A/N: New cover art by Patronustrip, I claim no ownership!
Smelling the scent of salt, Anna yanks on the reins and brings her horse to a shuddering stop by the edge of Fjord. The faintest wisps of light in the sky cast a pale glow on the starless blanket over her as she stares down at the ground, trying to make out something in the dark but having only pitch blackness looking back at her. With a grunt, she eases a leg over the saddle's side and holds her feet over the ground tentatively. Anna holds her breath and drops herself onto the ground, her reddened cheeks ballooning as the impact sends a jolt of pain into her ribs.
"Fuck," Anna gasps, clutching at her chest. The slightest hue of pink in the horizon casts a shimmer on the sweat brimming from her forehead as she tiptoes down the Fjord's banks. Unaccustomed to waking before dawn, the darkness fails to leave her eyes, and she searches the ground for the water's edge.
Failing to see or hear the water, the princess feels around for a pebble and tosses it into the blackness, sucking in a gasp as a clatter reaches her ears instead of a splash.
"Ice," Anna mutters, kneeling and extending an ungloved hand toward the sound, "in august?"
A smile reaches her lips as her fingers come away with ice, but the rattle of an approaching carriage sends her cowering against the ground. Anna's breath sputters in interspersed gasps as she drags herself away from the noise getting louder and louder; she shuts her eyes and covers her ears from the sound of turning wheels echoing in her ears, until the rattling stops. With cold sweat dripping off her eyelids, she pries her eyes open and shudders at the sight of four horses reined to the royal carriage.
The sight of the Queen stepping out from the carriage door steadies Anna's breathing, and she sighs in relief.
"Anna?" Elsa grimaces, staring at her sister's body buckled over on the ground.
With her gown glittering in the pale glow of the breaking dawn, Elsa strides over to her sister and helps her up. Anna pretends to falter for a second, clinging onto her sister's elbows and taking in her lemony scent.
"What's wrong?" Elsa asks, furrowing her brows, "Did you fall off your horse?"
"No, of course not!" Anna replies, looking down at the ground, "I-I just thought s-someone else was coming."
"Why would-" Elsa starts, "never mind about that, how are your ribs doing?"
Anna snaps upright and ignores the ache spreading through her lungs with each breath she takes.
"They're fine," Anna quips, snaking her fingers around her sister's and glancing over her shoulders, "y-you…came here in a carriage?"
"The Palace is concerned about my safety," Elsa sighs, gesturing at the soldiers stationed a stone's throw away from them, "there're people involved in the coup still seeking our lives."
"Oh god," Anna gasps, pressing herself into Elsa's arms, "you mean they-"
Elsa nods and gazes at the blanket of orange light draping itself over the Fjord, and the glittering hue rising from the ice to meet it, "I don't think you'd understand, but it's best if we stayed within the Palace walls for now-"
"No!" Anna gasps, pulling herself from Elsa's warmth, "You promised me you'd never shut the Palace gates again!"
Elsa's eyes widen as she stares into her sister's, trying to make out some semblance of fear or remorse – but only a livid rage stares back at her.
"Anna! This is for our own safe-"
"For yours, more like it," Anna scowls, folding her arms, "and we all know how much you want to be shut in."
"What!" Elsa shrieks, freezing the ground solid beneath her feet, "Do you think for one second I want this for us? Do you think I want you or myself to live in fear for the rest of my life?"
"Then fix this!" Anna growls, grasping her sister's gloved hands and resisting the urge to flinch at her chill, "They've wronged you. Now is the time to take back what's yours!"
Elsa shuts her eyes and tries to remember the words of her advisors. After days of weary inquiry hearings, the fervent calls for public executions and exile fade into one another; Elsa catches herself forgetting her counsel's sentences the moment he finishes them.
"We can fix this, together," Anna snarls, tightening her grasp on Elsa's hands and snapping her back to reality, "because if you won't, then I will."
"I'm not allowing you to-" Elsa starts, but the firm grip of her sister's fingers and the stare in her eyes tells her she's already made up her mind. Instead, she presses her lips into Anna's forehead and clutches her tightly against her chest, like it's the last time they'll ever share a hug.
"Oh yea, um, Elsa," Anna whispers, "you, uh, called me down to the harbor to do something?"
The Queen allows her eyelids to flutter open, and she smiles at the sight of the Fjord's waters glittering back streaks of orange beneath the sky, and the abandoned Southern Isle's fleet bobbing away in the stillness.
"You already have."
The driving rain forces the man to cover his head with a hood as he crouches behind a sodden stack of hay. Spying his comrade enter a ramshackle hut on the far end of the village, he looks over his shoulder again and feels his skin crawl at the tendrils of fog creeping behind him. The chill in his bones gnaws at his nerves as he scampers across the road; despite his matted hair and unshaven face, the blood-stained sword flopping against his tattered pants gives away his true identity.
The door creaks open on a singular rusty hinge barely hanging from the frame, and the hut offers little refuge from the cold outside. Inside, the remnants of a blacksmith's workshop lie strewn upon the dusty floor, and the smell of damp musk saturates the air.
"What a shithole," the admiral scowls, kicking at a dented pail, "you couldn't have picked less rundown place?"
"This is the most sparsely populated village in Arendelle," the general comments, lighting a pipe and attempting to start a fire in the dilapidated furnace, "they won't find us here."
"Doesn't matter, I think someone's following me," the admiral says, peeking between the hut's broken-in windows.
"We have to keep moving, it won't be long before the Queen finds us,"
"She'll be harder to track when winter sets in, which is in what – three months?"
"More like two if she freaks out again," the general says, "oh, and the Fjord's thawed since last week."
Whirling around on his heels, the admiral fumbles in his jacket for a map and scowls, "that makes things difficult for us, it's hard enough crossing the sea into the Southern Isles over ice, we'll have to wait for-"
"I don't think the Southern Isles has any ships left to mount a counter-offensive," the general comments, "they committed their entire fleet into Arendelle harbour, and there's only one prince still alive. We're going to have to cross into Weselton."
"The Duke's cavalry has retreated behind the borders, he wouldn't want to risk an open war with Elsa until the other nations can get their shit together. What about Russia?"
The sudden creak of a door snaps them from their discussion, and they jump to their feet. Already wound up from days of hiding from soldiers, the men draw swords and await their intruder's appearance, but the sight of a peasant girl dressed in rags and soaked to the skin in rain causes them to relax.
"Excuse me, kind sirs," the girl mutters, bowing lowly and keeping her eyes to the ground, "would it trouble you too much to spare me a piece of bread?"
"Piss off!" the general scowls, chucking a piece of coal at her, "Shoo! Get out of here!"
The girl whimpers, and the admiral's nerves fray at her persistence.
"No! There's no bread here, get lost!"
Lifting her eyes to the general's imposing frame striding across the room with an outstretched hand over his head, her lips curl into a smile as she slides the hood over her head. The smirk gracing her face stops the general dead in his tracks, and all the blood drains from his face.
"Oh god," he gasps as his knuckles turn the same shade of white as his face.
"What's the fuck's wrong with you?" the admiral hisses, trying to look over his comrade's shoulders.
Sense returns to the general's brain just in time for the ring of a sword to slice through the room. Raising his weapon at the last second, the girl's sword slams into his with such force it snaps both their blades and sends him staggering backwards. The admiral's sword clatters against the ground as he watches her hurl the general into a table.
"Fuck, fuck, it's that freak," the admiral spits, eyes darting left and right. He stumbles to the floor as his feet make a poor attempt at scrambling towards the only window in the hut.
Her eyes lift from the general inching away from her boots, and a foggy snarl escapes her lips as she sees the admiral making a run for it. She picks up the nearest object, a sledgehammer, and flings it as hard as she can at him. The block of iron sails through the air and slams into his knee just as he hurls himself through the window, sending shards of glass flying around the room.
The girl strides to the window, clutching at her ribs and panting from the exertion. She spots the admiral limping away into the forest, and chuckles to herself. A groan from behind her draws her attention as she wrenches the sledgehammer from the gaping hole it had torn into the wall.
"No, please, no, oh fuck, no, it wasn't me, I didn't-" the general sputters, widening his eyes at the sledgehammer and raising his hands in front of him.
"Didn't what?" the girl scowls, taking her time to stroll over to his trembling body, "Didn't beat my sister unconscious? Didn't imprison her in an oven? Didn't conspire to take her throne?"
"We wanted to give it to you-" the general hisses, before he's cut off by a boot to his throat.
"When you address a princess, you address her as your highness!" she spits, resting her weight on his neck. The girl's fists tighten into little red stumps around the hammer's oaken handle, and the weapon trembles beneath her pent-up rage. Sweat mingles with rainwater slithering down her reddened cheeks, dripping onto the block of iron held over her enemy's head.
The general wraps his thick hands around her boot and quakes beneath her, "Y-yes, y-your, h-highness," he sputters, trying to avoid the blue stare locked upon his eyes. Anna's fuming nostrils grunt as she rests the hammer's rusty face against his temple, and he flinches from its cold touch. "F-fuck," the general gasps, his chest heaving beneath the force jamming down on his windpipe.
A whistle resonates through the hut, followed by a violent crunch.
Stumbling through the forest clutching his knee, the admiral gives up trying to stem the blood streaming from his face. He snaps his gaze over his shoulders one more time in anticipation of the Princess bearing down on him in pursuit, but sees only a trail of his own blood glistening beneath the moonlight. With the constant nagging veil of death hanging over his head, the admiral fails to notice a slope coming up upon him, and he stumbles over his feet.
Damp leaves rustle amidst the pattering of rain as he tumbles down the slope before coming to a stop at the edge of a bramble bush. Wiping the mix of blood and rain from his eyes, he fumbles in his jacket and swears loudly when the map is nowhere to be found. A compass rattles inside his shaking hands as he makes a feeble attempt at finding the moon and gaining his bearings. Shooting a glance over his shoulders again, the admiral starts off limping east, dragging his shattered knee behind him every step of the way.
With fire tearing through his leg and bile creeping up his throat, the admiral fails to notice the ground beneath him turning white as he staggers into a clearing. A groan rips through the silence as his knee gives way and he falls face first into the earth. He recoils from the chill greeting his face, and gasps at the lumps of snow in his hands. The realization sends him scrambling onto his back, but the sleet has already fallen as far as the eye can see, blanketing the forest in a thick layer of white radiating a pale glow.
"Oh no, fuck no," he gasps in foggy breaths soaked with specks of blood. A rustle in the branches above draws his widened gaze upwards, and the breath catches in his lungs at the sight.
Dozens of crows stare back at him with beady white eyes devoid of life; their glinting, icy beaks silent and their snowy white wings motionless in the night air. Perched upon by rows of ice talons, the oak branches shift beneath the crows' weight; the rocking motion ominously echoing the admiral's fate. His pain forgotten, he shifts his weight backwards and flits his eyes from branch to branch, quickening his breathing to the point of hyperventilation as he spots crows filling up every empty spot all around him. A hideous noise tears through the silence as one of the crows begins cawing loudly. The other crows follow suit, and he covers his ears at the grating, jarring noise saturating the air.
With a furious rustle of flapping wings, the flock of snow crows descend in a cloud of white upon the Admiral's hapless body, and his screams join the chorus of cawing and chirping.
On a chalk cliff overlooking the clearing, the Ice Queen sits astride a dragon with her gaze tilted down at the snow-lined forest ground turning cherry-pink beneath her snowy creations. Sleet swirls around her still body and frost coats her lips drawn in a straight, motionless line. As the admiral's screams fade into silence, Elsa tightens her clutch on the reins, and her trembling fists glow snowy white.