7.

"Ma'am, the bow is on the table along with your gauntlet and horsewhip."

Muttering "so it is," Barthomeloi absentmindedly reaches for the ebony table top.

"Did Milady have a satisfying bath?"

Barthomeloi's reply is a distasteful grunt before, "And where is my cup of tea?"

"We're a leopard and stag Ma'am, we can't serve you your tea."

Sighing, Barthomeloi leaves for the kitchen and takes the teapot off the stove blowing the fire out in the process.

"That vice-commander wasn't completely useless after all." She sighs again this time moving to her armchair and allowing it the honor of embracing her fatigue.

After the King of Trolls "persuaded," her magic circuits as he called it, Barthomeloi returned to the quaint room that she had rented. It was simple and clean, but Barthomeloi didn't appreciate it at all. It was not befitting a Barthomeloi she grumbled, but a Barthomeloi does not grumble. Now she let herself soak in its baseness.

"Should you really be just sitting here Milady?"

Barthomeloi's gaze slices then roasts the stag. The antlers would be the centerpiece of the meal.

"The queen was captured, Ma'am, by Prince Hans too, the guards say. Are you not going to do anything about that?"

Barthomeloi's mouth begins to form a small "no," but her nose catches the wafting steam and she decides to forgo the retort for a sip of this atrocious tea. A Barthormeloi must keep up appearances and drink tea no matter even if the leaves look like dried tar.

The bath, heated with her own magecraft, warmed the outside of her body and this cup is supposed to heat the inside as she looks outside at the snow swept streets. Even the lanterns are weeping white. Sitting in her armchair in her rented room with her fireplace hot enough to roast marshamallows, Barthomeloi starts to ponder different methods to stop the snowstorm. Not that she considers doing it in the first place. While it is true that she can blackmail Arendelle into giving up the land for her services it also broke the first rule of being a magus.

Let the kingdom freeze then, Barthomeloi would never have to look back, in fact; she just obtained a very convenient solution to the problem at hand. No one in the Clock Tower could whisper in hushed corridors about her failure if the problem was simply a heretical magus in an area where there was no Second Owner.

Raising her eyebrows Barthomeloi congratulates herself with a little smile.

"But Ma'am cannot help but feel t'is is naught if not bittersweet, can she?"

Sarcastic as always leopard.

Barthomeloi allows herself to stew in the room for a moment. She doesn't consider what her familiar says, rather, she is free now, away from her duty, away from defeat, she has let herself go...

So then what is that goddamned line that she can't recall? She had still held onto it just a week before that pathetic lizard winged, thrice-cursed, half-leech humiliated her. So then somewhere along the way had it merely slipped? Had it slipped so far that right now as she sits in what is the envy of this entire kingdom the only thought on her mind is the past? If that is the case someone please tell her, before she has nothing left what that line is-

But that urgency doesn't mean anything against the smug grins plastering the faces of her familiars. A leopard and stag smiling together, it is quite the sight. Whoever saus that these are familiars who knew their place is an utter fool.

Closing her eyes and placing her cup of tea back onto the table that still holds her horsewhip and gloves, Barthomeloi cannot help but blame that self-indulgent girl of a queen. If she had just done what she should have and signed the agreement then all this would be have been over, wouldn't it? But Barthomeloi never let her. That's right, from the beginning Barthomeloi had been preoccupied with a hunt, then a personality, then a fight, then a mystery. Excuses, all of them, just like the queen who claims she doesn't want to be queen yet built an ice palace on top of a mountain.

"Rather, Milady, who was it that told her she should build an ice palace at that very spot?"

Yes, good. Actually it is very good. The first time Barthomeloi confronted the queen she was the one who gave her the location of the fallen leyline on which the queen would build her ice palace. More than that Barthomeloi is the one who deliberately withheld information about the state of the kingdom.

Grinding her teeth, Barthomeloi releases her vice-like grip on the armchair and for the first time that night gazes at her naked palms.

"Why-"

Why did Barthomeloi do something like that? It is so insignificant, rather, it is something that she had not done rather than something she had so she hadn't noticed it at all. A gap. It is a hole, an abyss, a fjord, whatever it was Barthomeloi did not tell Elsa that her country was under deep snow. To what purpose did this subterfuge serve?

"I-"

The windows crack. The swirling storm outside grows stronger and stronger, the temperature has gotten lower and lower, and these windows, these damned windows made with mid-ninetieth century glazing techniques which have hoarded impurities day after day, shape after shape, blow after blow until… of course until this moment when they break.

That line. That line offered in the middle of a swirling storm on top of a mountain. That line. That line offered to a frightened girl unsure of her place in the world. That line. That line, perhaps not that line, but merely a lie. No, the contents were pure and true. Indeed the top of the mountain was in that direction, but the intent, the will, the Barthomeloi behind it all.

That is the day by day that splintered the ice.

And those words, those words, those ever distant words, lingering on the brink of a mind. Remnant syllables on the tip of a tongue that never did taste the air. Those words, that warning, this curse, the ones that never materialized. The ones that warned one's kingdom was in deep, deep, deep, snow.

That is the shape by shape that fractured the ice.

Finally, let it go, she said. Let it go, Barthomeloi said.

Let what go the queen should have replied.

Everything, let everything go. Climb to the top of the mountain, let it all go and fall.

That is the blow by blow that shattered the ice.

"So all along my intention was..." Barthomeloi whispers to herself. "I see, so even I can still feel guilt."

Ahh, so that is it. One week ago, Barthomeloi had lost. For then on it is something that has been repeated again and again, a hopeless and useless redundancy, but merely the fact something like has been made redundant shows how far Barthomeloi has regressed. Knowing perfection, embodying perfection, Barthomeloi has lived that way since she was granted the name. She has sprinted through life only ever stopping to sate her thirst. In saying that, she has lived in a certain way, continually binding herself in chains so she could continue living that way. There is no reason why she would choose to live in such a way, rather the reason is merely that she has been living that way her entire life. She has never walked a different path; however, one week ago she strayed.

Perhaps forcefully but freed from the chains that bound her, any other human would be pleased, delighted even, as if a burden had been lifted from their chest. One could be sure that there were those who only became true kings and queens after tasting the despair of defeat. They are known as those who shine in the sky like a sun.

Barthomeloi is not one of them.

So what she sought, what she willed, what she wanted is merely a mirror. To stop and look upon one who has fallen as far as she and compare. What is left? What is left after you lost everything that made you who you were?

For that Barthomeloi has chased her, tortured her, fought her, found her, and now abandoned her. But at the end her doesn't mean Elsa. Her could have been anyone as long as they were on a cliff ready to fall into the same abyss as Barthomeloi.

And that is Barthomeloi's tale, the woeful travesty of a girl who is no longer she. One who could not stand such a feeling so much, she decides to tear apart another girl's life. Rather than helping someone who was on brink, Barthomeloi decided to pull the girl down with herself so she could compare. Compare the dregs after the body, mind, and soul is all stripped away to determine who she really is. To find out what is left when there is nothing left.

That line. That line was left.

But she doesn't remember that line, for a gloved mirror of ice can only reflect a cracked perfection.

"Even so," Barthomeloi murmurs to herself. "Even so,"

She doesn't deny it. All the pain, all the suffering she has caused, it is simply because she was scared. Barthomeloi was ripped off her path, the path that she had been walking her entire life and placed in the wilderness of Norway.

She guided a princess to self-destruction all in the name of seeing what was truly at the end of the total annihilation of one's sense of self, what was left when one fell down a mountain. She then told the girl she was not a queen, that she was merely a self-indulgent girl who wished to martyr herself for the sake of self-satisfaction. She even fought the poor girl, forcing her into a mental corner where all she could do was let herself be captured or truly turn into a monster.

All for that that line, what was that-

Shut up for a second, for the question should be: Why did Barthomeloi chase after her in the first place?

Barthomeloi does not say a word and her teeth stop grinding, yet her eyebrows do not move one bit. The storm outside grows stronger and stronger and soon the entire town will be buried under snow, yet it is nothing compared to the storm inside the girl's cold hateful eyes.

Ah, so that was it.

Barthomeloi finally rises from her chair but it is Lorelei's hands that grasp the horsewhip and gauntlet.