Winter's Bride - Candace Wondrak Page 0,20

trapped anywhere if that’s where you wanted to be. But it’d been difficult. So very difficult. What came easily to my brother and the humans was hard for me to grasp. I feared it was my fault this had all gone on for so long.

Night fell. I’d sent my messenger off. I would wed the girl in two days’ time, and after that we would see how long she would last. Lately, they’d lasted less and less time. Perhaps this one wouldn’t even make it to our wedding night. My bed, I feared, had become too cold for a human to survive.

It wasn’t as if I did it on purpose. These things… they simply happened, and I felt as helpless as anyone else in the situation. I wanted to find the diamond in the rough, so to speak, the woman who would help me feel again, the one who would take away the eternal cold I felt nestled deep within my soul.

I did not know if such a thing was possible anymore. I’d gone on for so long like this, trapped here, in a castle of my own making, a misery of my own. I did not know if there would ever be true happiness for me.

I’d taken to wandering the castle at night. Sleeping had become a luxury I could hardly do anymore. It wasn’t like I needed to sleep; being a god, I didn’t need to do any of the things mortals did to keep their bodies in top shape. Sleep, eat, drink, or even breathe. I did them all on occasion, but it was not necessary.

My feet often chose where to go, my mind a mess. When you were immortal, when time itself ceased to matter to you, you tended to zone out. Or I did, at least. Perhaps my brother wasn’t afflicted as much as I was, but I had to deal with myself. Wandering the castle in the middle of the night, refusing to go to my bedchambers and look at myself in the mirror was something that helped me stay sane.

Although, to be frank, I did wonder if I lost my sanity a while ago. Was insanity not doing the same thing over and over while expecting miraculously different results? Was I not expecting—or hoping, for that matter—for this time to be different, for my bride to be different? It was the same thing every time, the same hopeful feeling nesting inside of me, a wordless cry for help, a feeling a god should not have.

And yet here I was. Yet I always expected something more from them. I couldn’t say why. They were merely human; raised by humans, bred to be mortal, nothing unique about them in any way. Of course, I knew my brother would say there was always something unique about them, but I was too weary to notice the tiny details like that.

The women… my old brides… they were never what I wanted. Not what I needed. I was unsure of what I wanted, beyond someone to take away the eternal cold in me.

Was that even possible? Could someone help lessen the feeling of ice inside my heart? I was the god of winter, after all. I was Winter. I was both the season and the magic, rolled into one. What was Winter if he was not cold, frozen solid to the point where he could not remember the last time he’d felt a speck of warmth in his soul?

Had I ever carried that warmth, or was I molded into creation like this? Seemed a terrible fate, to belong to such a cold, unforgiving season. My brother had it easy, in that way. Why wouldn’t he be a free spirit? Why would he not wander the human kingdom whenever he wanted? He did not feel as awful as I did, did not abhor his eternal life as I did. We might have been brothers, but we were anything but the same.

I found myself in the grand hall, where my throne sat. The candelabras on the walls had dimmed with nightfall, though they still shone enough light to see. Shadows danced across everything, the room feeling smaller in the darkness. It held nothing but my throne, a regal carpet on the floor, rolled out from the fancy seat, where fellow guests would stand. If I ever had any guests.

I didn’t. It was always just me.

Me and only me, unless I called for my messenger. When my messenger was not here, he