"Your esteemed graces and majesties."

The man's voice rang through the huge hall, his already-ample volume slamming into the high ice walls and reflecting from them, somehow amplified and sent back into the centre of the room where it stabbed mercilessly into the ears of the assembled gentry.

It cannot be ice, a few thought. Not this high or this ornate.

Diamonds maybe. Did Arendelle have a diamond mile they didn't tell anyone about?

They looked around like stunned chickens, still casting desperately for any explanation other than the obvious. As if finding a single flaw or other credulous reason for the existence of this unreal place would somehow disprove everything else they had seen and heard since they had arrived in the capital and been escorted via the long and winding road to the near-summit of the mountain.

Those final lingering doubts from those too stupid or too blind to believe were finally dispelled as with a faint noise like glass shards bouncing off one another an entire section of what had looked like feet-thick wall simply melted in front of them, to flow and reform as twin sets of winding staircases leading up into the heights of the ice palace.

"This…this is preposterous."

Anna turned her head with a sigh as the long, nasally, weasely voice cut through the stunned silence."Duke?"

In contrast to the surrounding blues and whites of the palace Duke Weselton ran the full shade of hues from ochre at his neck to bright red covering his face. His uniform sheened with sweat at the armpits and knees. Clearly the ride up hadn't done the man much good. Even so, his voice had lost none of that intense whine the small man could make from it. "Princess, I must insist!"

Were you always so small? Anna wondered. "Insist away, your grace." She didn't have the time for it. She felt light, elated. On the floor above she knew her sister was putting the final touches on her coronation. Ascension, Elsa's voice whispered in her head.

The man shook his finger at her a few more times, as if he hadn't really thought through any more words to say. Clearly he had expected a grovelling apology for treating the assembled patronage of Europe like…like tourists! Looking up at her – word but had the princess always been so tall? He remembered her as a tiny thing hiding behind her late mother's skirts, not this woman staring imperiously at her elder and better – Duke Weselton suddenly felt…small?

Anna smiled, dazzlingly. "You're here for my sister's coronation your grace." Anna gestured around the bottom floor of the ice palace, where the guards and servants that had come from the castle were busy laying out the drapery and food they had brought up from Arendelle. The mixture of sheer white towering walls and plain human-made materials was a strange sight, but Elsa had given up in the end when Anna had insisted. You can't make them eat snow. Anna looked past – over, really – the duke and met the eyes of every other noble in turn. She noticed the Southern Isles' King looked extremely bored. "A time to reinforce the ties between royal and noble houses."

A time to reinforce trade deals and glad-hand each other and eat big pies, Anna had complained just that morning as the two had dressed. Well, while she had dressed, sitting on the edge of their bed and pulling on clothes roughly like she held a grudge against them. Elsa had watched from bed as Anna had pulled on her clothes. Servants stood by outside the door ready to help dress the soon-to-be monarch, but the two always craved those few seconds on the morning when it was no-one but themselves.

Let them, Elsa had whispered from their bed, twin sapphires of her eyes watching Anna until the last scrap of skin had disappeared under clothing. She had leaned forward so that she was draped against Anna's back, had taken her fingers and delicately bent Anna's head backwards, their lips meeting in a deep kiss that had set Anna's lips tingling. This will be the last day they can say a lot of things, Elsa had whispered into her mouth. Anna imagined she could still feel that breath and its words coating her lungs inside, warming her.

Anna met the eyes of everyone in turn. Some tried to meet her gaze back, others tried and failed, pretending they had merely glanced at her as they looked around the room. A few looked confident, others nervous. Only the king from the Southern Isles looked bored, as if this entire farce was beneath him. "Esteemed ladies and gentlemen," she began. "Welcome to the Palace of Arendelle."

A few mouths opened as if to start speaking, but the words were cut off as around them all, magic began to happen. If the far wall turning into a staircase had taken their breath away what happened now threatened to choke the life from them as the sheer featureless walls began to twist and slide, lines forming within them that looked like icebergs about to break up and smash. Instead though every crystalline fragment inside the walls began to shift in a riot of blues and whites, as every single line and pillar in the ice palace bent upwards, to align with their creator.

Elsa – Queen Elsa – stood at the top of the spiral staircases, staring down at the assembled nobles of the continent. Instead of some ludicrous over-wrought and complex dress as the others wore she appeared in a simple shift, some unnameable colour between blue and green that started almost at black from her feet and lightened at her shoulders until it was almost white. Around the simple dress was wrapped a cloak that shimmered and changed as they watched, fastened to her at the neck and shoulders with a furred silver chain and choker.

Anna stared up at her sister, feeling her heart vibrate inside her chest at the sheer beauty and majesty of her sister as she stood above them all.

"Your graces and majesties, thank you for coming" Elsa said, her voice seeming to rush down the staircase at them as they stood at the threshold of the hall. "Let us begin."

She almost missed it, but only Anna had the ears or the awareness left to hear the faintly-bored sounding voice come from behind her.

"Yes, let's."

It wasn't what they had expected at all. Good. Elsa had no intentions of allowing them the security of the familiar. Let them shift from foot to foot nervously, glancing down at the riot of blues and greens and whites that shifted like a roiling ocean under their feet inside the ice. Let them be nervous that the throne she sat in wasn't the traditional wooden and golf-leaf seat that her father had been canonized in but a high-backed slab of pure white ice decorated with trails of snowflakes. Don't let them forget that the chandelier above them that shone light down through the gaps of the tower wasn't not bronze and hammered with inch-thick bolts into the ceiling but an incredibly ornate ice-made one that appeared to be suspended with a single thread. Let them look at the tiara – ice of her course – as it was lowered onto her head by a priest who wore not the cross but an iron runestone around his neck polished so much it was a white mirror. Let them do all of this and make them remember every single thing around them, from the floor they stood in to the air they breathed, was totally within her control.

"Queen Elsa of Arendelle."

Elsa focused herself for just a moment as the priest said the words, and on queue the twisting fault-lines inside the ice that were responsible for throwing the entire floor in a mad dance of colour moved one last time, to all point straight at her feet. The effect was nothing less than every mote of light and colour in the tower bending to her sovereign will.

"Your majesty."

Elsa couldn't tell which of the interchangeable nobles said it, but she watched as they all bowed. She looked down at her sister kneeling before her, one hand on the sword that rested point-down, the other holding the ceremonial mace, the last part of the ceremony she hadn't quite been willing to part with. It symbolised her promise to protect her people from all harm, and that was a promise she had every intention of keeping. Her heart sang in her chest, felt as if it was both being pulled from her body and forced deeper into it at the same moment. She felt something in the ice below her penetrate through the soles of her thin slippers and feet, moving up through her legs and chest to surround her heart. All her life she had stared out from the old castle – and it really was the old castle now, make no mistake – at the giant mountain that towered above Arendelle. If she had drawn strength from it then, now she felt as though she were soaking in it, like she was drinking it up until she was the mountain.

It felt like every moment of her life had led her here. She risked a glance at Anna, who even with her head bowed was looking up at her eyes that had never captivated Elsa more than they did at this very moment. In that moment she never felt closer to her sister, not even when they were pressed against each other at night.

She felt like there was nothing she couldn't do.

Nothing at all.

She leaned forward as if to take the mace, but instead placed her hands on top of Anna's that held the sword, raised her chin up with the other, and kissed her deeply on the lips.

She knew the gasps had happened, rather than heard them herself as she opened her eyes again to see Anna's fire staring into her own. Are you sure? the eyes seemed to ask. For seconds the only sound in the icicle throne-room was the dull clang of the ceremonial mace as it fell to the ground from Elsa's hands. Then...

"THIS…THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!"

Elsa felt the mountain and her power inside her, ready to obey her command at a moment's notice. She rose up and met the eyes of the man who had screeched. Of course, who else?

If the Duke's face had been red before, it was positively scarlet now. Elsa stared down at him. "Your grace?"

Weselton pointed at her with a shaky hand, mouth open so wide it might as well have fallen off. Behind him the other nobles also stared with wide eyes. All but one. As he spoke the Duke's voice seemed to waver up and down the entire range of octaves. "What what WHAT is this!?"

Elsa walked down the steps from her throne, Anna pivoting with her until they stood side by side. "Is it not obvious your grace?" Elsa said, a pretended note of polite confusion in her voice.

"This is…this is…" the Duke looked as though he would drop dead on that very spot. "BLASPHEMY!"

As if the Duke's yelling had somehow burst a dam the other nobles broke their silence, and Elsa stood quietly by her love as fingers were pointed and words were said. Some were shouts of denunciation, other pleas for explanation or reasonableness. Elsa and Anna stood there and weathered them all. Elsa felt Anna's warm hand clasp over her own and felt that warmth flow through her. Enough.

"ENOUGH!"

Her voice carried not just through the air but through the very ice they stood on, and suddenly the dozens of gathered nobles were reminded that this was not the grand hall of the old castle or even the ornate chapel of that castle, but a tower that barely fit them all inside, in a palace made out of, apparently, the very willpower of the queen they were now screaming at. A few of the more timid nobles near the back shuffled closer to those at the front, glancing around the cylindrical chamber at walls that suddenly seemed very cold and foreboding, and thinking about the extremely ornate, extremely sharp snowflake chandelier that hung above them.

"For months," Elsa began, not in a tone of violence, but one of complete neutrality. A voice that nevertheless very much held the potential for much more. The voice of a queen. "For months approaching my coronation I entertained your thinly-disguised attempts at gaining my hand in marriage. Now it is a question you can put from your minds." She risked a small smile. "Isn't royal blood something you all claim to care a great deal about? What blood can be purer?"

A richly-dressed man she didn't even bother to remember the name of stepped forward. Instead Elsa reached into her royal education for the name of the flag on his lapel. "This is madness."

Ah, now she remembered. Oh, he really did make it too easy. "I hardly expect to hear that from a countryman of the lineage of Charles II, monsieur."

Another stepped forward to replace him, waving an expensive-looking gold cross in his hands. "It is ungodly!"

At those words the very ice around Elsa seemed to darken, and the unfortunate man could have sworn the two women facing him stared with eyes of brilliant cold diamonds. "Judging by the words of your countrymen that have reached us here, marquis, this then should come as no surprise to them!" Her free hand tightened as she remembered very clearly the crosses she had recently encountered, hung in the burned villages she and Anna had travelled through. 'Missionaries' whipping the faithful into a frenzy.

"The people will not stand for it."

Elsa stepped down the stairs of the throne, snowflakes dancing under her feet and tiny icicles forming where she did so. Icicles that looked very much like small spikes formed ahead of her, pointing at the nobles. "My people will stand for it, for this is my country." Elsa raised Anna's hand up. "I have my crown, by all the laws of royalty. I am queen here." She met their eyes one by one as she talked, and to all the assembled messengers and minor royalty of Europe she stared them down and not a single one managed to keep that gaze without blinking first. "I am Queen of Arendelle, not princess any longer. Your decision, insomuch as you have any choice in my kingdom, is to accept my choice of consort, or to sever all ties."

"Consort…" Weselton hissed, and stopped suddenly as he felt the skin around his legs become very, very cold.

Elsa glared. "For the respect my father had for you, dear Duke, I forgive you your outburst, and I implore you to be quiet." She turned away from the terrified old man and moved among the other. Many shrunk away, but some had overcome the shock enough to hold their ground. "Arendelle remains as it was, with everything we can offer. Oak and pine and cedar from the forests. Some small mining interests we barely use and offer use of for a price. Ice year round. Ice enough for a continent." She held out a hand, and on her palm a perfect cube formed from nothing. "Endless ice," she said, and they all heard the threat there as well as the offer. She spread out her hands and smiled, and for a second Elsa was once again the small princess they remembered being told about. "This is a celebration, please celebrate it."

"Or?"

Elsa's eyes flew to the speaker, and every other noble seemed to shrink away from him as he spoke. Somehow it wasn't a huge surprise.

"Or nothing, your grace," Elsa said to the King from the Southern Isles. "I am not offering an alternative." She resisted the urge to grin as elation surged through her. She could see it in all of them. They were greedy, or old, or really just didn't care but knew they had to make the effort. They would complain and whine and make endless accusations of filth and blasphemy but in the end they would accept it. Finally. Finally this entire rotten situation could be dealt with and she and Anna could get back to their real lives. She felt euphoric, like there was nothing she couldn't accomplish. She imagined she could feel Anna's heart beating via their connected hands.

She stared the man down, and that was why she wasn't the first one to notice it. Even though it was her palace and her ice, and her will working on the mountain, her elation temporarily blinded her. Which was why it was the wheezing, coughing, spluttering duke of all people who was the first to realise, and point with glee.

"Your people will accept it!?" he yelled, practically hopping on one foot. "Your people seem to have other ideas!"

Elsa felt it as Anna ripped her hand and rushed to the walls of the tower. The walls that faced down the side of the mountain. With some effort Elsa ripped her attention away from the spluttering duke and laconic King, and strode over to stand by her sister. She thought as she walked, and the walls melted away and down, and the nobles huddled together as a rough winter breeze suddenly blew from the balcony that had formed. Anna rushed forward and Elsa felt a small thrill that her sister trusted her so much she would run out over practically open air, knowing that Elsa's ice would support her.

That thrill was ripped away though as Anna spoke, and Elsa heard the pain in her voice. "No…"

Elsa looked down and was speechless, all of her elation fading away as suddenly as it had arrived. If the mountain had given her strength then suddenly it was as if she was a thousand miles away it, as she stared down at her town.

Arendelle was burning.

Okay so I don't really have an excuse for wandering off for months at a time. My life has changed pretty significantly since I started this and not having the time to work on fanfiction just turned into absolute plain forgetfulness about the entire thing.

It's incredibly unlikely I'll finish Queens, writing two things at the same time was immensely stupid. I'm going to make a real push to finish this though, I feel like it's the least I owe people who took the time to sit and review, especially when the end is so close.

I'm rusty but I'll do my best, thanks for reading.

~Cobray