Author's Note: I realize that everyone already knows what the "twist" is going to be in this fic from the title and the many unsubtle clues I have left along the way. So I am just going to try to keep you all in suspense anyway with how exactly I'm going to get there.
VI.
Breakfast was a considerably more pleasant affair the next morning, the queen demonstrating little of the animosity which had come to dominate her interactions with the prince over the previous week.
"Last night was rather interesting," he said. "I don't think I've ever heard someone try to recite Shakespearean sonnets and play the violin at the same time. Sort of impressive, in its own way."
She laughed mid-chew, placing her fork down as she fought to swallow her bread. "Yes. Can't blame them for trying, anyway."
"And what about that flautist?" he added with a grin. "I'm all for contemporary, original compositions, but…"
"It sounded like a dying bird," she finished. "A very loud, dying bird."
The princess, perplexed by their easy rapport, was quiet as she picked at her food in-between glances at them.
The queen eyed her with a smile. "Anna? You've hardly touched your toast. That's unlike you."
The younger woman's nose wrinkled. "I'm just surprised," she said with a sniff, staring at her sister suspiciously. "You're not usually so chatty in the morning."
When the queen looked down in embarrassment, the princess quickly added: "Not that that's a bad thing. Actually, I like the change. It's good for us. Plus, who wants to hear me yammer on all the time? We all need a break from that, including me."
"You don't 'yammer,' Anna," the prince protested through a half-smirk. "I like how you talk. It's genuine and… frank."
"He's right," the queen agreed, and admitted: "I can hardly hold a conversation by comparison."
The princess waved away the comments. "I can tell when you're lying, Elsa. And Hans—you're a better liar than she is, but your smooth talk gives you away."
He leveled a lopsided smile at her. "Is that right?"
"It is," she replied, her chin raising with confidence. After a beat, she noted with a sly look: "But don't let that stop you from giving me compliments. Even if they're fake, I'll take 'em."
The prince and the queen chuckled, and as their gazes met, their faces pinked, and they promptly directed their eyes back down at their plates, resuming their meals in silence.
The princess picked up the conversation again a few moments later, relating some anecdotes from her lessons and recent meetings with ambassadors and various nobles. Her sister and the prince nodded along, adding comments occasionally, until the clock struck nine.
The queen blinked. "I lost track of time," she excused herself as she dabbed her lips with a napkin and rose from the table. "I have to be off, now. I'll see you both later."
"Elsa, wait!" her sister called, rising and rushing to her side. A small, furtive smile played on her lips. "Can we talk for a minute?"
The queen glanced at her pocket watch. "Fine. But only for a minute," she agreed, and turned to the prince. "If you'll excuse us, Hans."
He bowed. "Of course."
The princess led her older sister away to a secluded corner of a narrow hallway some distance from the dining room, her eyes bright and curious. "So? Did you two kiss and make up?" She grinned. "I saw you leave together last night at the end of the concert."
The queen's face flushed. "We… came to an understanding of sorts, yes," she replied, and frowned. "But no kissing was involved."
"An 'understanding,' huh?" the princess repeated, her grin growing. "What exactly does that mean, Elsa?"
"Not what you think it does, apparently," her sister said, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. "We just talked, that's all."
The princess raised her hands in surrender. "If you say so. I'm just happy you're talking to him again." Her eyebrows waggled with interest. "Did my little speech to you help, after all?"
The queen sighed, her expression relaxing. "Maybe a little bit," she conceded. When the princess gave her a pointed look, she clarified: "Okay—maybe a lot. Anyway, it's resolved now."
"Good," the princess nodded, smiling. "I'm glad." She curtsied to the queen, who responded in turn, and then began to walk away. After a brief pause, she looked back at her sister over her shoulder, her smile becoming devious again. "So you won't be mad if I tell you that I told Hans to meet you this afternoon in the rose garden, right?"
The queen stood stock-still, her skin the color of a ripe strawberry. "Anna, you…" Her hands fell to her sides, and she stuttered, flustered. "That's the middle of the day, and you know I have—"
"Meetings and paperwork and other business, yes, I know," her sister finished, her smile unrelenting. "Don't worry—this won't interfere with any of that. I checked your schedule with Kai last night while you were gone, and told him that we were going to take a walk together today for a break from all of the guests." Her expression grew softer. "Don't be upset with him, though; he seemed really happy about us spending time together. Otherwise, I don't think he would've told me a thing."
The queen opened her mouth to protest, but no words came out.
The princess smirked. "Anyway, he'll be expecting you around two. Don't keep him waiting."
And with that, the younger woman skipped out into the hallway, humming the strange, cacophonous flautist's tune from the night before.
Against her better instincts, the queen found herself walking toward the rose garden at the appointed time—though she deliberately walked very slowly so as not to be too punctual, or seem too eager.
She cursed the meeting under her breath as she traveled, as the thought of seeing him in such a place – and of her sister's maneuvers in arranging it – had distracted her the entire morning, making her appear inattentive and careless at some of her meetings. Recalling the strange warmth of his hand, she had even smudged the ink of her signatures on various papers, and had had to send them back to be re-written.
She had sworn at various points that she would not go to meet him after all, and by noon she had convinced herself that she was going to disappoint him and the princess in order to keep her own sanity intact.
When the old steward had noticed her distraction and asked if she was feeling unwell, she had said yes; this half-truth had given her an excuse to leave her last engagement early, so that she could collect her bearings alone. In solitude, however, the temptation to go grew ever larger in her mind, to the point that when the clock struck quarter past one, she rose from her bed as if possessed, and left.
Initially passing many servants and courtiers on the way to the garden put her in a nervous state, and so the queen took a more circuitous path through discreet hallways until she reached a small side door by the servants' quarters, exiting onto the kitchen gardens. By that time in the afternoon they were quiet, and she was able to slip relatively unnoticed around them, finding a well-trodden dirt path towards the meeting place.
A tall hedge and locked iron gate separated her from it, and she groaned a little at realizing that she had forgotten her keyring in her bedroom. She jiggled the lock on the door as she peered through the bars on it, and her surprise at seeing no one in the gardens within caused ice to spark from her fingertips, breaking the lock in twain.
The queen jumped back, startled by the sound of the iron as it clattered to the ground below, and then pressed her offending hand to her chest with a red face, exhaling deeply.
"There's another unlocked gate further down the hedge, you know," the familiar voice of the prince said from the other side of the hedge, and her head shot up at the intrusion. "No need to inflict more property damage."
She sighed through her nose. "I didn't mean to, I just—never mind," she said, frowning. "Which way is it?"
"To your left," he replied. "Just follow my voice."
She continued along the hedge and onto softer grass shadowed by tall trees, keeping her hands close by her sides. Her face was still red. "I don't know this path," she said.
"I'm surprised to hear that," he remarked. "I would've thought, being confined for so long, that you'd know every inch of this place by now."
Her forehead wrinkled. "I was confined indoors, mostly. I'm not as familiar with the gardens, because…"
She paused when she came to the very edge of the natural wall, and she turned to face the hedge, her eyes widening as they met his. The only thing between them was a short wooden gate secured with a latch, which the prince lifted easily.
As she stepped through it and looked up, a soft gasp left her lips.
Tall arches wreathed with red roses in full bloom surrounded a dirt path just a few feet from the gate, and from the state of the vines and leaves encircling the arches, she could tell that they had not been properly pruned for some time. The shine and heat from the afternoon sun was lessened in the wildness of that space, its disuse casting an odd, green light upon the ground where sunlight filtered through the leaves.
"Your parents didn't allow you here?" the prince resumed their conversation, standing behind her.
She glanced at him over her shoulder, then approached the side of an arch, reaching out to graze the edge of a rose before withdrawing it. "It wasn't like that. They wanted me to come out more, actually. But… I was afraid to. I didn't want to spoil things."
"Spoil? You mean—"
"Well, freeze them, yes," the queen clarified, irritated. "My mother was very fond of these gardens, though I can't remember ever coming to this part of them." Her gaze tightened at the rose she could not bring herself to touch. "I guess the staff haven't kept it up since she died."
He was quiet for a while before coming to stand at her side, regarding the same flower. "You haven't spoken much about them." At her warning look, he continued: "I know that their passing was unexpected and tragic. But I imagine, before then, that you must have been quite close to them."
"I was, and I wasn't," she said, her lips pressing into a thin line. "They did their best to keep me safe, and love me in their own way, despite the circumstances. But I pushed them away."
His brow lifted. "'Loved you in their own way'?"
Her cheeks flushed. "I wasn't an easy child to care for; I gave them many hardships. It's a wonder that I haven't hurt more people, and I have them to thank for that."
He was silent at her reply, and then his hand reached out to the rose, his fingers drifting over its petals.
"You know, Elsa," he began, "roses are actually rather difficult to grow. The conditions have to be just right, with plenty of sunshine, well-drained soil, and in areas free from pests, since they're so susceptible to disease. Without regular attention, it's unlikely they'd survive." He eyed her pointedly as he added: "So it's a wonder that these are still here, and blooming as beautifully as they are."
The queen did not miss the look, her eyes darkening. "I'm not a rose, Hans. I don't require sunlight, or pruning, or 'regular attention' to endure." She stood taller, her chin raised, and directed a withering stare at him. "You're prying by means of flattery, but I already told you that won't work."
His hands came up, yielding to her. "You're right," he conceded, "it was a bad comparison. Forgive me."
She crossed her arms. "What were you trying to say, before?" she said. "It's not like you to drop a line of questioning, once you've started."
He smiled a little at the observation. "Yes, that's true," he agreed. The smile faded as his brows knitted together. "It's just… you speak so poorly about yourself and your powers. Calling yourself a 'hardship' to your parents, saying that you pushed them away—all because of one incident from your childhood, which your sister obviously recovered from."
"It wasn't just that one incident," she countered, her hands curling around her biceps. "That was the worst of them, yes, but there were many others after that which created cause for concern. You've seen it yourself—what happens when I get worked up, when I feel out of control."
She pressed a hand to her forehead, cooling the skin there. "This curse is my burden to bear, alone."
"Curse?" the prince asked. "Is that how you see it?"
She glowered at him. "What else could it be?"
He was quiet for a time, studying her irate features, and then stepped into the shadow of an archway. The green light flickered against his skin, dappled by the roses' red. "I used to wish that I had your powers, when I was a boy," he said, staring up at the sunbeams obscured by vines. "When my brothers would torment me, each act of cruelty more petty and vicious than the last, I fantasized about suffocating them with snowdrifts, or turning them into one of your spectacular ice statues—anything that would make them stop."
His eyes closed tightly, lines of pain visible at the edges. "Even realizing that doing so would make me the same as them, I couldn't help but imagine it, and it brought me some comfort during the hardest years of my childhood."
When the prince opened his eyes again, there was a dark honesty in them that the queen had never noticed before. "I know what it's like to feel cursed, Elsa—to feel like a burden. To feel as if I should never have been born. But I couldn't have lived this long if I kept feeling that way about myself. And I don't think you could've, either."
Her face reddened, and her hands throbbed as they fell to her sides.
"Conceal," she told herself, swallowing. "Don't feel."
"What was that?"
She blinked and stared at him, her lips parting but unable to form a reply.
"Don't let it show."
"Elsa?"
Snow fell lightly at first, and then all around them as if in a waking dream, and she gripped the sides of her dress tight enough to cause tears in the fabric.
Conceal, she heard the mantra again, don't feel.
"What are you saying?"
Don't let it show, she finished, silently mouthing the words.
Through the snow, the prince's hand reached out to the side of the arch, forcing itself into the barbed stems.
Conceal, don't feel, don't let it show.
He plucked a single rose from the bush.
"Elsa."
His voice was, at first, intermingled with her father's, and she found it hard to focus on him through the snowdrifts, her vision obscured.
"Come back, Elsa."
The second time she heard her name it was clearer, and as she squinted, the drifts began to dissipate.
"I'm here."
All at once, the snow was suspended in the air, and she could clearly hear – and see – the prince in front of her, holding a single red rose. At his side, his right hand hung loosely, blood trickling from the fingers down into the earth.
She gasped at the sight, instinctively seizing the injured hand and tearing one of her gloves off, wrapping it around his pricked fingers and palm, pressing there. The snow that was suspended, as well as the drifts that covered the earth, disappeared. His skin was hot to touch.
"What were you thinking?" she exclaimed, her face still pale from shock. "You know they have thorns."
He stood in stunned silence watching her tend to him, her thumbs pressing upon the uncovered skin of his wrist.
"Elsa, you…" he managed before growing quiet again, allowing her to focus.
She glanced up at his red face. "What? Don't you have anything to say for yourself?"
He gaped at her, fish-like, before closing his mouth, suppressing a larger smile.
"No," he replied softly. "I suppose I was trying to prove something, but… clearly, I just ended up making a fool out of myself."
Some color returned to her face, and her grip on him relaxed a little. "Yes, you did," she agreed, not looking at him.
He nodded, looking down at his hand still in hers. "I see that now," he said, and her blush deepened. "But what about your glove?"
The queen realized what she had done, and almost recoiled from him in surprise. "I—I'll just have it washed when I get back. I'll tell Gerda I tripped."
"Thank you, Elsa," the prince said, bowing his head. "I really am grateful."
She nodded in return, a hot tremor coursing through her hand as it finally let go of his. She caught sight of the rose still in his right hand, and pursed her lips. "You'd better let go of that, before you hurt your other hand."
He followed her look and examined the flower in question before carefully inserting it into the chest pocket of his jacket. "There, that's better."
Her brow rose. "Really?"
He shrugged. "It's a waste to throw away such a beautiful thing, even if it can hurt me."
She blushed at the long look from the prince that accompanied his remark, and crossed her arms.
"You're incredibly unsubtle," she told him, frowning. "It's very irritating."
"Then I shall strive to be cleverer with my innuendos," he said, a half-smirk tugging at his lips. "Wouldn't want you to get sick of me—not just yet, anyway." His humorous expression dissolved as he regarded her for a minute, and then his gaze returned to the glove covering his left hand, the light between the arches casting striped patterns across the stained fabric.
"It seems as though the bleeding has stopped," he said, and unfurled it from his fingers. "Are you sure you want it back? I'm happy to clean it for you, and return it in a more presentable condition."
She snatched the glove from his hand. "No, thank you," she snapped, and then added more gently: "It's just something I need to take care of on my own."
"You've been saying that a lot," the prince observed. "Needing to handle things, alone." He continued before she could interrupt him. "And I understand that, since I've often thought that I had to do the same. But…"
The queen swallowed. "But?"
He smiled. "Perhaps we can rely on each other." He glanced down at his thorn-pricked hand, and then up at her again. "It certainly paid off for me, today."
She clutched the bloodied glove. "You're asking a lot of me."
He nodded. "I know. But I wouldn't ask if I didn't believe you were capable of it."
Her blush faded as she stared at the rose in his pocket. "I just… don't understand why you do."
He cradled his injured hand thoughtfully. "Because you don't see what I see in you."
"No, I don't," she admitted, and pressed the stained glove against her stomach, her grip relaxing. Her eyes met his in the next moment, and a deep, unbidden desire was spoken.
"But I want to."
She returned to her bedroom a little while later by the same winding route she had taken to go outdoors, her sullied glove balled up in her bare left hand and pressed to her side, out of sight. She exhaled with relief once inside her door, quickly changing out of her torn dress and laying the glove on a side table.
"Your Majesty?"
She held back a sigh at the sound of her trusted steward's voice on the other side of the door.
"Yes, Kai?"
"May we speak for a minute? I know you still have a many meetings ahead of you today, so I won't be long."
She grabbed the dirtied glove from the table and hid it behind her back as she opened the door, waving him in. "Come in," she said, and nodded at the guards outside to close the doors behind him.
Her brow furrowed a little upon observing his tense expression and bearing, unused to seeing him so concerned. "Is everything all right?"
His lip twitched. "Well, Your Majesty, I heard a slightly… worrying report just now, from one of the kitchen staff."
The queen's eyes snapped open. "Oh?" she asked, trying to appear nonplussed. "What did they say?"
The steward's gaze grew more pointed. "That they saw you going out the back door to the rose garden. They said it looked as if you were meeting someone down the hidden lane to the wood gate—the one your mother and father used to use, when they walked there together."
At her twitching features, he continued: "The maid who looks after the guestrooms also mentioned that she saw Prince Hans go out not long before then into the same garden, before she lost sight of him." He paused. "I was surprised to hear this, since I thought you were going on a walk with Princess Anna this afternoon."
She frowned. "Are you having me followed?"
The steward was mortified by the accusation. "No, of course not, Your Majesty; I wouldn't dare. I assure you that these reports came in to me independently, completely of the staff's volition. I gave no orders to them."
Her stare was still suspicious. "Fine. But what is your purpose in coming to me with these reports? What business is it of theirs, or yours, where or with whom I choose to take an afternoon walk?"
The older man rose to meet her eyes again, and swallowed. "Well, Your Majesty, as you know, your father charged me with looking after your personal well-being before he passed, and so I feel that I must speak up when I observe something that may… endanger your health and happiness."
Her nose wrinkled. "Endanger my health and happiness."
"Yes," he affirmed, his posture more assured. "In this case, endangered by getting too close to a certain southern prince." At her annoyed look, he continued: "You remember the many months we spent discussing the fires in the Isles, and their curious origins—the research you sent me to do, and that you did in turn about the prince's family, as well as him? And now suddenly he is here as a valued guest, at the princess's side during many social events, at family meals, and with you on private walks of the rose garden."
His lips curled. "You know, Your Majesty, that innocent or not, he is a man of ill repute in his own lands, and is seen as suspect here in your own court, as well. There are already some rumors around him and the princess, and should word reach our guests of your meeting with him today…"
He paused at seeing his queen's face grow more and more twisted with anger, but went on to conclude: "I can see how his appearance and manners would be charming to you both, and can understand the temptation to overlook his dubious character. But, respectfully, I do not think it wise for you and the princess to associate yourselves further with this young man, Your Majesty."
The room crackled with an invisible energy, the queen's power barely contained as she remained silent, her fingernails digging into her palms.
Don't feel.
She almost spat at the words as they filled the empty air, her seething breaths cold as she swallowed them down.
Don't let it show.
Her gaze lifted to meet his. "Before my father left on his last journey, he told me to be strong—for myself, as well as for Anna. I told him I would try in order to please him, assuming that he and my mother would be back in a few weeks." Her expression grew dark. "I thought I could go on as I was, keeping to myself, believing Anna was better off on her own."
She stopped for a beat, feeling her fingernails draw blood from her palms. "But I was wrong, Kai; they never came back, and Anna was left without parents, and without a sister." Her eyes were as hard as coals. "But now I am queen, and I must protect her. And I can tell the difference between good and ill intent well enough myself."
He swallowed again. "Your Majesty, I'm not questioning your judgment. I know you're—"
"Good," she interrupted, smiling thinly. "Thank you, Kai. I appreciate your concern. You can go, now."
He was taken aback by the abrupt cut off, and even shorter dismissal; nonetheless, he bowed, and made his way towards the door. "I'll see you this evening, Your Majesty," he said, and left.
Alone, the queen's hands finally relaxed, and she exhaled through her mouth, sliding down the side of her bedpost to the carpet. Closing her eyes, she lifted her left glove until it was propped up atop bent knees, her heart still racing.
When she opened them again, she saw that the blood from her palms had become intermingled with the prince's on the fabric.