Abner leaned back in his chair, the wood higher than his frame. I’d only seen him on his feet briefly, and we had been too far apart for me to discern his height last night, but judging from how long his legs had looked while sitting on that throne, he was rather tall. “You made a number of good points last night,” he remarked, though he sounded disinterested in every way.
I did? I guess last night was just a blur; I hardly remembered anything I’d said, let alone anything of note. I did remember saying that any other man would’ve tried to woo me in the days leading up to our wedding, but that couldn’t be what this was.
Could it?
I let my gaze drop to the plates, inhaling the scent of breakfast. Flat cakes, fruit, even eggs whipped up with some sausage. It all looked very good, but I noticed Abner hadn’t touched any of it, so I didn’t go for any of it either. All this stuff… it had to be here because of magic. There was no way it tasted half as good as it looked, right? Just because dinner had been good last night didn’t mean this would taste the same.
“Go on,” he told me. “This is for you.”
All of it… for me? Did he not know how much a girl could eat? A lot, but not this much. Still, what was I going to do? Deny the yummy-looking food in front of me? I think not.
I shoveled as much as I could onto the large empty plate in front of me, grabbed a fork, and started chugging away. Gods, it was good. The fruit was even fresh, go figure. Apparently magic could make things taste just as good as the real thing, if not better. Although, who was I to say all these were fake? Maybe he’d simply snapped his fingers and pulled fruit from somewhere it still grew.
“Do you like it?” Abner asked, watching as I acted anything but eloquent as I ate. Ma would kill me if she saw the way I was shoveling food into my mouth in front of my future husband, a god, a king, and a handsome one at that. Quite literally, she might die.
Nodding once, I managed to wait until I swallowed what was currently in my mouth before saying, “It’s very good. Thank you.”
A sound left him, a sound of mock surprise. “So there are manners hidden in you.”
That earned him a glare. “You get my manners if you deserve them. You surprised me with this food, so I thanked you. Do not expect constant, eternal gratitude, Abner.” Perhaps I should bite my tongue, but I didn’t. His wives lasted twenty-five years at the most, so I was going to be myself, regardless of where I ended up because of it.
“I told you to call me Winter.”
“And I chose to ignore you, because Winter is not your name,” I told him, stabbing a strawberry before lifting it to my mouth. “It’s Abner, so that is what I will call you.” The strawberry was just right, not a hint of bitterness anywhere. Absolutely delicious. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d tasted a strawberry so perfectly ripe.
Those godly eyes narrowed in my direction, but I did not take back what I said.
“So, Abner—” If I was honest, I said his name that time just to annoy him, to irk him a little more. He might be handsome, but he was haughty as well, and that was something I could not stand. “—it must get lonely in this castle. Surely there are others who live here, not only you?” Spending the next twenty-five years locked in this castle with him and him alone… it sounded an awful fate.
Truly, Ember would’ve hated it here. Me? I guess we’d have to wait and see.
“There are only others here when I need them,” he informed me, dashing my hope of finding someone to befriend here. Surely it would grow old, stuck with him in this huge place? “When I do not need them, they are not here.”
I reached for my cup, taking a sip of juice. Squeezed from oranges, it tasted delicious. “Do you ever get lonely?” I answered my own question, “Of course you do. It’s why you take a bride every twenty-five years.”
His jaw ground, but he did not attempt to argue with me or tell me I was wrong in my assumption. Truly, there was no other reason he would take a human bride. Loneliness, the thought of starting a family, something like that. Why else would someone as magical and powerful as Winter himself want a human bride? And so frequently, too.
This led me into what I asked next: “What happens to your brides?” Some humans did not live long, it was true, but to have only twenty-five years left… it would put me just above my parents’ age, and they still had quite a few years left in them.
“I do not wish to talk about that,” he growled out, turning his head away from me, studying something on the floor, brooding, almost.
I studied him, knowing I’d upset him by asking. My curiosity was not something I could temper; he would have to either get used to it or get rid of me before my twenty-five years was up.
If he was alone in this castle, if there was no one else here, it meant his other brides were no longer here, either. Did he send them back home? Did he have them killed? I doubted any of them ran away—this castle was built on a mountainside, days away from any village if you were on foot. You were likely to freeze before then, if you were by yourself and didn’t know how to keep warm or hunt or any of that.
It was a mystery, wasn’t it? It was one I knew I’d have to keep pushing at, keep digging, for I needed to know what mess I had stepped into. Going into this blind did not seem smart, and though some might say I was foolish for taking my sister’s place here, for basically trading away the one thing I always wanted in life—my freedom—I wasn’t so sure.
“All right,” I relented, causing those silvery eyes to rise to me once more. “Then what do you wish to talk about?”
His brows creased slightly, as if he could not think of anything, as if he could not believe I’d given him the choice. “Must we talk? Can we not eat in silence?”
I had a comeback ready immediately, but I kept it to myself, nodding as I ate, though I did spare glances at him every now and then. Abner had turned his attention to the food, though he hardly touched any of it. His appetite was not large, or perhaps it was due to the fact he was a god and did not need to refill his body with food as often or as much as I did. I watched him, using the time to study him and his mannerisms.
Rude and cold, off-putting most definitely, but he did not radiate an air of evilness that I would associate with someone who killed their old brides. But maybe that was his power, his trick. It was possible his old brides had never seen it coming, and I would do my damnedest to not be kept blind or in the dark.
Just because he had a handsome face did not mean I would allow myself to be blind to the truth of the matter.
Time passed slowly. Instead of me eating by myself in my room, every single meal was shared with Abner instead, the messenger always appearing at my room to take me to him. I tried to get Abner to speak, to get to know the man I would soon be wed to, but it was like he was as tight-lipped as ever, refusing to divulge anything to me.
Frankly, it was annoying.
The one thing Abner did tell me was that we would be wed tomorrow, and the bastard waited until dinnertime to tell me. That had sent my insides scurrying and caused my heart to beat rapidly in my chest, and I hardly touched my food after that.
Married tomorrow. There would be no going back. This would forever be my life, and I didn’t know what to make of it, what to do or what to think. I only hoped Ember would live her life to the fullest out there, to chase her own happiness with Sorsha if that’s what she wanted to do.