So be it.
Words she had spoken months ago, yet they seemed to have taken on almost a life of their own.
So be it.
Spoken in the shattered and frozen ruins of a village, destroyed by fanatics who saw her as their devil come alive, that had followed her back to the castle that night and had draped themselves around Arendelle like a funeral shroud.
So be it.
The words of the speech she had given a week later to the assembled crowd of mayors, burghers and commoners she had invited into the castle to hear her, as ice crept around the wooden pillars of the room and the air around them so cold that she could see their nervous breath in the air. She had stood before the throne – not sat on it, not yet – dressed in a blue robe trimmed with white fur, Anna at her side with her icy blade and clad in white steel. Cold mist swirled around them both.
So be it.
I have given them every chance, far more than they clearly deserved. Instead of taking this as a gift or a sign I was not their enemy they have used my generosity to plot murder and treason. An entire village razed to the ground. Mothers and children dead in their homes. I extended the hand of peace and reconciliation to them and they showed a poisoned dagger in theirs in return. They have decided that the imagined orders of their god are more important than the lives of their fellow man.
So be it.
Let the word – my word – go out today; the people of Arendelle are my people, and my people will walk my country free from harm. To those of you who follow this ridiculous and pointless crusade two options are now all you have. You will put down your weapons and return to your lives, free to worship peacefully as you did for centuries before now. Or you will leave Arendelle before the day of the coronation.
To those who are loyal my promise remains: That you are my people, and will protect and defend you as my father did, and his father, and all the generations of my family have done.
To those who are not I promise only this: My wrath will find you soon, and you will not survive it.
"Your highness."
Elsa smiled as the servant entered the room, clothes in hand. Not the coronation gown though, not yet. The fitting would be done next week, practically last-minute.
The servant hummed to herself, something soft and musical that Elsa couldn't quite put her finger on, a slight smile on her face. Elsa looked a little lower and…yes, the small iron runestone. Almost everyone left in the castle wore it now, and increasingly Elsa didn't know if they were wearing it just to show their loyalty or as something more. Sometimes she would forget herself and just…play around…with her powers. Idly tracing snowflake patterns on the windows, or making small icy sculptures on tables to occupy her mind. Then she would glance around to find someone watching and the look they gave was something she couldn't wrap her mind around.
They worship you, Anna had said one night.
I don't need them to, she had replied. Once she would have said she didn't want them to, but nowadays – after burning villages and murderous fanatics – she didn't feel quite so strongly about it anymore. If they wanted to see her as some kind of goddess that only meant she had to prove herself worthy of their worship. At least that was what she told herself, as a voice in her heart – no longer small – told her it was how things should be.
Strange how she could make such a terrible decision and yet feel…better? Because she did feel better, ever since the ultimatum. Like a huge weight made up of worry and indecision had been taken off her shoulders. She had wondered for months what to do with them, how to solve the problem. Well, they had showed her once and for all what they thought about her mercy. They had forced her hand and now everyone knew where they stood. They could obey her, or they could leave.
Or they could die.
Anna… "Is my sister back?"
The servant glanced up and ran a finger across the runestone. "Her highness returned late in the night, I believe she's preparing herself to bathe." That Anna was getting ready to rest while the rest of the castle was just waking up was just one more thing everyone had become accustomed to. A small thing as well, next to a princess that these days was more likely to be wearing leathers than dresses, and to be holding a sword instead of a book.
"Thank you," Elsa said, and smiled. She felt better just knowing Anna was in the castle.
The girl, maybe mistaking who the smile was really meant for, blushed crimson and bent her head down again, leaving the clothes on the bed and backing from the room.
She changed quickly, a fast beat in her heart, and it still felt like it took too long as she left her room and travelled the few short metres to her sister's room. She passed servants along the way; two guards on patrol, a maid replacing flowers, one of the men delivering coal to guestrooms.
On every neck the glint of iron.
"You look terrible."
Anna turned and smiled radiantly. Or at least as radiantly as she could while looking like she had just wrestled with a bear. Her hair hung around her forehead in sweaty clumps and Elsa could see dark marks of perspiration dotted around the white undershirt she swore, leather jacket untied and hanging loosely at her waist. Her sword was in its sheath, propped against the small dresser next to the bed, unbloodied. Elsa breathed a small sigh of relief. Once or twice Anna had returned covered in not only the dust of the trail but specked with blood as well, and Elsa would sit half-terrified as Anna had talked long into the night about a chase through the words or fighting against a cornered fanatic through a village. Anna's hands would gesture in huge sweeps through the air and Elsa would listen like a child being told a campfire story.
Once and only once she had returned to the castle alone, her horse half-dead and her sword bloody to the hilt and still in her hand, the sheath lost. Elsa had never asked Anna what had happened on that trip, but that night Anna had made love to her with such passionate fierceness Elsa had doubled the guard that travelled with her from then on.
"It went well?" Elsa asked, hoping for good news.
She got it. "Fine," Anna said, tossing the jacket into a corner of the room. "A lot quieter than last time." The last word was stretched out as Anna yawned.
"I'm sorry," Elsa said.
"For what?" Anna asked.
"For you, having to do this." Where this was…was something Elsa wasn't even sure about.
"You can't go around to every village Elsa." Anna replied. She smiled. "You have a lot of power but teleportation isn't one of them. Your place is here, at the heart of the country."
"So is yours," Elsa replied fiercely.
"No, my place is wherever makes you safest," Anna shot back. "And right now the place I need to be is out there. Helping our people. Making sure they know who their queen is and who looks after them." Making sure those lunatics know that the Ice Queen always has an eye watching for them, Anna didn't add.
She had been thrilled at Elsa's declaration, and now it felt like the country was as quiet since Elsa's power had been revealed. But to get from a massacred village to this had been a month or more of…not civil war exactly, but maybe some of the things you got just before a civil war. The army had battered down more than one door, and more than one village had found itself being visited by a detachment. Some of the less devout had taken Elsa's final offer and left the country as fast as they could, with no retaliation but some angry mutters and some spit as they left. Others more convinced in their righteousness had taken last stands rather than turn and run. And so day by grinding day and inch by bloody inch the schism was mended. It would probably always be there, a small crack in an otherwise smooth façade, but at least now the whole country wasn't going to split apart under them.
Anna had done her part, even if Elsa and several different nervous captains had asked she remain behind in the castle. If Elsa was becoming a goddess – and she was, Anna felt it in her heart – then Anna would need to be worthy enough to stand by her. So she went out, in her patched leathers and white cloak and her blade of ice, and she helped run down the enemies of her soon-to-be-queen. Then when the cultists had been run out or cut down, she would go back to the village they had lived in and smile at the nervous citizens, and offer whatever help she could.
Even Hans, she had to admit, had done his part. Talking with who he could, visiting other countries and smoothing over the cracks in that easy way he had. Somehow he had talked and talked enough that a monarch with power over the elements was becoming just one more strange fact of life, rather than an earth-shattering event. Even if she still didn't like him much, even if something about that easy manner made her skin shiver whenever he looked at her, he had done his job well and Elsa had rewarded him with a place in Arendelle's court. Certainly god knew he barely had one in his own country, if the whispers were correct. He had been back to the Southern Isles a handful of times since the trouble had started and when he returned to Arendelle he never looked homesick.
So the weeks had rolled by and some sense of normality had returned to court life. Diplomats came and went, nobility visited, gave their compliments and thanks and talked the small, insignificant-sounding talk that Anna hated and barely understood. The kind that started with talking about how nice the weather was and how delicious the sandwiches were and somehow ended with trade agreements. Hans and Elsa were expert at it, but Anna got as far as the sandwiches and then left them to it to go practise her archery.
"And you do a good job of it," Elsa said, leaning forward to place a kiss on Anna's cheek. "Look," she said, staring out the window, where a few white flecks had begun to fall out of season.
"You?"
"No, just natural," Elsa said as they both sat on the bed and watched, Anna's head leaning against her own. "Damn."
Already the flakes had been joined by dozens of others, and she could feel a blizzard coming in her bones. Blizzards were a winter event in Arendelle, but this far north the cold was treacherous, and sometimes it would reach out into the summer to try and claw at the country. When that happened, in the middle of the harvest, there was almost nothing that could be done. Vegetables could be brought inside for a few days but to the fields of grain that were meant to take a village through the winter months the people could do little but pray. The runners would start coming back from the nearby villages to the castle asking for an audience. They weren't really petitions anymore. Now they really were more like prayers: Please, use your power, save us.
"I should go with you," Anna said, with that little beat between them that meant she already knew what Elsa was thinking. She tried to stand.
Elsa was faster. "No, you should get some sleep." She pushed Anna down onto the bed.
"Join me," Anna whispered.
"No," Elsa said softly, kissing Anna on the forehead. "Sleep."
She listened, and was right. A man from a village that had been just a little unprepared, a little slow in readying the harvest for storage, and now this snowfall would kill it and doom the village to starvation or ruinous debt. Elsa stood before the throne as the man practically grovelled before her.
"Please, your highness," the man begged, exhausted from what had clearly been a hellishly fast ride through the forests to the town.
Elsa felt a presence floating at her side. Kai. He whispered into her ear: "Your highness, we have preparations for the coronation that must-"
"That can certainly wait," Elsa interrupted. "The harvest will not." Elsa caught the look of pathetic gratitude on the face of the man below her, and she turned back. "Of course I will help."
"There is an inn nearby you can rest at while her majesty delivers your village from harm."
Elsa looked as Hans stepped forward, and nodded. The villager looked around to the foreign prince and nodded, having gone from desperation to gratitude instantly. "Thank you your highnesses thank you. They told us you would." He fumbled at his neck, the small iron charm, babbling in relief as a guard gently escorted him away. Hans stepped forward to walk next to her as Elsa stepped away from the dais, the routine well known at this point. Horses would already be saddling up and a small guard forming. Not that she needed it now. After endless months the idea of anything as small as men being able to hurt her seemed laughable. She felt confident, powerful. She could practically feel the magic thrumming through her bones.
She felt like a goddess.
From the window of the upper-level corridor Anna watched the riders depart the town, four silver-clad shapes glinting in the dawn sunlight, surrounding a fifth clad in shifting blues and whites. Every time Elsa left the castle Anna imagined she felt a small tug at her heart, as if the ice still embedded in it was yearning for its mother and begging to be there too. Much like Anna herself.
"Your highness?"
She turned to look at Hans. "Hmm?" she still felt distracted, woozy. If she had been more awake she probably would have been shocked that Hans was addressing her while she was, not to put too fine a point on it, entirely dressed to be seen outside a bed.
"You look exhausted, you should get some rest."
"I'll rest when Elsa gets back."
"You may be dead on your feet by then, Anna," the prince replied with a wry look. "If you return to your quarters I'll make sure some servants come by to assist you to the sleep you so obviously need."
She didn't listen to him, of course. She knew she should really get some sleep but also knew that would be impossible now, while Elsa was away. It was like there was an invisible string connecting them, and it tugged whenever they were apart, small but insistent.
So she did the same thing she did whenever this crazy feeling swamped her; she wandered. She changed from the nightgown Elsa had practically forced on her, into something she considered perfectly serviceable but other noblemen would probably have considered rags; just a white linen shirt and breeches. The servants bowed and curtsied as she passed through the halls, a few touching a respectful finger to the rune around their neck. That always lifted her spirits up, that she was accepted as their protector like that. Maybe the rest of the world found the idea of her ridiculous, but the people of Arendelle knew she was Elsa's knight, and they were all that mattered.
Her feet led her without her head being entirely in on whatever plans they had, but sometimes it didn't need to be, because as Anna wandered she smelled something in the air, hot and sweet. She headed in the direction of the smell, and before long found herself down in the castle kitchens that she and Elsa had loved when they were younger. The servants were already running back and forth, cooking huge cast-iron pots to feed the castle its early-morning meal, and they moved through her like she was a fish swimming through a river. Or at least, most of them did.
"Lady Anna?"
She turned away from the hustle to see Gerda looking at her in surprise, her arms dusted with flour to her elbows.
"Shouldn't you be in bed, girl?" her old handmaid asked.
"I…couldn't sleep," Anna replied lamely.
"Well sit down child and we'll fix you something that'll make you want to."
True to her word and with Anna barely realising what was happening she found herself sat at a simple wooden desk, a bowl and small spoon in front of her containing something hot and steamy. Gerda and the other cooks had used to make stews like this when she was younger, before she was expected to eat like a princess, which meant banquets and caviars and foods that were hard to pronounce, certainly not meat and broth. Even though it smelled gorgeous, she still couldn't bring herself to eat. Not when…
"You shouldn't worry," Gerda said, watching as Anna idly guided the food around her plate, like a small child trying to avoid eating the vegetables her parents demanded. "She's a strong girl, you both are. You were raised to be." To Gerda, Anna and Elsa would always remain a little bit of the two tiny waifs that had run through Arendelle's corridors, stealing food and getting into trouble. But…what that a note of regret Anna had heard in her old maid's voice?
"Is something wrong Gerda?" Anna asked.
"Of course not your highness."
Aha! "Liar." Anna hadn't learned much about diplomacy from being in all those meetings, but she could pick out mistruths at a thousand yards.
Gerda looked up from her own meal of stew and vegetables. "I miss your parents dearly. Sometimes I think if they had been there with us…well. I just wonder how different things would be if they hadn't been taken while you were so young."
That brought up Anna short, and made her feel just a little guilty. These days she didn't really think about the topic so much. She was just so busy, both of them were. Elsa in becoming who Anna knew she truly was, and Anna in becoming the best possible companion for her sister. "You think if mother and father had been around…"
"You were both forced to grow up too fast, and all the trouble it brought. Maybe if you had been allowed to stay younger…"
"You and Kai were always there for us Gerda," Anna said. "Plus, being too young never stopped us from getting in trouble."
"In more ways than one," Gerda said, whiplash-quick. Anna blushed underneath her arms, and that was as far as either of them would ever go to talking about…that. Although in her own defence Anna had never made it necessary to have that particular stomach-churning conversation. Some courts had endless problems from that sort of thing. At least Anna's tastes made inconvenient bastards impossible, and of course she was discrete. She had to be.
But yes, she had to admit, she did miss them sometimes, on lonely days when Elsa was busy and Anna's own impatience had driven her away from endless diplomatic meetings. Too tired to practise her archery or blades, she would sit in the library or the small drawing room and remember strong hands holding her and Elsa, and a soft voice singing them to sleep.
But then the ice in her heart would twinge, wrenching her back to the present. A present where she wasn't Anna, second princess of Arendelle, a beautiful, silent and well-behaved catch for any passing royal they needed an alliance with. She was Anna, the saviour of a half-dozen villages that year alone, the tireless sword and shield of a queen closer to being goddess than woman, and who loved that woman fiercely in a way the world would crucify them both for.
She was long past thinking she would have ever had their approval. She was also long past wanting it. But still, maybe if…
She didn't finish the thought before the buzzing at her ear brought her back to the table. She had felt that buzzing more times than she could count now, and every time she had felt it what had followed was something violent. Anna whirled clumsily to face the door, still bone-tired from riding the outskirts that day but fast enough to catch the man who had opened it a second before he caught her.
He wasn't a soldier of Arendelle, even in her half-asleep state she could realise that. The man who faced her now didn't wear the uniform of the castle guard or the uniform of the regular troop. He was dressed in slate-grey chainmail, a simple steel pot on his head and a dagger grasped in his free hand. One already stained with blood.
Clearly he had expected to find servants sitting down to dinner, because he had barely begun to raise the knife before Anna was on him, her own hands reaching out as she leapt so hard from the chair it clattered back against the table. She caught a half-second look of puzzled surprise in his eyes before she barrelled into him, and he toppled backwards. Then another half-second later the puzzlement turned to fear and anger as she wrestled the blade from his hands.
Then she wasn't thinking at all.
"Anna."
She stood shakily, turning back to Gerda. It felt like her own chest was squeezing the breath from her. "Are…are you alright?" she managed to force out of her lips. She felt sweat coming down her brow and wiped a hand across it. She saw the look of fear on Gerda's face and reached out a hand to steady her. There was something wrong though, her hand was covered with blood. Had she been…? No, it wasn't hers.
"I'm…" she started, but stopped. No, don't apologise. You've done nothing wrong. She straightened, trying to clear the cobwebs from her mind. "Go. Safety," she choked, and watched as Gerda scrambled out of the room, pointedly not looking at…well. Anna stopped to catch her breath. Had that all really just happened? Was this really happening? She looked down at the body of the man who had drawn a blade on her, a pool of red now underneath his body and his face near-unrecognizable. Unless it was an extremely convincing mannequin, then…
"Your highness."
The voice that spoke this time wasn't scared at all. Surprised, yes, and maybe shocked. But not scared. She turned to address the soldier that had spoken, the dagger still held ready in her hands. But she recognised Leif, one of the guard-captains. She vaguely remembered he had been one of the first to carry Elsa's symbol around his neck. Good. Loyal. "What's happening?" she asked, with as much authority as she could muster, while inside she wondered; is this really happening?
"Intruders in the castle," the man spoke.
How dare they, Anna's first thought came like a bolt of lightning through her brain, clearing away the fog there. It would return later she was sure, but right now she was wide awake.
Yes. This was happening.
The attack fell apart before it had even begun, although Anna wouldn't know that until hours later, when the pieces were picked up and the losses were tallied and laid out in the castle courtyard.
The soldiers – no, call them what they were; assassins – had come up through the servant's entrance, with the man who had opened it for them taking a knife to the ribs for his troubles. From there the small group of six had made their way through the twisting corridors of the lower castle, the storerooms and dusty places of Arendelle Castle that nobody paid attention to. On their way they had met and dispatched an old man looking for fresh candles for the guardroom, a stable-boy sneaking away for a nap among the cobwebs, and a guard looking for a quiet place for a smoke.
It was the final one that had been their undoing, as the dagger meant for the man's heart had glanced from his armour. The poor man hadn't survived the next strike to his neck, but he had had time to shout in alarm, and that had been enough. If their plan had been to sneak quietly to their target with no-one the wiser, it had died then as others had rushed to the scream. They had split up, one had turned left when he should have turned right, and his mistake had brought him to the servant's kitchen, and his life ended by his own blade in Anna's hands.
Anna listened as Leif spoke, and burned each death into her mind as she practically ran up the steps towards the main castle and smashed through the door into the guardroom. Leif, slow in his armour, struggled up behind her.
"Where are they?" Anna asked.
"Your highness, you need to-"
Anna stepped forward at the man, a good foot or so taller than her, and stared at him. "Your highness," she said, voice as slow and cold as a glacier, "demands to know; where the men are attacking her castle?"
The man towered over her, but he backed down as he saw the expression on his ruler's face. And the eyes. Later he would call it stress and dismiss it but in that moment looking down at Anna her normally green pupils looked sapphire blue. Like the queen's. "They were last seen towards the guest quarters, moving towards-"
Anna imagined it in her head faster than the man could finish. "Towards our rooms." She didn't wait for a confirmation. She looked at the other guards who had finished strapping their armour on and who were turning to her. Still dressed in servant's rags, and with a bloody dagger clasped in one hand and her eyes blazing with blue fire, she spoke:
"To arms, loyal soldiers of Arendelle! For your queen and country!"
In that second they were hers.
It was a new experience, and not a good one. Arendelle castle had always been a place of refuse for Anna. Whenever the outside world had become too much for her, or had made her angry or sad, she had always been able to retreat behind the huge oak doors into a place where she felt truly safe.
Just one more thing she would make them pay for. Because she knew – absolutely knew – why these cowardly scum were here. They hadn't invaded through the gate, or sieged the castle from outside. They'd snuck in through a servant's entrance and went straight through the servant's quarters to here, the rooms where she and Elsa slept. Where they slept!
Thank God Elsa had been called away. Thank God Anna had wandered down to the kitchens instead of getting some sleep first. As she and her escort passed through the guest wing Anna couldn't stop the image flying through her head: Elsa lying in her bed, a dagger planted in her heart.
How dare they, how dare they!
And even worse Anna knew someone inside the castle had let them do it. How else had they gotten in here so fast, so quietly?
Anna already had the guards not with her searching for any sign outside the castle door of where the assassins had come from. There would be a reckoning for this.
She'd know more once she shook down the man she was holding by the neck in front of her.
"Who sent you here?" she hissed.
The nameless assassin looked at her wide-eyed. He had expected a small girl barely strong enough to hold her hands up to stop her. He had expected a princess. He hadn't expected a demon in leathers with a blade so sharp and blue it looked like it was made of ice. It burned where it touched the skin of his neck.
"Your highness!"
Captain Leif had a hand on her shoulder and it was only with every inch of self-control she had that she didn't run the man's head through there and then. They were searching every room as they went, the other wings already closed off and barred, and Anna was leading the squad to flush out the rest. Either this one had taken a wrong turn or his friends had abandoned him as a sacrifice, but Anna had dragged him from the room he had been trying to pry open a window in, after shattering his blade with a single strike of her own.
But she wasn't done. "How many are you? How many men did your masters send to kill us while we were sleeping?"
He sputtered something through a throat closed off by Anna's hand, and she relented her grip, just a little. "Well?"
"Enough," he growled. "Enough for you and your witch."
"YOUR HIGHN-"
Leif didn't get a chance to finish. Anna felt like she was watching her body from outside herself as the blade went smoothly up through his jaw and into the top of his head. Instantly it felt like he tripled in weight, and Anna let go of him before he dropped to the ground like a doll whose strings had been cut. She wiggled the blade free and stared at it. It was still pristine, blood simply didn't stick to it, unlike the dagger she had taken from the first luckless assassin, and that she had discarded as soon as she had gotten to Elsa's ice-blade. If they were here to kill them they could die at Anna's hands and Elsa's magic. She looked down at the dead man. No threat now, just a sad broken thing.
The others will die the same way.
"Onward," she snarled.
The men died hard, she would give them that. One by one Anna and her men searched them out, locking and bolting every door they passed, and when they had found them Anna hadn't even bothered to try taking them prisoner, she had simply fought them for a few seconds and they had died. All she needed was one alive, and she would know the leader when she found them. Seven in all, including the one she had dispatched in the kitchen.
A lucky number.
But for who?
"Your highness."
My but she was becoming sick of hearing that. She turned to snap at the man to just follow her orders, only to see it wasn't him who had spoken at all. "Hans?" she blurted out. "What are you…?"
He didn't look normal that was for sure. The Hans she knew around the court was immaculate, military clothes always neat and clean, not a single hair out of place, always that smile wrapped around his jaw and such a reasonable voice on his tongue.
The Hans that stood before her now looked nothing like that. His military uniform was covered in dark stains that could have been sweat or blood, and his hair was matted and tangled around his face. He looked exhausted, like a man who had just climbed a mountain. "Hans?"
Hans tried to straighten himself out and failed. "I'm sorry…for not…coming heresoonerAnna," he gasped out.
"What's wrong?"
"We found out how the assassins entered the castle." He paused. "And where they came from?"
Elsa would have thanked him and told him to take a rest before he dropped dead. Anna was far too impatient. "Well?"
"They came in via the servant's entrance, they crossed the bridge dressed as merchants and changed into their armour when they were hidden from the gate?"
"Who?" she whispered.
"It was a ship from the Summer Isles." To his credit Hans looked her straight in the eyes as he spoke. "My home."
The combination of the shock and the tiredness Anna was feeling from more than a day without sleep might have saved Han's life in that moment, as he went on:
"When I reached the boat half the crew were already dead, and the captain was dying, most likely they were the ones not in on the plot. They came aboard before the ship departed from my home, on a letter that the leader may still have."
Elsa would know what to do, Anna thought. But Elsa wasn't here, and Anna didn't.
Hans smoothed his hair back into something resembling his usual coiffured elegance. "Let me talk with those left alive, your majesty. I am their prince, they may listen to reason. An offer, maybe."
"An offer of what?" I want their heads!
"Life in the face of certain death is extremely tempting, regardless of orders from a very distant king, your highness," Hans said. As he talked he kept glancing at Anna's sword-arm. Even though the blade let all the stains slip off it, her arm was spattered and bloodied to the elbow. There were multiple small cuts on her forearm where daggers had nicked at her, and she could barely see through one eye from a tiny cut on her forehead. Virtually unharmed, after six professional killers, when dead tired. Remarkable, really.
"I…" Take a deep breath Anna. What would Elsa do? To take that breath took physical pain almost, but she managed it. She lowered her sword till the point lay on the ground. "Go," she said, standing aside, not trusting herself to say anything more.
"The terms?" Hans asked.
"Surrender, for their lives."
In the end it wasn't necessary. Hans hadn't been gone around the corner for more than five minutes, calling out to his countrymen, when he suddenly fell quiet. Anna wondered if his 'countryman' had done the job Anna had so nearly done a second ago, but then Hans returned. He didn't even need to say a word, Anna just looked at the expression on his face and the single bloodstain on his gloved hand.
Well, what a waste of time.
Like the thought was a thumb-tack pricking her, Anna felt all of the tension deflate from her in an instant, and she had to grab a wall with her free hand in case she fell to the ground. She was only half paying attention as Hans spoke.
"Dead by his own hand as I watched, I'm so sorry I failed your highness. Spouted some nonsense about national pride and the rule of God, and took his own dagger to his neck. I tried to stop the bleeding but…I'm sorry. Brave, if amazingly pointless."
She needed Elsa to be back. Well, no, first she needed to collapse into her own bed and sleep straight through to the coronation. Then she needed Elsa back. They were two halves, and Elsa knew how to deal with this kind of thing. She could deal with what happened after you found assassins in your own castle. Did you immediately declare war back? Did you say 'since you sent some at me, fair's fair and we get to send some at you'? She didn't know these things. She didn't know what happened next.
God, she really was tired. So tired. She looked up at Hans, vaguely aware that he had said something. "Hmmm?"
"I said I can't apologise on behalf of my father, because I suspect he's the one who sent them. I will apologise for my failure though. These days I feel closer to Arendelle than I ever did in my own home. I hope at least I've proved that much."
She had never liked Hans. He had always seemed too free and easy in Arendelle, even though he was a foreigner. Always seemed a little too eager to try and…try and…she couldn't think straight. Whatever. Even if she found him a little slimy, he'd still walked into that room for them. For her. "Thank you Hans. We won't forget this." There, Elsa would probably have said something like that. She turned to Leif. "Tell the servants, have this…have this cleaned up." She waved at the mess they had left in their wake. Under normal circumstances she would pity the poor men and women who would have to scrub the walls to remove the blood, but she was dead on her feet. Dead on her feet, hah. As opposed to the assassins, who were dead on the ground? Okay Anna, time to sleep.
Somehow, minutes or hours later, she somehow found herself lying on her own bed, her sword leaned against the dresser – but still in reach, she made damn sure of that – and sleep falling onto her like a gentle snowfall. Someone had bandaged the small cuts on her arm and dressed her for sleep, and if she looked outside she knew she would see patrolling guards, even more alert than they usually were. Arendelle had come under attack, and woe betide her enemies if they thought a few simple assassins could shake her foundations free.
There was a cold rage inside her, barely kept at bay by the exhaustion. Tomorrow she would unleash it on everything around her, but tonight it was contained like a rabid dog. She had one final thought before she sank into blessed unconsciousness:
Elsa was going to be furious.