Elsa rubbed her forehead for the fourth time, fingers working over the large bump that resided above her left eyebrow. Her headache was excruciating and hadn't lessened in the slightest since she'd woken with it. Even the tea the royal Physician had given her hadn't been enough to dull the ache, and to make matters worse she was nauseous and light headed. Breakfast that morning had been a chore and it seemed lunch would go about as pleasantly. Glancing at the clock on the fireplace mantle, Elsa felt her irritation ramp up a notch and exhaled through her nose, sharp pain lancing across her forehead as her eyebrows knit into a scowl. Anna was late, again.

Since the king and queen's departure, the young princess had begun experimenting with new forms of youthful defiance, the most recent being her chronic tardiness for all meals and meetings with her tutors. Elsa understood being a few minutes late, but her younger sister usually sauntered in to wherever she was expected fifteen or twenty minutes late, full of half-hearted apologies and smug sideways grins. Elsa usually succeeded in keeping her cool mask in place but knew her eyes were alive with anger. This only seemed to delight Anna more, and she'd made it a sport of seeing how far she could push her older sister, irritating smile only growing the angrier Elsa got.

The young queen-to-be groaned and put her head in her gloved hands, taking deep breaths to steady her stomach. Today just wasn't going to be her day, she could already tell. On top of her little sister's antics, there had been no hawk received from the royal vessel and the harbor master was starting to worry. Of course his report had been as calm as ever, but Elsa could sense his growing unease and it made the ball of fear seeded in her heart only grow. Four days without word was troubling. It wasn't catastrophic, but it was troubling, and the last thing Elsa needed or wanted was trouble. Not with a headache powerful enough to split her forced concentration of concealing her powers.

At the sound of the servant door opening, Elsa put her hands on the table and looked up, arranging her face in the iciest expression she could muster, which was to say she could have killed someone with just a glance. She'd expected to see Anna swagger in but was surprised when Kai emerged from the shadows. Immediately the young queen-to-be knew something was wrong. The manservant's face had a gray pallor to it and his eyes were as wide as saucers, sweat beading along his brow as if he'd come down with a high fever. In his right hand he clutched a piece of paper, his fist so tight she could see the blue veins of his hand sticking out.

"Kai," Elsa said as she slowly stood, "what's wrong."

The manservant seemed to have not heard her, his eyes distant as if focusing on something very far away. He didn't return to himself until Elsa asked him again what was wrong, shaking his head while drawing in a shuddering breath.

"I…there has been a…"

Elsa felt the fear in her chest harden into an unimaginably heavy weight as she watched the manservant struggle to form a sentence. She'd never seen him this distraught, and the first thought that came to her mind was that something had happened to Anna.

"Kai," Elsa said not realizing she'd come around the table and was standing in front of the manservant, "where's—"

Anna

The young princess appeared beside Kai, her face as ashen as the manservant's and streaked with tears. She took one look at her older sister and covered her mouth with her hands, a heavy sob nearly doubling her over. The queen-to-be instinctively reached out to grab her little sister but remember herself at the last minute and drew back. The look of hurt and betrayal in Anna's eyes was enough to take the breath from Elsa lungs and she staggered back a step, focusing again on Kai just so she wouldn't have to look at her little sister.

"Tell me what's happened!"

"Majesty," Kai said in a small voice, and Elsa felt her world shatter. No, she thought frantically, bile rising in the back of her throat, Acting Majesty. I'm the Acting Majesty not… "I bear horrible news. The ship your parents were aboard capsized during a squall yesterday evening. There…there was only one survivor, a sailor who managed to swim here on a piece of driftwood. He…he died from his injuries earlier this morning. I am sorry Majesty, but the king and queen were lost at sea."

Elsa hadn't heard anything after 'ship' and 'capsized'. She barely heard the anguished cry that tore from her throat, barely felt the edge of the table scrape painfully against the small of her back as her knees gave out. Kai raced to catch her but she'd already righted herself, arms braced on the edge of the table. The young queen-to-be…no, queen now… prayed the long slab of polished wood was strong enough to hold her up, because God knew her strength was leaking out of her like a bucked with a hole in the bottom. The pain in her head flared and her vision grew uncomfortably bright. Suddenly she couldn't breathe fast enough, couldn't think. The room was too big, the walls to far away, yawning open around her like the mouth of some great beast ready to swallow her. Elsa desperately needed confinement and searched for a way out but knew even if she found the door she wouldn't be able to move towards it. She was frozen in place like a statue and every second that passed the pressure within increased, frost leaking through the cracks in her mental and physical armor.

Kai's eyes went wide as he watched a thin layer of frost overtake Elsa's fingers, turning the dark fabric of her gloves a milky white. Instinct took control and the manservant took a step towards the queen, blocking Anna's view of her sister as best he could. Oh yes, Kai knew about the young queen's powers. He and Gerda were the only servants privy to the knowledge and sworn to secrecy upon pain of death.

It had been the late queen's idea to let the manservant and servant matron know about Elsa's condition. At first the king had balked at the idea. No one could know about Elsa's secret until she was able to control it.

"Darling," the late queen had said while sitting in the library the night after their visit to the troll kingdom, "you know as well as I that we cannot raise our daughters alone, especially now. There will be times when we cannot be in the kingdom, when our royal duties will take us away from Elsa and Anna. How are we protecting them if we leave the castle in the dark about Elsa's powers? God forbid, what if something happens? Neither of us can be there for her all the time, it's just not possible."

"Then what do you suggest," the late king had whispered, head in his hands.

"Kai and Gerda have been with us since the beginning. They are perhaps the most loyal subjects you have, and I trust them with my life and the life of my daughters. Have them swear on their lives they will take Elsa's secret to the grave, and I know they will do it."

So the late king had done just that. Two days after Elsa had nearly killed Anna while they played one evening in the great hall, the late king had summoned Kai and Gerda to his personal chambers and explained everything from start to finish, leaving nothing out. At the end of his tale he'd instructed both servants that care of his daughters would be done separately. Anna would have little to no contact with her older sister until Elsa learned to control her powers. As the late queen had said, Kai and Gerda swore on their lives that they would take Elsa's secret to the grave and do everything in their power to protect the princesses. Now the king and queen were gone and as Kai watched the frost slowly overtaking Elsa's hands he could hear the kings words echo in his mind.

Watch over my girls.

"Majesty," Kai hissed trying to get Elsa's attention. He took another step forward, further concealing the magic taking place in front of Anna. "Majesty!"

Elsa seemed to return to herself and looked over at Kai. The manservant was giving her a strange look, his eyes going from staring at her face to staring at something around her waist. Confused, Elsa looked down at her hands on the table and froze, face paling. Ice was quickly overtaking her gloves and spreading out under her palms in pools of white frost. The young queen snatched her hands away and clutched them to her chest, hoping that she could regain control before anyone else noticed, but a cold unlike anything she'd ever felt before was spreading through her body like fire spreading through grass. She could feel frost starting to form on the underside of her turquoise bodice and could hear the crunch of ice under foot as she retreated from Kai and her little sister.

Conceal, Elsa thought frantically, Don't feel. Don't let it show. Control it, control it, control…

It wasn't working. The harder she fought to keep the ice in the stronger it seemed to become, and fear was rapidly replacing grief. Elsa looked over at Anna still standing beside the servants door, saw the pain written all over her beautiful freckle dusted face, saw the need to be held and comforted, saw the need for her sister's embrace and felt an icy ball alive with arctic power settle in her stomach, and it took all the strength she had to keep that power sealed within. Kai seemed to sense Elsa's growing panic and moved towards her. The young queen retreated back a few steps, heart in her throat, but realized by the look on the manservant's face he wasn't moving to comfort her. He was keeping himself between Elsa and her little sister, shielding Anna. Kai was able to catch the queen's attention one last time and she understood the message his eyes were silently screaming at her.

Run!

Elsa felt the world fall away as she took off towards the secondary door that would take her into the great hall and up the stairs to her room. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her, taking stairs three and four at a time, all the while praying her strength would hold until she was safely behind closed doors.

"Majesty," Kai called as he raced towards the door Elsa had shouldered through. He was able to grab hold of the handle that was quickly being overtaken by creeping frost and hissed at the pain, his skin burning as the super cold metal bit into his palm. "Majesty, wait!"

The manservant hoped his plaintive cries were enough to convince the castle guard and the young princess that he was trying to stop Elsa from retreating to her room, but underneath his façade he prayed the young queen made it in time. Movement from behind alerted the manservant to Anna's approach and he turned to intercept her.

"Elsa! Elsa please," Anna cried as she raced towards the door and attempted to shove her way past Kai. The manservant successfully blocked her path, hands out to keep her at a distance.

"Princess Anna, wait. Now is not—"

"Get out of the way, Kai," Anna all but screamed as she tried to push past him. The manservant may have been a heavyset man and his girth may have been enough to fill the doorway, but Anna knew she could get past him if he would only…

"No, Highness. Let your sister go. She needs to be alone," Kai said pushing Anna back as gently as he could. The young princess looked close to hitting him, face red and eyes welling with tears. Fists clenched at her side, Anna practically quivered with emotional energy.

"Alone is the last thing Elsa needs right now! That's the last thing I need right now!"

"Highness, please your sister just needs time to think."

"And what about what I need!" Anna exploded, tears rolling from her eyes. Picking up the closest thing to her, she chucked an ornate plate across the room where it shattered against the wall in a shower of porcelain fragments. "You're always keeping us apart! Every time I get close to Elsa you're always there to make sure she keeps her distance. Why, Kai? Why do you keep protecting her? What's she have to be protected from?!"

"Highness, I—"

"Shut up! I don't want to hear your excuses or your lies. Elsa is my sister and we've just lost both our parents. I need her as much as she needs me, so you can go to hell and step aside so I can be with my last living family member!"

Kai weathered Anna's storm as best he could, but felt his heart breaking regardless. Not because of Anna's words or accusations, but because she could never understand why he did the things he did. She could never know that it was her sister who depended on him, not the other way around, to keep Anna away for her own safety. For just a brief moment the manservant toyed with the idea of telling Anna the truth, of showing her the ice slowly melting under his palm, of revealing Elsa's secret so that she could finally understand. The king and queen were dead. Surely that meant his oath was finished. But no, the manservant would not betray his king even if death had torn him away. He would keep Elsa's secret in order to keep the princesses he loved so dearly safe.

"I'm sorry Highness, but I cannot let you go to your sister. Please understand that I'm only doing this to protect the both of you."

Anna let out a frustrated roar and tried to bull her way past the manservant, but he held his ground and pushed her back with as much gentleness as possible. When it became clear she wasn't going to succeed in reaching her sister, Anna sank to the floor defeated. Forehead pressed into the carpet and hands around her waist, her anger finally drained away and she began to sob in earnest. Kai would have moved to comfort her but Gerda beat him to it, sinking down next to the young princess and pulling her close.

"Oh my sweet princess, I'm so, so sorry," the service matron soothed as she stroked Anna's back while fighting off tears of her own.

"Why does she hate me so much? What…w-what did I do?" Anna hiccupped.

"Oh little one, there are stresses your sister is under that you can't understand. I know it hurts, I know, but we'll get through this. I promise."

"Why did mamma and papa have to go," Anna whispered in a small voice. "Now I really am alone."