author's note: Whelp. I don't know what to say. I don't know if anyone is even reading this story anymore. So I'll just leave this here and scoot away . . .

Chapter Six

Elsa

My nightmare is the same every time, and it isn't. I'm always the monster, even in my own mind, and Anna always dies—her chest exposed and open so her heart is visible, pumping the last feeble beats before ice overcomes its bleeding surface, her eyes watching me, growing more and more terrified. Then her heart shatters like the frail, frozen thing that it is. Variety comes in how I kill her. Will I hunt her down, this night? Will it be an accident? A mutated attempt to keep her with me? Once I killed her by looking at her.

Tonight I'm more vicious; my dream self is merciless, pushing her underwater and freezing her in place. Then slowly, precisely, I begin to carve out her heart, pulsing red beneath the ice—

I scream before it's over, thrashing—realizing, abruptly, that it isn't real—

And someone is holding me—

"Don't touch me," I gasp around a sob, wrenching free. Or trying to wrench free. The grip only tightens.

"Elsa, hey. You're awake. You're fine. Breathe."

I inhale with a shudder; my eyes widen and I absorb the small, unfamiliar room, the frigid air and frost coating everything. The inn. We're at the inn—we're—

I look up. Stabbington is frowning, one arm around me; I'm completely shielded by his embrace, his mass. He's dusted with snow, frost on the edge of the buckles on his tunic. The remains of what could only be a snow monster are on the floor in three parts. My door is covered in ice—and broken.

The innkeeper did hand over his best room for me, but still. It's small and worn in, mostly wood. I could have blasted the entire place apart if I'd gained enough momentum. A part of me is stiff with humiliation, but I manage to say, "Thank you," in a muted voice.

"Bad dreams?" he asks.

I nod.

"Yeah. Me too, sometimes."

Surprisingly, I don't find the sentiment trite. The scars I can see on him look vicious enough, let alone the ones I can't see. I'm sure a nightmare of his is no picnic. "Are you okay?" I ask.

He gives me a flat don't-insult-me look. Raising a hand, I absorb the remainder of the ice and frost. I can't believe he took out one of my snow monsters—does he sleep with a battle axe? Or maybe he did it with nothing but gloved hands. At this point, I would believe it.

"There's still a few hours until daylight," he says, shifting away from me. "Try and get some more sleep."

I don't even know where he slept, or in other words, how far away he'll be once he leaves. The rain made accomodation quickly scarce, and the inn only had one room available. Before I could awkwardly suggest we share, Stabbington had said, "This ain't a romance novel," and then, "nobody would ever believe we were a couple anyway."

"Do you mind staying?" I blurt before I can second-guess the decision.

He pauses, expression unreadable.

"In case . . . in case I start to freeze things again."

He glances around the room. I know what he's thinking. If he laid on the floor, he could touch one wall with his hand and the other with his toe—which is more of a tribute to his height than the smallness of the room. But the bed is big enough for two people, or at least one of me and one of him, so I scoot over.

He sighs and leans back on the bed.

"To be honest," I say, "I'm not going to be able to go back to sleep."

"Me either."

"I think you're the only person I'm not worried about hurting." I draw my knees up, realizing too late that I'm in a nightgown. Not that Stabbington's been looking. Maybe there's nothing to look at. I don't know.

He smirks, lifting his feet onto the bed, crossing one booted ankle over the other. "Why, 'cause nobody will miss me?"

"Because I can't," I say, half-tempted to laugh. "You're impervious. To my personality and my power."

"Honey, you're not half as fearsome as you like to think."

"Don't call me honey."

"Make me. Oh right—you can't."

I punch his forearm, just to see. It's like hitting a mountain. But he smiles, which is almost as hard as forcing him to move.

I glance over him. "Did you sleep with your boots and clothes on?"

"I usually do. In my line of business, you never know when you're going to need to run or fight."

"That sounds like a hard way to live."

He shrugs. "So does staying locked in your room, afraid of yourself."

"I don't live like that anymore," I say defensively.

"But you're worried about going back."

"You have no idea what I am or am not worried about."

"Guess I don't." He crosses his arms and leans back on the headboard behind us, closing his eyes.

I feel myself balancing on the edge of something. I could tell him about my nightmare. I could tell him I'm simultaneously afraid of finding and not finding Jack Frost. I could say a lot of things, and then maybe he'd say a lot of things back, about his brother, about his own fears, if he even has any. But at the precipice of change, I turn away. I grab my pillow and curl up at the edge of the bed.

I said I wouldn't sleep again, and I honestly think I won't, but somehow, with Stabbington right next to me, I don't have enough anxiety to keep me awake, and I sleep.

. . . . . . . . . .

"Snow!" My voice, embarrassingly, rises to a girlish squeal and I point. I sound like Anna.

"Yippee," Stabbington says, but his sarcasm is tempered by the small smile curling his lips.

After another long, long day of riding, we're nearing the top of the mountain, and I have just spotted a patch of glacial snow, hidden in a craggy pocket where the sun can't reach. The air is cooler and the vegetation has thinned considerably; tall pines, gray grass, and rock. I rein in my horse. There hasn't been a sign of another living person in hours.

"Now what?" Stabbington asks, frowning.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't like that look on your face."

I say nothing, but slide off my stopped horse. I march up the hill, flexing my fingers.

"Elsa . . ."

I check, one more time, just in case there's a hapless yodeler wandering about, but the mountain is as silent and empty as winter itself. My fear recedes, pushed aside by something calm and sure and powerful, as familiar as my own heartbeat. With a laugh, I let my power out; it roars to the surface, erupting in the world around me in a blaze of white and cold. Surety floods through me. I love this feeling; never am I more certain of myself than when I can let go without inhibition.

When I finally turn back to Stabbington, he's tied up both of our horses to a nearby tree, watching me turn the mountainside into a winter wonderland. "What?" I shout at his dubious expression. "We need to get Jack Frost here somehow!"

He puts his hands on his hips, standing ankle deep in snow. He doesn't look amused.

I raise both hands, spinning them elegantly to form a snowball.

As he comprehends what I'm doing, his eyebrows lift. "Don't you dare throw that—"

The snowball hits him between the eyes.

"Nice," he mutters, wiping his face. "You know, I'm not sure I like Happy Elsa. She's kind of obnoxious."

I launch two more snowballs at him. He dodges the first (he's surprisingly agile for someone so big), then catches the second with one hand, hurling it back to me in the same breath.

Obviously, I am unstoppable in any sort of warfare involving snow. But he does put up an admirable fight. I race toward a nearby pond and freeze the surface. Another layer of ice under my thin summer shoes and I glide effortlessly around, tracing my name in glittering tracks over the pond's top.

"Come on," I call to Stabbington where he hovers at the pond's edge, sitting on his abandoned "snowball" (more like the bottom half of a snowman). "I'll make you a pair of skates." Without waiting for a response, I graft a pair of literal ice skates over his boots.

"Cut it out," he says, propping a foot on his knee. He hacks the icy blade off with the shortsword he keeps at his waist. After doing the same to the other foot, he adds, "I've let you goof off long enough. We've got a winter spirit to track down."

"Who says he won't come to us?" I say. "If I make a big enough fuss, he might investigate and find us." But this is no eternal winter, I know that. I am, as Stabbington charmingly called it, only goofing off, putting snow on the ground where it will mostly melt before the day's end. Our goal is the highest mountains—where the winter never truly ends, where it's always cold, always a little dark. A place where Jack Frost would ride out the summer months; a place, perhaps, where someone like me belongs. Not that I want that—or I guess I don't know what I want, really. I'm not sure if I believe if I'd be happier in endless cold or not.

"Let's go," Stabbington says.

"Make me," I say, copying his earlier words. "Oh wait, you can't." I twirl again, closing my eyes, letting a cold breeze brush over my cheeks. With my arms spread, I almost feel like I can fly.

An ominous crack shatters my reverie. I whip around.

Stabbington is halfway across the pond, his shoulders rigid, his eyes drifting down to the cracking ice beneath his feet. He's too big. How deep is the pond? Deep enough to go over his head, deep enough to drown him.

He looks at me. "Wait—"

He drops through at the same time I send a rush of my power to thicken the ice and the reinforcement catches him around his broad shoulders, holding him up, clawing up his neck. Pain, actual pain, twists his face. Something red leaks over the white.

A horrified whimper pushes out my throat. I dimly notice gray cloud roiling above me, the sharp slice of sudden wind that speaks of a blizzard. I instantly pull the ice back and with a pained gasp, Stabbington drops into the arctic water.

I keep my guilt and horror and fear deeply buried. I am a machine, concentrating my powers to a fine point inside me. The water clears. A hand of ice cradles Stabbington and raises him into the air, carrying him to a small alcove among the craggy rocks that serves as rudimentary cave to shelter him from the storm that I'm having difficulty containing.

I try, very hard, to push all ice and coldness away from him, but of course I carry it with me as I rush to his side. He's trembling, jaw clenched tight. "Don't th-throw a f-fit," he gets out, leaning back against a boulder. "I'm f-fine." He hunches to the side and hacks up water.

"You are not." His tunic is black, high-collared and long sleeved, so it's hard to tell where he's hurt. He's soaked, the fabric of his clothes thickening with slush in the cold. I don't ask. I reach for his collar and undo the clasp, peeling his shirt off his shoulders. He jerks away reflexively, but after a defeated shudder, helps me get it off.

He lies back again, shaking worse than ever. There's a gash near his collar bone and another, deeper cut where his shoulder muscle dips into his neck. Tiny rivulets of blood run down his damp chest. The fresh wounds will join a multitude of others across his skin; silvery lines of ridged scars mar his torso. At least they don't seem fatal.

"Oh, Kay . . ." I murmur.

His lips are taking on a blue tinge. I need to warm him up, but, of course, I'm the last person in the world who can. My panic is making the air around us colder. The potential blizzard howls just beyond the alcove. Still, maybe I can draw the cold out of him, attract it to me like a magnet. My fingers glow, hovering over his chest. If I concentrate, I can sense the chill settling within him.

"What are you d-doing?" he says around gritted teeth.

"Drawing the cold out," I say. "Try and hold still. I don't want to accidentally hit your heart." Like steering poison.

A bark of rough laughter escapes him. "I d-don't have a heart to h-hit . . ."

"Be quiet so I can concentrate." But his lack of fear calms me; I even smile a little. Plus, I think it's working. He's not shaking as much, anyway.

Until another gust of icy wind blasts through the rocks, tangling in my hair, circling my head like a swarm of bees. I curse out loud and Kay offers another weak laugh. "I didn't know queens knew words like that . . ."

He's going to be fine. And maybe he's just making jokes to reassure me, but if so, it's working. I still feel terrible, but also admittedly relieved. I don't why this blasted storm won't calm down already.

"Give me a minute to take care of this," I tell him, touching his cheek before I realize what I'm doing. I draw back quickly, but he doesn't seem to notice.

"There's med supplies in my pack," he says. "And flint. On my horse."

"I'll get it," I promise, inwardly hoping they haven't taken off during my impromptu anxiety-blizzard.

I stand and hurry out past the rocks, where yet another blast hits me from the side. Oh, for heaven's sake, I think and thrust my arms out, pushing the storm back.

I'm in control. Bend.

The wind dies and I sigh in relief. Across the blankets of white, I can see the two horses, skittish and frightened, their saddles speckled with snow, but still there, bound by Kay's expertly tied knots. I inhale, summoning my concentration so I can melt the snow and allow the natural climate to take over.

This works for about one second . . . and then it pushes against me again!

The wind is aggressive and filled with frost; a normal person would have been frozen by it. And even though it doesn't really affect me, I still feel it, because it isn't my frost. My power is like another limb; a bird doesn't feel the weight of its wings. This is other, separate, still an element of the winter I love, but from something else.

Well the something else hasn't met anyone like me before. Whatever storm I created was an accident. When I do it on purpose, it's not so easy to brush aside. I whip my arm out, sending a furious lash out against the wind. The snow is swirling so badly I can barely see two feet in front of me. I push my power through and keep pushing until I think I find the source. Then I hit that with a maelstrom of ice and snow.

The opposing force ebbs. I direct a spear of blue power forward, seeing the shadowy form too late as the wind dies down and the snow falls. I think—oh gods, it's a person—but there's nothing I can do. A boy emerges just as my power collides with his chest. He jerks back, shivers at the impact—and then sneezes, a faint achoo that produces a sparkling snow cloud out his mouth.

He floats—floats!—over to me, frowning. My mouth opens. He hovers over me, his bare feet tucking under in a cross-legged position. A crooked staff rests over his shoulders, his wrists draped casually on either side.

He tilts his head, lips pursed to the side. His eyes are like looking into the depths of a frozen lake. "Mixed signals much?"

His face is sharp, pale, and strangely beautiful; his hair a shock of white that rustles faintly around his head, responding to a constant breeze that touches only him.

"First you send me a come hither snowflake—" He languidly turns one hand up and a huge snowflake forms above his palm. He clenches his fist and it disappears. "—and now you try and chase me off with a blizzard. Which is it, Your Majesty?"

"You're . . . are you . . ." I can't even form the words. I can't catch my breath. He's younger than I expected, for an ancient spirit. He's dressed like a peasant.

A slow smile creeps over his mouth at my struggle. But there's something coldly familiar in his eyes—longing, perhaps, an angry loneliness I recognize in myself. "You're flustered," he says. "And I'm flattered. I'm also exactly who you think I am."

Finally, I find my voice. "Jack Frost?"

He winks. "At your service."