The villagers had somewhat calmed down by the time Hans and Anna trudged wordlessly back up the shore to the palace courtyard. A few wrung their hands anxiously and muttered in disbelief, "It's…snow…in July…" But most were directing their attention to the princess—the sole remainder of the ruling family of Arendelle.
"Are you all right?"
"No." His fiancée sounded dazed, still reeling from her sister's revelation.
The queen had ice powers. She'd destroyed the coronation party and iced over the courtyard in her haste to get away, and now Arendelle had no leader, and it was still snowing, and all the ships were trapped in the frozen fjord, and they were going to freeze to death because they were all standing around in summer clothes and…
"Did you know?"
Anna had to have known about the powers, right? As much as Elsa had supposedly neglected her younger sister, surely Anna would have noticed something? Maybe a cold draft whenever she walked by Elsa's room? Or inexplicable traces of ice left on doorknobs and handrails?
"…No."
Hans decided he believed her. Her blue eyes were still round with shock, but something not unlike remorse was starting to creep in. She opened her mouth to say something more, but the Duke of Weselton suddenly burst through the crowd and flailed his arms, shrieking, "Look! It's snowing! It's snowing! The queen has cursed this land! She must be stopped!"
"Wait, no!" Anna cried as the Duke turned to bark something at his thugs. "She didn't mean—"
"You!" The old man darted behind his bodyguard, pointing a shaking finger at her accusatorially. "Is there sorcery in you, too? Are you a monster, too?"
"No, no, I'm completely ordinary!"
"That's right, she is!" Hans interjected, overcome by a surge of protective fury. The Duke seemed the most panicked of anyone in the courtyard, including all the villagers who had witnessed the terrifying moment when Elsa had conjured what seemed to be an ice demon from the fountain. While Hans had grown accustomed over the years to the man's histrionic personality, he was almost certain that the old weasel was trying to further his brothers' Plot by discrediting what remained of the Arendellean royal family. Hans realized with sick horror that, with Elsa out of the picture, the throne would fall to her sister. The Duke would no doubt see to it that she and Hans were immediately wed, before turning the kingdom against her and thereby securing her husband as the successor. Hans could not—would not—let the bastard slander Anna like that!
"Completely ordinary…in the best way," he amended apologetically to Anna, lest he accidentally offend her.
Anna flashed him a grateful look before turning back to the Duke. "And my sister's not a monster."
"She nearly killed me!"
"You slipped on ice," Hans deadpanned.
"Her ice!"
Seriously, how much lower could his guy sink? He'd tried to usurp the throne at the first chance Elsa gave him and chased the terrified queen out of her own kingdom, and now he was trying to send an angry mob after her? Hans was prepared to throttle him, but Anna stepped forward to address the staring crowd.
"It was an accident. She was scared. She didn't mean it—she didn't mean any of this. Tonight was my fault. I pushed her, so I'm the one that needs to go after her."
The Duke rolled his eyes and mimed praising the heavens. "Yes. Fine. Do."
Anna waved to the royal handler. "Bring me my horse, please."
"Wait, what?" Hans quickly shoved aside all thoughts of tearing the old man to pieces. What was she thinking? Had she forgotten that if she went charging off after Elsa and something happened to her, then there would be no one left in the immediate family to secure the throne, and Arendelle would descend into chaos and anarchy and possibly civil war if the upper class families started fighting over who would fill the power vacuum? Hans was having a hard enough time dealing with an imminent civil war outbreak that he could not prevent in the Southern Isles. How would he cope with another civil war in Arendelle, with the specter of his parents' assassination already hanging over his head?
He tried to stop her as the royal handler returned with a white stallion and proceeded to tie a cloak around her shoulders.
"Anna, no, it's too dangerous." He looked at her pleadingly, attempting to communicate with the strange lovers' mental synchronization that they'd discovered they shared earlier in the evening. It's a long story, and I'll explain it all to you later, but you really can't go!
But Anna simply replied, "Elsa's not dangerous." She mounted her horse, adding, "I'll bring her back and make this right."
"At least let me go with you! Or take some guards, in case—"
"No, she'll be even more jumpy if I bring others with me. And I need you here to take care of Arendelle." She gestured at the crowd that was still miserably huddled in the courtyard and at the still steadily falling snowflakes that were already starting to blanket the rooftops. "I leave Prince Hans in charge!"
He tried to object one last time, but then he relented. Clearly, driving Elsa to reveal her curse was weighing heavily on Anna's conscience, and he knew no amount of persuasion would stop her from doing what she felt was right. "On my honor." Then and there, he swore he would not allow Arendelle to descend into the chaos that would become of his own kingdom. "Just…are you sure you can trust her? I don't want you getting hurt."
"She's my sister," Anna replied firmly. "She would never hurt me."
Then, with a snap of her reins, she rode away.
Sometime around six in the morning, Hans finally stumbled past the double doors to his temporary guest room and sprawled onto the bed.
He'd tried asking multiple times for the regent after Anna left—they had to have had a regent in the three years between the king and queen's deaths and Elsa's coronation, right? Why Anna would leave Hans in charge instead of the regent was beyond him, until one of the servants quietly informed him that Lord Louie, a cousin of the late king, had died in a mysterious accident two years into the regency. By then, Elsa was nearly of age, so it was decided that she would rule Arendelle unofficially until her coronation. But the accident had involved a falling icicle—and, well, that clearly wasn't helping Elsa's case. The looks of fear and distrust in the villagers' eyes clearly indicated that they were beginning to connect the accident with the queen's recently revealed ice powers.
Hans had then tried to make a speech to reassure the people, to discourage them from convicting their queen before she could defend herself, but they were in no mood for empty promises of hope. And being the youngest of thirteen, he had little to no experience with governing, so he finally gave up and set about sending everyone home. He and the surprisingly paltry few servants had raided the palace's closets and distributed extra blankets to the villagers. In the meantime, the visiting dignitaries were furious about the frozen fjord and all the damaged ships that would no longer be able to sail. A storm was brewing in the north and seemed to be heading straight for Arendelle, and seeing as the weather would not ease up soon, it would be asinine to send pigeons and ask for new ships to take them home. They were stranded on a strange island at least until Anna convinced her sister to stop the winter.
The Duke of Weselton in particular had been a constant thorn in Hans's side. He'd objected to giving the villagers the extra blankets, claiming that they were allowing a tradable good go to waste and attempting to charge fifty crowns for every blanket. Then he'd complained that the cold was making his bones ache, and then in the same breath, disparaged Anna for being a "harebrained wench bent on getting herself killed." Hans had eventually subdued the insufferable old man with some champagne, and the heads of the household, a pair of plump older people—Hans recalled they had introduced themselves as Kai and Gerda—had shown the delegates to the long-unused guest bedrooms in a previously sealed-off wing of the palace.
Once everyone had a place to retire for the night, Hans was planning on stealing a moment away to check on Sitron in the stables when a page had burst into the palace with news of the storm. Apparently, a roof had collapsed under the weight of the snow and strong winds—quite an impressive feat, considering that at this latitude, Arendellean homes must have seen their fair share of heavy snowfall and winds—so the courtyard was once again packed with antsy villagers who were now distrustful of their own roofs' integrity. With a sigh, Kai went off to haul out more firewood, and Hans repurposed the palace kitchen as a refugee camp.
After all the chaos was settled, Hans decided to forgo a bath and went straight to bed…except now, with all the villagers, palace staff, and visiting dignitaries finally accounted for, his mind was starting to drift again.
Anna was still missing, and the ominous creaking throughout the palace indicated that the storm was getting worse. She'd ridden off in her coronation summer dress and a cloak, clearly having not anticipated the storm that now raged across the land. Hans had sent a small search party after her when the storm first started to worsen, but they'd returned empty-handed, unable to find her tracks under the fresh snow. There was no telling whether she'd found shelter for the night or if she'd run into danger, and Hans kicked himself for the umpteenth time for allowing her to charge off alone. She had been confident that Elsa would never hurt her, but what about the storm? She could be dying from hypothermia right this minute, or she may have slipped and fallen into a crevasse, for all anyone knew!
As for Hector and the Plot…well, on one hand, Hans was engaged to the heir to the throne, and the current ruler had all but abdicated. As long as Anna was still alive, Arendelle would still be out of Hector's reach. And as long as she and Hans remained unwed, Arendelle would continue to stay out of Hector's hands. Hans supposed that was the one upside to not knowing his fiancée's whereabouts—they couldn't be wed, and so Hans would have no claim to the throne for Hector to exploit.
But…if Anna returned without Elsa, then she would become queen. If Hans married her, then he would have rights to the throne as her successor, should anything happen to her (and Hans knew for a fact that his brothers would have something planned). If Elsa did not return, then the only way to keep Arendelle out of their greedy clutches would be to call off the engagement. And even if Elsa did return, she had no suitors to speak of, so Hans would still have a chance of becoming ruler of Arendelle as Anna's husband, and his brothers would still have a chance to usurp the throne. Thus the only way to guarantee Arendelle's safety would be to break off the engagement, regardless of how Anna's quest to bring back Elsa went.
But could Hans do that? Could he hurt Anna like that just to protect her?
What about Mother and Father? Hector would murder them if Hans failed to secure the Arendellean throne, and with all the ships frozen in the fjord and the storm battering the kingdom, there was no way he would be able to warn them to stay in the Dutch Republic.
And then there was the burning question of what to do if Anna did not return. They were only engaged, not married, after all. Hans supposed Rapunzel of Corona would then inherit the crown, since she was a first cousin. But would the people of Arendelle accept a foreign princess as their next queen, especially when they were growing increasingly embittered toward the sorceress queen who'd abandoned them? Or would they reject Rapunzel for her own history of magic powers—not to mention for her blood relation to the Snow Queen—and choose sides in the Arendellean nobility's civil war instead?
His mind heavy with worries, Hans rolled over and finally fell into an uneasy sleep.
A/N: Sorry it's been so long. This fic was supposed to be for stress relief and for when I experience writer's block while working on Welcome to Life. I also haven't updated that fic in a really long time because a certain sitcom on Disney Channel has basically consumed my life, and I had to hammer out three fics for that fandom last summer. And then I got sucked into the black hole that is yet another fandom I'm in now. So it's been what? 18 months since I updated? Yeesh.
To the guest reviewer who pointed out the erroneous geographical characteristics of Arendelle in my fic: Thanks for the info. I couldn't be sure because, to date, I've only seen Frozen twice and have no intention to see it again (sorry, I just don't think it has that much re-watch value), so the only clues I had to go by when I wrote the first chapter were my memory and a few blurry movie stills from Google images. And I really don't feel like going back and editing everything, so for the sake of this fic, can we all just go with Arendelle being a populated island in a bay/fjord surrounded on three sides by a largely unpopulated and uncharted mountainous mainland where the only people are Oaken and the ice harvesters?