you look flushed.”
“Hans, I…” Elsa looked from the prince to the others. All she could think about was Mama’s letter. “I need another moment.” She reached for the door handle. The Duke held the door closed.
“I think you’ve spent enough time shutting people out,” he said firmly. “Don’t you?”
Elsa felt a flash of anger at the Duke’s words.
“You can’t talk to the princess like that,” Hans said. The two started arguing.
Elsa looked desperately back at her door. A letter with keys to her past was on one side, while Hans and the Duke were trying to decide her future on the other. Her fingertips started to tingle, and this time she couldn’t hold her emotions back. She needed to get to that letter.
“I’m not doing this right now,” Elsa said shakily, and the Duke tried to interrupt her again. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”
The Duke touched her arm. “Princess, if I may—”
The tremors going through her body came in waves. Her high collar was beginning to itch terribly, and her emotions were too strong to control. “No, you may not,” Elsa snapped. “I need to go back to my room. You should leave.”
“Leave?” The Duke looked outraged. “Before the coronation?”
“Princess, there is no time to go back to your room again,” Lord Peterssen pleaded.
“The priest is waiting,” Kai added.
“Princess?” Gerda said, sounding unsure. “Are you all right?”
No, she wasn’t all right. She needed to read that letter. Circumstance forced us to keep you apart. She needed to find Anna. They’d been separated for far too long. Elsa looked from the crowd in front of her to her door again. If they wouldn’t let her enter, she’d find another way back inside. The castle had many secret passages. She’d go around. Elsa tried pushing her way through the crowd in desperation. Her sleeves felt so tight; she could barely move her arms.
“Elsa, wait.” Hans reached for her, accidentally pulling off one of her gloves.
“Give me my glove!” Elsa panicked.
Hans held it out of reach. “Something is troubling you. Please just talk to me,” he said. “Let me help you.”
“Princess! The priest is waiting,” Lord Peterssen said.
“Weselton is a close trade partner and I should be at the coronation…” the Duke was muttering.
Gerda tried to intervene. “The princess is upset.”
Elsa closed her eyes. “Enough,” she whispered.
The Duke kept talking. “I was trying to help you present yourself in the best possible light after closing yourself away and…”
Elsa needed him to stop talking. All she could hear inside her head was Mama’s words.
We love you and your sister very much.
Sister.
Sister.
She had a sister!
Nothing else mattered. She pushed past them and ran down the hall. The voices followed.
“Princess, wait!” Kai cried.
Elsa was done waiting. She needed to read that letter. Sister. Sister. Her breathing became ragged and her fingers tingled so badly they burned.
“Princess Elsa!” Hans called.
“I said, enough!”
Ice flew away from her hands with such force it shot across the floor, spiking into jagged, twisted icicles that formed an immediate barrier between her and the others. Hans jumped out of the way of a spike that threatened to hit him in the chest. The Duke was knocked off his feet. Frozen crystals of ice floated through the air and silently fell to the floor.
Elsa gasped in horror.
Her secret was a secret no more.
“Sorcery,” she heard the Duke whisper. His face pulsed with anger as he struggled to stand up. “So that’s why. I knew something dubious was going on here!”
Elsa grasped her own hand in shock. She locked eyes with Hans and saw his confusion.
“Elsa?” he whispered.
She did the only thing she still could do: run.
Down the hall she raced, bursting through the closest set of doors she could find.
“There she is!” someone cried.
Without realizing it, Elsa had exited the castle. She was standing in the courtyard in front of the statue of her and her parents, where hundreds of people were waiting. When they saw her, the people began to clap and cheer. Elsa started to back up, then heard voices. Hans, Kai, the Duke, and Lord Peterssen were coming. With no choice, she ran down the steps, holding up her coronation gown as she darted into the crowd.
“It is her!” someone shouted.
“Princess Elsa!” People bowed to her.
Elsa spun around, looking for a path out of the crowd.
A man blocked her. “Our future queen!”
Elsa’s heart was pounding. She tried to go another way.
A woman holding a baby stepped forward. “Your Royal Highness,” she said kindly.
Elsa immediately thought of her mother and Anna.
“Are