#tnu

“Your Highness! Are you hurt?” Ronny. A familiar face. An anchor.

“I… y-yes. I mean, no. The… the blood’s not mine.” Kristoff made to get up and slipped. Instead of hitting the marble floor, though, his knee crunched into unmoving flesh. It was a small blessing he hadn’t speared himself on one of the dozen crossbow bolts protruding from the man’s torso like a pincushion. 

Herman dragged him upwards and back, none too gently. “We’ll guard the prince! Make sure these bastards are really dead.”

“Wait—” Bile overtook words. Kristoff dropped to all fours and retched. 

Scattered words swirled around him as his guards waded through the bodies. “—that big talk about their military. These idiots fought like lumps of wood!”

“Any news from the general? Did we manage to intercept their fleet?”

“Still can’t see a thing out there; the fjord’s completely covered in mist after the wall fell. How did they break Princess Elsa’s magic—”

“Forget that! The queen and princess are missing—we need a search party—”

“With what men? We’re already stretched thin as ice—”

Ice. If he’d kept his head down and continued hacking at the frozen tundra and going home to his family of trolls, he wouldn’t be here, crouched in a lake of dark red. Staring at a canopy of death spattered across the hallway like the reaper itself had danced with a conductor’s wand. How easily could he have been one of those bodies splayed out across the same floor Anna always slid down in her socks, laughing and crashing into his arms? Where was Anna? What if she was lying in a ditch somewhere, just like—

“Oi! Got a live one here!”

“You telling me this runt was the commander of this freak show? What, did you use your own soldiers as meat shields? You cowardly little—”

Kristoff looked up to see his men crowded around a huddled figure. If these southerners hadn’t brought swords and bloodlust to Arendelle… if they hadn’t spilled mortality in these sunny halls… 

Don’t be pathetic, Bjorgman. 

“Let me talk to him,” Kristoff rasped. 

“Sir, this scum tried to kill you—”

“Trust me, I’ve noticed.” 

The soldiers quietened. A few stepped away from their quarry, blinking like they had snapped out of a trance. Kristoff knew them all by name, but when they had come to his rescue in a flurry of unforgiving steel, he momentarily couldn’t recognise them. But he recognised himself in their sudden cruelty. They weren’t baying for blood— they were afraid for themselves, their families, their homes. They needed a leader, and Mattias was out the fjord. 

Come on, Lord Regent, he could hear Anna teasing. You’re in charge when I’m gone, remember?

But you’re not gone, Kristoff thought. You’re safe with Elsa somewhere, and you’ll come back to me. 

He rose to his feet. He’d kept his balance on cliffsides and frozen lakes; he could stomach standing on solid ground, nauseatingly slippery as it was. He stopped before the only survivor of the Isles’ ambush party.

“Let’s hear what the crown prince of the Southern Isles has to say. That’s you, right? Jesper Westergaard?”

Spindly shoulders jerked. Bitter memories of another sneering, auburn-haired prince made Kristoff’s fists and jaw tighten. 

“Your father sent you into our tunnels to secure the castle, didn’t he? Bet he didn’t expect us to be waiting for you. He’s probably sitting on the fjord in his big ship, waiting for you to open the gates for him.”

The prince’s sword tinkered on the floor. Herman pushed Kristoff behind him, but Jesper made no move to attack. He only kept his head bowed and rocked slightly on his heels, clenching and unclenching his hand on his sword. Staring down at him, Kristoff realised their adversary was more boy than man.

What would Anna do?

Giving Herman the standby signal, Kristoff knelt down in front of Jesper. “Calm down. Work with us, and no one else needs to get hurt.”

Jesper’s glazed stare remained unerringly fixed on his shoes. Kristoff saw pale lips moving, though. He cautiously leaned in.

“Hurry up hurry up hurry up…”

Kristoff waved a hand in front of the prince’s face. “Hey. Can you hear me?”

“… up hurry up hurry—” The frenetic whispering halted abruptly as Jesper’s head snapped up. Dilated pupils locked on Kristoff’s, swimming in fear and adrenaline and… triumph?

A shiver slithered up Kristoff’s spine. 

Freshly spilled blood could melt snow. Yet it only struck him now, as his soldiers let out shocked cries and whipped out their swords for the second time, that the blood he had been kneeling in was icy enough to chill him to the bone.