The scent of gunpowder was everywhere. Pillars of fire danced in growing puddles.

It was like a bomb had gone off.

Only without the ‘like’ part. It was exactly that.

And there had been more than one.

Anna sloshed across the lower deck, tripping over a barrel that had come loose. Thick, burning smoke was diving into her lungs and eyes, muting the only awareness she had past the numb ringing in her ears.

As more scrambled seconds passed, she could also pick up a dizzying vibration growing in her hands, like someone had replaced them with angry hornet nests. She watched them try to grip the railing leading up, but then her cheek was landing against something hard and the railing was out of reach.

Her shirt felt wet.

Waves were lapping against her cheek. Like she was on the beach again.

Anna shook herself, pins and needles slicing across her body as the hornets migrated through the rest of her. Breath shocked its way back to her, and with a heroic effort, she yanked herself off the floor.

The top deck. Top. Not lower. She needed to make it out.

She could barely remember her name through the smoky haze burning her eyes, but the plan was buried deep, a bright safety line dragging her up from the murky depths her head had landed in.

Everything would be fine as long as she got to the boat. Back to the island.

Another explosion sounded, throwing Anna’s body halfway up the steps.

If any part of her were available for thought, she would have started to think that maybe this stage of her plan had gone a little too well.

“Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!

We kindle and char and inflame and ignite—

Stand up me hearties, yo ho!

We burn up the city, we're really a fright—

Stand up me hearties, yo ho!”

Anna swung herself around a near tree branch with a flourish as she stepped daintily over one of its fallen brethren. The wild forest was lush and green, shots of vibrantly colored fruits dotting the leaves over her head, and the air was tinged with a brush of salt that sang its own ditty.

A shame the shining sea it promised was notably absent from view.

Dropping her tune to a low hum, Anna collapsed against the—oddly cool—rubbery bark of her jury mast.

She was lost. Not hopelessly—yet, anyway—but somewhere around the squawking parrot and the crumpled mass of conjoined trees, she’d stopped keeping track of where she was going. The intoxicating view and scent of freedom were distracting, and the temptation to close her eyes and bask in everything had won over her good sense.

Meanwhile, her legs had kept moving, and so, upon opening her eyes, she found herself in the middle of her new island home with very little idea of what direction she should be going in.

She dug through her knapsack and pulled out a sheet of parchment and some charcoal. She’d asked about a map before she went off, but her new hutmates had shrugged and told her that the collection of cottages she’d be calling home now were on the southernmost part of the island, and she should pay attention to the sun if she got lost.

It was fine for getting back, but she wasn’t looking to get back; she wanted to find that tantalizing bit of grass heading the sheer cliff that stuck out over the water. Anna had only seen it from the ferry, but that was more than enough to get her attention.

Just not enough to figure out where it was. And no one else on the island seemed even a little bit curious about it.

Sketching out a rough estimate of where she’d been headed before getting lost, Anna let her mind drift a little. From the beams of light making their way down to the forest floor, she was guessing that early afternoon was turning late. And even if every bit of her was sure that she would gladly spend the night freezing to death if it meant finding that magical spot, she’d probably have to start heading back in another hour.

“We're beggars and blighters and ne'er do-well cads, stand up me hearties, yo ho,” Anna sang softly. “Aye, but we're loved by our mommies and—”

The piece of charcoal twitched in her hands and dropped to the ground, and Anna covered the inaudible thump with a cough before reaching down to pick it up—

“Pardon me.”

—and promptly fumbling it again when she whipped her head around at the quiet voice invading her bubble of incompetent isolation.

Standing next to her tree was a young woman dressed in a tailored blue shirt and deeper blue breeches tucked into a pair of sparkling black boots, and anything Anna might have said about how uptight it made her look to her fell short in her throat. About where the collar of the woman’s shirt came up to, coincidentally, and Anna had no idea why that particular spot had to stand out, but she quickly flitted her eyes even further up before either one of them could notice.

Luminous blonde outlined a slim face with eyes the color of robins’ eggs. Tension warped Anna’s stomach, strangling the small butterflies trying to escape.

“H-hi. Can I help you?”

The stranger’s eyebrows knit together. “I was going to ask you the same,” she said slowly. Her arms crossed over her chest, and her already exemplary posture went stiffer than a ship’s figurehead. A slight chill entered the air. “Are you lost?”

“Who, me? No, no, I’m—I’m fine.”

Both pairs of eyes fell to the crude attempt of a map lying on Anna’s lap.

Anna clamped hers shut and forcibly shoved away her last memory of someone this pretty approaching her. “Yeah, I’m a little lost.”

Inexplicably, the confession seemed to warm the air. There was a small rustle of cloth and Anna blinked her eyes open to find that the woman had pulled away from the tree to stand in front of her.

“Are you from the village?”

“Yes.” Assuming the motley collection of huts and grumpy old men made a village. “Oh, but that’s not where I’m trying to go,” she added hurriedly. “I’m looking for this cliff I saw when I was arriving the other day. And then I kind of lost track of where I was going because of how beautiful everything else is, and…” She grinned sheepishly at the woman. “Here I am.”

The woman didn’t smile back, but her face softened, and one of her eyebrows quirked up. “Here you are,” she echoed. “A siren on dry land.”

Red blossomed on Anna’s cheeks, and she cleared her throat and tugged a strand of hair behind one. “Er, how long were you watching me?”

Listening. Hearing. There were certain things that probably shouldn’t be said—or, sung, really not sung—in the presence of certain kinds of company.

Namely, the tax-paying kind.

The woman’s boots (and more than enough of the rest of her to make things uncomfortable, so Anna preferred to focus on the boots) shone aggressively in the shade, looking very bought.

Her spy offered up a stiff bow of her neck. “Only for a short time. I didn’t want to interrupt.” She paused, and there was a small twitch to her lips when she spoke next. “Do you usually speak so candidly of engaging in piracy?”

Anna groaned and buried her head in her pitiful map.

Maybe she should have just let Snow and her dopey crew cut out her tongue when she’d offered.

A near-silent huff of laughter almost convinced her to look back up. The hand that tugged on her piece of parchment a minute of moping later didn’t provide anything close to the same level of encouragement, but she raised her head all the same.

The sight of the beautiful woman holding up a gloved hand to cover her laugh—while her other, pale and bare, was held inches from Anna’s face—made the restrained butterflies fight for freedom in her chest. Unfortunate reinforcements came when the glove was lowered to reveal a slight smile.

“What’s your interest in the cliff, Lady Siren?”

Anna shrugged helplessly at the—sailor, she felt safe guessing. “It’s not really an—I mean, I only got a glimpse of it, but it’s about the same height as my old crow’s nest, and it sticks out so far over the ocean that you’d only see land if you wanted to. You could just float in the air above the waves.” She laughed, a deeper burn of embarrassment crawling up her neck. “I’m stuck here for a while, so I thought... you know.”

Hopefully she did, anyway. Because Anna and her very-much-attached tongue didn’t have anywhere near enough experience with being evasive to dance around all of the things she didn’t want random pretty strangers to know.

She turned back to the ground, eyes picking apart the trail of ants marching around her unshined boots while her entire head felt like it had picked up a very interesting sunburn through all of her hair. Very much without the pleasure of being out above deck all day.

The stranger didn’t seem in a hurry to ask for any sort of better explanation, so maybe Anna had done well enough and the woman would be fine walking away and leaving the strange girl to her moping in the middle of nowhere. That was starting to sound like the most optimistic outcome to this expedition.

“I could take you there.”

Anna attention snapped back to the woman so fast that she could feel her eyeballs straining to hop right out of her head. “Really?”

The woman nodded. “Not today,” she clarified. “I’m afraid you’d have to make your way back home in the dark if we went now. But… I’m on the island for a few more sunrises. I would be happy to accompany you.”

Anna blinked.

Beautiful and accommodating.

History made a pretty clean case here.

Except she was already marooned on an island. It wasn’t like she had any advantages left to take.

And she’d earned some sightseeing.

With a slow grin, Anna stuck out her hand—her left, to match the sailor’s bare one. “Then I,” she said, “would be happy to accept.”

Stumbling out onto the top deck, it took all of Anna’s willpower not to simply topple over. The muted hush the first explosions had left her ears with vanished the moment her head reached fresh air.

A wave of sound washed over her, taking the unnerving deafness and turning it around into a cacophony of noise and sensation that threatened to overpower what senses Anna had left.

Men were yelling and swearing up a storm, caught by the surprise of the explosions—and in several cases, the holes that had appeared underneath them so suddenly. Flames and splintered wood coated the ship. The corner of Anna’s mind that had pulled back from the insanity made a mental note to capture the picture so she could laugh about it later. Or cry.

The rest of her had more immediate concerns.

The bandanna covering her hair was long gone, and her bun had come completely undone in the second round of explosions. She still had a sword in her belt, which was a small miracle, but if she had to use it, she’d be in trouble.

Meaning that she really couldn’t let the so-called captain catch sight of her.

She wasn’t sure she remembered how stealth worked at this point, so the best thing for it would be to run as fast as she could.

That was not very fast.

Anna let out a rasping laugh that scorched her lungs and staggered over to the edge of the ship, fully prepared to just cast herself over the railing and hope she landed on the lifeboat.

Never, in all her time at sea, had she wanted back to land so badly.

Three steps away.

Two steps.

One…

A crushing weight latched itself around her throat, and Anna found herself looking into eyes blazing with more fire than any of the literal ones she’d just set off.

“You.”

Maybe she should have gone with taking a second to remember how stealth worked.

Rumor had it that the island Anna had claimed as her temporary home was the treasury and keep of the Wintergale—famed vessel of the infamous Ice Scourge of the Northern Seas. Or Winter Scourge, or Blizzard Demon, or really, any combination of ice and terror that the seafaring rumor mill could come up with.

That happened to be a lot.

Apparently ice deities of questionable human origin inspired a lot of creativity.

Anna couldn’t say she appreciated that. She had dug through several mountains of records she didn’t have to just because no one had the common decency to agree on a name for the captain of the mystical pirates of the northern seas.

Who were only sometimes from the north. Other times it was east, then south, oh, and then there was that one time when an entire port swore up and down that it came out of a city made of gold that appeared out of nowhere. Because it wasn’t enough that it had a magical captain, no, the entire ship had to be made out of the stuff.

It was, if Anna were a hundred percent honest, like something out of a dream. A dream she’d probably had every night for the past few months. Except it made her life incredibly difficult. How were you supposed to find a ship that could literally go anywhere?

Finally though, she’d settled on a small, unnamed island off the coast of Arendelle.

It didn’t attract much attention from—anyone, which was already reason enough to investigate. The surrounding waters were flooded with so much life that no one on the dock had batted an eye when Anna took up a fisherman’s net on a whim, and some of the trees were so well-stocked that if she ever wanted to run off to live in the jungle, she could.

And all of that came with an unspoken agreement from everyone who ever sailed the ocean blue that it was best not to go anywhere near it.

Along with regular, very isolated, rounds of fog.

If Anna had anything of value left to bet—she’d probably bury it somewhere safe and not waste it on gambling, but still, her odds had to be better here than anywhere else in this world. She hoped. Dearly.

And no matter what else, this was where her ship would come back to her. It was just a matter of waiting. Slow, careful, agonizing, diligent waiting.

Resting on damp, weathered planks, dipping her hand down to the water to say hello to the waves, Anna had to admit that it could be much worse.

It could also be much better.

Like, a lot better.

Her eyes wandered back to the huts dotting the beach. The paling sky was chasing away the shadows left by the night, but the ones in her head were being stubborn this morning. They did that when she didn’t have anything interesting going for her, and with how little there was to do…

A more mundane kind of sorcery than the island was known for answered the thought before she could even finish it, and with a start, she realized that there was one more shadow to account for, pacing back and forth in front of her cottage door.

With each sharp turn of her feet, the stranger’s moonstruck hair caught the dawning light.

An uncontainable smile spread across Anna’s face. She stole her hand away from the water, scrambling to her feet and prancing briskly across the dock.

After a day had gone by without the woman making any contact, Anna had started to wonder if the conversation she remembered (as well as the very pleasant jaunt back to the beach) had occurred between her and a stunningly solid ghost. It wasn’t out of the question in a place like this, and it was a much nicer thought than the more realistic possibility of the woman forgetting about her. Or deciding she didn’t want to be a pirate’s tour guide after all.

The twinge of hurt that led to wanting to come up with nicer ideas probably wasn’t a good thing, but she was on reinforced shore leave. She could roll with it.

Anna slowed her footsteps on her approach, noting the glimmer of nerves marking her visitor’s visage with interest.

“Yo ho,” she called cheerily.

It was the sailor’s turn to jump. Not remotely in the same way. Her bare hand briefly flared in front of her in a way Anna would have expected from someone brandishing a weapon, and the set of her razor-sharp eyes was convincing enough that Anna yelped and backed up several steps.

The razorblades blinked through the morning mist.

Anna presented her hand in an awkward wave.

The woman blinked again, the severity in her expression melting into a much saner expression for someone responding to a harmless greeting. She relaxed her arm and reared her head back in a judgmental tilt. “I trust that isn’t the only song you know.”

Anna grinned. “What can I say, sirens don’t worry a lot about repeat performances.”

The soft laugh her remark was rewarded with wasn’t covered by the sailor’s glove fast enough to hide the glint of teeth. “No,” she said, “I suppose that wouldn’t be a primary concern.”

Her bright blue eyes were sparkling brightly enough that under normal circumstances, and if they weren’t attached to someone’s face, Anna would be plucking them out for safekeeping. It was distracting.

“Don’t let that stop you from showing me around,” she said, aiming for casual.

“Of course not,” the sailor responded promptly, her figurehead posture returning. “I believe I’ve already kept you waiting.”

Anna shrugged the implied apology aside. “You never said that you’d be showing up right away.”

“Or today,” added the woman. Her gaze lingered on Anna’s waist. For a moment the accursed butterflies floating through Anna’s head left her too addled to think why, then she realized that she wasn’t being stared at—the knapsack tied around her belt was. “You packed.”

Guilt was just a thing with this woman, wasn’t it?

“Oh, well, I would have needed to anyway. Otherwise I’d have to walk all the way back for lunch from, ah—” Anna gestured to the end of the dock—all several hundred meters from her place of residence. She switched tactics. “Isn’t a pirate’s motto, ‘be prepared’?”

The woman’s lips quirked. “Not usually.”

Anna edged herself sideways, leaning towards the end of the beach. “Let’s say it’s this one’s.” Her eyes caught on the woman’s, and she took a few proper steps. “As long as you get me there without robbing me blind, I’m sure it’ll work out.”

It took several moments of silence for it to kick in that, considering her work history, and considering what the woman knew of her work history, that was probably the silliest thing she could have come up with to say.

She, Anna, was supposed to be the fearsome threat here. This beautiful stranger should be the one quaking in her flawless boots. She didn’t seem very inclined to do that, though. She kept watching Anna, like speaking to technical felons in the middle of a random beach was something she did every morning.

“Robbing pirates is a dangerous business,” said the sailor, her eyes roving over Anna’s paltry wares once again. “It takes more than a day of planning to swindle one.”

Anna would have tried to stop the massive internal flinch. She just had no way of knowing it was coming, so the internal got all the way out to external, and she didn’t need a mirror to know that she was probably making a horrible expression.

“Well,” she started, “you’d think.”

Her companion frowned, and the beach suddenly felt as cold and unwelcome as her insides. Anna could have smacked herself. Or thrown the feeling to the bottom of the ocean. It was heavy enough; it could sink that far. She swallowed.

“So—cliffs?”

Their second foray into the trees wasn’t awkward because Anna refused to let it be. The sailor could keep her stiff shoulders and formal diction as she led the way all she wanted; it was a bright, cool spring day, and quiet enough to hear the waking sounds of birds and every single solitary snap of the twigs underneath their feet while they enjoyed all that land nature had to offer and didn’t ever speak.

Not awkward at all.

Anna had never been good at the lying part of her profession.

The thought of a lack of air killing her wasn’t really anything new.

Just, when it came up, it usually involved more water. For fairly obvious reasons.

Anna gasped through the stranglehold she was caught in, digging her fingers under the hand around her throat in some faint hope of loosening it. Stars flickered in her eyes, bursting with the surrounding fire. She ignored them to stare into the would-be captain’s.

He glared back, fury and ash smearing his face.

If Anna weren’t so distracted with trying and mostly failing to breathe, she would have gladly returned the expression with the months of interest she’d built up. Or hit him. She could definitely get behind hitting. But her vision was blurring and she couldn’t even decide which one of him she felt like punching most.

The ship rocked, and her back bumped against the railing hard enough for her to waste air on gasping for more. Her sword swung uselessly from her belt while her eyes snagged on the burning splinters of wood dotting the black night waves.

So close. If she’d only been a little faster, or put a little more thought into where all the bombs went…

Smoke and fire were everywhere. People were still shouting. She didn’t think a single plank of the ship had gone untouched. Same went for most of her body.

Anna fought for one last, good breath, then fought harder to keep it from sobbing it out.

“You were right,” she croaked. “Bad luck to have a woman on board.” Swallowed. “For you.”

His fingers tightened, and hers were falling back down as she closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to die looking at him. She didn’t want to at all, really, but since she was—the only thing she wanted to see was the glorious ocean blue of home.

A lighter set of eyes crossed her mind for a second.

Only that was the kind of romantic childishness that had gotten her into this mess.

Closed off from the rest of the world, she listened to the waves lapping at her dying ship, remembering what it was like to stand high above them with the wind in her hair and the chittering gulls. It was almost easy to pretend that the sparks of white interrupting the vision were stars.

She’d give a lot to have never left.

The fantasy faded slowly, giving way to soft black dots of fuzz, and the spikes of pain in her neck were feeling less and less important. Like falling asleep in a lost, drifting boat.

And then a shriek that could rouse the dead smashed the illusion to smithereens.

“I know more than one song,” Anna blurted out.

The sailor blinked. “Come again?”

“Other songs,” Anna said. “I know them.”

The woman leaned back against the tree she was reading under, head at a slant. “I… believe you?”

A momentary silence paid tribute to the charred remains of this latest feat of human interaction. The frigid afternoon breeze joined in. Anna wound one of her fingers around a blade of grass and tried not to think too deeply about the merits of jumping off the cliff.

“I—great.”

She went for another blade of grass, breaking eye contact. It was much easier to pretend she wasn’t being stared at that way, and she was very much in the mood to play pretend.

They were coming up on two weeks of not talking.

Ever since Anna’s implied indiscretion, the sailor—and the more days they ran into each other the less sure she was about that classification; who spent this much time on one island?—had retreated into a reluctant stiffness that killed most attempts at conversation before they even started. Some people might have called it politeness. Those people didn’t have to put up with it.

Anna had resigned herself to calling the whole mess a bust and going about her land-condemned life in mopey peace.

Except the sailor kept showing up.

And giving Anna strange looks whenever she did.

Anna was starting to get the idea that the woman never would have shown her how to get to the cliff if she’d had any clue how often Anna would be invading it. She didn’t feel great about that. It was a crummy way to repay the woman for giving her a slice of sanity to come home to, but it wasn’t like she’d be here forever.

The sailor, Anna was half-convinced at this point, probably would be.

So for the time being, it looked like they were stuck with each other, and all of Anna’s isolated hours in her crow’s nest chatting with seagulls had done nothing to prepare her for how hard it was to find something to say to this woman. Every time she opened her mouth around the supposed sailor, Anna felt like she was treading somewhere she didn’t really belong. Which she’d done before, a lot, so she didn’t get why it was so intimidating with some random stranger.

Especially when she was the one looking at Anna like she was a circling shark.

A few extra rows of teeth probably would have done wonders for her confidence.

Lacking that, Anna sat up straight anyway and grit the ones she had.

There had been a question on her mind since before she even came to this island, and the more days that went by with no one but grouchy old fishermen and silent sailors to talk at, the more her worries started to pile up. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to talk about it, but she needed something, and too many wants were aiming at this woman delivering on it.

“So,” Anna asked, “do you make port here often?”

The very noticeable arch of a blonde eyebrow glinted back at her. The sailor dropped her chin to perch on her gloved hand. Her other kept a firm grasp on what appeared to be a very mangled sea chart.

“On occasion.”

Try ‘every single day until the end of time.’

Still, jumping on the only information resource this island had (and the first piece of conversation in days she felt like she had a prayer of working with), Anna plowed further. “Do you know anything about the Wintergale?”

Moments of subdued, silent staring passed before a reply was uttered. “A ship you’re after?”

“Not quite.”

The eyebrow inched higher. “Then why are you interested?” the sailor asked. “As far as I know, most pirates don’t concern themselves with specific ships unless they have something planned for them.”

Anna had encountered enough suspicious shipyard guards over her years of assorted criminal activity to know when to start backpedaling. She yanked her hands out of the grass, along with a flurry of dirt, and waved them in front of her. “Oh no, no, you don’t have to worry about me doing anything to it—I mean, I would, but not now. My interest is pure. Completely innocent.”

“You’re just a pirate asking after a random ship.”

“Exactly.”

“For no reason at all,” said the sailor.

“I didn’t say that.”

The sailor’s lips curled ever-so-slightly upward, and she finally turned away from Anna to look out at the sea, the breeze catching several wisps of her hair. Anna felt her mouth go dry.

“Look, you really don’t have to worry,” she said. “Whatever nefarious plans you think I’m up to aren’t going to get any worse than they are already—and they aren’t even that bad. The ship’s barely involved. I was just wondering if you’d seen it.” Her voice faltered. With an extra pinch of force, she added, “You know, since you’re here so often.”

She probably could have tried a little harder to make that sound less accusing.

A small lull greeted her rambling, but it felt warmer than the previous ones. Considering that she’d once again drawn attention to her status as a fearsome pirate that civilized people should stay away from, she could probably count that as a success.

Even if the sailor was now focusing on the ocean so intently that signs pointed to nothing being fixed between them.

Anna couldn’t hold back the whole sigh, but she tried to at least keep it quiet.

It didn’t matter, she reminded herself for the millionth time. Life here didn’t really count, and as for epic magical ships that people sung songs over, she could work with a rumor. And that was only if she was wrong. Which she probably wasn’t. And even if she was, with all the chaos the perfected plan was depending on, she might even do better on her own. No magical distractions necessary. Just her. And herself.

“It comes around every once in a while.”

Anna popped back to attention. “What?”

To her surprise, the sailor smiled, the shadow of her benevolent guide from the first day reappearing. “Wintergale,” she said. “Your pure, innocent curiosity has brought you to the right island, Lady Siren.”

Anna’s heartbeat announced itself with a thud.

“You’ve seen it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And you—” Anna dug her hands back into the dirt, planting herself better than any of the uprooted blades of grass spilling over her fingers. “Here. You’ve seen it here?”

The woman nodded. She was watching Anna out of the corner of her eye now, though she was still resolutely facing the sea. Anna barely registered the look. She’d settled back on her haunches. The tides were rushing in her ears, blocking out everything, and her head was swimming through a haze of pain and triumph so intense that she couldn’t do anything but dive for the latter.

She was going to save Joan.

“Yes!”

The loud shout—followed by a jubilant leap and punch to the air—brought out a startled squawk from the trees, and the sailor started so violently that she came very close to misplacing her map in a gust of wind.

Smoothing out one of the more frayed corners with a hiss, she cast what was probably meant to be a skeptical glance at Anna. The smile ruined it a little. “’Barely involved’?” she said.

Anna grinned in turn, weeks of silence all but forgotten. “I don’t like to give the bait credit for my catch.”

The sailor’s whole body seemed to twitch. Her smile, oddly enough, stayed exactly in place, but the rest of her went as lopsided as a person possibly could when sitting so rigidly. With great precision, she folded her chart and slipped it into her breast pocket, gracing Anna with her full attention. “You’re—you’re using Wintergale as bait?”

Anna shrugged sheepishly. “Well, since it already is…”

She flopped back on the grass with a soft huff and a smile so broad it made her cheeks ache. Dangling her head backwards, she could see the outlines of the grey clouds above the ocean shining silver, and feel the old, happy dream bubbling right out of her.

“I mean, it’s a magic ship that can go anywhere. Everybody wants that. I don’t know what you get up to, but I haven’t even seen all seven seas. Going beyond that, leaving everything behind to explore places you couldn’t dream of,” she sighed whimsically, “it’s perfect! It’s—”

The word almost slipped away, the shadow of everything behind it coming too close. She took a sharp breath and forced another grin. “It’s irresistible. Don’t tell me you’re so straight-laced that you can’t get behind that, Lady Sailor.”

Instead of an immediate answer about how Anna couldn’t possibly be more right, a dead silence followed. Anna felt her giddiness wilt. She pulled her head out of the clouds and looked back at her conversation partner awkwardly, preparing to apologize for herself. In her limited interaction with decent people, that usually did the trick.

Except then she was looking straight at the sailor, and the words wouldn’t come.

Contrary to the popular opinion of her former crew, Anna hadn’t fallen into her varied career of liberating property by accident. She just had a natural eye for treasure. And even better hands for it.

Maybe building something out of it hadn’t been her call, but finding beauty and setting it free—or at least giving it a more appreciative audience—had always appealed to her.

It explained just about everything that had gone wrong in her life, and she was supposed to be restraining it with an ironclad will of stout determination, but then there was these eyes, and this soft, affectionate smile. Just sitting there, waiting for her to reach out and claim them.

Then the sailor realized that Anna was looking right back at her, and the gates slammed shut. She coughed into her glove and sat up primly against her tree.

“I won’t tell you anything of the sort,” she said, despite looking significantly less entranced by the thought of a magic ship than she had a second ago. She paused, tapping her knee absently. “And it’s Captain.”

“Say what?” Anna said. She wasn’t sure if it was the words themselves or the idea that words could still exist that caught her wrong-footed.

“Captain Sailor,” said the sailor archly.

Anna stared at her, all thoughts of romantic whimsy suffering a swift beheading. And before she had time to think about all of the ways that analogy was not one she wanted to think, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Since when?”

The esteemed Captain Sailor shrugged. Somehow she managed to make it look dignified. “It’s hard to put a date on it,” she said.

“But you’re always here!” Anna said. “Aren’t you supposed to—I don’t know, be around?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a fisherman?” the captain countered. “Missing the morning catch can’t be good for business.” She was biting her lip now, and Anna was very sure that she was a second away from being laughed at, and no, that was not the sort of thought that should invite the butterflies back.

“That is not even close to being the same thing!”

“Because you’re tracking down ships to not-pillage?”

Anna turned up her nose, doing her best impression of the captain’s affected superiority. “That,” she said, “is the very definition of not a crime.”

The sailor dropped her map to the ground, cuing the inevitable arrival of the next second. A short peal of warmth, uncovered by her hands, rang out, and she looked at Anna with all of the dazzling brightness of a ray of light caught in shallow water.

And Anna, well. Anna was dazzled.

Anna only got a brief flash of total darkness before she was thrown back to consciousness. Pain lanced through her head as she opened her eyes, only a little surprised to find herself looking up at sails.

Next to her, still howling, Hans had fallen to his knees.

The icicle embedded in his arm didn’t seem overly moved.

She should probably be. She was back to having a clear path to the lifeboat. All she really had to do was stand up and trip over the railing. Then get the boat into the water. Simple stuff.

Her finger managed a twitch.

Her eyelids did, too, and for a moment the darkness was back.

Wrestling with it felt like swatting away a very determined mosquito. Her consciousness pulsed weakly while she kept forgetting where her arms were. Her head throbbed with it, but it had taken worse knocks. Each flare of pain ebbed away almost before it started. The cold blanket she was lying on helped.

More of the blanket fell on her cheek, dripping down her chin.

Wait.

Anna peeled her eyes open so slowly that she thought her eyelids were going to grow little mouths so they could start screaming from the effort she was putting them through.

Then they were open, and the world made just about as much sense as it did without them.

With the very slightest shift of her head, she could see a blindingly white pillow on all sides. Soft and cool, and definitely not there a minute ago.

And making it really, really hard to convince the rest of her body that she needed to start running.

Groaning, she tried to get her legs to see some kind of reason. Failing that, she grasped what little feeling she had in her arms and pushed until she could feel clumps of her landing site coming free from her hair.

And it was probably because her ears had been more soundly abused than most of the rest of her since this started, but as she inched her way up, it occurred to her that the rest of the world seemed very quiet.

Anna blinked heavily, watching as her breath misted in front of her.

With the intensity of an incredibly slow lightning bolt, for the first time since setting her bombs, her mind went to the ship across from Joan.

The thunderous implications hit right in time with the sudden wave of cold that surged past her.

Anna once stole a painting that was rumored, all through the land, to be unstealable.

The correlation was mostly a coincidence. With the amount of time she preferred to spend on land, she didn’t have a very clear picture of what the people who lived there liked to talk about. Nonetheless, the high-strung little duke was very insistent that no one could possibly make off with his most prized possession.

It wouldn’t survive, he claimed. It needed the proper care and treatment that only nobility could provide.

It hung over her bed for three years, living out the highlight of both their lives.

Anna knew exactly how to handle treasure.

“It isn’t going to explode,” her sailor said, lightly.

“I know that,” Anna said, the words squeaking louder than the groaning planks under her feet. The nearest fisherman on the dock scowled over at her. He did that. He also screamed at merchants who tried to sell clocks, scaring away every living thing under the sea, so if Anna weren’t so supremely occupied, she would have scowled right back.

The sailor did it for her, frowning with disapproval, then something far less certain when she caught the hook the man had in place of a hand. Anna took advantage of her just companion’s cultural shock to stare down her precious cargo.

The small silk square, held with all the uncertainty in the universe in her hands, looked up ingenuously.

Unstained, heavenly soft, probably worth more than all of the fish Anna had caught since ever put together, and very clearly doing everything it could to support its owner’s previous statement. The closest something like this had ever come to being near gunpowder was right this second, the one right after the poor thing had been gracelessly shoved into Anna’s fingers.

“My cabin boy,” the sailor had said, full of fraudulent, tousled dignity, “wanted me to give you this before we left.”

First order of business: Captain Sailor was leaving.

Second: Her cabin boy had given her an instruction and she hadn’t been able to say no. It was adorable.

Third: She maybe misjudged the order, because before she even had a chance to be devastated or charmed, there was the slight distraction of being handed something that was certainly not an explosive. With the implication that it belonged to her.

Anna did not get gifts. Not in general, not from people she’d never met, and certainly never through someone else being used as a delivery service. Her father used to take her off raiding their rivals each summer, kind of like a present, but the ensuing loot never really had much to do with giving.

Carefully, curiosity and basic politeness getting the better of the whole complicated rest of it, she peeled back the sky-blue silk. If it reminded her of the similar shade that had quietly returned to watching her every movement, she mostly succeeded in not dwelling on it. Then her present was rolling out onto her palm, and all dwellings were unilaterally abandoned.

“Oh wow,” she breathed.

A slim, serrated piece of scrimshaw, barely wider around than her finger, settled in her hand.

Snowflakes were everywhere, in a pattern she would know in her sleep. The Winter Terror’s mark covered every sketch, detailed with an admiration she never would have expected from a member of the dignified captain’s crew. Maybe that explained why the sailor had never blinked twice at Anna.

But what really caught her attention, what snagged through the hole in her heart without any intention of release, was the rest of the landscape smeared over the creamy canvas.

A ship dominated the image. Stretching from the ocean shallows into the sky, she lounged in both worlds from beneath her cover of snowflakes. Clouds wafted through the mast, meeting billowing sails. The anchor was still dripping from its spot by the cathead. Every splinter of wood was shaded lovingly into life. Nets and rigging splayed across the picture with casual distinction, and waves lapped audibly against her proud bow. High up in the crow’s nest, resting over every cloud, several birds crowded the railing while one took flight. A plain, half-domed sun outlined its path, and a tiny human likeness waved up at it.

And there, down below, stood her favorite Captain Sailor, coattails caught dramatically in the wind, while she stared out at the great beyond.

Anna’s fingers drifted over the figure, nudging the nearest snowflake.

“This is your ship,” she whispered, eyes drinking in every scratch. “It’s beautiful.”

She couldn’t look away, but the sailor’s radiant smile transcended sight.

“Thank you,” she said. Her throat cleared softly, and a tapered finger appeared over the crow’s nest, pointing to Anna’s thumb. “But I think this is why he wanted you to have it.”

“This?” For a second of smitten haze, Anna didn’t catch what the sailor meant. She tilted her head up, eyes stubbornly sticking to the soaring seagull. The human art could wait a few more seconds.

It was the familiar flutter of motion from her sailor’s glove that made her slowly peel away from the sight. Cheeks rosed, the smile behind her glove only broadened when she regained Anna’s attention. She nodded back down at the gift. “The other end.”

There would probably never again come a time when Anna was so eager to look away from the sailor. Though the desire to hide her face in embarrassment was one she could see happening a lot. Refocusing on the image as a whole, it was glaringly, horribly obvious that her hand was covering up a good half of her present. Sheepishly shifting her thumb off of the tooth’s tip, her whole body gave an odd jolt at the newly uncovered pieces.

Riddled with even more snowflakes than the ship, a beachy segment of land spread out over the tail end of the picture, an outcropping of rocks sheltering the sand.

A tiny, freckled mermaid was lounging on one of them, a conglomeration of musical notes dancing around her braided head. A siren on dry land. Drawn with just as much care as the captain on deck, only centimeters away.

“Oh,” Anna said. Then again, because this was a moment for words, specifically thank yous and feelings of flattery, but those didn’t seem to be happening outside of the fuzzy warmth taking over her head, “Oh.”

She forgot the better words.

She looked up, away from the striking ship the siren was calling towards her, and into the eyes of the woman it belonged to, and she wanted, for an instant, to ask what it was like, being part of a crew that loved for their captain enough to listen when she talked about the silly island girls she met. What it was like not to wonder if they’d stay if their pay didn’t come through that month. What it was like to know their names. A world without mutinies. A surreal daydream where the only sparkling pieces of treasure came from over-polished boots and soft, kind eyes.

She also really wanted to ask why the sailor had been telling her cabin boy what she looked like.

“He’s a really incredible artist,” she said instead.

The sailor smiled. “He is,” she said. “I’ll tell him you said so.”

“And thank you,” Anna added for her, manners kicking in. “Tell him that, too, because this…” Her thumb went back over the familiar grooves of the snowflake pattern, seeking out the ship once again, and her sea-deprived gaze was quick to follow. “This is amazing. She’s amazing, and it’s really—thank you.”

Her sailor only nodded, either too polite or too proud of her crew member’s skill to complain about losing out on Anna’s focus. Not that it was some kind of prize. Anna would have loved it if she thought that way, but it really wasn’t. Besides all that, the sailor got to see her ship whenever she wanted. She probably understood better than anyone how gorgeous it was. Even if she did spend a bizarre amount of time away from it.

The sails, full and breathing, caught Anna’s eye again, and she knew she probably shouldn’t ask, even if gift-giving propelled them firmly into some kind of friendship category, but she couldn’t help it.

“When are you leaving?”

The weathered dock squeaked some more as the sailor’s weight shifted. “In the morning.” Her hands cupped her elbows. “We—we’ll be back in a few weeks. Less, possibly.”

Her grip tightened enough that the bit of color left in her bare hand almost went out.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Anna said unthinkingly, lifting her head; all thoughts of hating the island and doing anything to get back to the wild blue ocean disappearing like they were never there. A flash of experienced sense later, they came back, and she hurried to correct herself. “I mean, probably. I’ll try. Not too hard, because I still have to go and do—pirate stuff, but, if you were wondering, I’ll probably still be here. When you get back.”

She smiled nervously. The edges of the scrimshaw bit into her hand.

But when the sailor smiled back, that probably, that unfortunate hand she kept being dealt that kept her stuck so far away from home, felt like the best luck she’d had in months.

The Ice Scourge of Arendelle. Blizzard of the North Seas.

Captain of the Wintergale.

More of a legend than her own ship. More myth than human, swarmed with so many fantastic rumors that reality couldn’t keep up—and when it tried, all it managed was a bunch of ridiculous titles. All anyone really knew was that even with the temptation of a ship that could literally go anywhere, even with everyone who ever heard of it wanting it, the captain was where the dreaming stopped.

Anna had known all of that, on some level. Planned for it.

Somehow, none of it had ever made enough of an impressionable dent to understand how plainly suicidal challenging someone like that for her ship was.

The only real consolation was that Hans was the one who had tried, not her.

She did what she could to hold on to that happy thought when the fog rolled in.

Thick blocks of mist were unfolding across the deck, leaving a solid caste of ice in their wake. It molded itself over the ship, blocking every set of stairs and warping the rigging. Anna waited for the moment when it doused the flames, but whenever it reached a spot of them, it rolled over, blocking off the patches of fire behind walls of ice instead of smothering them, damping the night in an unearthly blue glow.

Caught up in the sight, Anna barely heard the pained groans coming from her ship.

Joan lurched under Anna, bucking her from the relative safety of her snow pillow and sending her skidding into the rails.

Or in that general direction, anyway. By the time she remembered to brace herself for the new pain, she was already caught in the arms of another snow drift, ghosts of breath huffing out of her as she stared up at the sky.

Snowflakes, glistening in the light of the flames, hung in the air. Perfectly still.

The ocean mimicked them.

Anna was starting to hope she was hallucinating.

She could still feel her heart swinging with the currents, as it should have been, but the past months had gotten her body very acquainted with the stillness of the ground. Resting in a crumpled heap on the deck of her ship, she might as well have been stuck back on the island.

Nothing moved.

The earlier shouts had gone silent, helped by the bodies they belonged to being flung haphazardly into parts of the ship that weren’t covered in piles of snow.

Anna knew that parts of her body had started shaking, and she wasn’t sure if it had to do with the explosions, the cold, or just plain old shock. The part of her that had held it all back, the part that knew how risky this plan was but trusted her to win with it, was falling apart at the seams.

With a simple tilt of her head, she could see the ocean blazing white. Jagged, frozen waves shone under the moon, lining Joan with as much mercy as a shark’s teeth.

There was no way she was getting out of this.

She watched as more ice collected itself around Joan’s edge, a solid plank of the stuff reaching out into air. Twirling shimmers of magic wove their way through the emptiness, heading towards the blurred mass of the Wintergale.

The echoing click of footsteps greeted them.

An eternity must have passed while Anna sat there, listening to her doom arriving.

That still wasn’t anywhere near long enough to prepare her for the moment the Wintergale’s captain landed her first step on the ruined ship.

Boots positively gleaming.

Outside the initial stroke of wanderlust, Anna hadn’t made a habit of exploring the island. Tempting as it was (and it only got worse after the revelation that shouldn’t have been that no, the reclusive Captain Sailor did not, in fact, spend every waking hour of her life up on a cliff in the middle of nowhere, who would?) with her luck, she would probably end up falling straight into the clutches of the Abominable Snow Terror and never make it back.

So it made sense that, months into her mandatory shore leave, she’d just happen to stumble over a hidden staircase embedded in the side of the abandoned cliff. Possibly due to the aggressive kicking a bush had fallen victim to.

And she’d just happen to very quickly talk herself out of whatever remaining caution had survived her tedious torment and hop down the steps.

By the time she reached the bottom, and the small, hidden beach beneath it, she was willing to admit that there was less of things happening to her going on and more of her making absolutely fabulous decisions.

Filled with a glee that the island was in sore lack of most of the time, Anna crashed into the water with an impressive splash, rolling across the shallows until she popped back to the surface to catch her breath—where a wave caught her full in the face, tossing her up against the beach.

Anna spluttered through her laughter, crawling backwards to sprawl out over the warm sand. Her clothes were soaked through and pulling awkwardly at her skin, and her boots felt like they were on their way to growing their own lakes, and she felt better than she had in months.

Naturally, the second she thought it, an unearthly chill coated her face, and she shivered her way up to a sitting position, wrapping her arms around herself.

Tilting her head back in irritation, she took a gander at the underside of the cliff that was denying her wind cover. It looked a little like it had come across the wrong end of a giant spoon. The perfectly scooped rock left a great, open overhang of shadow that failed on every point except for masking a still, blonde gargoyle huddling against the side.

Anna did a double-take.

Her heart jumped happily in her chest, and toppling backwards over herself, she scrambled to her feet, catching a great deal of sand in her shirt in her attempt to make herself look slightly more presentable.

“Hey there, sailor!” she said, breathlessly, batting at the hem. “I didn’t realize you’d made it back yet! I was—”

She didn’t know what would have spilled out of her mouth next, because the words faded away before she’d even gone through all the options. Her hand stalled, caught somewhere between her shirt and the ground as she took in the state of the returned sailor.

Her hair was up.

It should have made her look sophisticated. Clean, pressed linen was tucked stiffly into her breeches under a smart blue coat, and the darn boots sparkled brilliantly despite the shade. She looked like she could have walked out of a painting.

Only it was hard to imagine this woman walking anywhere. It was more like the world had fallen into being around her. Very literally, in Anna’s case. Her eyes were pale echoes of what they were supposed to be, and though she was certainly paying attention to Anna, she was looking at the space over her shoulder, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle.

Attention fully and terribly scattered by the oppressive silence, Anna’s eyes darted around the inlet. Iron dark rock filled every inch that wasn’t covered with sand. Along with a piece of cut, lighter stone sitting out where the rest of the rock met the water.

Letters were carved into it.

No, names.

Anna’s stomach dropped.

This was significantly worse than falling into the Ice Scourge’s grasp.

Backpedaling, she searched for her voice again. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I’ll go. I’ll just… go.”

She turned around, successfully not tripping over her own two feet, and made it several steps before she looked up and realized that the staircase only met as far down as the tide line. Putting it a solid meter above her head.

There was not enough treasure in the world to convince her that repeatedly jumping up and down was anything but a bad idea right now.

Panic rising faster than the sea would any time soon, she dug her hands into her waterlogged pockets and tried to think about anything besides how she’d clearly underestimated the level of guilt trespassing could still get out of her.

“It’s all right,” the sailor’s voice called, hoarsely.

Anna spun around, gulping past the lump in her throat. The sailor had stepped right up behind her without her even noticing. So she could walk. There was an element of relief to the thought that made her glad it hadn’t fallen out of her mouth.

Staring at the matching gloves on the sailor’s hands, Anna gave the only response she could. “No,” she said, “it really isn’t.”

The sailor opened her mouth, maybe to tell Anna she was wrong, maybe to distract both of them by changing the subject to the weather, and then shut it with a snap and looked back at the grave marker.

“That doesn’t mean you have anything to apologize for,” she said quietly.

Anna didn’t know that there was a response to that. She stuck to standing in place, staring helplessly at the yearning misery she’d accidentally interrupted.

Her first few weeks on the island had spoiled her with the sailor’s constant presence, and as uncomfortable as some of it had been, the first time she made the long hike across the island to find herself alone, she couldn’t help feeling—actually alone. Even the gifted piece of scrimshaw she’d tied around her neck didn’t really help.

The captain always came back, and sometimes managed to stick around long enough for the annoying pangs in Anna’s heart when she wasn’t there to feel slightly more reasonable, but something about that very first time stayed, building on all the other feelings she didn’t need.

“Do you—” she hesitated. “Do you want me to stay?”

The sailor looked almost as surprised hearing the words as Anna was saying them. Her eyes flickered to the unreachable stairs. Anna winced. “I’m not just saying that because I can’t leave,” she said.

A small, sorry smile brushed the sailor’s face. “I’m surprised anything could lure you away from up there.”

Anna considered telling her that it wasn’t really that difficult without the sailor to convince her to stick around. She also considered saying absolutely nothing and going over to hug her, but she was guessing that it wouldn’t be allowed. She shouldn’t be covering the captain’s dress clothes with seawater, anyway.

She stuck with the first half of the second plan, watching the sailor uncertainly. The paired gloves weren’t wrinkling her shirt anymore.

‘Who?’ was the obvious question. She didn’t think that would be allowed, either.

“You—you can sit back down if you’d like,” said the sailor, addressing Anna’s shoulder.

Anna refrained from jumping in shock, kind of, and took a few careful steps before she sat down on the rock, crossing her legs so that her boots didn’t splash around unnecessarily in the water. The thought made her shiver a little; the dark shadows under the rock didn’t leave a lot of room for direct sunlight. Her tanned complexion was the only thing standing between her and looking like a piece of drowned seaweed.

The sailor started. “Are you cold? We can—the beach is right there, it wouldn’t be—”

“Please don’t worry about it,” Anna interrupted, trying to be subtle about squeezing the water out of one of her sleeves. She didn’t think she’d survive trying to reposition herself again.

The sailor didn’t look entirely convinced. Probably because she was incapable of not worrying about things. If they weren’t already, those creases in her forehead were going to be permanent one day. But she gave a shallow nod and dropped her gaze back to the stone.

Anna stared at it with her, not really seeing it. Her eyes politely skittered away from the names anyway while she tried to think of something to say that didn’t involve an apology. Or probing personal questions.

“It’s… underwater most of the time, isn’t it?” she asked.

She was leaning towards that not counting.

The sailor shrugged. She was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, looking more like a small child than the dignified picture that her getup suggested. “They loved the ocean,” she said. “I thought they belonged in the middle of it.”

A hook of clarity settled in Anna’s chest. Slowly, she looked up at the inscription under the names.

She got to ‘mother’ before she had to pull herself away. Her fingers went white around her sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“You shouldn’t be,” was the quick, low reply.

Anna shook her head, wanting to laugh just so crying would feel a little further away. “No, I meant… I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

The sailor dug her face into the protection of her arms until her eyes were barely visible. Dry and empty, they stayed fixed on the headstone. “And I meant that you shouldn’t be,” she said. “You should feel sorry for them. I survived. They—”

She inhaled so sharply that it almost hid the hitch in her voice.

Anna gnawed on her lip.

“What happened?” she asked.

One of the sailor’s hands twitched convulsively. A cold draft stepped eerily into the shallow cave, hushing the familiar warmth of the ocean waves while they both sat stock still. What little life the breeze had curled around the sailor’s fringe, tugging at the restrictive bun keeping her hair in place. Anna was tempted to help it. She was tempted to do so many things about this, but if she knew anything at all, it was that she’d already gone with the only option that had a real chance of doing any good.

So she sat. Cold, wet, and bracing herself against the invasion of her own personal tragedy. Of the many, many things to do with her that didn’t belong in a place like this, that was somewhere near the top of the list. She watched the sailor’s hands, their deliberate tension covered by gloves that didn’t really fit, and waited.

“We were caught in a storm,” the sailor said at last, too softly to carry. Anna leaned in close to listen. “I was…” she looked distractedly at the marker’s inscription before shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. I was asleep. Below deck.” Her arms tightened. “The mast went. It—we were going to see about repairing it the next time…” her voice trailed off.

Anna tried not to shiver. Because there was always a next time. No one living a life at sea could afford to think anything else. She had to remind herself to keep breathing. Complete desolation had smoothed out the lines in the sailor’s face.

“They tried to get me out,” she continued, flatly. “It didn’t work. And then… they were gone.”

A strike of raw pain tarnished her eyes. She shook her head again, looking like one of those marionettes traveling acts played with. “It isn’t an unusual story,” she said. “Most people can expect to lose a few…” She stopped herself.

The next words were stuttered, and so quiet that Anna came close to not catching them at all, but there was no mistaking the force behind them.

“I’m not most people.”

Anna had no idea what that had to do with anything.

For all kinds of reasons, she had no trouble believing it, and she wasn’t about to waste her breath arguing over something like that, but the resigned, penitent cast the admission had wrung out of the sailor was so far beyond wrong that it took her a second to remember why.

With a harsh swallow, she reached out and pressed a hand down on her friend’s. The one that was supposed to be gloved. The sailor didn’t jerk away, but a bone-deep shudder wracked her body.

“That doesn’t make it your fault,” Anna said. “Trust me, I know what that looks like.”

Less certainly, she added, “And I would have saved you, too.”

The sailor’s morbid composure cracked, and for a brief, heart-pounding moment Anna thought she’d break the silent hug prohibition on her own, but then, with obvious effort, the storm of emotion was walled off, and the sailor smiled—so halfheartedly that she might as well have burst into tears. It certainly made Anna want to. “No one needed to,” she said gently.

Anna looked at her in disbelief. “So what? I—”

“So,” the sailor said, a tinge of bitterness patching the heartbreak in her smile, “that’s why it is my fault.”

Anna could have hit her if she didn’t want to hold her so badly.

“It wasn’t.”

The words came out muffled.

She wanted to shout them. Sure, maybe they weren’t close enough—and wow did that thought hurt so much more than she wanted it to—for her to be worth sharing the whole story with, but shipwrecks happened. Tragedies happened, and sometimes the only good thing that came out of them was someone good surviving, and the good thing wasn’t supposed to…

She knew that guilt in the sailor’s eyes, and it didn’t belong there.

But the fundamental familiarity burned in Anna’s throat, a thousand times worse because of the basic differences between this and the choices that had landed her here, and she wanted to snatch her hand back before it started pouring out of her.

Her hand refused to agree, clamping down so tightly on the sailor’s that it should have been causing more than a little bit of discomfort, but the inquisitive pinch of the sailor’s brow was closer to concern than anything else.

Taking a selfish moment, she fixed her eyes in the shallows by her feet. Tiny, colorful fish flickered around the rock, their scales catching the limited rays of light bouncing across the water. The easy slope of sand and rock dropped away completely just a little ways out, diving into darkness, and she followed the fish as they swarmed the edge.

A cautious pressure melted against her fingers. “Are you okay?”

Anna nodded. She wanted to say it was embarrassment making her flush.

She didn’t. She was pretty sure if she tried to talk right now, raucous sobbing would play more of a part than words.

The hold on her fingers strengthened. There was a soft struggle of sound, one that maybe Anna’s name would have fallen out of if they’d ever bothered sharing something besides company.

“I—Siren,” the sailor started slowly, “the person you’re baiting with Wintergale…”

It should have been alarming, how she had figured that much out without Anna ever saying it directly. Anna didn’t care. She focused on the puddles in her boots. The harsh shift of the sand she hadn’t gotten out of her shirt. The steady drips coming out of her hair.

And she made herself look up and smile, the sailor’s attention fading into a bright, shimmering blur.

“Oh, it’s the usual story.” She reached up and flicked the tears from her eyes. “A silly girl meets a dashing prince and tells him all her secrets, and he turns around and uses them to kill her father and steal her ship.”

The hand gripping hers didn’t falter. Anna bit her lip so hard that she imagined she could taste the blood that had splashed Joan’s deck.

“I-I think I told you. It’s irresistible. Leaving all of this behind for another world…” She coughed out a laugh. “Who wouldn’t want that?”

Who wouldn’t do everything possible to get close to it. Who wouldn’t weave fantastical dreams of a different kind of magic to earn someone’s trust. Who wouldn’t abandon all principles if it meant being able to run away from it all.

Especially a disgraced prince who had already destroyed every bit of honest power to his name.

Before throwing Anna overboard, he’d admitted his ultimate goal easily, with a smile, so sure that he’d gotten everything he could have out of her, that he’d won, and that nothing could possibly stop him. Never once stopping to think that he was wrong, and would be for as long as Anna’s heart stayed beating, because there was no way she was ever letting him come away from all of this with a victory. Even if the worst did happen, she’d be the most vengeful, effective ghost he’d ever seen.

“You said you knew what fault looked like.”

Anna nearly yelped. Despite the hand holding hers, she’d forgotten that she wasn’t alone with her thoughts. She blinked away the newer tears and felt an expression of dumbstruck guilt freeze over her face as she stared more properly at the sailor.

This was not supposed to be about her dead parents.

For some reason, though, the sailor didn’t seem bothered. A soft kind of sorrow, aged and protective, shone in her face, affectionate twin to the squeeze on Anna’s hand.

“So do I,” she said. “And this wasn’t your fault.”

Anna could hear the same surety in her voice that had been in hers.

The need to laugh and cling to the thought that maybe that meant neither of them had done anything wrong was torturously tempting, but Anna knew so much better than that. She could remember every second—a full day of seconds where she’d watched someone plan a murder while she helped him along without a care in the world.

With an uncertain jolt, she wondered what kind of seconds the sailor remembered.

And it was all really sort of awful, and made the feel of the light breeze and her damp clothes so much colder, so without thinking about all the reasons why not to, she lurched forward, burying her forehead in the sailor’s shoulder and probably soaking her to the bone with the worst hug in creation.

Predictably, the sailor froze.

Less predictably, and ever so slowly, she wrapped her free arm around Anna. The motion was warped in hesitation, nothing like her secure hold on Anna’s hand, but the light touch of her spare as she smoothed it over Anna’s back lingered.

“If you ever want another crew—” she whispered.

Anna cut her off before the dream could settle. “Still a pirate.”

The sailor didn’t move for several seconds. Then she nodded into Anna’s hair. “The offer stands.”

Against all logic, for a moment, that made everything okay.

Only the immediate memory of what it was like to stop kept Anna breathing.

There was no mistaking it.

Flickers of blue flamelight shone against the rectangular cut of bronze that dangled from the Wintergale captain’s ear. The barest twinkle caught the silver snowflake dangling from a dark, tricorn hat. Opaque ice, quieter than even this empty night at sea, was drawn over one eye.

Swathed in cloth so deeply blue that it flashed black, waves of frost cascaded over a sleeveless coat. Wisps of fog rolled out from under the hem, joining the packs of ice moving silently across the deck. Frozen patches spread from where her feet were planted, forming a pattern that no amount of head trauma could render forgettable.

Arendelle’s Winter Queen.

Pirate. From head to toe.

And—

She strode forward a step, looking down at Hans while her visible eye blazed with the insatiable fury of a winter storm. Her right hand slipped into Anna’s line of sight, and with a suddenness her sluggish thoughts couldn’t keep up with, Anna realized that, for the first time, the woman wasn’t wearing any gloves.

Ice.

Nothing but ice, running past her elbow, all the way up to a shortened sleeve.

Anna could hear her heartbeat.

The icy digits, crafted so carefully to imitate flesh and bone that only the iceberg blue gave them away, flexed before balling into a fist. Sheets of lesser frost flashed across Joan’s deck, layer upon layer. They streaked over every plank, claiming the whole ship.

A violent shiver, the most any of her could move, and this time definitely the cold’s fault, ran through Anna’s core. Dislodged clumps of snow from her snowy bed fell onto the spreading panes.

And then they stopped.

They stopped.

They stopped, because Captain of the Wintergale, Scourge of the Northern Seas, the legendary Queen of Ice and Snow, was Anna’s sailor. And when she was looking into her eyes, of course the whole rest of the world stopped.

In steps so quick they didn’t leave a single snowflake, she was kneeling by Anna’s side, her good arm reaching down into the snow and pulling her up, and it was only through all the silence of the night that Anna could hear her breathed prayer of a whisper.

“Anna.”

Anna didn’t know what it said about their friendship that the closest they came to talking about the incident was the shared looks of relief when no one ran away screaming the next time they saw each other.

She liked to think good things, since they were both still here. Partially by choice.

She hoped. It was so dark that she could barely make out the outlines of trees, let alone anything or one else. This, she brooded, was an incredibly unfair punishment for her pure and (for once) perfectly legal desire to watch a sunset.

‘This’ was trying to make her way back to the beach from the cliff. In total darkness. With roots and rocks and no doubt all kinds of other invisible things tripping her up every other second. She was never going out wandering without a torch again.

Her foot jammed against a boulder.

Biting back a yelp by unfortunately biting her tongue, she tumbled straight into her volunteer guide’s shoulder, almost bashing her nose open.

“Ow,” she groaned, accepting what felt like the sailor’s steadying hand. “Sorry, are you okay?”

“Fine,” the sailor said. Her voice was distractingly close to Anna’s ear. “You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

“No, I’m good.” Better than good, for a second, but then the sailor’s hand was gone after a murmur of relief, and her footsteps were rustling back down the path. Anna joined her quickly, not at all eager to get lost in the same jungle twice.

“I think,” she huffed, actually seeing the next root hazard thanks to the glisten of slime something had left on it, “that I need to lodge a complaint about where the Ice Lord keeps their base.”

The steady pace of the sailor’s footsteps missed a beat.

“The—Ice Lord,” she said.

“It’s something someone in… Tortuga, I think, called the Wintergale’s captain. Everyone calls them something different.” Anna laughed. Softly, so she didn’t disrupt the pleasant parts of the night’s atmosphere too much. “You should really hear some of the things people come up with. And I think I forgot at least half of them.”

The sailor didn’t say anything for a handful of moments. “No,” she said, “I think I can live without that.”

“Really?” Anna asked. An unseen smile was growing on her face, and the piece of scrimshaw she kept tied around her neck, covered with pirate snowflakes, was starting to feel like an illuminating puzzle piece. “You don’t want to hear about the Sleet Slayer?”

There was a noise that sounded like the sailor tripping over something for once, and Anna quickly reached out a useless hand into the darkness. Surprisingly, though there was no further disruption of her footsteps, a quick squeeze found its way to Anna’s fingertips.

Taking that as permission to continue, Anna did so, ticking the names off her warm fingers.

“Or, you know, Hoarfrost Hearse, Ice Demon, Winter Scourge—Snowball Scoundrel.” She paused. “Hurricane Hustler.”

“That is not a real title.”

Anna bit her bottom lip, grinning. “It is,” she confirmed.

A pained silence filled the cool night air. Now in very good humor, and high on the success of narrowly avoiding another rock, Anna gleefully continued the conversation.

“So were you the one to teach your cabin boy how to draw those snowflakes?”

“Olaf taught himself,” the sailor said, sounding so embarrassed that Anna wished they were doing this during the middle of the day. Or closer to a light source. The look on her face would probably be one of her greatest treasures yet, and—

And.

Wait.

“Olaf,” Anna said.

The sailor’s steps stopped.

Anna’s did too, to avoid running into her again. And because her interest in hurrying back to the beach suddenly existed less than it usually did.

There was a long hush of nothing. She could hear the trees swaying. With the right yearning, they sounded like the creak of a boat.

“That’s his name,” the sailor said, quietly. “Olaf. He—he and his brother were the first ones to join my crew.”

Anna tucked some hair behind her ear. The light breeze tangled it enough that she had to try twice. “They had good taste.” And because no matter how much she wondered, she understood needing secrets too well now, she added, “Captain Sailor.”

The sailor’s boots scuffed the dirt, and Anna could hear the leather of her glove curling around itself. “Thank you,” she said, the crinkle of a leaf signaling the return to their blind hike. “Lady Siren.”

Anna let herself be pulled up, collapsing bodily against the sailor when her legs refused to support any of the rest of her. The warm arm holding her sagged a little, but the frozen one wrapped around her back stayed steady.

“You’re,” Anna started, abruptly stopping when her throat remembered what it had been through tonight.

“Here,” the sailor finished for her. Her voice was soothing. The cooling balm to the firestorm Anna had unleashed. “I’ve got you, Anna.”

It shouldn’t have been possible for a name to sound so good. Anna’s hands clawed into the sailor’s shoulders. Damp heat came to her eyes, and it would have been so, so easy to slip back to unconsciousness now.

The tip of her sword scraped against her boot. In the world beyond her sailor’s heartbeat, pained whimpers were starting to come back to life.

“I didn’t finish it,” Anna said, hoarsely. With what little strength she had left, she tried to push herself away from her friend, but that wasn’t strength at all. She almost toppled over from the effort.

The sailor took a deep breath. She looked back over her shoulder. At her crew, maybe. Anna couldn’t see. The important thing was that she was still standing.

She held on to that as much as she did to the sailor when, in the next second, their hold on each other shifted around so Anna was being supported entirely by the sailor’s frozen arm, and they were slowly walking forward. Back towards Hans, who was slowly moving past the pain of his impaled limb.

Ice crackled under both sets of boots. Anna wouldn’t have thought enough of her weight was making it to the soles of her feet to do that.

They stopped walking.

Anna stood still, not looking at Hans. Not looking at anything real at all. The blood she was imagining soaking through her boots hadn’t been on Joan’s deck for a long time, now. Even if it was still there, the sailor’s ice would have covered it several times over.

Strength found its way back to her legs.

She looked at Hans.

By her side, a low rumble cued the dangerous voice of Arendelle’s own Ice Scourge. It was accompanied by a sleek blade of ice materializing in her hand, the very tip seeking out Hans’ throat.

“You attacked my ship.”

Another time, Anna might have laughed at the accusation. Maybe the sailor would have, too. Maybe they could laugh at this together soon. Hans had tried to attack her ship. Anna didn’t think it had suffered a single scratch, not with all of Joan’s cannons busy blowing up in his face.

He looked murderous. The ice at his neck crept out another centimeter. A drop of blood rolled along the edge.

The sailor breathed quietly in Anna’s ear, and as much as Anna could be aware of anything, she was suddenly aware that she was part of this conversation. A cold handle offered itself to her numbed fingers.

“To the victor go the spoils,” the sailor said tonelessly.

Anna stiffened in her arm.

“I,” she said. A wasted syllable. Her throat burned with it. She swallowed. That didn’t really help.

“I have my own sword,” she told the sailor. She felt the nod at her back, and the chill of the sailor’s weapon left her. And Hans.

She stood up as much as she could on her own, staring at the man who had murdered her father and stolen Joan from her. Seething hate was the only thing that stared back. Maybe, if she had known better, she would have seen that all along.

Bracing herself, Anna readied her body for the speech she’d never expected to say. She’d thought it, maybe a million times, but this was no longer anything like her plans.

She didn’t think she minded.

“I don’t want,” she said clearly, “anything to do with your life.” She breathed in, and through the pain she was seeing the blood on Joan’s deck again. “Including ending it.” Another breath, and she could maybe get through this without passing out. “All I want,” more clear annunciation that her throat hated her for, “is you beaten.

“And off my boat.”

Gripping the sailor’s arm as tightly as she could without losing the power the rest of her needed, Anna took a giant step forward with one leg, and, forcing every angry thought she’d ever felt and all the hurt she felt now into her other, she lashed out fiercely, foot connecting solidly with Hans’ jaw and sending him flying over the side, taking the broken half of the icicle embedded in his arm with him.

A gasped shout of laughter that Anna immediately regretted left her throat, and she fell back in limp relief against her sailor, sending both of them stumbling.

Free, Anna thought, dizzily. Joan was…

Joan was…

Anna was free.

It was over.

It really…

Numb exhaustion bled all of the feeling out of her, and the next thing Anna knew, she was sinking so deeply into the sailor’s arms that she could feel their hearts beating on top of each other. The welcoming thud sounding like a drum in her ears, like victory and plunder, and wet, salty tears fell down her face and joined Joan’s icy deck.

A snowflake, hanging in the air by her eye, fluttered down, mopping the burning dampness away with a kiss against her skin.

Blearily, Anna lifted up her hand, groping through the snow-dotted air until her fingers caught the one metal snowflake that was twinkling somewhere above her head. The sailor leaned down obligingly. A lock of her hair tickled Anna’s nose.

She still smelled like the sea. Anna nestled closer, and made a fumbling attempt to flick the snowflake before her arm fell back to the icy deck.

“Hi,” she rasped, past her scorched throat, “Captain Snowball Scoundrel.”

An embarrassed, happy, smile slipped in under the dim half-light, drawing the legend back from the sailor’s face. “Truthfully,” she whispered, brushing a pair of cool fingers through Anna’s hair, “I prefer Elsa.”

Anna dreamt about when she would see Joan again.

Not literally. Except for sometimes. She had enough nightmares about what happened the last time she did see her that she didn’t think her sleeping self always liked thinking about what would happen next. She dreamt with her eyes, staring out at the swirling blue horizon and imagining what it would be like when she saw the shadow of her unforgettable vessel calling her.

Her ship.

Her father’s ship.

Home.

Whatever it was like, Anna had determined, it would be a dream come true. A miraculous bit of life coming back to her after so long. It was what kept her awake during the lazy evenings of fish nipping at stray scraps of bait. It was what kept the whole scheme going. Joan. A damsel in distress that would have to settle for a noble pirate rescuer instead of a heroic knight, but would still definitely be rescued by Anna’s hand.

She dreamt of the wild ocean, and stories, and Joan’s own sails, and when the nightmares came, she dreamt harder, bringing in explosions and the look on Hans’ face when she finally won. A loud, roaring victory erupting from all of Anna’s careful planning and patience.

That part, she told herself, didn’t even count as a dream. She’d make it real if it was the last thing she did.

Sometimes, she spent so much of her time dreaming that she was shocked to wake up in the middle and find out it was already real. Those moments, filled with mismatched gloves and cautious conversation, were so easy, and so right, that they took all of the nightmares and banished them away.

That was a moment she might have expected, sitting next to the sailor on the stone steps by the cliff. A moment of looking over and being completely marveled by how okay everything was.

What happened, though, was nothing like that.

One second she was scattering drops of water on the sailor’s gleaming boots, bringing a smile to both their faces and the closest noise the sailor had to whining out of her mouth (which still managed to sound so smoothly beautiful that Anna had to wonder why no one had ever called her a siren), and the next a shadowy blur was on the horizon.

Her hand fell underwater mid-splash. Her eyes went so wide that her face shouldn’t have had room.

“Joan,” she whispered.

The sailor’s voice stopped. Anna barely noticed except for the extra ease there was in keeping her eyes planted on the ship. She barely noticed anything until several moments later, when out of nowhere, and without a single word, the cool brass of a telescope was being offered to her hand. A cautious, rattling breath left her, and Anna whipped it up to her eye. Her hands trembled so badly that she nearly poked it out, but those concerns could be ignored until something actually went wrong, and when she wasn’t having a life-altering moment.

She held her breath, and waited for her out-of-practice hands to find her damsel.

And even though the idea of doubt had never come close, there was still something so different about really seeing her, and not just knowing that she was out there. In a place where she could afford to think about other things, she’d be apologizing to the sailor, because she’d probably never get her telescope back now.

“She’s a beautiful ship,” the sailor said, softly.

Anna wanted nothing more than to agree. Over a year of imprisonment hadn’t taken that effortless majesty away from her. A magnificent ship. Sturdy and imposing, her strength obvious from leagues away, she was supposed to be the most glorious craft to ever sail the seven seas.

“She was,” Anna answered. “Not… not now.”

A ship without a true captain. A ship sold into servitude because in the end, only two people onboard counted her as family. And she’d lost them both in a blink of an eye, forced to wander the ocean all on her own, still covered with the blood of the one who’d known her longest.

Anna really had been on this island too long. Even with Joan eclipsing her sight, she could feel the sailor turning to look at her like she felt her next heartbeat.

“Do you want help?”

The offer soared through Anna’s ears, grew a lump in her throat, and sent such an awful crack down her chest that it felt like her heart was being split in two while growing five sizes. Staring at Joan only made it worse. She pulled the telescope away, meeting her friend’s compassionate gaze. The beautiful stranger, who was still very strange, but only more beautiful and wonderful with each passing day.

For a wild second, she could see herself taking the offer. Trusting one more time, with something real, and believing that things would be better for it.

She couldn’t.

She wanted to, the second she heard it she wanted to—no point lying about that—and she didn’t know if that meant she’d learned something or nothing at all, but she couldn’t do that to her. Not for Anna’s destructive revenge scheme.

“No,” she said, hoping the sailor believed her.

She stared back out at the horizon line. Thoughts of explosives and stowaway routes danced in her head. The island felt very far away, and even if that felt like more of a tragedy than a final victory in the moment, she thought she knew what she had to do next.

“I… should go get ready.”

She didn’t look at the sailor right away. She kept her eyes on Joan, remembering nothing and everything. Remembering the affirming clap of her father’s hand on her shoulder and the lying, lying smile that had taken him away from her.

Anna twisted around, meeting her friend’s eyes. Robin egg blue, and so oddly resolute in the moment that Anna almost wasted another second being afraid that she was going to try to help anyway, and probably end up very hurt. It made the ache in Anna’s heart several times worse.

Caught by the tangles of her other memories, suddenly, and maybe a little ridiculously, all she could think of was the countless stories people shared about their spouses heading off to sea, or war, and coming back or not, and because they knew what the odds were, making the most of every last second.

Olaf’s present swung from its cord under her shirt.

She didn’t know if the sailor would like the comparison, but. She was a pirate. She was allowed to be a little selfish. She set her shoulders back, absorbing the pensive, serious face and the silky blonde waves that framed it. The soft curve of her jawline was tighter than usual, which said something with how much stress she already felt over whatever it was that always had her so worried.

Anna wondered, still being selfish, how much that meant about what Anna meant to her.

But Joan was waiting, and she wasn’t so selfish that she would ask, so she settled for lunging determinedly, and gracelessly, into the sailor’s personal space. Not quite in her lap, but close enough that she could feel heat against her thigh, and then against her hand, and hear the sharp breath that might have stolen hers away in a different moment.

Uncertainty flashed across the sailor’s face. Vulnerability that mixed with the adrenaline in Anna’s veins, making her heart race.

Sirens, she thought to herself in a spark of brilliance or utter wrongness. Irresistible menaces.

Anna wasn’t that at all, no matter what the sailor called her. But there was a tremble to her captain’s lips that matched Anna’s rising hand, and when it reached its destination, stroking the stress from her jaw, her eyelids fluttered shut. Anna’s resisted the temptation, and she had no idea how, especially when she pulled the sailor in close enough to feel the warmth of her breathing against her lips.

With only an instant of hesitation, Anna pressed them fully to the sailor’s cheek, hoping with all her might that she got to do this again.

“My name,” she said, lips still brushing against her, more reckless dreams bursting in her chest when she thought of how long it had been since she told anyone, “is Anna.”

If she was going to imagine that the minute shift of the sailor’s jaw under her hand, so noticeable next to the new stillness that had taken over the rest of her, was a smile, she was definitely going to imagine that she wasn’t imagining it at all.

Kissing the sailor’s cheek one more time, memorizing the softness and taste of sea salt that coated her skin, Anna pulled away before she stayed forever. “And I’ll be back before you know it.”

Hoping more that that wasn’t a lie, and knowing what the odds were of the heroic goodbye turning into tears and blubbering if she stuck around, Anna took off, skipping steps at a time to get back up the cliff face before roaring down the grass and into path through the trees, not daring to look back for a second.

That was the plan.

“Anna!”

Anna looked back.

The sailor’s countenance blazed. “I meant it,” she said. “If you ever want a new crew…”

Anna laughed, and if it sounded more like a sob, they’d have to see each other again for it to matter, so that was okay. Olaf’s scrimshaw burned against its spot next to her heart, too good and innocent to be true, and she waved her sendoff. “Still a pirate!”

She took the path down to the beach at a sprint.

The next time she looked back, the cliff was passing out of the horizon line from Joan’s bow.

And she found herself promising, after all of the months she’d been trapped there, that she’d make it back. Somehow.

Everything was quiet.

An ordinary kind of quiet, not shrouded in ominous terror, or hiding under the ringing hiss of explosives. One that kept the soothing spell of waves alive as they lapped gently against the rocks. Warm, with soft breezes that could barely carry away raindrops. It made thoughts of icebergs and winter feel such a long way away, when they had been so close just a moment ago. Even the snow beneath her head had melted away, leaving a cushion of puffy cloud behind to cradle her through the peaceful lull of sleep.

Slowly, with an absent ease smoother than an oar through the glass stillness of a lake, it turned into the drowsy haze of morning.

Anna was in a bed. Tucked under a bazillion blankets.

Anna didn’t think she was ever moving again.

The world surrounding the bed felt like it was in agreement with her. Solid. Like land.

Or magic.

Memories unfurled like fluttering pages in a storybook.

Joan, full of flames that danced on a frozen ocean. Bottomless, endless pain, and the cool touch of snow. Floating weightlessly into a giant pair of arms while new voices echoed over the silent sea, her hand hooked around the familiar one that shouted orders as quietly as it could. A rougher resting place, filled with bright chatter that followed everywhere, obediently falling to every single hush until the next time it forgot.

After that…

This was probably what was after that.

Anna opened her eyes.

Light spilled into the world, and she lost whatever sense she’d had of where she was and why. A bright white blur, full of misplaced edges and moving dots, veiled her vision, and it took a very long time for the sleep to blink itself away.

When it finally did, she was in a ship’s cabin, staring through a misted haze of curtains hanging from shattered planks of roof. At land. Definitely land. All of outside was strewn with rocky sand and bubbling tide pools, threads of ice curled protectively around them.

Watching the catch of the breeze playing with the curtains, it would have been very easy to fall back to sleep with the delicate decorations of frost guarding her, the oddness of lying on a bed in a broken, beached cabin feeling closer to perfect than anything had in forever.

She rolled over, squishing the down in the other side of her pillow, drowsily taking in the unbroken side of the cabin. Or she would have, if the sight of two ships resting side by side weren’t the first thing she saw through the glistening glass porthole.

One, which she had never expected to see, hadn’t seen even when the order to attack had run throughout the lower deck, too busy scrambling to perfect her sabotage, was, without a doubt, the breathing version of the carving under her shirt. Made of dark, handsome wood that gleamed so startlingly in the dawning light that she never would have had to wonder who captained it, shimmering rainbows bounced from the veins of ice sewing the vessel together. The legendary Wintergale.

The other was Joan.

Dozens of holes blasted through her, and brand new scorch marks over every board.

Anna dragged herself up, the small retreat from the soft fleece blankets bringing back all the aches and bruises she’d been more than happy forgetting, when the cabin’s main attraction stopped her in her creaking tracks.

Sitting in a chair by the bed, fast asleep, was Elsa.

From the polished boots, to the socked feet next to them, to the blonde strands unspooling around an arm made of ice. Elsa.

Slouching.

Elsas knew how to slouch.

Anna’s head sank back into the pillow.

Her chest was rising in slow, deep breaths, and there was a smudge of red on her cheek from sleeping on top of the chair. The other lines that usually marked her face were nowhere in sight. Neither were any of the maps or books she carried around. Just her, and the steady inhales and exhales that joined the dreamy cabin solitude.

For someone with such a fearsome reputation, it was hard to believe how cute she looked.

It was hard to believe she was real. If the parts of Anna that weren’t stiff and sorry could come up with some kind of motivation for movement, she would have pinched herself. She felt like she’d flown through a hurricane on a sailboat and found paradise.

A jacket, several sizes too small, shifted from its spot on Elsa’s lap. Flopping softly to the floor, on top of its captain’s feet, it barely made a sound. Nevertheless, Elsa’s eyes flickered open, looking towards Anna before any of the rest of her knew she was awake.

Anna amended her previous thought, watching the moment Elsa saw her, and the dawning light that wiped away all traces of sleep.

This was paradise.

“Hi,” she said.

Croaked. She winced, a poor, beleaguered hand reaching up to her tender throat.

Elsa stood up from her chair and knelt next to the bed. “Hi,” she said softly, not croaking, and sounding so heavenly that Anna wondered if she really had died. “How are you feeling?”

Anna shrugged with her head, swallowing down the pain. “Speechless.” Elsa stifled a laugh, and it didn’t hurt at all to smile at her. “No siren calls today.”

“You’ve always been effective without them,” Elsa said. Her fingers played with the fringe of Anna’s pillowcase. For a moment, Anna was sure that they were going to reach out to her, and the quiet affection in Elsa’s face agreed, but she didn’t move from her spot of not quite close enough. “I think you’ll live.”

“Thanks to you.”

Elsa’s fidgeting stopped. Anna’s honest rasp brought a weight to the warm air that wasn’t all imaginary. The next wafting breeze had a small bite of cold to it. Elsa looked at her throat, a swirl of winter coming back to the gentle sailor.

It wasn’t an awed silence for her, obviously, but she wasn’t seeing herself. Anna’s heart picked up a few beats, and she was just a little relieved that all of the garbled emotions and feelings just staring at Elsa was bringing out were all too hard to say at the moment. She was a peasant lying before a queen, and it was intoxicating and heated in a way that had nothing to do with her magic.

The fidgeting came back. Not close enough as they were, those fingers were suddenly the height of distraction.

“Arendelle’s Navy appears to have arrested Prince Hans for piracy,” Elsa said, blandly.

Seconds passed, the tone needing some time to reconnect with meaning. Then it hit. Relief, and the final banishment of a stress that felt impossibly ancient, coursed through Anna. She slumped further into her pillow. “Thank you,” she said, with as much sincerity as she could muster.

Elsa smiled. “I don’t think I had much to do with it. Someone else kicked him into the ocean.” Her fingertips fell to Anna’s cheek. “You were incredible, Anna.”

Anna scoffed under the glow of her name and the touch of Elsa’s hand. “Look who’s—agh.” She clutched her throat. “Talking,” she finished feebly. She shut her eyes, scowling and trying futilely to rub the discomfort away.

The next moment, blissful cold was sinking in, deeper and more effective than her fumbling attempts.

Anna opened her eyes, and she couldn’t be secretly delighted, because the smile would give her away, but she was still inappropriately ecstatic to see Elsa’s arm, not her magic, taking the pain away. The back of her hand was pressed to Anna’s neck, careful and unrestricting, and maybe even more careful not to touch the hand that was already there.

Looking back over at Elsa, it wasn’t surprising at all to see the worry lines falling back into place. Her cool fingers fretted by Anna’s pulse point, and she was frowning at them with the most endearing expression of befuddlement that Anna had ever seen.

“I—” A flurry of snowflakes popped next to her head, and she shook them away tentatively. “It would probably be easier if I made you something to hold—”

Anna grabbed Elsa’s hand. Holding it firmly enough that even overthinking worriers should get the point. She waited for Elsa to meet her eyes, yearning disbelief in that haunted blue, and smiled. “Elsa, it’s fine.”

Elsa examined Anna closely, the furrow of worry between her eyes disagreeing with the spark of joy Anna had seen when she said her name. Anna grinned, threading their fingers together as best she could with the angles involved. Slowly, and so obviously against what she considered her better judgment that Anna had to hold back from laughing, Elsa smiled back.

It would have been simple to sit there forever, basking in all of Elsa, touching her, not having to worry about grand schemes and revenge and tragedy for another lifetime of staring into her eyes. Anna could feel herself wanting it, and with her, with Elsa, it wasn’t so unthinkable that she might want it too.

The blossoming hope, completely unburdened and free, felt strange and wobbly in her chest, but worth it. So, so worth it that she could have cried enough happy tears to build them a whole new ocean.

She settled for smiling at Elsa instead, squeezing her hand.

“You, um,” Anna cleared her throat roughly, cursing the extra syllable, “you brought Joan back.”

Cue dimming of smile. Elsa nodded. “She’s your ship,” she said. “We can probably have her seaworthy in a few weeks. We wouldn’t want to keep you on land more than we have to.”

The light tease fell flat. Anna worried her lip experimentally.

“I don’t have a crew,” she blurted, at a whisper because pain, not possible overreaching in emotional commitment that she desperately wanted and understood on absolutely no level. “I, uh. Might be looking for a new one.”

Elsa, appropriately enough, if not completely nerve-wracking, froze. Her mouth wasn’t exactly hanging open, but the small gap, slack next to the rest of her body’s stiffness, stood out. She licked her lips, and Anna didn’t think she knew how tightly her hand was holding Anna’s, but she was grateful for it.

“It comes with a new ship,” whispered Elsa, slowly. Anna’s heartbeat envied the pace.

“An irresistible ship,” she pointed out. The pitch could have worked as a whistle. She was looking at the bed covers, and didn’t know when that had started, but she smiled anyway. “I was in love with Wintergale before I even saw her. Now that I have, I mean, sign me up.” She chuckled, nerves at an all-time high. “And…”

She looked up, giddy before the glittering wonder in Elsa’s eyes.

“I’m a little in love with her captain, too.”

All of Elsa gave a small lurch forward.

Not enough to cross the boundaries of personal space she’d set up even with both of her hands on Anna, but enough for anyone with eyes to notice.

Anna had great eyes.

Anna didn’t stop breathing, even with her heart running away from her.

An ice cold thumb caressed her cheek. Unlike the rest of the person attached to it, it didn’t shake. Drawing close, with movements sudden enough that Anna couldn’t have managed without someone getting hurt, Elsa pressed her lips softly to Anna’s forehead, holding there until her trembling had passed fully into Anna.

“I think,” Elsa murmured, “she’s a lot in love with you.”

And when she leaned down to kiss her, under the torrent of pure joy and elation, it regretfully occurred to Anna that she was joining a magical pirate crew legends were told of, capable of traveling the seven seas and beyond—after she’d already found the greatest treasure of any world.

But, she thought, wrapping her arms around Elsa, it was a small regret.