Winter's Bride - Candace Wondrak Page 0,32

silvery eyes, and I felt the ache in my soul.

All this time, I’d known it was no more than a prolonged death sentence. A god who searched for a bride every twenty-five years; the story itself practically told the non-happy endings of the previous brides, but seeing it for myself was another thing entirely.

This was for Ember. I had volunteered to take her place, I reminded myself. Though the last thing I wanted was to become just another frozen girl locked away in this tower, I would rather it be me than her.

“Take me back to the hall,” I muttered.

Ishan started to speak, as if he’d wanted me to tell him I did not want to marry Abner, as if he’d been expecting me to throw my arms around him and beg him to take me elsewhere, but with one glare from me, he nodded and reached for me.

I closed my eyes for only a split-second, and once we were out of that horrible room, I moved back to the window with no glass, gazing out at the castle below. “Why?” I asked, unable to look at him.

I wasn’t crying, but… but there was emotion welling inside of me. Conflicting feelings. I was torn. A part of me did want to tell Ishan to take me away from this awful place, but the other part of me accepted my fate, that those statues in there would be me, soon enough.

Ishan moved close, peering down at me and paying no heed to the view from the tower. “I don’t know. Perhaps they were not good wives, or perhaps they simply could not live here.”

“Did Abner…” I couldn’t voice the question, but it didn’t matter, because he knew what I meant.

“I don’t know if he did any of them on purpose,” Ishan told me. “But his magic is in this place, woven into every block that makes up this castle. His power holds that wall of ice there, and he had them moved into that room when they turned stolid. Even if he did not outright turn them himself…”

I knew what Ishan was saying, and it hurt to hear. Marrying Winter was dangerous, and I couldn’t help but wonder about all those other poor girls. They’d walked into this castle, probably against their own will, married Abner because they had no choice, and then turned to ice.

Judging from their faces, they’d all been younger, too. None of them lasted twenty-five years here, and I wasn’t sure what that said about Abner. Even if he did not freeze them, his magic did. He still had a hand in it, whether it was unknowing or not.

That… that didn’t make it any better, being an unknowing participant in something like this.

“Please,” Ishan said, touching my back, filling me with his warmth and his magic, causing me to lean into him in spite of myself. “Please, let me take you from this place. Come with me to my castle, and you will be my bride instead of Abner’s. We will be happy. Happy and warm and our lives full of laughter. Please. I could not bear it if you end up like them.”

Marry Ishan, betray Abner? Even though I did not want to face what was in that room, I didn’t know whether I could do something like that.

It was stupid of me, but I found myself pulling away from Ishan and saying, “Thank you for showing me. I… I need time to think.”

“You have no time. You’re to marry my brother tomorrow.” As if I could possibly forget that tiny detail.

“I know,” I told him, tilting my chin up, meeting those dark, amber eyes. In their depths I saw the truth of Ishan’s feelings, how much he cared for me, how badly he wanted me, and I was truly moved. I was. Of course I was. But even so, I could not simply walk away from this. Not without confronting Winter himself. “But I need time. I need to think. Give me that, Ishan, please.”

Ishan’s shoulders slumped beneath his tan tunic, and he was slow to nod. “Very well. When you’re ready, call for me, and I will come.” He lifted a hand, gently caressing my face, touching my cheek in the way only a lover would. “I will always come for you.” And then, in the blink of an eye, he disappeared from my view, leaving me alone in the tallest tower, with the door of ice behind me and its secrets not so