So.

I've been awake for about twenty-four hours now, so if this chapter is riddled with all sorts of grammar and spelling ish, that's my go-to excuse right now. I'll give the chapter another once-over when I wake up this evening - I promise. I do hope you enjoy the chapter as I'm already working on the next one. :)

As always, I appreciate all your reviews, comments, criticisms, et cetera. I hope you'll keep them coming. They really do make a difference in this girl's life.

Lots of love,
ssg.x.

CHAPTER 29
EMBERS

Everyone hates me.

And that poor soldier…

Why hadn't anyone told me about him before?

She ran blindly down one hallway after another. She bounded up staircases and iced doors as she ran through them so that no one would be able to follow her. She couldn't bear to have anyone look at her. She knew that, as queen, no one would give her an honest answer. No one would reprimand her or insist that she own up to her mistakes the way that poor old woman had. They'd tell her the woman was just upset, to not pay any attention to a parent mourning the loss of her son, and that she was a wonderful, kind queen who loved her people. But behind her back…

behind my back.

She was surrounded by liars. Even Anna had been tip-toeing around her in regards to Hans being moved into the palace. It wasn't until Elsa saw the way Anna held the old woman, saw her heart break for her, that she was able to see a sliver of how Anna really felt about Elsa harbouring Hans. Anna's mask had slipped. Elsa never thought Anna would ever feel the need to wear one around her.

Everyone thinks I'm made of glass.

What did Elsa expect? When had she ever given anyone reason to believe otherwise?

Elsa slowed down to a walk, and then a trudge as she wiped the tears from her eyes with a sleeve across her face. Pausing to look around, she recognized the paintings on the walls before anything else – each one was marine-themed – The Jetty of Calais, Shipwreck on the Coast of Norway, The Sea of Ice, among others. The works of art had once been scattered all over the palace, but sometime after their parents' death, for obvious reasons, they had been collected and moved to a wing rarely frequented by Anna or herself. The light from the gas lamps was dimmer here, and the wood panels were a dark, oppressive mahogany. She tried to avoid focusing on any one painting by staring at the satin mules that poked out from beneath the hem of her plum-coloured dress.

This was where Hans was being kept.

Elsa bit her lip. This was where she had been headed this entire time, she realized. She wasn't sure how she knew which pair of doors he was behind, as she hadn't been to visit him since he had arrived here two weeks before, but when her fingers lightly touched the last two doors at the very end of the hall, she felt so strongly that he must be on the other side of them. He'd be angry with her, and he'd have every right to be. No one could lie like Hans, but she'd realized over the course of the past few months that no one could tell the truth like him either. When he was honest with her, he was brutally honest. Just the thought of that made her…

Just the thought of that made her…

"Queen Elsa!"

Two guards appeared at the other end of the hall, out of breath but looking relieved that they'd managed to catch up with her. She recognized them as the men assigned to keep watch over Hans' room. For whatever reason, they had left their post.

"Shouldn't you two be watching these doors?" she snapped, angrier at herself for almost getting caught sneaking into Hans' room than at the guards for leaving him unattended. The guards looked contritely across at each other.

"Forgive us, Your Majesty. We…"

There was an awkward pause, and then the elder of the two spoke up.

"It's very cold up here, Queen Elsa. We needed warmer clothes. Gloves, coats…But neither of us wanted to leave the other alone with…"

Elsa frowned, glancing at them sheepishly. They were afraid of Hans and what he might do to them, and they were afraid to tell her that for fear they'd upset her.

"I want you two to go down to the kitchen and ask for some hot cider, then maybe take a quick stroll around the grounds to warm up. It's a beautiful day outside."

"But…Your Highness…"

They were both looking at her as though she'd lost her mind. That could very well have been. She waved them off with a smile she hoped they wouldn't be able to see through.

"Go on, now. I'm due to check in on Prince Hans myself anyways. I'll be sure to do something about the cold," she said, hoping a lovely demeanour would alleviate any suspicions they might have. "No one understands the cold better than me after all," she giggled demurely. The men laughed along with her.

She was getting good at this, she decided.

Once left alone, Elsa closed her eyes and swallowed the lump in her throat. With a quick wave of her hand, she filled the lock with ice to create a makeshift key. She turned it and listened for the click. With one long, calming breath, she pushed on the door to open it.

The room was cold and dark, and Elsa could feel the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. The floor was a large, black expanse of ice that traveled up the walls and darkened the windows. The air was so dry that it was almost uncomfortable to breathe. In a few deep breaths she actually began to feel light-headed.

When Hans turned to look at her from across the room, her heart stopped. It was as though she was walking into that room back at the Westergård palace all over again. He had been staring at one of the blacked out windows like he could see right through it. He was sitting at a round wooden table that was lightly covered in snow, a full plate of food sitting in front of him – a hunk of buttered bread, cod fillet, rutabaga, creamed peas and shredded red cabbage.

They looked at each other, waiting for the other to break the silence. Elsa's hand clenched painfully around the door handle behind her back. The fingers on her other hand lightly tapped just below her left breast and the white feather that marked her skin.

"You…I…um…" she sputtered. "You haven't eaten."

Hans tilted his head to one side, bemused by the first words she'd spoken to him in weeks. She squeezed her eyes shut and cursed under her breath. "I just…I mean…"

This was not the romantic reunion she'd had in mind.

Hans raised his eyebrows, a small smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. It seemed that he'd decided he wasn't going to go out of his way make this easy for her, and she deserved that.

"You should probably eat," she said.

"I can't," he finally replied.

Elsa took a few tentative steps towards him.

"Is it cold? Does it need to be warmed up? Should I call someone to –"

Hans brought his hands out from beneath the table, holding them up for her to see. They were wrapped in so many layers of bandage that they looked almost three times their size.

"Oh…" Elsa exclaimed guiltily.

"I'm having a tad bit of trouble with the bones," he said, gesturing at the cod filet with a tilt of his chin.

"Have you been able to eat at all since you've been here?"

"Queen Elsa, why are you here?" he asked, ignoring her lame attempt at small talk.

Her brows knitted together.

Queen Elsa…

The distance that single word put between them…

Queen…

Her stomach roiled.

"What do you mean?" she asked, her mouth suddenly very dry.

Hans leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs under the table. "Exactly what I asked. Why are you here? For two months you didn't bother yourself to come see me –"

"I –"

"And when you finally do decide to pay me a visit, you barely speak to me."

Elsa wrung her hands together. "It's only because –"

Hans sighed. "You have me brought here, and then you vanish again –"

"Hans, please. I hadn't meant to –"

"—so I believe I've asked a reasonable question at this juncture," he continued calmly. "Why are you here?"

Elsa closed her eyes and swallowed. The freeze swelled inside her, lapped at her bones, rolled and crashed against the insides of her skull. She clenched her fists at her sides.

"I needed to see you," she whispered.

"Ah," Hans chuckled sourly. "Very nice."

Elsa took another few steps towards him. "I wanted to see you," she amended. "Of course I wanted to see you, Hans."

Hans pursed his lips and nodded slowly before looking away. Elsa's eyes welled with tears and her chin began to wobble. Her voice cracked as she spoke.

"You promised," she said. "You promised you wouldn't change."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he muttered.

She circled the table, ducking back into his eye-line. "You're literally taking my mistreatment of you sitting down."

"A broken promise for a broken promise," he answered evenly.

"So call me a liar," she said. "Call me a coward. Tell me we're the same, you and I. Tell me you believed in me, that I disappointed you, and that you should have known better. Just…God, Hans. Tell me you hate me, that I've broken your heart, that I'm the first and the last woman you'll ever love because you'll never be able to trust anyone ever again –"

Hans shook his head. She could see that he was biting the inside of his cheek as though he were trying to keep from speaking his heart. The cold, dry air was filled with static electricity – his and hers combined – and it popped and crackled up the walls, across the rafters, and even along their spines.

"Tell me how stupid you feel," she cried. "How you wish you'd left Arendelle when I had given you the chance, how you wish you'd never kissed me –"

"All of those things!" Hans finally erupted, composure all but withered away in the face of a burning anger that set fire to his features and launched a second white forelock through his red hair. "You said I'd never be alone again. I told you I wouldn't hold you to that promise, but you insisted that I do."

He stood and kicked the chair out from under him, almost sending the table and its contents soaring violently across the room on a gust of wind with a wave of one of his bandaged hands. His eyes darkened, and the walls began to creak as the wind grew stronger. The blue snowflake emblazoned on his chest flared and the white feather on hers answered in kind.

"Then tell me you wish you'd never sent that letter to me, Hans. Tell me you wish you'd never met me," Elsa said, a hint of pleading in her voice.

Looking perplexed, Hans' eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Despite his confusion, and probably only out of sheer curiosity, he granted her request. "I wish I'd never met you," he said implacably. Elsa's mouth quirked with what could only be described as arousal. She hoped Hans wouldn't ask her to explain why, but she found his honesty…stimulating. She missed having a person in her life, as short a time as it was, that didn't handle her like a champagne flute. She missed the Hans that had bent her back over his arm and tattooed his initials on her heart, the man that had ripped her dress trying to get it off of her, the man who drove himself into her with all the delicateness of a chariot race and kissed her with every shade of darkness and light in him.

Hans took several determined steps towards her. She took the same number of footfalls back.

"Tell me you're a coward," he said.

"I'm a coward," she whispered.

"And a liar," he hissed.

"Yes," she said.

"Say it," he growled. It sent a delicious little shiver down her spine. She squeezed her thighs together beneath her skirts, feeling the freeze thrumming through her veins, pooling between her legs.

"I'm a liar," she breathed, letting him close the distance between them in three strides. He inhaled the scent of her hair, licked his lips and pressed them to her ear.

"Tell me you'll do anything to make it up to me."

Elsa nuzzled the hollow of his throat. He smelled like shaving soap and clean linens. She raised herself up onto the tips of her toes. "Anything," she whispered, her icy breath ghosting along the strong line of his clean-shaven jaw. He trembled, and she knew it wasn't because of the cold. The white feather drummed against her heart as her hand sought out his. "I'll do anything to make it up to you."

Her fingers lightly traced the outline of his frozen heart, teasing it with the assurance that the freeze could be his if only he would ask for it. His head lolled back and he let out a low, guttural moan.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" she said, smiling. "Did you say something?"

His response was a breathless chuckle and a tilt of his hips against the soft curve of her belly. She started to pluck at the buttons of his shirt, and his eyes fluttered closed. She slid the fabric back over his shoulders, biting her lip to suppress a sob gaining strength at the back of her throat. It sounded silly, but she missed his skin – its pallor, the smattering of freckles that began on his shoulders and grew fainter and sparser the further down his chest and back it went. She lightly raked her fingernails down his chest, capturing one of his nipples and giving it a painful twist between her thumb and forefinger before flattening her hand over his heart and releasing the freeze into it with one powerful blast.

Hans gasped, wrapping her up in his arms and pulling her against him tightly with one bandaged hand over the other. He growled into her ear, "If my injuries weren't keeping me from it, I'd bend you over that table and fuck you until your legs couldn't hold you up anymore."

Elsa laughed nervously, taken aback by his unabashed use of that word.

"Or maybe I'd have you up against those doors…" he rasped. Elsa closed her eyes and swallowed hard. "…crying out so loudly that you'd have no choice but to tell everyone on the other side of them that their worst fears have officially been confirmed – once, twice…three times…four times…"

"Hans…" Elsa whispered, blushing furiously. She would never say it out loud – thinking about it alone made her feel wicked enough – but the idea of pushing the boundaries of their secret affair to see how close they could get to the line without toppling over it sometimes excited her more than scared her.

Despite outward appearances, Elsa considered herself to be the far more mischievous sister. Before she and Anna had been separated back when they were children, Elsa was "the one who should know better". Anna had been too young to really understand that sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to turn the ballroom into a private winter wonderland wasn't proper princess conduct. Anna just wanted to have fun. Elsa looked forward to the next morning when the doors would open and the avalanche of snow would pour out into the hallway, much to the bewilderment of the house staff. Her parents would take the sisters aside and scold them privately about how wildly inappropriate their behaviour was. She and Elsa would tell their parents how sorry they were, then Anna would be dismissed.

"Wait just one moment please, Elsa," her father would say once Anna had disappeared through the doors ahead of her. He would get down on one knee and take her shoulders in his hands. "Your mother and I are very disappointed. We expect more from you. You're the big sister here, Elsa – you should know better."

"I know. I'm sorry, Papa," she would say, eyes cast downward, trying her best to look as sincerely remorseful as possible. She'd glance over his shoulder at her mother, who always ended up looking like she was trying not to laugh. She knew her elder daughter wasn't even a little sorry, though she seemed to appreciate her efforts to at least appear apologetic, if only to put her poor father's mind at ease until the next time Anna was hit with another bout of insomnia.

You're still the big sister, Elsa. And you should still know better.

But with Hans' voice in her ear, that was an easy truth to temporarily mollify with a half-hearted apology before going ahead and doing what she wanted to do anyway. And there was so much she wanted to do with Hans.

"It sounds like you missed me," she said to him, letting her hand drift down from the back of his neck to the front of his trousers. She couldn't help the grin that spread across her face when her forwardness caused him to nearly jump out of his skin. He was hard, like she knew he would be. "It feels like you missed me, too."

He sighed and arched into her hand. She cupped him through the fabric and squeezed ever-so-gently. He let out a hoarse moan. "God…"

"I'd prefer if you called me 'Elsa'," she chuckled softly.

"Be careful," he warned. "I've thought about almost nothing but you for nearly three months now - reliving me taking you on that bed back home, you riding me in that chair in the library - over and over again, with my hands in those blasted shackles the entire time."

Elsa didn't immediately get his words' meaning, and not just because her memory of those events were suddenly driving her to distraction.

He smiled and leaned into her ear. "You look confused."

"I am a little," she admitted bashfully.

"What you're doing to me now," he said, looking pointedly down between them at the hand still fondling his erection. "Well…I usually do it myself."

Elsa's eyes widened. "Oh…I…um…"

"Haven't you ever...? You must have!" he said, looking genuinely surprised. "You've never…done it yourself?"

"No," Elsa answered, wondering absently if it was actually scientifically possible to die of embarrassment. She'd be lying if she said she'd never thought about it before, but she didn't think indulging in such an activity was befitting of a future queen, and so she hadn't. "I've just never…I wouldn't even know how to…begin to…" Her life was starting to flash before her eyes.

Hans grinned. "Really. If you'd like, I can…maybe talk you through it."

"Talk me through it?" Elsa arched an eyebrow at him. He held his bandaged hands up in front of her again to remind her of his predicament.

"I can't very well show you now, can I?" he replied. "And might I remind you that you said you'd do anything I asked."

"Well, yes…but," Elsa stammered uneasily, involuntarily looking more scandalized than seductive just then.

"You want to be a woman of your word again, don't you?"

"Yes," she answered ruefully.

Hans leaned in close, and she found that her heart was beating faster and her eyes were closing for the kiss her spinelessness these past two and a half months had denied her. Instead, his lips and increasingly ragged breathing were at her ear again.

"Then may I have a word with you, Your Grace?" he asked thickly.

"Just one?" Elsa replied breathlessly. His eyes narrowed and a smug little smile tugged playfully at features. God, she wanted to kiss that mouth more than anything else in the world in that instant. She knew, of course, that they'd have to address their relationship issues in due course – that what they were doing just then was only delaying that inevitability. She knew that.

Still…

Her fingers sprung back to life, and she began stroking him through his trousers again. He rested his forehead against hers, murmuring "Fuck…" under his breath. She thrilled at the sound of that word on his lips a second time.

She didn't point out that he'd just used up his one word. In fact, she decided to stop counting words altogether, because as far as she was concerned, what she needed most just then was a good talking to, and that was going to take as many words as it was going to take.

And she wasn't the least bit sorry about that.