I poked my head out of the room, gazing both ways down the hall. I saw no one. It was like a ghost had knocked and left me this food. Hesitant to take it, I knew I had no choice. I was starved for a meal that wasn’t rabbit or deer. The messenger had done his best with what he had, feeding me as best as he could during the journey here, but there was something to be said about food that had spices and salt.
Flavor, basically. Food that had flavor and wasn’t just meat roasted over an open fire.
Heaving a sigh to myself, I picked up the tray and brought it to my bed, sliding it at the foot of it as I once again glanced all around.
I was alone. For the first time in nearly my whole life, I was to eat a meal by myself. It had always been something done with my family, and during the journey, I’d had the messenger to talk to. Granted, he’d never talked back, but that was beside the point.
This whole place… it just felt too abandoned and isolated. I felt alone, even though I knew Winter was here somewhere.
I mentally reminded myself of what I’d told Ishan, hoping that things would get better. This was indeed the bed I’d made myself, and I had no choice but to lay in it and accept whatever fate dealt me. So what if another god had appeared in my life just as I’d agreed to wed another in place of my sister? I was a human girl. I didn’t get to choose between gods like a feast, and I certainly wouldn’t get to keep them both.
It was a nice thought, though. A very nice thought, one that would keep me awake in the nights to come, I knew.
I ate in silence. At least the food was warm. It was more than I expected. Bread rolls, meat that was seasoned and smoked to perfection, and even some fruit. Fruit that you definitely could never grow in a place like this. Magic had to be involved, but I didn’t think too much about it, knowing the more I thought about it, the more I’d think about the gods whose magic it was.
Winter and Summer. I had no idea that I’d ever be caught between them.
Chapter Four – Winter
My messenger told me she was here. He also relayed that the choosing did not go as it should’ve, that my bride-to-be had volunteered to take the place of her sister, and he allowed it. I was not angry, no, far from angry as I listened to him relay the story. If I felt anything, it was melancholy, a deeply ingrained sadness that only seemed to grow lately.
It didn’t matter who she was. It never did. My brides never lasted long, leaving me to live in this big castle, alone. I could summon people, I supposed. I could force my messenger or any of the animals on the mountain to keep me company, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted the one thing I would never have, the one thing that seemed to come so effortlessly to my brother, Summer.
I wanted life. I wanted the warmth. I wanted everything that was not mine, so tired of the vacant cold and death that seemed to accompany every winter, the destruction and power of its storms. While it was beautiful—there was nothing like an undisturbed field of snow sparkling with the weak rays of sun breaking through the clouds—it was not enough for me. Not anymore.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure if it had ever been enough.
It was difficult for me to keep track of time while up here. There was no law saying I had to remain in my castle, away from the kingdom I overlooked, but some days I could not muster up the strength to even think about leaving, let alone to actually get up and go. I could teleport, but what was the point? My brother was one with the humans, much more so than I ever was. They loved him more than they loved me, but I understood why.
I was Winter. I brought death to their crops and starved their animals when they did not save enough grain to feed them through the dark and cold months. I made the roads between villages hazardous to travel. It was all me, so why would I want to spend time with the mortals who would rather be in the presence of my brother?
All I wanted was someone who understood, someone who could be there for me. I didn’t want the world, didn’t want all of the humans to bow to their knees and worship me. I just wanted one. A wife. A bride who would spend her days with me and remind me that there was still so much wonder left in this world.
I’d spent so long trying to find her, spent so many countless years desperately hoping for a miracle, to find someone who would understand me, who would want to be with me. You could not be 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.