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The words barely pierced the haze of battle in her mind. Adrenaline ignited her veins and drummed in her ears – blocking all noise, all pleas, all pain – as she watched the idiot who had even dared to attack her, inching towards the edge of the terrace of her ice palace.

He was being pushed by a wall she had conjured of the same material. Her other hand kept another man against the wall, as still as the sharp jag of ice threatening to pierce his throat.

Weaselton's minions, she recognized. Sent to kill me. 

She gritted her teeth, the anger fueling the adrenaline. She pushed her hand forward, escalating the speed of the moving wall, and stared at him, at his increasing helplessness, at his intensifying fear as he edged closer to the far abyss below.

And then, a scream – raw and hoarse and scared – pierced the bitter and barren air, echoing inside the palace and out onto the frozen world.

The wall dropped with him.

At the corner of her eye, she spotted movement. Hesitation was lacking, as her hand – the remaining boundary that kept the inch of distance between the jag of ice and his throat – twitched, and the crossbow clanged to the icy floor.

Lowering her arms, she straightened, returning to the rigid posture of a queen. After taking two turning steps, she was facing the guards, and at their center – Hans.

Their faces were open, eyes wide and jaw down. The grips on their weapons were fragile, hands trembling. Body frozen (a figure of speech), and feet stuck. Speechless, horrified and afraid.

"Are you here to kill me?" she asked, voice as cold as the crystal she could generate.

Hans stepped back, apparently caught off guard at the calmness of her voice. But he immediately composed, swallowing the lump in his throat and taking a step forward. "We only wish to protect you, Your Majes–"

"Protect?" she said, eyes flashing and shoulders tense. "Protect me?" Her voice barely rose in volume, but the guards flinched as if she had.

For the first time ever, words failed to form on Hans's tongue. Fear melted them before they slipped past his chapped lips. Lips that were paling to a lighter hue of pink at the shivering temperature. 

"That's what my father said." Her tone was soft; features hard. Slender fingers curled into her palm. "And now, look at me –" She threw an arm forward, hand splayed, and from the floor of the palace, thin ice – tinted with an angry shade of yellow – was snaking up their boots, and was soon infecting their legs, removing their ability to walk.

It wasn't what ice should have felt like, Hans realized, hitting it with his own sword – the guards doing the same – but failing to even produce a crack. Indeed, it was cold, freezing his limbs as it slipped into the microscopic fibers of his clothes and onto flesh.

But it was also hot, burning bones and muscles as it seeped into his pores. It poisoned his blood, as it followed – and scorched – its flow to the very core of his physical being – the heart.

Elsa approached him, the clicking of her heels ringing in the hollowness of the palace. She stopped in front of his struggling form, arms now useless as the ice contaminated his sword upon one of its strikes on his legs. Its grace matched that of its creator.

He met her gaze. Unreadable, with eyes glinting an alarming shade of blue. Light but deep, and as furious as the hue of yellow tainting her ice. 

Out of instinct, he shrunk, leaning backward – away from her. Fear pulsed beside the ice in his veins; burnished the green and gray of his eyes, and suffocated the life in his lungs. (And he didn't need to act.)

"I am a monster, Hans."

 And then –