out a short laugh. "It felt like she was swooning over how correctly I'd solved a math equation, or something."
"I might swoon over that."
Underwater, chips of rock broke away from the small of Marie's back.
"It's hard for me to describe what it was like, now. It's the absence of a feeling - ah!" Marie gasped, as more water poured over her skin, relieving the stinging. The sponge wiped away lingering debris with broad, generous strokes starting at the top of her shoulder, ending at the low curve of her hip.
"What's the feeling?" Elsa ran a playful finger back up from Marie's hip to the base of her neck. The feathery ice on the sleeves of the bath gown sent cool tingles across her body.
"Oh," Marie sighed, "even more indescribable."
Then, on her right shoulder blade warm lips pressed to her skin. The tingling became more of a hum, like the air before a rainstorm.
"Are you feeling it now?" Elsa's voice was silky, and a bit muffled.
"Yes."
"Don't you know what it is, when you feel something?" Marie felt the apple of Elsa's cheek rub against her shoulder muscle - a grin as a caress.
"I do know. It's - ".
Lips skimmed the length of her neck with a crackle of energy. Marie struggled to tether it to her tongue.
"- a kind of - "
Elsa nuzzled into her hair, stirring up the smell of violets.
"- beauty," Marie blurted out.
But, no - that didn't make sense, beauty wasn't a feeling.
"Mmm." Elsa drew one arm around the slope of Marie's still shielded chest, embracing her. "What's beautiful?"
Her ethereal sleeve billowed into the bath, the hot water thawed through the frost-spun silk while rising steam pulled apart the downy crystals.
"It's like I..."
"Don't say what you're like. Say what you are." Elsa demanded between kisses - quick and tender, like first raindrops.
Through the haze of sensation, Marie did begin to grasp what Elsa wanted to hear. But that's not how she wanted to say it.
She unbent her back, stretched her neck, and Elsa kissed up the angle of her jaw.
"I… I feel graceful... "
Elsa's other hand slid down and around Marie's waist, where her figure curved in and out.
"Profane," Marie hissed, and Elsa's lashes fluttered. Beneath the basalt, her body trembled with something primal, drawn deep from her core. "I feel the power."
She felt their noses brush. Hot breath in her mouth.
"What power?" Elsa asked.
"Mine."
She kissed her fully, and Elsa responded with a fervor.
Their second kiss lacked the raw desperation and melodrama that colored the first, but surpassed it in sheer passion. Elsa pushed back Marie's hair, twisting wet locks round her fingers. Marie opened her mouth to drive the kiss deeper, giving Elsa more. But Elsa's lips wouldn't stay in one place. When Marie paused for a breath, Elsa moved to the side of her jaw. Then the crest of her nose, and ridge of her brow, and the top of her cheekbone, and the hollow of her cheek - not allowing a scrap of her to go unblessed.
Eager hands clawed at the rock coating Marie's neck, undoing the armor like a cravat. Throat free, Marie tilted her head back, to receive a patter of kisses under her chin - heavier now, with a flash of teeth. Elsa's hands didn't stop, either. Like floodwaters forced through a narrow valley, she cleared the hollow of Marie's neck and tore at the edge of the chest plate.
With the direction matters were moving, very soon the basalt would not be the only barrier between them. Already, the walls of the bathtub hindered Marie's ability to reciprocate Elsa's devotions in kind. She started to push herself up, bracing the bad leg.
"Stay there," Elsa commanded, panting, holding Marie down by the shoulders. She kissed her forehead, and repeated, "Stay."
Elsa came in - water splashed out. She knelt in the bath with her knees together, awkwardly demure, trying to fit between Marie and the tub wall.
"You're going side-saddle?" Marie prompted.
Elsa blinked, uncomprehending. "Wh - I don't…"
"Here, like this..." Marie slid a hand over her knee, around her outer thigh, up her hips - guiding Elsa into straddling her. "Alright?"
She had to ask, for a feverish flush bloomed over Elsa's face as her legs spread. Her eyes glittered with candlelight reflecting in pupils so wide and dark, her blue irises reduced barely a wisp. Through the soaked velour, Marie felt a shudder rise from Elsa's hips through her chest, bursting from her mouth as shaky laughter.
Elsa only nodded, no air left to answer with words. She sank lower on her haunches, hands pressed on Marie's breast plate to steady herself - like a snow leopard preparing to pounce.
A finger grazed the bare skin of Marie's sternum - where she broke off the first chip of basalt. Marie shivered, her heart skipped.
Elsa grinned and ripped into the rock. At the speed of desire, she tore the shell from Marie's chest, overwhelming all her senses with that of touch. First the heat - heaven, it burned. Then the wet kiss of steam, breath of life to her skin. Soft skin, that waxed and waned, and yielded so easily to wanting fingers and lips, nails and teeth.
Her own hands gripped Elsa's thigh, soft and taut. Marie's back arched, shoulders breaking the water, warm with streaks of cool ice crystals. She'd never felt this exposed and vulnerable, this electric and alive. At once, they were both fair Andromeda on the cliffside, and the lithe leviathan bearing down on her. No chains and no princes.
Ceaseless, Elsa's hands carved a path down Marie's stomach for her lips to follow - nuzzling under her breast, over sleek muscle, passion flowing with no hesitation nor resistance. But more challenging terrain was fast approaching, with a new threshold to cross. Marie had a fair idea of where this led, but did Elsa? And would she have any idea what to do when she got there?
It was then, while these concerns nudged Marie's awareness, that pain bit into her leg. Not like the pain of her aching muscles or burning skin - pains that harmonized with gentler gratifications - but a spiky, discordant agony. Elsa's thigh jammed her calf - the wound - against the hardwood of the tub. The soak in the bath made the basalt loose and Marie's skin tender - turning the calf-plate of her armor into an iron maiden, digging coarse rock into her flesh.
Shivers ran up Marie's chest as she tried to speak, pleasure stole the voice of pain, and her protest came out as a sharp gasp and a moan. "Ahh, stop!"
And Elsa didn't. She kissed Marie's stomach heavily - flexing lower on her haunches, tightening the vice, driving the rock deeper.
"ELSA STOP!"
Knee to chest, Marie shoved her back. Elsa scrambled away, eyes wide and wild.
The temperature dropped like a stone. Steam turned to mist. Ice spread from where Elsa crouched in the water, jagged and red in the light. Marie's legs went numb, frozen in place as the ice came for her open skin.
Marie twisted her torso away - she reached over the deep wall of the tub, to grab the hilt of the Firebird Sword. The blade flashed gold and heat pulsed through her being, from her chest to her feet. Elsa's ice hissed and thawed, the bathwater violently phazed back from solid to liquid, from frozen to boiling.
Elsa yelped and leapt backward out of the tub. Her ice caught her feet in place on the floor - saving her from cracking her head on the sink. The candles went out.
Pale and panting, they stared at each other by the light of sparkling ice magic and the feathery glow of the blade.
The sword fell with a clatter. Marie curled up, clutching her calf. After a couple of searing seconds, the pain dulled to a throb. Still tender, but she didn't think the wound had reopened.
"Oh, your leg," Elsa breathed. "I forgot."
Elsa lowered her hands from her defensive pose, palms dimming, to cover her mouth.
"It's alright. I let you forget," Marie told her as gently as she could through gritted teeth. "The pain wasn't unmanageable earlier, but just now, you were pressing on the wound and -"
"I was hurting you." Elsa backed against the opposite wall.
"For a moment." At Marie's honesty, the sword glowed brighter, filling the hazy room with golden light and warmth. "I didn't mean to scare you, but you were very caught up -"
Elsa clutched the drenched bathrobe around herself. Icicles hung off the cotton sleeves, casting sharp shadows on the sink. "I almost - "
"Elsa, I am alright," Marie cut her off. "It was just an accident. It happens, in the heat of things - it's normal."
"It's normal to nearly kill each other?" Elsa wrung her hands.
"Well, for us, I'd say so." Marie gave a smile that Elsa did not return. She kept rubbing her palms, and Marie realized the gesture was not just for anxiety. "Did I hurt you?"
Elsa blew a puff of frost on her hands. "You scalded me."
Marie closed her eyes, taking a breath. Perhaps less than two minutes had passed since things went from wonderful to horrible. "I'm sorry. This is all my fault -
"No, Marie, it's mine, you were only defending yourself -"
"This is not a contest of who can be the bigger martyr. I'm the expert, remember? There's measures that can be taken to prevent accidents like this. I was dumb and didn't take them because you were the one leading matters, so I figured I wouldn't need them."
"Oh." Elsa blinked, following Marie's logic. Her hands relaxed a bit, but didn't unclasp. "What are the measures?"
"The easiest, the one we needed, was to have something to say if we need the other person to stop. Since 'stop' can be easily misheard as "don't stop", or vice versa."
"And what if I mishear that?"
Marie let out a short sigh and pushed loose hair out of her eyes. Now was not the time to have this discussion, while nerves were still high. "We can make it something silly and jarring, something we'd never say passionately. Like, oh.. 'punch bowl!'"
"Punch bowl?" That got a smile from her.
"It just popped in my mind. Look, we can sort it out later, or another time. I really shouldn't have ignored my leg this long."
The wound still throbbed. Marie tried stretching her calf out in the water again - wincing as she did so.
Elsa sobered. "No, we shouldn't have."
"Can you call Gerda, for bandages?"
"I'll go get them, I know where they're kept," Elsa said quickly.
"Thank you."
Elsa waved her hands, dissipating the ice on the floor. Her frigid sleeve broke against the sink as she went to the door, but she didn't seem to notice.
"Elsa?" Marie prompted. "You might want to change into something dry."
"Oh, yes, of course." Elsa half-glanced back to Marie, eyes unfocused. She opened the bathroom door and steam clouds flowed out.
"Elsa," Marie repeated, softer but firmer. There was something more she needed to say. She ought to reassure her, try to repair the golden moment that slipped and shattered through their fingers. But it was all too much for mere words, so she just reminded her, "I do need the bandages."
"I know." Elsa lingered in the threshold, her face lost in the fog. "I'll be right back."