I let my hands linger on hers, let my magic wash over her in every way, filled those pretty blue eyes with a glimmer of promise, of me. Of Summer himself. “I will do no such thing,” I quietly said, giving her a small grin. “I find it commendable, what you’re doing for your sister, but I cannot step aside and let you throw your life away with my brother.”
For that’s what would happen. Abner would never love her. He never loved any of them. He never grew to care about them, and that’s precisely why they never lasted long. Just the mere possibility of Morana fading, her losing her brightness, her spirit and her soul, I couldn’t stand it.
No, I refused to step aside and let this be. I’d watched my brother from afar for far too long; now, with the human that had earned my favor and my heart riding to his castle to become his bride, I would do the opposite of making myself scarce.
“Perhaps it is foolish to try to tell a god what to do,” Morana started, pulling her hands from mine as her will hardened, “but I’m going to do just that and tell you to leave it be. I made my choice.” She said nothing more as she turned and picked up her dress, stepping into it and pulling it up over her shoulders—which had long since dried, thanks to my heat—but when she glanced back to where I’d been, she saw nothing.
I was still there, of course, but I’d made myself invisible to humans once more. I stared at her, a dejected feeling growing in my heart. She was stubborn; that much I’d already known from keeping an eye on her all these years. But to wed my brother—that was insanity, pure and simple.
Taking her for myself, forcing her to go with me instead of with my brother’s messenger… she would hate me for it. I could never do something so awful to her, could not ever dare to force her into anything she did not want. I might be a god, but I was not a god of vengeance and pain. Summer was my home, and that meant warmth, fire, the sun, being surrounded by those who you loved.
I had to get through to her, had to make her see that this was a mistake, that she didn’t belong with Abner, but how?
Chapter Three – Morana
I kept Summer’s—er, Ishan’s—visit to me while I was bathing to myself, not knowing how to bring it up to the messenger. Plus, I had the feeling he was still there, somewhere, still watching me and trying to come up with an idiotic plan to get me to abandon my vow to take my sister’s place and become Winter’s bride.
I didn’t know why Ishan would want to step in; Winter was his brother. Did he not want his brother to have a bride? Granted, I knew I wouldn’t be his first bride, nor would I be his last, but surely coming between Winter and his bride was a big no-no.
What was it about me that garnered Summer’s favor? Nearly everyone in town had mentioned it before to me, how my skin never lost its color in the winter months, how I always seemed to be a bit warmer than everyone else—but I never really thought… I never thought it was actually possible.
Don’t get me wrong, I believed in the gods. I just didn’t know what it was about me that merited one’s favor. I never asked for it, never went searching for it. I simply had lived my life and been me, never pretended to be anyone else. If that was the sole reason Ishan had granted me his favor, surely there were countless others in the kingdom who’d done the same?
I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand, and as time went on, I grew more and more confused.
Summer had been… not at all what I’d expected. Not that I had been expecting anything, for I’d never heard of a god actually appearing before anyone, but he was… well, I didn’t even know what to think about him.
Flawless in the way gods surely were? Of course.
Easygoing in manner because he was a god and nothing truly mattered to him except his current flitting fancy? Clearly.
Strikingly attractive and handsome in every way? Yes, yes he was.
Ishan was both everything I never expected Summer to be and everything I knew he would be. I’d imagined the gods as a child; I bet nearly every child did, at one point or another. I’d imagined what they looked like, how their faces were and what they wore. Even my wildest of fantasies could never have prepared me for meeting Ishan in real life, though.
He was… he was beautiful and manly and powerful—and confusing. Very, very confusing in the things he told me, in how his hands had felt gripping mine, almost like those hands had been created to match mine. Or, I guess, that my hands had been made for his.
Something had come over me then, when we’d touched. It’d felt, for lack of a better word, perfect, as if I’d finally found where I belonged—only I couldn’t belong with Summer, with Ishan, because I was to marry his brother.
I couldn’t belong to Summer when I’d taken my sister’s place at Winter’s side, and I wasn’t sure whether I should laugh at my misfortune or just try to ignore it.
As the days blended into each other, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Ishan was there, forever watching me. I couldn’t fight the notion that he hovered over me as I slept, that he was constantly peering at me, even during the moments when no one should be watching me.
A part of me waited for him to make himself known again, for him to knock the messenger and I off the ethereal horse we rode, to throw me over his shoulder and take me someplace where Winter would never get his cold fingers on me. Ishan was a god, after all, and I’d spoken to him like a petulant, stubborn child, obnoxious in every way. He had to be waiting for the right moment to strike; I highly doubted he’d left and given up on me.
I never knew until the day Ishan showed himself to me, how confused my heart could be. Here, I’d thought I’d never feel it skip a beat while in the presence of someone else again, not after the disaster that was the boy from a few years ago, but for a god, making a heart act funny was probably one of their lesser powers anyway.
The journey was a lonely one. Even though I suspected Ishan was still near, and although I was with the messenger, never truly alone, the quietness of the journey got to me. I tried speaking with Winter’s messenger multiple times, attempted to learn his name and everything, but the man in the silver armor was silent, as if he was not obligated to entertain me on this journey, only to bring me back to Winter’s castle.
Basically, I had to entertain myself the entire time. In reality, that meant I did a lot of thinking. I thought about Winter, about the life I was heading toward; I thought about Summer, Ishan, all he’d told me and how it’d felt to have his hands wrapped around mine. I thought about how fickle fate was, how quickly everything had changed for me. One day, I’d woken up and expected just another day to go by, but literally everything had changed.
I hoped, prayed that my life would get simpler when we arrived at the castle.
The messenger gave me the cloak attached to his armor before we started up the mountain, where Winter’s castle was. Surrounded by ice and snow, it was an omen of what would spread across the kingdom soon enough. The sun overhead was constantly blocked out by a thin layer of grey clouds, and even though the beast we rode came from this land, it still seemed to have some trouble navigating the landscape.
Whenever the chill of the area got too strong for me and I began to shiver, a jolt of warmth spread through me. Ishan was still around, still watching me, still keeping an eye on me, refusing to simply let me be. I would repeat this until the end of time if I had to: I’d made my choice, and I would not go back on my word. I was not that kind of person, especially not when doing so might have bad repercussions for my sister.