Chapter Text
Elsa stifled a small yawn as she left her room, closing the door quietly behind her. She crept down the hallway and paused to press her ear against the door of Anna’s room, smiling as her soft snores filtered through the wood.
It had been two months since Elsa’s powers had been revealed, two months since she had almost doomed Anna and all of Arendelle, and she still had a hard time believing that it was all real. The openness about her powers and her re-kindled relationship with her estranged sister seemed too good to be true. Every morning for the past two months, she had stopped outside Anna’s door to remind herself that it was not just a dream, that after this vision faded she would not wake up to her kingdom still buried in snow and Anna dead by her hand.
Elsa listened to Anna’s breathing for a few more seconds before stepping away from the bedroom door. She glanced down at the carpet, choking back a laugh as she caught sight of the flour covering the floor outside of Anna’s room.
Yesterday Elsa had been in the middle of an almost unbearably boring meeting with the castle decorator, trying to plan for an upcoming ball, when Anna had burst into the study and demanded that Elsa come to the kitchen to bake cookies with her. Anna’s arms, chest, and face had been covered in flour, which she had promptly spread over everything in the study while she bounced around the room. The look of horror on the decorator’s face as his clothes and fabric samples were coated with white powder had threatened to break even Elsa’s practiced queenly demeanor. After the decorator had stormed off the sisters had doubled over with laughter, gasping and choking on the dust from the flour. Gerda had found them a few minutes later and ushered Anna up to her room to change, leaving a trail of white powder from the study to her bedroom. Apparently they had missed a few spots in their efforts to clean up after yesterday’s antics.
Elsa smiled and shook her head, carefully stepping around several other floury spots dotting the hallway. Anna was always a welcome interruption to her royal duties but her disruptions weren’t always as conveniently timed as yesterday’s had been. Dawn was still an hour away and Anna would not rise for at least another five, possibly six, hours but the queen had work that needed to be done before her sister would burst into her study, begging Elsa to read to her or to make the garden into an ice rink.
Elsa decided she would head to the kitchens in a few minutes to grab a light breakfast before starting her work, but for now she was content to walk silently through the castle’s corridors, allowing her mind to wander from her royal duties.
She let her feet follow the familiar paths through the castle, her thoughts wonderfully blank. It amazed her how nice it felt to just let her mind be still, to not have it filled with her old fears or thoughts of her new responsibilities. She started down the hallway to the throne room, chuckling softly at the crooked suits of armor that stood between the windows, evidence that Anna had recently spent time here.
At the doors to the throne room, Elsa hesitated, a small line of worry appearing between her eyebrows. One of the doors stood ajar, an odd occurrence since the room was only used on formal occasions. There had not been any such event since her coronation and Kai and Gerda should have left this room securely shut.
Elsa stepped to the door, swinging it open wider to admit the delicate pre-dawn light that suffused the hallway into the windowless room. She squinted into the darkness for few seconds but could detect nothing amiss. She pushed the door open further and the soft light fell across the throne, illuminating a sheet of paper attached to its backrest.
She frowned, moving swiftly to retrieve the note. The paper had been fastened to the back of the throne by a crossbow bolt and it took a moment for her to wrench it from the wood. She seized the paper and returned to the hallway, standing near a window to use the faint light coming over the horizon to read the document.
Frost crept around the edges of the paper and Elsa clutched it to her chest, looking around the hallway to ensure that no one had seen her. She strode hurriedly through the castle, her heart beating wildly in her chest, praying she would not be intercepted by any early-rising servants.
Mind whirling, Elsa reached the castle’s courtyard and continued out the main gate. For several minutes she paid no attention to where her feet were taking her and was pulled suddenly back to reality by a cool, salty breeze. She blinked, startled to realize that she was at Arendelle’s docks, standing at the end of one of the piers.
Elsa gazed across the harbor with unfocused eyes, listening to the waves lap softly against the wooden supports of the docks. She leaned her head forward against her chest as another breeze blew around her, ruffling her hair and causing a corner of the paper in her hands to brush gently against her chin. Elsa shuddered, shifting the paper away from her face and closing her eyes. She forced herself to exhale slowly before lowering the document to read it once again.
Queen Elsa of Arendelle has until one month from today to step down from her throne. A white flag must be flown from the top of the Queen’s castle to signal her unconditional surrender and abdication. If the Queen surrenders within thirty days, no harm will come to Arendelle’s rulers or its people. But, if in thirty days’ time, no white flag can be seen atop the castle, Arendelle will burn.
Elsa clenched her hands and realized that she was still holding the bolt that had fastened the paper to the throne. She hurriedly threw the missile into the water and looked back at the document, her hands trembling. Save for the words in the middle of its surface, the paper was blank. There was no seal or signature of any kind, nothing to indicate who would make such a threat against Arendelle.
She bit her lip as frost began to creep across the paper again, its icy tendrils snaking over the ink of the message.