Winter's Bride - Candace Wondrak Page 0,34

stand straight, to hold my head up high—for I was the king of this castle. Though she would be my wife, she could not speak to me as if I meant nothing. A scowl crossed my face, even though I wanted to be left alone, to mope in silence. “I must answer to nothing if I do not wish to,” I told her, frowning. Never before had a frown felt so labored.

“If you want me to become your next bride, you do,” she said, refusing to back down. I could feel the heat coming off her in waves, could feel my brother’s touch on her, and I pushed off the balcony railing, turning away from her, needing space. She only followed me into the hall, refusing to let it go. “Abner!” she called after me, her voice cutting the chilly air as I started down the hall.

I stopped, finding it unusually difficult to breathe just then.

“Do not walk away from me,” Morana said, her feet gliding until she was at my side once again.

I looked at her, and I meant I really looked at her—the fury burning behind her gaze, the intense frown on her lips, the way she held herself in my presence, refusing to back down even though she should be the one kneeling to me. Morana was righteously angry, although I did not know why. Somehow, I had the feeling I was about to find out.

She held my stare, narrowing those beautiful eyes somewhat, as if she hated me. “Tell me the truth, Abner.” Again, she said my name, and it made me wonder if she spoke it purposefully, knowing I did not like being called that.

I was Winter. I was a god. I was not simply a man with a name; to claim I was would be to lie about everything.

“What happens to your brides?” Morana asked, leveling the question at me with an unblinking glare, the fury only seeming to grow behind that stare. The way she spoke, how angry she was… it all made me think she already knew, she knew what happened to every single one of my old brides.

But, no, that was impossible. They were locked behind a wall of ice only I controlled. Morana, a mere human, could never get through it on her own, let alone touch it; to do so would be to turn her hand to ice.

And then, as I stared at her, trying to stick to my silence, to will myself to turn around and walk away, for surely I owed this girl nothing, it came to me. Oh, the possibility dawned on me and made me frown.

Brother, I thought bitterly, did you show her the room? Did you try to convince her to leave with you?

If this was some hairbrained attempt at trying to get Morana to leave me for him, if indeed this girl had seen every single one of my old brides… why in the world was she still here? Why did she bother to demand answers from me? Perhaps Morana was afraid I would go back for her sister if she left with Ishan.

Would I? Would I be so vengeful? I couldn’t say. These days… I hardly recognized myself.

My shoulders slumped, and I turned my head away, though I could not muster up the strength to actually leave. She was still here. She hadn’t left. If she’d seen the truth, she was only asking me to confess. The problem was I did not know what to confess; it wasn’t as if I purposefully turned my wives to ice. It merely happened. Every single time they froze, unable to take the cold.

Unable to take me.

“You saw them, didn’t you?” I whispered, my voice almost inaudible. I could not look at her; I had to stare at the floor beside us, the light emanating from the icy candelabras dim. Outside, a world of night had encased the land, a world that was foreign to me in every way. I could not say why, but the thought of staring at her, knowing she had seen them, wasn’t a thought that filled me with pleasure.

I hated it. I hated what happened to them, hated I could not change it. I’d tried, in the beginning, when it first started happening, to undo the magic that had changed them, to unfreeze them. After all, I was Winter. I held the power over snow and ice and cold. Alas, I could not. Regardless of how much I tried, how many