QUICK NOTES:

So I'm at peace with Chapter 14. The improvements were minor, but I'm generally accepting of them at this point. I'm not going for false modesty, here: the quality of writing just isn't what I want it to be.

I've gone back and tinkered, as I do, and so you're welcome to check out the changes to Chapter 15 if you like. They don't really kick in until Anna and Kristoff finally (finally!) have a conversation in present time. That moment deserves a better payoff. I still don't think I've gotten it to where I want it to be, so I'll continue to keep you informed in these notes.

If you'd rather just read on, then by all means do!

Chapter 16

Elsa was wearing her gloves again. She'd asked Gerda to bring them down with the tea, and when this had been done she'd reached for them with a mingled sense of regret and relief. The housemistress watched, tea service balanced before her, as Elsa slipped back into this ritual of hiding her beautiful, beautiful hands. It was a terrible thing to see, the queen withdrawing as she had done so many years ago. A sad thing. A dangerous thing ...

She had not agreed with the late King Agdar, back then, when he'd determined that the only way to save his daughter was to isolate her. Gerda was in no position to voice her distress for the child, of course, and yet voice it she had. Were it not for the princess's astonishing behavior in the face of her father's resolve, Gerda would've been soundly dismissed for her impertinence.

But she hadn't been, and this was because little Elsa had released a cry of such savage, wide-eyed despair that the staff cowered in shock at the sound of it. Gerda, who'd been sent to her quarters at the time, could hear it resounding from an entirely different floor of the castle.

She would never forget the violence of Elsa's tears, on that occasion, her wild keening hysteria. It was as though her father, in reprimanding the woman who waited on her, had threatened the girl's very existence. Much later, it would occur to Gerda that perhaps she'd been one of the few remaining connections Elsa had to a world that was rapidly slipping from her fingers. At the time, however, she feared that the poor child had lost her mind.

She hadn't been present to witness the full manifestation of Elsa's wretchedness, then, though the staff fell to whispering highly speculative tales of ice creeping along the lintel, spindrifts of snow clouding forcefully from beneath the bedroom doors, an unholy wind rattling the hinges. Then as now, Gerda would not tolerate such talk in her presence. It was rubbish—disgraceful chinwaggery and nothing more. But every once in awhile, Gerda would think of that child in a rare moment of idleness. She imagined the girl's unruly hair, released from its conservative hold; her frenzied eyes turning into a strange, more cutting iteration of their usual blue; her pale, stiffening fingers clutched at her fragile, frightened heart.

Elsa was eight years old at the time.

The king had relented, of course. Gerda was summoned later that evening, and it was clear that he and his wife had been shaken by the fear and the power that could both issue from and do such incomprehensible damage to their beloved daughter. And make no mistake, beloved she was, for the housemistress had attended to their quiet weeping for the girl on more than one occasion.

The royal family never quite recovered from the ravaged hearts of King Agdar and Queen Idun. They'd wished to save the princess from herself; instead, they managed only to insulate her from her gifts, and the consequences were disastrous.

Now Gerda watched the grown princess as she placed her hand on the door to the drawing room. Elsa hesitated, waiting for the chill to quicken along her splayed fingers. It did not.

Good, she thought to herself dolefully.

She couldn't let the magic run its course in her, because if she gave into it this time—under these circumstances—she was likely to do far more damage than she had at her coronation. What had Anna called it? The snowpocalypse. Elsa couldn't help but smirk. And just like that, the incident with Hans seemed like so much frippery, a petty squabble between siblings. Nothing to freeze the kingdom over. But this? This was no trifle. Anna wasn't about to rush into marriage; she was maybe going to ...

The queen took a deep breath. She kindly dismissed the physician. Then she opened the door.

He'd told her that there was nothing he could do for the princess. That her fever would increase until her body could no longer accommodate for such elevated temperatures. That, most likely, she wouldn't make it through a second night like this one. And Elsa had buried her face in her hands.

After all those years alone, isolated from the world and withheld from her sister; after their turbulent reunion; after months of having to learn all over again how to understand, how to console, how to forgive … after all of this, Elsa was going to lose Anna forever. And she couldn't bear it.

She couldn't bear it.

Her eyes were a telltale pink when she stepped into the room, followed shortly by Gerda with the tea. And while she had gained control of her tears, they'd still left traces of rime on her cheeks. She did not think to wipe them away.

Behind her, the housemistress deposited their tea and, moving entirely without sound, withdrew from the room.

Elsa stood alone. She observed her sister lying curled up against Kristoff, the two of them on the sofa, deeply asleep. It was an intimate portrait, full of tenderness and clarity, a sweet distillation of all that was good in them both: her innocence and his constraint, her passion and his kindness. It was simple, really, those things that made her love them. And yet she felt, in that instant, like an intruder. Like she was violating something wonderful and sincere and not at all for her. Suddenly, she felt the gloves chafe against her skin.

Kristoff stirred, then. He lifted his head and looked blearily at his surroundings as though he wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten there. Elsa waited while he took in the folded pile of clothing, placed neatly on a table for him to change into; the tea service rapidly cooling along the sideboard; the fireplace, the clock, and then ... the queen.

Their eyes met, and without a thought toward what she was doing or why, Elsa clasped her hands behind her back. She did not have to tell him what the physician had said. The tinge of frost on her cheeks betrayed her.

"Kristoff—" she began, but he interrupted.

"You've got to do it, Elsa."

She blinked at him, confused.

"What are you talking about?" she countered, searching his face for signs of greater coherence. But his eyes were too bright; she could see this even in the subdued light from the fireplace, and the realization of what it must mean alarmed her. "Kristoff, are you all right?"

He ignored the question.

"Bring down her fever."

Inside the gloves, Elsa's palms burned cold.

"Who told you that?" she demanded. "Olaf?"

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he let his gaze flatten as he tried to remember. Olaf had come to see him at the stable. Sven was not in a conversational mood. There'd been a group hug … Wait, what?

The queen studied Kristoff warily. He was looking straight at her, but he did not appear to see her. Of course, he was merely rummaging in his addlepated head for the tail-end of some distant conversation, but to Elsa it seemed that he was drifting away from her and she grew afraid for him. She took half a step forward and uttered his name, dreading the possibility that he wouldn't respond. But then he frowned, and his eyes turned clear and sad.

"What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong?" She looked around the room, noticing at last a certain conspicuous absence there.

Kristoff looked at her helplessly. "He was outside," he murmured.

And she understood. The snowman had been caught in the storm. He wouldn't have made it through the rain …

"Poor Olaf," she whispered. She sank into a chair, defeated.

Kristoff said nothing, and they just sat for a beat, listening to the rain and the wind and the clock. And yet, for two people so acutely aware of how little time was left to them, neither marked its passing. They simply stared at the fire in the grate, lost in their own dark thoughts, until finally Elsa roused herself. She did not want to have this conversation, not now. Not ever, really. It was just too awful, came too close to the thing that had remained, for the most part, unacknowleged between them for the last eighteen months. Elsa fervently wished that it could continue to be so.

But it could not.

"Kristoff," she ventured, looking away from him. "I … I can't do that ... what you said."

She sensed his agitation. "Why not?" he asked. His voice was careful, restrained.

"You know why not."

He shook his head. "I don't accept that, Elsa."

And she felt a flare of anger. It was unexpected, and she saw him shiver as the ice crept back along her fingertips.

"I've never used the magic like that before," she returned sharply. She met his eyes and saw distrust in them. Or perhaps it was skepticism. Either way, what right did he have to question her judgment on these matters? None. None, whatsoever. The illness must be impairing his good sense.

Yet there he was, watching her dubiously. Inciting her to greater levels of frustration. Outside, a surge of frigid air rattled the casements. She brought her hands to her temples and suppressed the urge to scream.

"You don't understand," she said instead. "I could kill her!"

But Kristoff just narrowed his eyes. He understood, all right.

"The answer is no, Kristoff. Stop looking at me like that."

"She's going to die anyway," he shot back, his voice seething with bitterness. "Isn't that what you came to tell me?"

Elsa froze.

She stared at him, her mouth hanging open in shock. Somewhere deep within her, she felt a horrible, staggering tremor—as though, for one brief and interminable moment, her heart had stalled. As though he had struck her there and knocked the wind out of her.

Kristoff, for his part, was all too aware of the line he had crossed. It was so sudden—and so out of character for him—that he seemed completely incapacitated by the significance of what he had done. His eyes were impossibly wide; the color drained from his face. He was breathing heavily, and his skin was as slick with sweat as Elsa's was with frost.

She'd never seen him angry before. Not really. Frustrated, yes. Vexed, mildly provoked—usually by her sister—certainly. But not like this. Not at all like this. It frightened her, but she could see, now, that it frightened them both. And if Kristoff had in some token sense struck her, he'd only done so with the full force of his grief, which was every bit as strong as the rest of him. And she could not fault him for that.

"I'm sorry," he said. His voice sounded both lost and urgent at the same time, if that was even possible, and Elsa was overwhelmingly moved by it. Poor Kristoff. Always fumbling for words and, often as not, mishandling them terribly. She could see the dispirited slump of his shoulders even now, under the sprawling form of her sister. "I'm sorry," he said again.

She protested, but he wasn't listening.

"I should go, maybe," he muttered. He shifted on the couch and brought his arm out from under the princess. "Sven'll be worried ..."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"It's fine."

Elsa shook her head. "You're not well," she insisted, and it was true. He wouldn't make it far in this state. But it was more than that. She didn't want him to leave her there. She didn't want him to go.

Kristoff studied the floor. "It was a terrible thing to say," he whispered.

"Don't," she retorted. "Just … don't."

At that moment, Anna seemed to agitate against her blankets and they watched her anxiously until she settled back against Kristoff's side. Elsa found herself wondering whether fragments of their conversation had reached her, filtered through the protective lens of her fevered, fractured dreams. She hoped not.

Again, they fell silent. And again, time seemed to slip away from them, expanding and contracting in odd, illusory bursts. It was impossible to tell, really, whether it was late afternoon or early evening in Arendelle, and Elsa found that she didn't much care.

Idly, she thought of the tea. How cold it must be, by now. She stole a glance at Kristoff and saw him worrying a string of loose threads on one of the blankets, his hands coming together around Anna's shoulder, knotting and reknotting each filament into a sturdy roseate. His fingers moved absently, expertly, in the way of the mountain people who dwelt far above the walls of Arendelle.

She could see that he was working through something, trying to untangle his own disordered thinking. At length, he did.

"Try it on me first," he said.

It was not what she expected, though if she were honest with herself she would have acknowledged that she hadn't had the slightest idea what to expect in the first place. Either way, Kristoff's suggestion caught her completely off guard.

"What?" she spluttered. "No!"

"Elsa—"

But it was her turn to interrupt, now. "Are you crazy?" she demanded. She looked at him incredulously. "Have you forgotten what happened the last time I froze you?"

And that was it. She'd put words to the thing they never talked about—the thing that also happened that summer when Anna had the incident with Hans. The thing that made Elsa so ashamed and Kristoff so uncomfortable and both of them so inclined to retreat to the relative safety of their high office or their even higher mountain. It was out there, now, and Elsa couldn't take it back.

Kristoff flinched. "That was an accident," he said uneasily.

"What difference does it make?"

"A pretty big one," he returned, the anger flaring and receding in him quickly. "You've got it under control now."

But even as he said this, tendrils of ice began to curl up her arms and a shrill breath of air swept between them. The fire wavered and crouched in the grate, brought low by the current before returning to its former glory.

"Have I?" she asked.

Kristoff didn't answer. Instead, he struggled to sit up against Anna's weight and gazed at her sister meaningfully.

"We don't have time to think of anything else," he said firmly.

What he didn't add, but the truth of which they were both well aware, was that he only had a day or two left, anyway. There was no point in sparing him—especially if Anna couldn't be saved. Elsa looked down at the princess. She was limp in Kristoff's arms, her hair dark with sweat, her skin clammy to the touch. She appeared to be sleeping, but this was no ordinary sleep.

An expectant stillness filled the room. And then, for the second time in nearly as many years, the queen of Arendelle took off her gloves.