head rolling toward her.
“You’ll kill her!” Elsa screamed.
Hans didn’t move. “Exactly.” He looked at Elsa as Anna writhed on the floor in pain. “You doomed yourself, but she was dumb enough to go after you. Now you’ll both be out of the picture and I’ll rule Arendelle on my own.”
“No!” Elsa cried out in agony. Her cuffs began to glow again. Snowflakes spread across them, the chains, and soon the walls. Hans looked up in surprise as the room filled with ice. Elsa yanked once, twice, and then a third time as icicles formed on the ceiling and fell on top of them. Olaf clambered onto Anna just as the ice began to fall. Hans covered his head with his hands.
Elsa concentrated on the window in the dungeon, and willed her magic to create a hole. Finally, the stones burst, taking half the wall and her chains along with it. Each cuff on her hands broke in two, freeing her from her binds. Elsa climbed through the opening in the wall and looked back at Anna. The ice on her body was starting to recede as Elsa ran into the tempest and disappeared.
There was a loud blast and shouting, then the sound of men running.
“The princess has escaped!” someone yelled, but his voice sounded far away.
A moment earlier, Anna had felt like she was freezing from the inside out. The second Elsa was gone, the nausea subsided and she started to warm up again.
How strange, she thought.
Do the magic! the small voice inside her head said again, causing an instant headache. She tried to block the memory out.
You remember? Elsa had asked. Anna had been so surprised by the question she hadn’t known how to answer her. Elsa clearly did, but Anna was still figuring out these new memories and the information Hans had fed her. She couldn’t believe it was all true: she was the lost princess of Arendelle and King Agnarr and Queen Iduna’s child. She thought of the portrait she had seen of the royal family in the castle.
Anna heard her heart pounding as she started to put together the pieces: the way Freya had perished, the infrequent visits under the cloak of darkness, the carriage that waited for her outside the bakery. The portrait of the queen in the castle that looked remarkably like the woman who had been her aunt and her mother’s best friend.
Could Freya and the queen be the same person?
And was that person her birth mother?
She watched through the fuzz in her vision as Olaf’s head rolled by and connected with his body. Suddenly it became clear: Freya was Queen Iduna.
The snowman poked her with his carrot nose. “Anna? Are you all right?”
Anna struggled to sit up and answer him. Then she heard someone else talking.
“Prince Hans!” A guard was leaning over a figure on the ground a few feet away.
“The princess,” Hans choked out. “I tried to stop her from making the storm worse, but she struck me with her magic. She’s…getting…away.”
“Liar!” Anna said, but her voice was weak. The room slowly began to come into focus. Snow was streaming into the dungeon through a large hole in the wall.
Hans pointed to Anna. “Elsa struck Anna, too. Her whole body started to freeze.”
Elsa hadn’t struck her. She had been happy to see Anna. But why had she run away?
Elsa, wake up! Wake up! Wake up! a voice inside her head said. Do you want to build a snowman?
It was her own voice from long ago. The memories were coming to the surface faster now. I need to find Elsa.
“Men, aid Anna while I go after the princess,” she heard Hans say.
“No!” Anna shouted out as the guards descended on her. She watched as Hans turned his shoulder into the wind and disappeared through the hole. His sword was raised, ready to attack. He’s going to kill her, Anna thought. I have to stop him. “I’m fine,” she told the guards. “Someone needs to stop Prince Hans! He’s going to hurt the princess!” The guards looked at her in confusion.
“After the princess!” one of the guards shouted and headed through the hole. The others followed.
Anna struggled to stand up, but she felt like she had been hit by something hard. Slowly, she moved toward the opening in the wall. “We have to find Elsa before Hans and the others do,” Anna told Olaf, but the words sounded strange.
“Hey! Your lips are blue!” Olaf commented.
“Olaf? You have to help me get to Elsa