Thank you so much for reading this! Again, any helpful tips about fanfiction in general are helpful, as I'm a first-timer!

Thank you to CloudStrife12345 for reviewing!

Enjoy!

Pain exploded in Elsa's shoulder and her breath froze in her throat. Never had she experienced this feeling. She could feel her arm throbbing, but when she looked down, blood had not yet appeared. She looked back up to see the soldiers running at her. Grabbing up her dress, she began to run for her life to the stairway. As she descended to the first landing, she gritted her teeth and yanked the arrow from her arm. Instantly, the pain tripled and blood began to seep out of the wound, staining the sheer blue sleeve of her dress. She let out a small cry, but continued her escape down the stairs. Just as she was clearing the last few stairs, a volley of arrows sped past her, one coming so close that she felt it sever a few hairs from the top of her head. She ran for the door, and turned around to send a section of the stairs crashing to the ground. The tinkling of breaking ice filled the room and Elsa was satisfied as Hans's men had to stop short to keep from falling off of the drop. That should stop them for a while. The blonde woman continued to run until she was out of the large ice doors. Outside, the sun was touching the distant mountains, and the sky was painted orange, purple, yellow, and pink. It would have been a beautiful moment had she not been running from the castle that had come to symbolize her freedom.

Hans stopped short as five stairs ahead, a large gap appeared. The stairs went crashing 30 feet below and exploded into twinkling shards of ice. Hans looked up from the gap below to see Elsa turn and dash out of the tall ice doors.

"Get the ropes again!" Hans called to his men, "We are not going to lose her!"

The men rushed to secure the ropes to the railing, and sent the loose ends down to the floor. The soldiers scurried down the ropes like rats on a docked ship, then jumped to the shining floor below. Hans was among the first men to jump down, and they wasted no time in pursuing Elsa out the door. The men's horses were still outside, unharmed, so they ran to mount them.

"C'mon, Sitron, c'mon," Hans dug his heels into his faithful horse's sides, urging the steed to go faster.

A steady wave of men sped down the snowy slope. Hans could see Elsa in the distance, but as she had to go on foot, the men on the horses were gaining on her.

Elsa looked over her shoulder. The men had gotten down the stairs far sooner than she had anticipated, and they were quickly eliminating the space between her and themselves. She was going to need to either think of something soon or surrender herself. Her entire arm suddenly felt as if it were on fire, as if to remind her that she was still wounded. She was beginning to grow exhausted from the pain, running, and use of her powers, and the young queen was suddenly more aware of just how much danger she was really in.

Elsa managed to keep ahead of the pack of soldiers by occasionally laying out a sharp wall of ice or by unleashing a mini avalanche to knock them off their course. While these diversions slowed their pace, it further exhausted the blonde. Night was falling, though, and the pastel colors in the sky darkened and eventually surrendered to the deep blue of night. Elsa used the darkness and another wall of ice to hide herself behind a ledge. She willed a light dusting of snow to fall to cover her tracks and the drops of blood that had begun to fall from her arm. She hoped the snow would also make it seem like she'd kept moving forward and that her tracks were simply covered, though truthfully the tracks had stopped. Hans didn't need to know that, though.

Finally able to catch her breath, Elsa collapsed to the soft snow, exhausted. As she lay in the powder, a deep cold took hold of her arm. The cold numbed the shoulder wound and took away the pain, giving Elsa a brief sense of relief. She had forgotten that the magic within her occasionally tried to help her out by numbing her pain. Years ago, when her parents died, she had been crying for hours when a cold sensation spread through her head, dulling her senses. She was still filled with sorrow, but she stopped crying and fell into a dreamless sleep on the floor by her door. When she woke up, she felt a little better. What her magic didn't do was fix the problem. The King and Queen of Arendelle did not make a miraculous return, and there was still a jagged puncture in her shoulder.

As Hans sat on the back of Sitron, fighting fatigue and searching the snow below, he began to grow from annoyed to truly angry. Elsa sure knew how to make things difficult. Initially, she held everyone at an icy distance, making it impossible for Hans to ask her to marry him. Then, when Hans had settled for Anna, Elsa wouldn't allow the couple to get married. In all honestly, Anna wasn't that bad, although she was a little too energetic and loud for him, not to mention the fact that while Elsa was still alive, she was useless. Then, Elsa had revealed her powers and run off into these blasted mountains, setting a magical winter onto Arendelle, freezing the fjords and causing snow to fall, despite it having been a warm evening not 5 minutes before. Now, Hans could only hope to kill Elsa, go back and marry Anna regardless of her flaws, and find the right time to kill Anna as well, all with the end goal of being crowned King Hans of Arendelle.

No one would have thought Hans capable of thoughts such as these. The youngest of 13, he had grown up almost exclusively with adults, causing him to become a mature young man at a younger age. He loved reading and geography, and loved riding his beloved horse, Sitron, from dawn until dusk, often stopping in the local market for lunch. He learned to be very self- sufficient, having been largely ignored for his entire life. He was quiet, but could hold his own in an argument, and he was genuinely kind to almost everyone he met. So these thoughts of murder and glory were uncharacteristic, but truthfully, they had not been hatched out of nowhere.

Hans's mind wandered as the band of soldiers rode thought the snowy night. It had become impossible to track Elsa once the snow began to fall again in the mountains, but since she'd been following a straight path before, he could only assume she'd kept that path. But she would be exhausted by now, and so Hans called for the men to halt and the group set up a small camp in the tree line. Elsa couldn't be too far ahead.

In reality, Elsa was actually more than a mile behind the camp. She had been nodding off when she heard the jingle of harnesses approach. She pressed herself up against the back of the stone ledge overhang and slowed her shaking breath to a minimum. Soon, though, the band moved past her into the night, and she relaxed her muscles, falling into a fitful sleep.