Author's Note: Based on a couple of prompts: "Portrait" and "A queen with no heir."

Epilogue

At night, she dreams of a boy with red hair.

He's no more than five or six years old - the same age Anna was when she struck her - though there's almost nothing else about him that she recognises.

He has a long, heart-shaped face, freckled cheeks, and thin, pink lips, all of which seem to belong to someone else—except for one thing.

Blue eyes.

It's as if she's staring at her own reflection, and her heart seizes when he comes closer, bends down, and touches the edges of her ice that runs in thin, long lines towards him.

Don't, she wants to tell the boy, but finds she can't speak nor move from her spot; instead, she watches in horror as the ice crawls along his curious fingers, up his fine robes ... to his heart.

Her breath is short, gasping.

Stop.

(And it stops.)

The boy's expression is melancholic as he stares at her, or through her - she can't tell - and he places one of his small, ice-laced hands to that untouched heart.

It's all right, he says. It can't hurt me.

Tears sting at the edges of her eyes, and her vision blurs.

It can hurt you, she wants to reply, her throat aching with desperation. It can always hurt you.

The boy cocks his head gently to the side, red bangs falling across familiar eyes.

It can't hurt me, he repeats, and suddenly he sounds and looks too much like Anna for her to bear. I'm special—I'm different.

You're not, she tries to mouth to him, though her lips are sealed. You can hurt, you can bleed—you can die like everyone else.

He smiles—and there, finally, in that expression, she sees, and she knows whom he reminds her of, and a wave of revulsion washes over her.

It can't hurt me, he says again, because I'm a monster.

He presses his icy hands into his chest for effect; she watches in horror as the ice enters his body and makes it pulse with its aura, his eyes glowing with a hideous light, the magic seeming to consume him—

And then it is gone.

His little hands are at his sides again as before, his face unsmiling, his eyes blue like hers.

She finds herself looking, no, searching for that shock of white hair she's come to expect with these incidents, though there's not a trace of it anywhere on him.

It should make her sigh with relief, she thinks, or perhaps weep with joy; instead, she is seized with a sudden terror that makes her feel ill.

You see? he says. I told you it would be all right, Mama.

Her eyes open softly.

She rests a hand atop her stomach, hardly noticing it's level with her nose, and breathes.

Just a dream, she thinks. Nothing more.

There is a soft beat beneath that hand, but her gaze doesn't waver from the painted ceiling above.

Nothing more.

She closes her eyes, her brow relaxing, her fingertips drifting away towards her side again.

(And she dreams of a boy with red hair.)