The castle was asleep by the time Elsa returned to her room, but the queen was not tired. Over half of A History of Royal Magic still awaited her and anything else was a distraction as far as she was concerned.

Elsa couldn't help but feel as though she knew Agatha Paddick personally. It was as if reading her book was a conversation with the woman instead of a chronicle written by her and Elsa was compelled to read it as though she were under some kind of curse. It wouldn't be so out of character for Agatha to place a spell on her own book, and as the queen rounded the corner of the deserted hallway where her bedchamber awaited, she decided that even if she was under some kind of sorcerer's spell, she did not mind.

As Elsa approached the door to her bedchamber, she stumbled on something by her feet.

What's this? she thought as she bent down to pick up a kitchen tray holding a small tea kettle, ceramic mug, and a handwritten note in the unmistakable curvy scrawl of her sister.

I knew you would be up late tonight reading, so I brought you some tea! Don't overwork yourself. We need you in your best health!

~Love, Anna

A smile tugged at Elsa's lips as she brought the tea inside and rested it on the nightstand, amazed at how thoughtful her sister could be despite her busy schedule of late.

Anna had been worried she would be useless in the preparations for the attack, but in the past week she had proven exactly the opposite. The young princess was hard at work every day helping her betrothed Kristoff and his ice harvesters, organizing their projects and making sure the castle was as protected and well stocked as possible.

The mountain man was, of course, doing most of the heavy lifting, but Anna was always right behind him with a steadying hand and Kristoff was always very vocal about his appreciation for her.

Too vocal, in fact, for Elsa's taste. The way the two of them would flirt and giggle at each other in the hallways always made Elsa turn the opposite direction. The couple was just as lovey-dovey as ever despite the fact that their wedding had been delayed indefinitely, and Elsa could only stomach so much of the reminder that if she made it through this attack she would go back to sitting alone on the frozen throne of Arendelle.

Anna had also placed herself in charge of building a shelter for the women, children, and elderly of the kingdom who could not fight and who had no place else to go. It had been Elsa's idea, but Anna had taken it for her own personal project, aware that she had a more steady rapport with the common folk than Elsa, a fact that the queen accepted with a bit of resentment.

If the castle was taken by Alexander and his army, Arendelle would belong to him, but Elsa could scarcely imagine he would slaughter all the innocent of the city after the battle.

When she had brought the subject up to Aaron, the former prince thought for a moment before saying, "Alexander is a cruel man, but not a wasteful one. If he were to succeed, he would see the commoners as work-horses for whatever he means to do with Arendelle. Though make no mistake, Elsa, it's you he really wants, not the kingdom."

So plans for the safehouse were put into motion. At the very least, the people inside would be safe during the battle, where they would wait and pray for victory. Elsa had ordered her sister to be with them.

"You can't be serious!" Anna had protested when the queen had brought that detail up. "I'm not leaving your side for a second!"

"Anna, it's not a suggestion, it's an order. You don't belong in the front lines of an attack," was Elsa's rebuttal.

"Neither do you! And you'll be in the castle anyway, not on the front lines. You're a Queen, not a warrior."

"But Anna, I have my magic for my own protection and I just don't know if I can keep both of us safe. Just, please, do as your queen says. Do as your sister says."

With a scowl and a huff, that had been the end of it, though Elsa suspected her sister would give her more stubborn rebellion before all this was over.

After getting comfortable, it was hard for Elsa to concentrate on reading for a bit, but she eventually found her focus as she sipped Anna's tea and soon enough she was sucked back into the story of Agatha Paddick.

King Borus was a brute of a man, nearly seven feet tall, with a grip like a bear and a mouth like a lion, Agatha wrote. He cursed heavily, fought without fear, and chastised his men for so much as dropping an apple on the ground. I once saw him threaten to put a man to the sword for charring his meat too much during one of his "Kalimahs," feasts of glory that Borus liked to throw in his own honor. Humbleness was not one of the king's shining virtues.

I remember that night well. Borus had been perturbed all day, snarling at the slightest annoyance, almost daring anyone to push him over the edge. A servant brought in the main course, a rack of boar ribs, charred to black as I remember, and placed it in front of the king. Borus took one look and called for his men to seize the poor chump.

It was an empty threat, I knew, but then again, I knew the King better than anyone after the first year in his service. He let the man go, but not before scaring him so bad he wet his britches and cried harder than I ever did even as a little girl. He got no injuries besides his bruised dignity and obliterated reputation, but the sight was still hard to stomach, and every person in that room grew a little more afraid of their king in that moment.

I knew that was the intent from the start. See, Borus acted like a cold-blooded killer to his people and in front of his men, but it was all an act, a mask he put on to keep him feared and respected. When it was just me and him, the king was a dim-witted sweetheart who wouldn't so much as stomp a cockroach in the dirt if it went skittering by. And if you think that's an exaggeration, I'll show you the boots I made while under his service – the bottoms were coated in bug guts.

Agatha spent three years teaching Borus to read and write the common tongue, and his progress was slow, but he got better day by day. Agatha couldn't help but be proud of him.

At first, the king placed Agatha in one of the common tents with the serving wenches and whores of the village where she slept on the ground next to some of the filthiest human beings she had ever been near. It was hot and crowded, but the other girls were nice enough and Agatha considered herself lucky just to have a place to sleep and a job to do. Anything was better than life in the wilderness.

The optimist inside of Agatha was thrilled about her situation but the skeptic kept her alert, cautious, and weary. Sooner or later her luck was bound to run out, and so Agatha Sharptongue forced herself to stay cold and tough – the city of Bal'rok was no place to let your guard down, even when all circumstance seemed in your favor.

Despite everything she would have guessed, Borus grew on Agatha as the months went by. She found the way he struggled with simple words strangely endearing and his frustration cute. He never laid a finger on her or blamed her for his failures – he was much too stubborn and proud to blame a woman for what he could not do. He had a genuine yearning to learn, which took Agatha by surprise. It wasn't long before she was asking questions.

"What are ya gonna do, once ya learn to write?" she asked him. "Ya don't plan on visitin' the North anytime soon I reckon."

The king took a moment to think. "King Borus is ruler in a fierce city, my friend," he said in his heavy southern accent. "Many many men in Bal'rok… no, all of Anvel want Borus dead. And many many men are stronger than Borus. I am fierce warrior, yes, but that is not enough to rule. I need strength in the head as well as the body. My father and his father before him did not know this. I must have something other men do not. And Borus knows not even the strongest Anvel warrior in all of Bal'rok can read or write like Agatha Sharptongue can." He clapped her on the back. "Some come! Teach me your words so that I may go down in history as the King With Brains, eh?"

And so she did. From that point on, Agatha was not only Borus' teacher, but his friend and number one confidant. She drank with him, laughed with him and even shared his table at his Kalimahs. The king gave Agatha her own tent, right near his own, so that she would always be nearby. Agatha quickly gained notoriety among the king's men and they grew to like her almost as much as Borus himself. After two years, Bal'rok was no longer Agatha's prison, or a stop along the way. It was her home.

Borus loved to talk about himself and spin tales more than anyone I ever met. He was known to exaggerate and boast and anything he said needed to be viewed with a skeptic's eye. However, there was one thing in particular that he would talk about that grabbed my attention every time – His grandfather.

They had called him King Ramsay the Earthquake, and if the tales were true, he was no ordinary man. They say he could split the Earth in two with the stomp of his foot and bury a man to his ears with gravel with the clench of a fist.

Borus spoke of him often, boasting of his great warrior grandfather as if his achievements were his own because they shared the same blood. He told Agatha that Ramsay had stopped a rebellion by creating a fissure in the ground the size of a river, swallowing his foes into a black abyss.

At first Agatha thought it was just a story, but Borus spoke sincerely, claiming he had been a child when it happened, witnessing the miracle with his own two eyes. Agatha had a moment of revelation when she remembered Queen Alissa, saw the green emerald eyes of the three-tailed fox in her mind, reminding her that anything was possible; reminding her that magic existed in this world.

I thought on it for a long time when I heard of King Ramsay the Earthquake. Surely it could be no coincidence, could it? A King and a Queen of separate kingdoms, born of different generations, leagues apart, each possessing some kind of magical power.

Of course, I had no proof of anything and the idea was just ripening in my head, but I knew there was something going on, something big. It was then that my research began.

Bal'rok was not known to keep written records of much, and almost everything was illustrated or passed down through spoken word, song, and tale. Agatha asked many of Borus' men about King Ramsay, paying particular attention to the older ones who would have been alive during his reign.

There were different accounts and some naysayers, but for the most part the story was the same. Ramsay the Earthquake possessed an unnatural control over stone, rock, and soil. He could toss boulders with the wave of a hand and create landslides with no less than a thought. In the southern tongue, they called him a "rak bar'rac" meaning "stone shaman."

Some of the Anvellish thought of him as a god and believed he would live forever – but they were proven wrong by his highly unremarkable and inglorious death from drinking tainted stream water and falling ill like any other man would have. The entire kingdom of Anvel simultaneously laughed and wept as the great Ramsay dies and left his son, Borus' father, to rule with no supernatural powers to speak of, and very large boots to fill.

Agatha was eventually able to track down a mural of King Ramsay in a trader's tent at the very edge of Bal'rok, buried under barrels of wine and wool cloth. It was painted over a sheepskin canvas and depicted an impossibly large man wielding a battle axe. Agatha almost mistook him for Borus at first. The resemblance he bore to his grandfather was uncanny.

On the mural, Ramsay was stomping the ground and causing pillars of rock to rise up and crash into an army of smaller men, flaying them in every direction. Agatha had recreated it in the book, labeling it King Ramsay the Earthquake – the Highborn of Anvel.

It was only after I was convinced Ramsay was real that I came up with the concept of a 'Highborn' – a person of royal birth (or any kind of ruler) who possessed a form of magical ability, the origins of which were unknown to me at the time. I had no real reason to think magic-users could only be kings or queens, but those were the only examples I had been exposed to and I had quite a strong hunch it was no coincidence. Thoughts of Alissa and Ramsay consumed me for a time, and my old obsession was reinvigorated. Though Bal'rok was not the place for research of magic, as I soon found out.

Just as Agatha feared, her good fortune came to an end soon after her twentieth birthday. She was awoken in the night by a great bellowing horn blast that rattled the city of Bal'rok, shattering the dreams of all who slept, and waking the nightmare of war. The battlehorns could only mean one thing: Bal'rok was under siege.

The next thing Agatha knew, Borus himself was rushing her inside the king's tent, screaming for her to hide behind the throne and not to come out until he came to retrieve her. Outside she could hear the clash of metal and the screams of dying men, the thick of the battle already underway, the village in absolute chaos.

Agatha wanted to say she would fight as well, but the words somehow caught in her throat. Before she could protest, Borus grabbed his great-axe and stormed outside the tent, his head held high and a warrior cry in his throat, ready to either kill or die.

Agatha did as she was told, but adrenaline was coursing through her veins. For hours she fought with herself, listening to the battle raging outside, hearing men beg for mercy and knowing that some of them were her friends. Agatha knew in her gut that the battle was being lost by Borus' men and the invaders would soon be in the tent, ready to cut her throat if they found her.

Steeling herself, she crept out from behind the throne to find the enormous tent still empty and dark, the tables lined with armor, food, and various things men had left there before the battle started. She scanned the room for anything useful and her eyes landed on an unsheathed saber laying on one of the tables closest to the throne.

She dashed to the weapon, staying light and quiet on her feet, dressed in only a dirty sleeping garment, nothing heavy on her person to slow her down.

Agatha grasped the blade with a sweaty palm. She had practiced with a sword many times before with Borus and his guards, but only ever in friendly sparring and impromptu drunken bouts. The thought of meeting a huge southern man with a thirst for blood in single combat made Agatha queasy. Still, the saber was light and she was quick, and she felt more confident now that she had something to defend herself with.

There were men fighting just outside the king's tent now, no more than twenty or thirty feet away. Agatha swallowed. Maybe it's Borus, she thought. Maybe he's winning and he'll come through that flap and rescue me in just a few seconds.

As if in answer to her thoughts, the two men fighting suddenly burst through the flap, one ramming his body against the other and causing them to topple through. It was Borus who landed on his back, with another hulking man grappling with him, a giant greatsword falling with a clang beside them.

Borus was struggling to keep the man away from his weapon, pushing with all his might against his head and arm, clawing at his face, his axe nowhere in sight. The stranger was roaring as he reached slowly for the pommel of the sword so he could end the king and his struggling for good.

Agatha shouted and tightened her palm on the grip of the saber when she realized what was happening. She sprang forward and ran towards Borus to help, but it took her half a second too late to get there.

The brute finally got a good grip on his greatsword and he wrenched it outwards, screaming in rage as he did it, and thrust the tip through Borus' exposed side where it entered through his ribcage with a sickening crack. Borus grunted and his flailing stopped, blood beginning to poor from his mouth and side.

There was a moment of victory in the attacker's eyes before he looked up and noticed Agatha screaming and charging, steel in hand, and the last thing he ever saw was the look of rage on her face as she planted a foot between his eyes to wrest him from Borus and then plunged the saber into his heart.

That was the first time I had killed anyone, Agatha wrote. And I did not enjoy it.

Although, for some reason, I do remember taking a second to look down at his face. There was some kind of… satisfaction in looking down at a man I had just killed, the very man who had just taken the life of my friend, and I will never forget that moment. When it passed, I turned to Borus.

The stories always have some kind of last words from a man as he lay dying next to a friend, some kind of wisdom in their last moments that escapes from their lips. But Borus never spoke, even when I was screaming and crying over him, trying desperately to keep him with me, shaking him uselessly. I could tell he could see me at least. I was the last face he saw before entering the darkness.

As he stared at me with those big black eyes, he did not look afraid or defeated. In fact, he looked almost proud. And then I heard more footsteps and I knew they were coming, usurpers here to claim their prize, and I had no time to lay there and grieve.

Agatha fled, taking the saber with her. She cut a hole in the back of the king's tent and escaped into the night, narrowly avoiding a pack of men with torches and weapons as they rounded towards the entrance. She heard their whoops and cries of victory when they found Borus slain.

The fighting looked to be mostly over now, with most of the tents and camps of Bal'rok either deserted or overrun. Men lay dead or dying and some of the tents and wooden structures were ablaze, and Agatha was worried she would find her own home ransacked when she got there.

To her relief, Agatha's tent just behind the king's remained untouched and she quickly gathered the supplies and clothes she could into a pack and withdrew into the night, figuring she needed to escape before daybreak if she wanted to stand the best chance.

Agatha thought about how she would have to find a horse in the next village and then…

And then what? I had nowhere to go, once again. North would take me back to Myleria from where I had been banished and west only lead to the sea. I would have had to take a boat if I wanted to get to the Western Kingdoms, and that hardly seemed likely considering I had no money. My only option was to head east. What I would find there, I could have only guessed.

The Eastern Kingdoms were more civilized than the South, but far more secretive and exclusive, very little of its history and culture making its way to lowborn Northerners like me. I wondered if anyone there would welcome a banished Mylerian girl with no family, no money, and nothing to my name besides a saber and a heart full of hatred.

But I had to try, didn't I?

The first few days were the hardest, and I came very close to giving up. Being thrown into the wilderness alone is hard, but doing it with a broken heart is damn near impossible. Every time I closed my eyes my chest would clench up and I would feel like screaming.

It wasn't that I would remember Borus' murder or his attacker or even the moment I pierced the man's heart with steel. Instead I would remember the good times, the drunken evenings around a fire pit, throwing around light-hearted insults with the king's men, and the long nights chatting with Borus in his dimly lit tent about words and traditions and how to rule a kingdom. I would remember the small moments that would never come back, and I would die a little inside.

Eventually, after simply putting one foot in front of the other over and over, after several nights of hunger and near dehydration, I became tired of my grief. I was tired of being helpless, hungry, and alone, tired of letting the world toss me around like a ragdoll on a stallion, and tired of myself. But my life couldn't end just yet.

I still had research to do.

Sophie stared at her favorite spot on the tiled floor below the throne as she knelt there. She knew that spot all too well. There was a small crack right between two tiles where a strange looking blue beetle would sometimes crawl out of. Today it was nowhere in sight. Sophie wondered if it was dead.

"I'm assuming you've heard the news, Swan," Alexander growled above her. "Our captains have been speaking of nothing else. Twenty ships sunk and nearly half of our ground soldier's armor, weapons, and supplies burned, rigged with oil and torched from the inside of the Calidae armory."

Sophie stood and crossed her arms, an angry scowl painted across her face. "I got word this morning. Twenty ships… gods, I never saw it coming. I will have a word with the guards that were on duty. Anyone who let this happen is going to pay for their incompetence, I promise, uncle."

The entire Astor army had been in shambles today, trying to figure out how to recover from the massive hit to the fleet that was prepared to sail within the month. Accusations had been slung like mud from one guard to another and nobody would take responsibility for the destruction. Sophie couldn't blame them, either, knowing full well that Alexander's wrath was nothing to take lightly.

Honestly, Sophie had expected her uncle to be much angrier than he was when she finally came to report to him this evening. He had been waiting with a frown and had summoned Efreet to guard the door when the princess arrived, but he was surprisingly calm. It made her weary.

"This reeks of sabotage, niece," said Alexander. "If there are traitors among us, they must be sniffed out and put to the flame or we will never sail for Arendelle." The fire lord gave her a long, suspicious glare that made Sophie's eyes widen.

"You… you don't think I had something to do with this, uncle? I would never –"

"Spare me your prayer of loyalty," he said, raising a hand. "I've already caught the traitorous bastards. Five of them, all young recruits barely out of training caught fleeing the capital on their way south. Only one confessed, but he sold out the others. They are being held in the stronghold as we speak."

Sophie was surprised by that. "Why am I just now hearing about this? I spent all day sorting this out and I was under the impression the perpetrator was never caught."

"A precaution. I had to rule you out as the one giving the order, so I had them tortured and questioned earlier today. Fortunately, none gave any hint that they took orders from the Black Swan. It appears they were merely rebels from the streets looking for vengeance on me for deaths due to the Disease. Why they targeted my ships, I still am unsure. Rebels with no sense of direction, it seems. Still an impressive feat for just five men. They no doubt schemed for a long time, finding the weak spot in the hulls of the battleships and using corrosive acid to burn through them. I wouldn't have even known how to do it myself, I admit."

"I… I don't know what to say uncle. I will make sure they rot in the dungeons for what they've done."

Alexander laughed coldly. "Hah! Dungeons are for petty thieves and hostages. Traitors and deserters get the flame. I will execute the five of them in the morning with the whole army watching. We'll see who seeks to betray us after that."

Sophie went white. If these boys were fresh recruits they could be no older than eighteen or nineteen years old, and what Alexander was suggesting was not a quick painless death, if she knew him. A noose is one thing to pay for your crimes, but burned alive in front of thousands? It was too cruel. "Uncle, surely there must be another way to send a message…"

"Are you questioning me?" he boomed, causing the torches to flicker. Sophie thought she saw a bit of red appear in his palm. Perhaps he was angrier than she originally thought, but unwilling to show it. "I will punish traitors how I always have. As for the guards who allowed it, I will leave them to you. Make sure this kind of backhanded cowardice is never seen in my army again. At any rate, the invasion will have to be delayed until we can replenish what was destroyed. I will not go to war with Arendelle at half strength."

"Yes, uncle, I understand," Sophie said, bowing in submission. She knew that pushing the issue of the executions would only lead to a worse fate for the men at this point. "By your leave." She began to walk down the length of the throne room to the door while Alexander called for Efreet.

The golem came lumbering in from his place just outside the door, heat and flame bursting from the cracks between the stones that made up his body. He stared with fiery red eyes at Sophie as he passed her, making a sound like a belch and spitting out a small flame. Sophie returned the stare and took off her glasses to polish them with the end of her sleeve.

"Oh, one more thing, Swan," Alexander said as Efreet stomped over beside him and curled into a ball of molten stone. "There's a tavern in the city called the Sundown run by a man named Vasheer Maljahr."

Sophie's blood turned to ice and she froze. What does he know about Vash?

"Word has come to me that he trades heavily with Arendelle. I want him brought to me for questioning."

The princess had to physically restrain a sigh of relief. Nothing. He knows nothing.

"Of course, uncle. I will find him."