A hammering flurry of knocks on the door awoke her suddenly.
"On the orders of the Duke of Weselton, we command you to open this door immediately!"
She shot up out of the bed with a terrified jolt, clawing at the sheets in the dark to orient herself even as the knocking continued, unabated.
"Whoever you are," the voice from behind the door roared again, "if you do not open this door, we will not hesitate to break it down!"
Her whole body shook at the crashing of fists against wood, and she desperately pulled on her gloves to steady her thundering heart in her chest.
What's happening? Who is shouting? Where is Hans?
The questions were like a circle of bats shrieking at her in that darkness, and she choked back a cry of panic as she crawled onto the ground, gripping a bedpost.
"We warned you!" the voice bellowed, and following it soon after was the deafening crash of whatever the group behind the door were using to break through it.
Her hands were glued to her ears all the while, trying to block out the noise; though she didn't quite realize it yet, the frozen tears that fell to the ground in a tiny, sputtering hailstorm were evidence of her subconscious understanding of the situation.
They're coming for me.
As the door finally gave way in a splintering boom, she hid her face in her gloved hands, and her body became like ice.
"Queen . . . Queen Elsa? You're alive?"
The question was posed in such a shocked manner that she was forced to finally look up, though she was equally startled by the sudden silence that had descended upon the room.
Still, she could find no words to answer the man—some castle guard at the front of a whole group of them, by the looks of it—nor even to ask questions of her own.
Her chilly, haunted look seemed to deter them from asking anything further; nonetheless, the quietude that had settled in the darkness was soon snuffed out by another voice at the back, which snorted derisively.
"Well, this is a surprise," he said snidely, revealing himself to her as the very same Duke of Weselton whose name had been uttered as a means of intimidation not but a few minutes before. "But no matter—this just means that we'll be locking up two traitors."
She looked up again at that remark, and her heart pounded with sudden, bewildering terror.
Two traitors?
The first guard stepped in close to the Duke, his expression showing some consternation with the judgment. "But, sir," he protested, "if the traitor King Hans locked her up in here, doesn't that mean that—that perhaps she is innocent?"
The Duke scoffed at the question before waving the man away. "Innocent of what? Turning the entire kingdom into an icebox on a whim with her accursed power?" He sneered at the guard as the man looked away, embarrassed to have spoken at all. "No. I think not."
When her gaze grew hard at this pronouncement, he eyed her for a moment; afterwards, he turned back to the men. "Whatever reason the princeling of the Southern Isles had for keeping the traitor queen here, I don't know—nor, frankly, do I care to know," he said bluntly, twitching his moustache. "All that matters now is that she is put back in a proper prison cell where she belongs, awaiting what will likely be her death."
She would have shuddered once, upon hearing such a firm, unwavering proclamation of her eventual doom; by then, though, she had heard it so many times that it meant practically nothing.
What troubled her more than her own fate, in fact, was the knowledge that Hans had been captured as well—and, by the sounds of it, was already in the prison, having probably been likewise dragged out of his bed in the middle of the night with, no doubt, some dreadful accusations placed on his head by the Duke and his fellow conspirators.
"Seize her and take her down to join the former King of Arendelle," he said suddenly, and she went stiff as two guards grabbed her by both of her arms, intending to force her onto her feet.
But no sooner had they had wrapped their bare hands around her skin than they recoiled from her, clutching their arms to their chests.
"Sir, she's like ice!" one shouted to the Duke as he walked away. The older man turned around with narrowed eyes, impatient at the complaint.
"Then throw something over her and carry her that way," he snapped, heading off again with most of his retinue of guards.
Only a few stayed behind along with the two that had tried to grab her first, and the others quickly wrapped her in the thick blanket from the bed. The action mitigated the cold radiating off her skin, but only just enough for them to roughly lead her out of the bedroom, nearly pushing her tired body over in the process.
I'm not ready to go back.
She tried to look back into the room she had been in for so long—to look through that darkness and see the remnants of her parents in the books and paintings, and of Anna in the now-dying flowers all around the bed—but her view was blocked by the guards behind her.
"Keep your head down," one of them barked at her, and she bowed her head with a sudden, unexpected compliance.
Fine, she thought bitterly, her eyes glued to the ground. I'll keep it down.
She could feel their hands trembling on her even through the heavy blanket, but the sensation gave her no sense of pleasure.
There's nothing to see if I look up, anyway.
It felt like no time at all had passed when they finally reached the prison, the hallway dimly lit by torches lining it; she winced and looked up again at the light, just barely catching a glimpse of Hans as she was suddenly pushed, sans blanket, into the cell next to his.
It didn't feel real to her until she heard the lock on the door click, and even then, in the cold, damp solitude of that awful and familiar place, only one thought caused her entire body to shake uncontrollably.
I want to see him.
The trial was over without them ever even needing to appear in court.
It had been done the very next day after their incarceration in a closed-door meeting between the Duke and Hans's former advisers, though—overhearing the short exchange between the guard outside and Hans with regards to their joint "guilty" sentences—it didn't seem as though he had ever particularly trusted the men around him whilst he had been king.
He'd been quiet since the morning of the verdicts, and hadn't even made a sound when the Duke had appeared outside in the main square, publicly announcing them to the shocked faces of the crowd.
He must still be processing it all.
The accusations against her were exactly what she expected: that she had brought a wintry death upon Arendelle; that she had relinquished her responsibility as Queen and faked her own death; and—worst of all—that she had killed her own sister, Princess Anna.
It had been horrible to hear these read aloud in public when each and every one had plagued her mind for months; all she could do at the time was curl into a ball on the hard plank that served as her "bed" in the cell and wait for it to end, shaking all the while.
The accusations against him, meanwhile, were numerous and questionable: one was that Hans had lied about exchanging wedding vows with Princess Anna in order to become King; another that he had been stockpiling supplies during the worst parts of the long winter in the castle, leaving the public to fend for themselves; and, finally, that several guards had been executed secretly under his authority for questioning his selfish hoarding of said supplies.
The first of these, was, admittedly, hard to know, though the fact that Anna had left Hans in charge was undoubtable, since there had been many witnesses to Anna's declaration; the second seemed equally dubious, since she'd also heard stories of how chivalrous Hans had been when the ice had first set in (although, in all honesty, she couldn't remember the last time she'd heard the voices of many other people inside the castle, let alone partaking in the food and what little other comforts existed inside).
As to the last, however . . . she shuddered at the memory of blood pooling on the hard floor beneath her on that awful night during which she'd nearly lost her own life, and of Hans's cold, calculating look when she'd asked, shocked, if he had really killed that guardsman.
Still . . . how did they find out about that?
She had never asked Hans about the circumstances following the man's death—whether or not he had kept the murder hidden, or had openly admitted to doing so with the excuse that the guard had disobeyed his direct orders and endangered the life of an inmate—but she supposed that it didn't matter anymore, since the Duke had used the incident to further his own machinations.
I wonder if they'll turn against him, too.
She thought of the shocked faces of the people, and of all they had been through before this judgment had been piled on top of it; she doubted, somehow, that Weselton could handle the pressure of all the questions and anger that was sure to follow in the days ahead.
On the other hand, she was filled with dread that—even if the public was surprised and upset by the ruling—Hans had never secured his position as king firmly enough to make them revolt against Weselton and his cronies, nor to overturn his—and her—death sentences.
Not that they would try to commute mine.
She was sure that the same notion had occurred to Hans by then, a full two days after the trial, but she had heard nothing from his cell indicating what he was thinking about anything at all.
I wish he would say something.
She had been tempted, more than once, to initiate a conversation of some kind with him. On every occasion, however, she found that she had nothing to say—no words of concern, or encouragement, or anything even close to those.
Because we share the same, miserable fate.
Her eyes grew gloomy at the thought as glanced at the open grate on the ground connecting their cells, and she wondered, darkly, if she would ever hear his voice again before the end.
"Elsa."
She nearly fell off the plank in surprise as her name filtered through the opening.
"Elsa," his voice repeated, sounding weak, "are you awake?"
Her throat felt disgustingly dry as she swallowed down her nervousness, and she crouched down by the grate with wide eyes.
"Yes—I'm awake," she answered timidly, glancing at the door cautiously. She hoped that the guards posted outside couldn't hear them talking.
He sighed a little in relief. "I'm sorry that I—that I was quiet until now," he said slowly, and he, too, seemed aware of the problem posed by the guards. "I just . . . didn't know what to say."
She half-smiled at the remark, and her heart strangely skipped a beat. "I'm relieved to hear you say that," she whispered, "because I felt the same."
He paused, and she wondered if he was smiling, too; the idea that he was made her own smile grow more genuine.
"I was afraid I wouldn't hear your voice again," he admitted quietly, making her blush. "Even though I still don't have much to say, I just . . . needed to hear it."
Her cheeks turned a darker shade of red.
It's as if he's reading my thoughts.
When she was too embarrassed to reply, he continued: "I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. Please, Elsa—say something."
Her lip twitched as her face heated at the request, and she took off one glove, pressing her palm to her cheek in a futile attempt to cool it down again.
"There's no need to apologize," she said softly. "You just took me by surprise."
There was a hint of his signature smirk in his reply. "How so?"
She quickly put the glove back on, suddenly feeling self-conscious. "I just—I didn't expect you to say something like that," she admitted.
He chuckled a little. "I suppose I wouldn't, normally," he conceded, "but then . . . there's not much of a point in minding what I say anymore, is there?"
The colour faded from her cheeks at the remark, and she leaned against the wall near the grate, drawing her legs up to her chest.
"No. I suppose there isn't."
It was quiet again for a while after that, neither knowing how to fill the silence in a way that didn't remind them of their unfortunate circumstances.
At length, she heard him clear his equally dry throat to speak again, and her ears perked up in curiosity.
"Did they even give you a change of clothes, after dragging you out of bed?"
The query was so far out of the realm of possible things that she thought he might say in that moment—and, really, quite random, considering all the other things he should have been worrying about then—that she had to stifle her laughter.
"What?" he pressed her, obviously intrigued by the muffled sound.
She wiped away a small tear of amusement from the corner of her eye. "Nothing," she said with a smile. "And no—I'm still in my nightgown." She paused for a moment, and her brow rose in interest. "Why do you ask?"
She wondered if he was blushing on the other side. "I didn't think they had, since I haven't gotten to change, either."
She reflected on the comment, reddening.
What does he even wear to bed, anyway?
"It's a white nightshirt and cloth pants," he said suddenly, catching her off-guard, "in case you were wondering."
She crimsoned further, annoyed at how well he seemed to know her thoughts.
It's not as if I really wanted to know.
"Did I embarrass you again?" he asked coyly.
She turned her head slightly away from the grate, blushing harder.
"No," she denied stubbornly.
He sighed again, but this time it was a sigh of fondness. "I don't mind, you know," he told her. "It's a natural thing to wonder about when you can't see the person you're talking to."
His comment, meant as a reassurance, only served to remind her of the thick wall that divided them.
She frowned morosely. "I wasn't curious about it in the first place."
She knew that if she could see him then, a particularly self-satisfied smirk would be planted on his rosy lips.
"Of course you weren't," he said knowingly.
"Oi! You two keep your mouths shut in there, you hear?"
She recoiled from the voice outside the door, reflexively tucking her knees even more tightly beneath her chin.
I knew it couldn't last.
She frowned upon remembering his last words to her.
Especially not when he keeps talking like that.
Still, she couldn't help but feel the tiniest bit of contentment in knowing that, at least, she wasn't alone in there; and, what's more, that he was willing to distract her with frivolous conversation, even with the spectre of a public hanging looming over their heads.
I need him now.
A rueful smile spread across her pale lips.
Maybe he needs me, too.
Author's Note: I was so pleasantly surprised by all the lovely feedback I got on the last installment, so I hope this chapter was not a disappointment for you all by comparison. If things still seem unclear after the ending of Part VII, rest assured that they will be more fully explained - and explored - in upcoming chapters.
Also, be sure to check out some amazing fanart for the last scene from Part VII on my Tumblr by the wonderfully talented lisuli79 (link on my profile page)!
Thanks again for your support!