"You're going to look beautiful dear."

Elsa stood like a sculpture half-finished as the maids danced around her with bobby pins and scissors and measures, making final alterations to the dress.

Yes, I will be. She watched herself be built in the mirror, swathes of green and black cloth held up to her, examined and cut and pinned by the small intense tailor her father had hired. She shifted uncomfortably under the constraining fabric, every pin that held it in place pricking her when she did so. Eventually she simply stopped struggling against it as a green bodice and skirt went over the tight black smock. The wrinkled old tailor held up a small thick strip of black velvet and wrapped it gently around her throat. She tried to lift up her hands to rip his away from her neck but the pins in the dress pricked and stabbed at her and she had no choice but to stand as he secured it with a single red pin.

The man smiled as he stepped back from his masterpiece. "Perfect. Your majesty, you will be radiant."

"Pfff. You'd look great in Kristoff's old castaways," Anna said with a laugh from the depths of her chair.

Elsa didn't feel like laughing much. She kept scratching at her neck and wrists and chest, still feeling those steel points poking at her flesh. Just sitting on the carpet in front of her mother's chair while Idunn did her braids felt like tiny pins and needles. "Easy for you to laugh, you're not the one who spent the whole morning in an iron maiden," she muttered darkly at her sister.

"But the fit will be so much better in the end love," queen Idunn said softly as she ran the comb through Elsa's hair with one hand and gathered it up in another. If she had been asked at sword-point to name the favourite thing to do with her daughter, the hair was it. Elsa's hair was gorgeous, and she loved having it styled. They'd spent innumerable hours together playing with it as Elsa had grown up. "The reward will be worth the small discomfort."

The three of them sat in the small drawing room; the woman, the soon-to-be-woman and the girl. Arendelle castle had so many rooms with so much history behind them that Elsa barely bothered to remember their names, all of them somehow terribly significant and imbued with the very history of their great country, whatever that meant. The Galleria. Olaf's Room. The Treaty Room. The Independence Room. Instead she and Anna had given them childhood names of their own. Joan's Pictire-Room. The Cold Room. The Scary Dungeon. The Fireplace Room.

The Mountain's Corridor.

She and Anna had always liked this one though. Whenever she had been upset or sad she had always come here and the fireplace had always been roaring and her mother was always there waiting for her. She would come in and sit down on her mother's lap and Idunn had always just…listened…to whatever was bothering the young princesses. Whether it had been their tutors giving them unfair lectures or a scraped knee, a noontime snack or an argument with a servant, Elsa had always been able to go to the small drawing room and find her mother there, waiting. She would open the door with a creak and Idunn would look up from a book or her embroidery and smile, and Elsa would feel better.

Like today. Elsa had spent every morning of the last week in that small and stuffy dressing room as women –and men! – she didn't know ran hands over her in front of reams of cloth. The first morning she had gone in and been ecstatic. The second morning much less so. By Thursday she was entirely willing to put it all aside and go to her own ball in, as Anna had suggested, Kristoff's old slacks.

"You'll look radiant," Idun said wistfully. "They'll all be spellbound."

"Hey, Elsa doesn't need witchcraft to help out. Although I guess if you want to make absolutely sure…" Anna laughed as Elsa playfully slapped a hand at her shoulder.

"Anna! Where do you pick up these ideas from?"

"Nowhere mother, just a book," Anna said, and since Idunn's eyes were on Elsa's hair, only Elsa caught the wink Anna gave.

"Witchcraft's nothing to joke about young lady, especially these days," Idunn whispered with a dark look in her eyes.

And as Elsa looked at Anna, her little sister had the good grace to look ashamed. Your fault, Elsa mouthed.

Anna stood from her own chair, dropping her book haphazardly on the ground. She strode over to her mother and elbowed her to one side, shuffling back and forward until she was hugging up close against her in a chair built for one. "Lemme help," Anna said, and even though Idunn had no idea why, Elsa knew that Anna was feeling just the littlest bit guilty.

A ghost dressed all in black and blue seemed to simply appear out of thin air.

"Kristoff, have you seen Anna?" Elsa asked, and when the ice-harvester turned away from Sven and looked at her she might have laughed if she hadn't been so worried. No matter how old he grew or how much time he spent around other people, the man simply didn't know how to bluff.

"No," he bluffed.

"Liar. Where is she? It's important."

Kristoff pushed Sven away as the reindeer tried to nuzzle at his face. "What's it about?" he asked. All I want, he thought, is a single quiet week…

And Elsa held up the tiny pendant she had found. "This."

I F

Kristoff went bug-eyed, and Elsa watched as the thoughts ran transparently across his big dumb blonde face. He knew when he was beaten though, and sighed. "She's in the kitchen," he said, panicking just a little too much to remember he really shouldn't have said that, as Elsa strode off purposefully towards the wooden door leading to the downstairs castle. Something warm and wet licked at his cheek, and without looking he reached into his pocket for a carrot and held it up. It immediately vanished. "Oh Sven. Why do we get ourselves involved with those two?"

Elsa walked through the draughty stone corridors, tracing the long and well-worn route to the castle kitchens. The servants gasped and bowed as she passed by, occasionally stopping as a food service or loaded tray came through. From morning 'till night the downstairs of Arendelle castle worked and heaved to try and make sure the upstairs never experienced more than a slight inconvenience, like a court magician rapidly dashing to and fro to keep a dozen spinning plates perfectly balanced in the air. Even with the castle closed off and the staffing kept to those loyal there were still dozens of servants who worked day and night, who themselves needed to be fed and watered and cared for.

Finally Elsa reached the kitchens, and looked around.

"Y'majesty?" the cook's assistant nearly screeched, eyes wide in alarm.

"Hello. Have you seen the princess Anna?" Elsa asked, as kindly as she could. The poor woman's eyes looked like they could have popped from her skull. We really don't come down here that often, do we? she thought.

Unfortunately, for both Anna and for Elsa, the cook was almost as bad a liar as Kristoff was. "No," he said, in the exact same instant his eyes darted sideways, away from Elsa.

She settled for a small smile. "Thank you. Don't let me detain you," she said softly, and watched as the relieved chef hurried away. When she was sure the man was gone she turned in the direction his eyes had gone, and saw the small wooden trapdoor leading down into the castle's foundations. She sighed. Oh Anna.

She wondered what trouble her little sister was getting into in the castle wine cellar.

"You really did look pretty though," Anna said, just a little guiltily. "I said I was sorry."

Anna had wandered into the room on the third morning and stood there smiling at Elsa as the older princess stood, unable to shift so much as a millimetre under threat of being poked by a thousand drawing pins. All morning Anna had stood there, looking the perfect little picture of decorum when one of the dress-makers looked across at her. When the coast had been clear she had spent the rest of the time sticking her tongue out and trying to make Elsa laugh. Every time Elsa had giggled the dress-maker had shushed her, and a thousand tiny pinpricks had run over her body. She hadn't spoken to Anna for the rest of the night.

That hadn't lasted though.

"Fine," Elsa said. "But expect my revenge in three years' time when you have to go through the ball, and you're stuck on a box with things poking at you."

"I'm tougher than you," Anna said confidently.

"Prove it!" Elsa said, and grabbed a pillow. Suddenly the room was filled with laughter as Anna grabbed another to defend herself, and the two started whacking each other with goosefeather-pillows.

"Elsa, Anna!" their mother said with a gasp that quickly turned to laughter. "This is no way for ladies to behave!"

The wine cellar was kept lit only be a few scattered candles on the wall, and kept warm only by the heat of the fires above. She felt soil under her shoes, the entire sprawling room never having been paved like the outside or the main corridors. Why bother, when the only people to come down here were maids and servants to fetch drinks for the royalty and guests, or merchants come to buy and sell?

"Anna?" Elsa whispered into the dark. She was a little worried. Not that she would find Anna drunk or anything like that, their father allowed them wine at small celebrations like New Year's or his birthday, but both of them found it tepid and too sharp. But she knew if anyone could find mischief down in a dark cellar filled with valuable, easily-breakable glass, Anna could.

Finally she spotted it, a shadow moving in a way that it shouldn't across the stone walls and wooden barrels that sat in seemingly-endless rows in the huge room. Elsa wasn't really in the mood for games that day, not after what she'd found, and strode through the wood. "Anna I don't know what you're hoping to find down here but if you still believe those stories about buried treasure then I have to wonder if…"

Her voice trailed off as she turned one last corner and found her sister, and her mouth dropped open in absolute unexpected shock, so widely her mother would have told her to close it or else her face might stay that way. The shadows hadn't been shifting oddly because Anna had been digging. She had been moving though.

Anna stood with her back against a wooden barrel, her dress unbuttoned at the front and fallen to her waist, and she was wearing no underclothes underneath. Her small frame was hidden though by the other woman – and it was a woman, somehow – who was stood in front of her, pushing her against the wooden barrel. She was just as nude as Anna, shirts drawn down to her middle, but with much more to reveal. Huge breasts pressed against her little sister's smaller nubs as the two shifted against each other.

Anna was lost in her, it was clear. Elsa watched in horror as they their lips met over and over again, kissing and sucking at each other as their tongues darted in and out of each other's mouths, intertwined. Their hands moved across each other's fronts, running over their bellies and up and across their breasts, tugging and grabbing at each other, Anna grabbing handfuls of pale flesh while the other woman trailed lightly and grasped at what little Anna had. A hand lazily reached for one of Anna's small nipples with her big and index fingers and tweaked it, making Anna moan wetly into the other woman's mouth, eyes fluttering up to the ceiling.

She had been watching for only a couple of seconds.

"ANNA!"

Anna's eyes opened slowly, languidly to look up. It took half a second's heartbeat for the eyes to look from the person she was embracing. Smokey half-lidded teal orbs caught blue ones, and suddenly Anna's eyes were as wide as Elsa's and she gave a small squeak of panic as her hands that had a second ago been grasping at the other woman's flesh was pushing her away as fast as they could.

"Elsa!?" Anna shrieked, her hands going down to her sides and trying to grab her dress. She tried to button it but her fingers were shaking too badly, and all she managed to do was make an idiot of herself. The other woman was much calmer, simply stepping back and turning to look at Elsa, making no effort to cover herself.

Eva, Elsa thought, recognising the woman that had helped them six months ago on that disastrous birthday trip. The milkmaid stared back at her. Not defiant, or ashamed. Just looking with those huge dark eyes and brown hair plastered over her face, rivulets of sweat snaking down over…over…

She was jerked from her mindless anger when Anna pushed past her holding up her dress, barely slowing down.

"Elsaimsorryicanexplain!" She said, as if she wanted to stay but some outside force was dragging her from the wine cellar. Elsa listened as Anna's shoes tap-tapped against the wooden stairs leading out of the cellar.

Eva bent down to curtsey, making no attempt to hide herself. "Your majesty," she said, as if the two had met in the castle halls.

Elsa didn't know what she was experiencing. Something hot and raw that felt like anger, or betrayal, or a mix of the two. She could feel something cold and hard against her teeth, not realising she was grinding them together.

"Can I help you, your majesty?" Eva asked.

"You…you..." Elsa sputtered.

Eva took a step forward, breasts shifting with the movement of her hips, and Elsa watched as a bead of sweat ran down from her hair to her cheek, and the milkmaid's tongue darted out to lick it. She was so…so…she couldn't think of the exact word, but enough of them ran through her head she could have picked any of them and been more or less right. Gross. Indecent. Lascivious. Obscene.

She felt a bump at her back, and grabbed the wooden slat holding up the wine-barrel. Instantly to her horror a thin coating of ice formed over the wood, which creaked with the sudden pressure. She took a deep breath. Get it together.

She did so.

"How dare you." she hissed. This servant doing this disgusting thing to her sister. Her sister! "How dare you!"

Worse, the milkmaid had the nerve to look surprised, wounded even. "She asked, your majesty."

Liar. Anna would never. "Liar!"

But Elsa felt the tiny little iron charm in her dress' pocket, the original reason she had went searching for Anna, and her mind whispered to her; but you already suspect that she would.

"I don't go where I'm not wanted your majesty," Eva whispered, as she raised her hands and crossed them over her chest, her breasts rising and filling out above them as sweat from the woman's head ran down her chest. Her nipples were large and dark in the warm air, surrounded by pimpled gooseflesh, too large to be from someone the same age as Elsa. "She wanted me to, and I am a loyal servant." Eva stepped closer, and licked her lips and Elsa blushed angry scarlet at the gesture. "If you would like to know-"

Elsa heard the noise, felt her hand move from motionless at the right side of her body to outstretched on the left, and she saw Eva's head snap sideways, but somehow it took her a second to realise the sharp, painful noise was her slapping the milkmaid as hard as she could. She felt exhausted from it somehow.

"Get out," Elsa whispered, but she was the one who ran. She didn't spare a single glance as she did so, but she knew Eva was standing there staring after her as she ran, those huge dark eyes following her every step she took.

"No fair, you cheated! She grabbed a second pillow!" Elsa shouted in mock anger at her sister.

"I'm the queen, I write the rules, I never said you couldn't."

Anna stuck her tongue out at Elsa and held her new pillow up to the sky, the other hand planted on her hips, posing like a conquering hero. "Then I win!"

The queen smiled down at her youngest daughter and tapped her on each shoulder like she was anointing a knight. "Well done brave sir, for vanquishing the evil sorce- the evil dragon."

"Hey!" Elsa said in mock outrage, not really caring but playing along anyway.

"Next time you can be the hero," Anna whispered, and knocked her sister on the head with the pillow, and that set the pair off again.

When the king entered later in the day to check on his family, he would find Anna asleep in her mother's lap, and Elsa asleep leaned against her in the chair. Queen Idunn held up a finger to her lips and smiled, and the king stepped quietly into the room, taking a seat beside his wife and daughters, just watching.

The queen's eyes narrowed, ever so slightly, when she saw the small charm in her husband's hands. "Is that…" she whispered.

"Another one," Agdar said, fingering the small iron rectangle. He traced his thumb over it and even through the velvet could feel the letters scored deeply into the metal.

I F

"You don't know," Idunn said, with a note of pleading in her voice that she hated.

The king wanted to go and sit next to his wife, but he didn't want to dislodge his sleeping daughters either. Both of them looked so happy and worry-free sitting there, wrapped in their mother's embrace. His beautiful family. He felt apart from them sometimes, like a cold stranger intruding on something warm and wonderful.

His hands shifted as he thought about the thin box back in his rooms, wrapped and ready. The birthday gift he would rather burn than give to his eldest daughter, his precious little diamond. He wanted to believe. He wanted to be like his wife. But unlike Idunn who had a love big enough to hold the entire world, King Agdar's head was too strong to let itself be ruled by his heart. She'll thank me when she's older, was the only thing he could think of to comfort himself.

No she won't, his head replied, not allowing it.

"Elsa? Can I come in?"

"…Door's open."

Anna crept into the room, shutting the door behind her as quietly as she could. She shivered as instantly the temperature dropped several degrees the second she stepped over the threshold. She's really mad. She ran her eyes over Elsa's sparse room; barely more than a bed and a desk and chair, and a wardrobe opposite. Elsa didn't spend much time in her room, she lived in the rest of the castle. For Elsa and herself their bedrooms were where they slept in, and little else. "Elsa?" She crept forward, and spotted a tuft of platinum hair poking out from behind the bed. Anna went around it and found Elsa sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back against the bed, staring out of her huge window. She had something in her hands she was moving around. Anna felt butterflies moving through her stomach as she spoke. "Can I sit down?" she said, barely above a whisper.

"…Yes," Elsa said grudgingly.

Anna sat down next to her sister and held her breath. She risked a glance at Elsa, staring out of the window over the courtyard, and the town beyond. "I'm sorry," she whispered, reaching a hand across to Elsa's, and felt her flinch. She withdrew it. "What's that?" she asked, turning the nervous reach into a pointed finger.

Elsa held her hands out to show her, and Anna saw a small rectangle there. A tiny little iron charm, with two letters inscribed on it. She saw it and felt sick. "…Oh."

"What is it Anna?" Elsa asked, looking at her little sister, and suddenly it was Anna who couldn't meet her sister's eyes. "Are you alright? Are you in trouble?" Elsa asked, and when Anna finally looked at her sister the eyes she saw weren't angry or disappointed. Only worried.

She still cares, she thought in wonder, and it felt like a summer breeze sweeping through her heart. "It's a charm, to an ice god," Anna said, shuffling closer to her sister, and waiting for the next question she knew was coming. Her sister was too smart. Smart and beautiful and everything Anna wasn't.

It wasn't long in coming. "Is it you?"

"Yes."

Elsa sighed, a long drawn-out breath that seemed to take forever, as her right arm went over Anna's shoulder to hug her little sister. "I'm not mad Anna. I could never stay mad at you," Elsa said, with infinite patience and forgiveness. "Tell me."

So Anna did. All of it. Starting at what she had felt six months ago when they had snuck out of the castle for the first time, and ending at when she had returned to the castle. Her first…experience…she blushed and skipped.

"I remember. You were so brave," Elsa said.

Anna nodded, words flowing out now like water down a waterfall, unstoppable. "I know! I felt like I was useful and strong and I wanted to feel like that again. I just feel like…like I have something I can be good at that you aren't." She felt Elsa's arm jerk away and pulled it back. She wanted to stay close to her, try and explain. "You're smart and beautiful and you're going to be the queen and I'm not stupid Elsa, I know…I know I'm going to end up marrying some prince somewhere for a trade agreement or something stupid but I just…" Her free hand flapped in the sky as if she could pull the words down from the air and her eyes burned from the tears of frustration and sadness flowing out of them.

Elsa found them for her. "You wanted to be you," she whispered in the cold air that was already warming up, as she gently wiped the years from her little sister's eyes.

"So I went out again looking," Anna said, eyes flicking to her sister's. "I went back out and…and the first time nothing happened!"

"When did something happen?" Elsa asked.

"The third time," Anna admitted. "Three months ago." Three months after the birthday. "I found the sword we used to…on the old bear, and I was bringing it back when I heard a shout, and…"

Elsa listened as she told the story. He had been an old man wandering the forest, half-drunk and looking for God-knew-what, and the wolf had been hungry in the warming spring. She didn't shake with fear only because clearly Anna was here beside here and not dead, but still…

I was sleeping without a care in the world while my sister was fighting a wolf!

"And he thanked me! He was so happy to be alive! He thanked me and called me an angel sent from heaven and…and I loved it Elsa. It felt so good to help someone like that," Anna said, looking up at her older sister for validation. "And I thought finally I had something I could do."

And so on, and it had gone from there. Every few weeks, whenever she had dared, or when the thought of what her adulthood had in store for her got too much, or just whenever she needed to get away, Anna waited 'till the dead of night and snuck out of the castle with nothing but a sword and a borrowed cloak. Out in the woods she wasn't Princess Anna of Arendelle. She was a sword of mercy that struck out and saved the weak and avenged the lost, and it felt simple and right and good.

"Not every time, but…but often enough," Anna said, as the story finished. "I loved it."

And there it was, Elsa thought. My little sister, the hero. My God. She smiled as she pictured it in her head; a mysterious lone figure, face hidden in a long white cloak, steel sword flashing at her side. Just like out of a storybook.

"I'm sorry I made you worry," Anna whispered, cuddling closer to her sister.

Elsa took a deep breath. "You're safe Anna, and that's all that counts for me. But what about…what about…" She tried to find the words to describe what she had felt when she had went down those stairs and found her little sister belly to belly with that woman, lips wrapped around each other, but she couldn't. "About her?" she settled on eventually. She could still see Eva in her mind, half-naked and breasts dripping in sweat as she came closer to her, suggesting...suggesting that she could…

But Anna couldn't find the words either. She wanted to try and explain, wanted to say that she had kept reading the storybooks but the princes in them had made her smile less and less as her…obligations…had become clearer and clearer to her. She wanted to explain how Eva looked at her. About how she felt when she had first kissed the other woman in the kitchen weeks before the birthday, and tasted heat and spices. About the incredible feelings that had been pulled out of her body and what it felt like to stand over someone else and take them out in turn. About how rough and coarse Kristoff and the other boys looked and sounded when she compared them to Eva's smooth curves and soft voice. About how she felt a little heat bloom in her cheeks just thinking about it.

But she couldn't. She just sat there and blushed and settled on two statements so general she felt stupid just saying them. "I like her. It feels…good."

"Do you…is it…are you in love?" Elsa asked, somewhere between horrified and fascinated. Just thinking about it made her own chest tighten up.

Anna's mouth gaped open and she shook her head so fast she saw stars. "NO! I just…I just like her is all." Maybe when she was older she could explain better. For now she just shrugged.

Elsa sighed and put it aside. She could dwell on it, she knew. Think about it over and over and try to work up some kind of indignation. Knew that by all rights she should. Weren't there laws? But she couldn't, really. Love for her little sister overrode them, and she sighed and rested Anna's head on her shoulders. "Oh Anna."

"I'm sorry," Anna whispered.

"Maybe I should start calling you Sir Anna," Elsa said, and when Anna looked up at her she melted at the joy in her eyes. "But promise me something," she asked.

"Anything."

Elsa put a finger onto Anna's lips. "Don't ever worry me like this again." She took a deep breath. "If you ever go outside of the castle like this again…" Am I really going to do this? "If you ever go outside of the castle again, promise you'll tell me first." She held out a hand, dangling the small pendant from it. "Promise?"

Anna nodded solemnly. "Promise."

The idea struck Elsa as perfect the second she thought of it. She stood and kept a hand on Anna's shoulder to stop her following. She reached inside herself and saw the power there, blue and calm and totally under her control. She'll love it. She closed her eyes and held out the hand palm up, the pendant resting on top. When she heard Anna gasp, she knew she had succeeded.

When she opened them again she saw the blade resting on her hand. It was nothing like the perfectly-straight swords that came from the Arendelle forges; it wavered from one end to the other. But it was sharp, and pointy, and that was enough for a first try.

Anna giggled as Elsa tapped her on both shoulders.

"I pronounce you…er…Lady Anna! Of Arendelle!" Elsa said grandly, but quietly. The effect was ruined when she burst out giggling, and the sword dissolved in her hand into snowflakes that scattered through the room.

Anna laughed and chased after them. "Hey, bring it back!"

"Nope. Your first royal quest is to catch them all," Elsa said, and blew a very immature raspberry at her little sister.

"It was so much prettier than mine," Anna said wistfully.

Elsa ruffled her hair. "When you become a real knight I'll make you a better one."

Anna stared up at the motes of ice that danced all around her, the light from the moon outside reflecting off them, making Elsa's room sparkle. "I'll never be a real knight," she said, and Elsa could see the sadness in the way she spoke.

She stood and went over to her little sister and put her arms around her. "When I'm queen I'll make you a real knight," she whispered.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"You should get some sleep Elsa. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow," the king said with a smile, closing the curtains of the drawing room as the sun faded through red and yellow and orange, to let the night rise to take its place.

"I'm not that sleepy father," Elsa said, and then immediately yawned.

The door shut with a click as Anna waved and left the room for her own bed, perfectly content to sleep the rest of the day away if she could – Anna had always loved sleep, it was the getting up part she had trouble with – leaving Elsa and her father alone in the small drawing room, fireplace still going.

King Agdar coughed. "My dear, listen…" he said, and reached for the mantelpiece. Elsa watched as he brought down a small blue box, wrapped in ribbons.

"It's too early father," she said. She wanted to smile too, but she was watching her father, and his expression wasn't that of a man giving his daughter a sneak birthday present. "…Father?"

The king handed over the box. "Listen Elsa. Today's a very important day, we both…we both know that. Important for you and therefore, eventually, to the kingdom."

Elsa wanted to sigh but kept it back out of respect. More talking about obligations. "Of course father."

"Open it please."

She did so, the blue wrapping paper giving way to a small blue box. She smiled. She had always loved blue, ever since…

"Elsa…"

She lifted the gloves from the box, feeling the silk running through her fingers as she did so. She looked up at the king.

She knew what the gloves were for.

"Elsa tomorrow is so important, please understand."

"…How could you?" she said, so quietly Agdar nearly didn't hear it at all.

"Elsa," the king said, a note of impatience through his voice.

Bury it, Elsa's brain told her. But she couldn't. "Haven't I been perfect?" she asked, heart close to breaking in her chest. "Hasn't all this time been good enough?"

The king sighed and tried to ignore the sound his own heart was making. It was for her own good, it really was. "Please consider what would happen Elsa." He knelt down and grasped his daughter's hand in his own. He had dreaded this conversation for hours, weeks, years. But he had to do it. The old dreams had come back the closer they came to the ball. Peasants and mobs and torches and pitchforks. "We have to conceal it Elsa."

"I can!" Elsa said, almost shouted. She felt an anger, the anger she hadn't felt when she had been talking with Anna, and thought it was all just so unfair. "I've done it all these years! What does-"

"Your mother agrees with me," the king said, and felt just a little rotten. She had agreed to the gloves, eventually, but, he suspected, only because she was afraid for her little baby, not because she agreed that she was dangerous.

I only want what's best for you.

I know what's best for me!

She took the gloves, in the end. A seventeen year-old's adult arguments didn't work and turned into a fifteen year-old's wheedling deals and complaints, down to a ten year-old's complaints about unfairness. By the end Elsa had regressed right down to a small child's glaring and breath-holding. She had hated every second of it and in the end she simply couldn't convince him.

She took the gloves.

It was a week later, and she didn't know what she was doing.

"Your majesty," Kristoff said in surprise, coming out of his room. He was still buttoning up his shirt. He glanced up and down the corridor to make sure the coast was clear, then… "Elsa, hey, what's up?" he asked, as Elsa stared at him, biting her lip.

"Kristoff."

"What?"

"We're friends right?"

"I…" he paused, thrown off.

"Well?"

He shrugged. "Of course. You and Anna and Sven are pretty much my only friends, but-"

She cut him off. "Friends help each other out."

"…Of course."

"Kristoff I need you to do something for me and not complain or ever, ever ask why."

"Whoa, wait, what. If this is about-"

"I need you to kiss me."

"-about the time you and Annaahahha what?" If Kristoff's brain had been a locomotive it would have derailed and spun off into the nearest village.

Elsa bounced up and down on the balls of her perfectly-dressed feet. "Please let's just do this," she said, much the same way Kristoff imagined she would talk about someone asking her to recite a poem for a class.

In the end he simply gave up. "Fine," he said, and stepped forward to meet Elsa's lips.

And then stepped back a second later to see Elsa opening her eyes. He stared at her, and she stared back. "…Did it help?"

Elsa looked thoughtful. "It did. Thank you for the help," Elsa said, formally, as if he had just helped repair a horseshoe on her favourite horse.

Kristoff watched as the crown princess strode off back towards the stairs leading to the castle-proper, out of the servant's quarters. He ran a finger across his lips.

Now what the hell was that all about? he thought.

Elsa could have told him but she was wrapped up in her own head as she walked, not towards the upper castle as Kristoff had thought, but to a different section of the servant's quarters.

She had to know. It was that simple. Fascination and disgust and more than a little gear churned in her gut but she had to know.

If she could have gathered more information from books and knew that way she would have done so. If she could have gotten the answer through prayer – and she had considered it, she really had – she would have done it.

But those ways wouldn't work, and she had to know.

"Your majesty," Eva said as she opened the door. She was dressed in a simple white bedrobe that flowed over her body and down to her feet. Somehow even clothes the woman gave off something even Elsa could detect. Something primal that made her stomach ball up in knots.

I will not be scared of a mere servant girl. "Eva," Elsa said coldly.

"How can I serve your majesty?" Eva asked with that voice, that same gods-damned voice that had spoken so little and implied so much at the wine-cellar.

"I…" Elsa started and stopped, as Eva stepped forward, closer, far too close. "I want you to stay away from my sister," she said with as much force as she could manage.

Deep brown eyes looked into her own, warm breath coming out of her mouth against Elsa's face. "Of course your majesty," Eva said, and smiled. Elsa watched as the girl's tongue wetted her lips. "If there's anything I can-"

Elsa kissed her. The same way she kissed Kristoff. Or at least she tried to. The second their lips touched a questing tongue was lapping at her mouth, and a hand grabbed her own and placed it on top of something warm and soft, and Elsa felt something rough and pebbly between her fingers. Her hand moved automatically and Eva smiled into Elsa's mouth.

"Like that."

She gasped pulled back and ran, without wondering how it would look, feet kicking at the hem of her skirt as she hurried away and back to where she belonged. Back to the castle where the only confusing things would be her classes on economics and trade and the treaties Arendelle had with other countries.

Before she knew it she was in the central garden, the sun still not fully risen to banish the night, sitting on the single bench there and trying not to cry. Her lips still tingled and her fingers still felt electric where they had been placed on…on her chest.

In comparison, kissing Kristoff had felt like a dry chunk of wood.

She could have cried.

She opened her eyes slowly and smiled.

Happy birthday to me.

Someone else was thinking the same thing too, because that pounding wasn't a headache, or cannons sieging the castle, but someone banging on her door.

She didn't bother over-dressing that day, because she knew elsewhere in the castle there was a special dress waiting just for her. A simple white shirt and long black skirt would do for now. Finally she opened the do-

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELSAAAAAAA!"

"Happy birthday m'lady."

"Happy birthday, your majesty."

Elsa looked at Kai and Gerda and smiled, then down at Anna who looked positively radiant. "Thank you everyone." She gathered Anna into a huge hug. "Thank you Anna."

At a tap on her shoulder Elsa looked up to see Gerda smiling at her. "It's time, your majesty. Your dress is waiting."

Elsa was about to reply when she heard a gasp, and turned to see Anna staring out of the window, eyes as wide as a dinner plate. "What is it Anna?"

"Look," her little sister said, pointing.

Elsa stood next to her sister, and did so. Beyond the glass and the courtyard, Elsa and Anna could see from outside Elsa's room all the way to the town, where ships were docked and people were milling in the square in uniforms and clothing Elsa had never seen before. That wasn't what Anna was gasping at though, as Elsa followed her sister's finger to stare and see the two guards at the top of the courtyard, a line of men pushing at the huge oaken gates. Slowly they opened, and Elsa's soul soared.

She could have cried.