Anna had been wrong, Elsa wasn't angry. As if she recognised the emotion would be so inadequate and had simply bypassed it, like a person walking down the street would ignore a beggar in the gutter. Elsa's emotions churned inside her, none winning out and so none reaching the surface. She floated through the week in a haze, barely registering the world outside her own thoughts. Arendelle might as well have not existed for all that it intruded on her. Her body moved through the castle automatically as her mind paid it the absolute minimum of attention, shapes she vaguely recognised moving into her vision to ask this or that, before withdrawing away as fast as they were able. Preparations for the coronation continued on with minimal input, books and protocols from her grandfather's grandfather's time telling the servants what and how to prepare, and Elsa merely nodded at this or that. She sleepwalked towards her ascension.

Even Anna was…indistinct. A flash of red and green, with silver-blue at her hip – for Anna always kept her blade within reach now – who was the only thing that penetrated the mist. She would talk for a few minutes before moving off, and although Elsa felt the need to shout no, stay, she never did. Anna would withdraw away from Elsa's quiet world and leave her older sister alone. Off dealing with the repercussions of the Southern Isles clumsy assassination attempt. Or to be more exact making other people feel the repercussions.

So instead she spent hours walking the castle. One place in particular. Elsa would stand in the middle of the northern corridor, the great glass windows that looked out over the mountain, and simply stare. It had started here, somehow. Ever since she had been a child Arendelle's northern mountain had captivated her. Sometimes she thought it beautiful, all pure brilliant white, shot through with slices of blue where ice shone at the surface, and a halo of green at the base in summer. Then as winter approached the beauty would give way to power. Like someone shaking off a dusty overcoat the trees would vanish under avalanches and turn to brown twigs, and the white snow would swirl around it in the harsh wind of the summit. But no matter which it was Elsa could always come here and be enthralled. As a child whenever she had been hurt or scared she had come here and imagined herself like the mountain; stony and impenetrable. When she had needed reassurance she had come here and imagined the mountain a living thing, with a voice she could almost here. She closed her eyes and pictured it and felt the reverberations running through her breast.

It spoke and she listened.

"Anna!"

Anna turned at the sound of the voice to see Kristoff running towards her. Kristoff. Again. Once even the sight of him approaching would have made her feel better. Nowadays she just felt…exasperation. "What now?" She snapped. Couldn't he see how busy she was? How much she had to do? She didn't have time for him. Especially not…especially not this!

"Anna, you should come back inside," Kristoff said. On his own two feet, surrounded by mounted and armed guards, he looked almost small. "Els- your sister needs you."

Yes, this again. Infuriating! "My sister needs to be safe!" Anna shouted back at him, her horse pawing at the ground underneath. She gripped the saddles and mounted in one swift motion.

"And how are you going to made her safer, going out there?" Kristoff replied, as if they didn't both know the answer.

"By stopping this…this…" Blasphemy "this from ever happening again!"

"Will killing do that?"

"Only if they refuse to go!" Anna replied, one hand jerking the reigns of her nervous steed while the other fingered the pommel of her ice-blade. Yes, only if they refused. Elsa had been firm about that and Anna would keep her sister's wish, for all that she would happily run those murderous scum through. If they agreed to leave and be escorted to the borders of Arendelle, so be it. But Anna still left the castle armed with Elsa's icy sword and white cloak, her own leathers and thin chainmail enough to protect her if any of them…disagreed.

They tried to kill my sister! She could feel the ice around her heart – Elsa's ice – singing in agreement.

Kristoff stepped closer, and none of Anna's guard stopped him. It was an argument they had had the day after the assassination attempt, when blood had still been drying on the castle floor. Anna had been furious, incandescent. She had wanted to ride out and cleanse them all. Kristoff had been waiting there as if forewarned, telling her to stop and wait like some kind of angel on her shoulder. He had done it too. They had argued and Anna had screamed and practically cried, but by the time she left the castle gates to hunt down any conspirators she could find it was to bring them to justice, not to bring them a sword-point.

As the week passed and Anna had went out again and again they had repeated the conversation. The arguments had gotten shorter, and simply, until finally they had both been rendered down to a single word:

Anna: Vengeance!

Kristoff: Justice.

Both of them knew they were approaching some kind of tipping point, but Anna wasn't willing to step back from it. They had tried to kill her sister. That was all of it, everything. Kristoff was her oldest friend, they had laughed and played together since her parents had been alive and he had been a small little thing who fed the horses. But put him on and the scales next to Elsa and he simply didn't register.

"This isn't you," Kristoff said, and for one moment Anna imagined she could hear the voices of those forest trolls behind him, who had brought him up. She resisted the urge to sigh. He was a good man, who didn't ask much from life, and kept to what code he had. Simple, honourable, honest. Maybe in some other life they could have had something more than…no. Somehow she just couldn't imagine it.

Elsa's ice sang around her heart, and Kristoff's words couldn't penetrate it.

"Yes, it is!" She snapped the reigns and her charger turned away, towards the gates. Anna felt Kristoff's eyes on her back as she left. She kept her eyes on the bridge as she rode away, and didn't look back before the gates closed.

You've given them every opportunity, the ice and wind sang to Elsa.

No sense in arguing there. She had done everything she could possibly think of. She had offered meetings, offered amnesty, offered them the freedom to go in peace from her land. Now on the eve of her coronation she had been stabbed in the back by a nation she had done nothing but right by. They had taken in Hans and given him an honoured place at court. Were they not happy with her treatment of him? But Hans had said often enough his own country cared little for him, one more son in a royal family with a dozen older. Were they too locked in the grip of religion? But according to Anna and Hans the men who had come to her castle to kill her hadn't spoken like fanatics. Some other reason?

Their reason isn't important.

No, she supposed not.

You extended the hand, they tried to cut it off. They all did.

How many of the diplomats coming to her coronation would be the same? Smiling and bowing while hiding figurative knives to be thrown at her later? How many of their mother countries handed money to preachers that then called for the death of the Arendelle witch-queen?

Make an example.

No, she wouldn't go that far. Those who tried to attack her country had made their choice and so be it, she would no longer shed tears for people who might have submitted to her rule if only she had done more. The only thing she could do that would make them happy would be to fall on a blade.

Then make them afraid.

Outside the castle, Elsa reigned, and her power blanketed the town in winter.

Not like the harsh winters Arendelle sometimes went through in the worst years, where the well-water would turn to ice, livestock would freeze standing up, and wood became too cold to burn. It was gentler than that, softer. Outside of the castle walls a scene greeted Anna that could have been any Christmas day; children ran through the parks and streets, laughing happily, building snowmen and having snowball fights, not a care in the world.

The adults were the ones who told the real tale, and as Anna and her group passed they fell into two camps.

"Your grace."

Some bowed as she passed, almost prostrating themselves before her. These ones touched a hand to the runestones around their necks, a silent prayer to Elsa the Ice Queen as her sister and protector passed. Whether they touched the small piece of inscribed iron to ask for her blessing or to ward off her anger Anna couldn't tell. She looked down at them from the back of her horse and watched carefully the way Elsa had taught her to. She saw the thin fabric of an old woman's shawl or the barely-hidden shaking in a man's shoulders and as she passed she gestured down. One of the men following her would reach into a saddlebag and hand out the woollen coats inside, and without a word Anna would move on.

The other group didn't bow or keep their distance as Anna passed. They looked up awestruck at her and moved closer, to try and brush a hand against the leather of her boots or hem or her cloak as she passed. The braver ones tried to reach up and touch a fingertip to her sword, refusing to meet eye contact. They took the cloaks gratefully, and unlike the first group they praised Anna, like she was some kind of warrior-priest, and they did so in Elsa's name, as though she were a goddess. They clutched runestones so tightly that their palms were almost red.

Fear, then? But was that the kind of queen she wanted to be? Her father had never been that kind of king. Maybe in the distant past, when a crown had to be kept through force of arms, that might have been possible. But she didn't want to rule through fear. But when Elsa had dreamed about being queen that image had never been of herself standing above a populace on their knees, only obeying her out of terror.

Then what do you want? the mountain asked her. The snow at the summit swirled and streamed away, as if the rock and ice itself was frustrated with her.

Safety. She wanted Anna to be safe. She wanted her people to be safe. She wanted her country to be safe. Just let her have that. Let her spend her whole life in Arendelle, with Anna and Kristoff and her people. The person she loved most in the place she loved the most. The rest of the world be damned.

But how to achieve this? They hate you, and that hate is stronger than their fear. That hate will devour your attempts to make them love you, and you cannot truly respect what you hate. So what does that leave you, little ice queen?

And Elsa could only think of one thing. One that maybe she had always known she would come down to.

Awe.

If they hated her because they saw her as a heathen goddess of ice, she would show them a goddess of ice so powerful that even the idea of attacking her would be unthinkable. Her and Anna, together. Let those hidden conspirators spend the rest of time cowering at the thought of her reaching out from Arendelle to claw at them in their far-off capitals, while her own people lived under her rule safe from the thought of invasion, or banditry, or even winter itself. She could do it. A part of her lit up inside at the thought of it.

The wind howled over the top of the mountain, as if celebrating her decision.

The title suits us well.

And looking up at that invincible and immovable shape she knew exactly how to start.

If she was going to be a goddess, she would need a throne fit for one.

It was almost dark when Anna returned to the capital. Dark enough that anyone seeing her and her guard as they returned might not notice a few patches on her armour where the shadows were just a little deeper than the rest, more red than dark.

She always felt loose and talkative after combat, and here she was with nobody to talk with. She wished Hans had been with her, then at least she would have someone to talk with. But the young prince had went off after the assassination attempt to find out which of his countrymen – well, ex-countrymen at this point, she guessed – had planned something so outrageous. Her guards either didn't dare or didn't think it appropriate to share casual banter with their princess, and Kristoff…well…she wasn't on the best of terms with Kristoff right now. So when the courtyard doors swung open she took the silence of her guard as simple courtesy, and it wasn't until she looked up from her own thoughts that she realised they were silent because they were quite simply breathless.

Ice covered the courtyard. No, it draped the courtyard. Anna's mouth fell open as brilliant whites and blues swirled over the entryway to the castle, as if a river had materialised in mid-way and flowed through the courtyard before freezing. The last rays of the sun seemed to flow through it as Anna watched, lighting it up from the inside. She didn't have words to describe the feeling she got in her heart just looking at it.

"Do you like it?"

Anna heard the clang of metal hitting stone as behind her the guards instantly dropped to their knees. Anna had a second's glance backwards to see them holding the runestones around their necks, but then her attention was dragged forcibly back to Elsa.

She wasn't wearing her usual simple dresses, or the more casual clothing she wore at night around the castle. As Elsa descended the steps she did so clothed in ice. A long sweeping blue…dress didn't seem to be the right word for it but Anna knew no other. It shimmered as she walked, blues and whites dancing in snowflake patterns as she did so, trailing off behind her in a waterfall of beautiful colours. It was dazzling. Just watching it Anna felt the breath ripped out of her throat. She fingered the blade hilted at her side, suddenly aware of the bloodstains hidden by the sheathe. She felt ashamed bringing it into Elsa's presence.

"Stand."

It took Anna a moment to realise Elsa was talking to the guards as they clambered to their feet. One look told her they were feeling exactly the same amount of wonder what she was. No, not wonder, something more, because even as they obeyed they kept their hands wrapped tightly around the runestones in their hands. Elsa's symbol.

Awe. That was the word she was looking for.

Elsa hugged Anna fiercely. "Welcome home." She felt…not cold exactly, she was as warm and felt as good as she ever had. But it floated around here like an aura, one that only Anna was inside.

"This is…amazing," she whispered.

Elsa drew back and looked at Anna with a smile. Blue stars danced in her eyes. "I've been thinking." She turned past Anna, back towards the courtyard doors, back towards Arendelle. But Anna could see that her eyes was fixed on something much further away than Arendelle's town centre. "Ride with me."

The cold didn't touch them. Anna drove her horse up and mountain and while it whinnied and complained it kept onward. Anna could feel Elsa, sat side-saddle behind her, keeping out the cold, the snowflakes and winds that flowed down from the mountain almost year-round twisting before they reached them, nature itself bending before Elsa's royal authority.

"I've been thinking," Elsa whispered, her breath tickling Anna's ear.

"About what?" Anna said, not taking her eyes from the nearly-invisible path on the ground. As the horse inched up the slope the snow underneath swirled and flattened. It was mesmerising to watch.

And she listened as Elsa talked. About her hopes and her fears, about what she wanted and what she dreaded. She didn't say much, only nodding and maybe whispering 'yes' when Elsa mentioned power and awe, and talked about embracing herself. All words Anna had waited so long to hear.

"So what's next?" Anna asked. She felt rocked back in the saddle slightly and looked up. They had come to the end of one of the thousand small snowdrifts that wound their way up the side of the mountain. She glanced backwards at Elsa and behind her could see Arendelle, far in the distance. If she hadn't known any better she would have sworn Elsa's power had simply picked them up and deposited them nearer the summit.

Elsa slid off the back of the horse, her magical dress trailing behind her. If it had been beautiful in the stone courtyard with only those frozen ice-floes around the stone, up here in the mountains where it was in its element it was glorious. Elsa looked barely human. Anna was so engrossed in just looking at Elsa that she almost missed what she was actually saying, and it took a second for the words of her sister to sink in.

"A new castle?"

"Yes," Elsa breathed, looking up towards the new summit.

"What…what's wrong with the old one?" Live somewhere else? The thought of it was just bizarre. They had grown up in that castle. Their parents had grown up in that castle.

"It isn't…it doesn't feel like me anymore," Elsa said, still staring up at the peak. "It feels small, like I can't be me when I'm inside." She took a deep breath. "I don't want to have the coronation there."

"Why not?"

"I'm not…" Elsa was struggling to find the words. "I'm not that place. I'm not the old ways. We need something to tell people that."

"So we can build a new one," Anna said. "We have the money."

"No," Elsa replied. "I have a better idea." She raised her arms.

For a second nothing happened. Anna watched as Elsa held out her hands towards the summit, palms open, as if inviting it to do something. She was about to open her mouth to ask Elsa, what do you mean, when it started.

Nothing, at first. Snowfall a little heavier maybe. But as Anna watched the single snowflakes turned into a deluge, gently hitting the snow already trodden underfoot. Then they moved past the snowbank they stood on, over the crevice, and simply…hung there. As if there was an invisible bridge they were resting on.

Anna watched, wide-eyed, as more snowflakes joined the first, linked up and crystallised into ice so pure it was almost blue. Elsa stepped forward, stepped out into the abyss, and Anna didn't even shout wait, stop, she was so enthralled. Where Elsa's foot came down light flashed and spun as the first step formed, a perfect block of ice that held the soon-to-be-queen's weight. Another formed, then another, and suddenly Elsa was walking across the chasm on a bridge more perfect and unbreakable than the stone monolith that linked Arendelle castle to the town.

Elsa turned back and in that second, standing on top of nothing with the mountain at her back, she was the most beautiful being Anna had ever seen. She held out a hand and said a single word: "Come." She didn't even think. She stepped forward onto the bridge, which made not a single creak.

From then on she watched in awestruck silence as Elsa built. No, built wasn't the word. Created. Anna watched from the edge of the bridge – not cold, even though her hands were gripping sold ice in freezing weather she knew Elsa would never let her become cold – and smiled in faint wonderment as Elsa created the castle she needed. Spires rose from the ground as if they had been waiting there for years just for Elsa to call them up. Ice and snow flowed together like in the courtyard back in the town, but infinitely sharper and clearer, rising up to meet one another to make towers and floors. Inside huge sheets of ice taller than houses delicate snowflakes were etched by an invisible hand. Anna stepped forward and the ice moved around and past her, massive doors in blue and white forming around her.

Elsa rose up into the air as stairs formed around a spiral staircase, a single icicle lowered itself from the tip of the new spire and seemed to shatter outwards into a hundred perfectly-formed facets before they were hidden before a solid sheet of ice became a second floor and hid it from view.

On it went as Anna watched, as Elsa built a new castle – no, a palace – around herself. Her palace. Slowly, after what seemed like only minutes of creation the creaking and groaning of the forming ice was stopped, and they both stood inside a grand hall of shining blue and white. Anna took the stairs – somehow not slippery at all – two at a time to join Elsa on a grand balcony overlooking it, and together they walked up to the second floor, Elsa leading the way. They found themselves in a huge circular chamber, and Anna looked up to see the finished chandelier, light streaming through it to illuminate the room.

"The throne will be here, when I'm rested," Elsa said, and moved on to a small set of doors opposite the stairway entrance. As Elsa approached they slid open silently, and the two walked out onto a small circular balcony, overlooking…overlooking everything. Anna could see all the way down the mountain from here. She could see the ice-bridge they had crossed and the snowdrifts they had come up. Her gaze went past it to the forests that ringed the mountain, down to the town and the castle in the middle of the lake that looked so very small now. She could see plumes of smoke coming from a half-dozen villages that dotted the country. The country! She felt like a goddess looking down on the earth.

"Amazing." The word didn't come close to Anna's feelings, could never encapsulate the awe or love she felt towards her sister as she stood inside a place that was truly hers.

"We'll hold the coronation here," Elsa said, staring up at the majestic structure she had created out of nothing but mountainside. She looked at Anna and smiled. "I'll always love the old castle, but this is me. Let everyone see that, if they still doubt what I am, or what I can do." To them, the words went unspoken. From here nothing will escape my sight. "From here I can see the world." She looked back down at Anna and gripped her sister's hands in her own. "All the world that matters."

And as Anna moved into Elsa's arms she only had time for one more thought before her sister's embrace swallowed her up: It would not be a coronation.

It would be an ascension.

Merry Christmas