Winter's Bride - Candace Wondrak
Prologue – Winter
The days were cold and long, stuck inside the castle and its grounds. It was not a place humans dared to venture; a castle made of white block and ice, a place where even the sun’s rays could not warm. Impressively carved into the side of a snowy mountain, with spires shooting towards the sky at an almost alarming height.
But it was home.
Winter’s home. My home.
Some might say the land was cursed. Some might say it was because of me, because of my power, that the kingdom between here and there only had two seasons: a bitter, raging winter… and a bright, intensely hot summer.
The latter was my brother’s doing.
Ishan, Summer, my brother since the beginning of time, had always been more free-spirited than me. He’d always stuck his nose in the human world, in the villages and cities that sprouted up in the lands we oversaw. He took joy in them, in their mortality, in their iron-hard wills and the way they fought, even when the odds were turned against them.
I was not like him. I never left my castle. And, even as it was, Ishan and I were not kings. We were not men. Our blood did not run red, simply because it did not run at all. We were not human, because we were gods. We were better than them.
Even so, it was a lonely existence. I wanted what the humans seemed to get so easily, what kept their smiles deep and their eyes bright. I wanted the one thing I was destined to never have: love.
And so, with the help of my magic, my messenger, every twenty-five years I searched for a bride. It had been like that for an eternity now, and though I felt like giving up, though I felt as if fate wanted to keep me locked in this castle, alone, until time itself ceased to exist, I couldn’t.
Winter would find his bride, no matter how long it took.
Chapter One – Morana
The weather had started to change. You could feel it in your bones, a chill steadily growing, a chill that would continue to grow until you were freezing, every part of you desperately searching for warmth. The winters were rough around here, but we managed. We kept a good supply of dried meat to last and enough grain to feed the animals in the barns. We had our system, and it worked.
Years ago, when I was much younger than the nineteen years I was now, I had asked Ma and Pa why we didn’t find somewhere else to live. There were other villages in the valley; north and south dominated by two imposing castles that were said to belong to Winter and Summer themselves. Surely there had to be other places beyond this land? Surely there had to be more to the world?
But it wasn’t my place to question, and Ma and Pa always had something to say to shut me up. Or another chore to give me to punish me for being curious.
I couldn’t help it, though. I yearned for something more, for a life that did not consist of marrying whatever suitor offered my parents a goat or two. I wanted more. So, so much more.
What was strange was that I was the only one who seemed to want more. Everyone else in the village appeared to be happy with their lot in life, with their families and their duties to keep their farms and houses running. I wanted to be free of chores, to be truly free of all responsibilities. Surely there had to be somewhere out there that could give me what I wanted? A far-off kingdom with an actual king or queen and not the deities we worshipped?
Winter and Summer. Two sides of the same thing: nature. Two extremes, one hot and one cold, who we were basically slaves to, dedicating our lives around. If I had to choose one, I’d choose Summer. Many in our town thought I was blessed by Summer himself, my white skin always touched with a warm tint of color, my blonde hair always a few shades lighter and more golden than the rest of my family’s.
Whether or not I was really touched by Summer was beyond me, of course.
The wind lapped around my frame as I pulled water up from the well. Two buckets, which I then had to carry back to the house. It wasn’t my first trip of the afternoon, either. My little sister, Ember, was supposed to