Just a small touch, something that shouldn’t make me feel so hot and bothered, but it did. As much as I did not want to admit it to myself, Ishan affected me the same way I affected him.
But I was to marry Abner, not him. Hence the issue here.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered, and I did. This time, I listened to his words with not an ounce of trepidation in my body. After a moment, after what felt like dozens of tiny little wisps of energy crawling along my skin, Ishan said, “You can open them now.”
So I did. I lifted my eyelids and viewed a part of the castle I hadn’t found on my own, yet. This place held so many halls and towers; it was practically bigger than the village I’d grown up in. I could search this place for days and still not visit every room.
We stood before a window, no glass between us and the outside air. The cold blew in, unhindered, and I shivered, even though I still held onto Ishan’s warm hand. The moon was closer, and as I inched toward the wide-open window, I found we’d been teleported to one of the castle’s many towers, perhaps its tallest one.
Everything looked different outside, from this height. I’d love to see it during the day, on the rare day the sun shone over this place. I bet the view was unlike any other, stunning and awe-inspiring all the same. Cold and cruel but beautiful nonetheless. Even the snow and ice held nature’s beauty, and anyone who would deny it was a liar.
Ishan stood beside me, his fingers intertwined with mine. “As nice as this is,” he started, causing me to turn my head and look at him, “this isn’t what I wanted to show you.” He pulled me away from the window, turning us so that we now faced the opposite direction. “This is.”
We stood staring at a door… only it wasn’t a door in the strictest of sense; it didn’t have a handle or anything you could touch to pull or push it open. It was not made of a stained-white wood. This door shimmered and glowed of its own accord, no glowing ice on any of the nearby candelabras to illuminate the area. The door was able to light the hall on its own due to its magical nature.
We stepped closer, an air of sheer, bitter cold enveloping me. The closer we got, the more it dawned on me, what this door was made of.
Ice. It was a door made of ice so thick and so pure you couldn’t see through it, nor, I bet, could you break through it with any sort of weapon. Ice such as this oozed and ebbed with magic, its surface so smooth it almost looked unreal.
I lifted my other hand, reaching out toward it, but Ishan pulled me back. “Don’t,” he advised. “Never touch it.” Though he did not tell me what would happen, I knew it wouldn’t be good. Perhaps it would instantly freeze my skin or something along those lines.
“What is this place?” I whispered, wondering why Ishan had brought me here. It was a place I hadn’t yet seen, and yet I knew, somehow, deep inside of myself I would not like whatever it was hidden behind that door.
This was Abner’s magic. Whatever it was, Abner knew of it, and he was hiding it.
“This is what I warned you of,” he told me, his hand squeezing mine. “This is why I warned you against coming here, but you were too stubborn.” A tiny grin formed on his lips as he added, “Too willing to take your sister’s place and take her fate.”
I was slow to look back at the icy door. “I don’t understand.” I had the feeling I would not understand until we teleported inside that room, saw whatever was hidden on its other side. This, I knew, would be a night I would not soon forget.
“Close your eyes again,” he said, “and the next time you open them, you will.” A promise, a foreboding promise I wasn’t sure whether I liked the sound of, but at this point, I had no choice, so I closed my eyes and waited for his magic to envelop me again.
Once the tingling wore off, once I was sure Ishan and I had moved inside the room, I cautiously opened my eyes and saw the truth. The truth of it all. Centuries and centuries of fairytales… and their bitter end.
Because everything had to end, but for these girls, for Abner’s ex-wives, the ending was anything but happy.
Ishan released me, letting me look around the near pitch-black room. Two small windows at the top of the circular room allowed slivers of moonlight to seep in, again with no glass. When it snowed, the snow came in, coating everything here with a dusting. I took a step away from him, looking all around, my mouth hanging open, my breath nothing but a white puff in front of me.
They were all here. Every single one of them was still here. They hadn’t gone anywhere. Abner’s old brides were all here, locked away in this castle, forgotten by the sands of time.
And, what’s worse: each and every one of them was frozen solid. A sculpture of human proportions, with lifelike faces etched in bluish ice, even down to the folds on their dresses and the laces on their boots. Their hair, their eyes… it was literally as if someone—Abner—had frozen each and every one of these women, these poor, unlucky souls, and kept them hidden in the tallest tower of the castle, out of sight and out of mind.
I walked through the maze of frozen ex-brides, my stomach curdling as I looked at each one. Some appeared sad, others frightened or angry. They all wore regal dresses, jewelry on their necks and fingers. They had been Abner’s queens, and now look at them. They were nothing more than statues caught in time.
Were they… were they still alive in there, or were they dead? I didn’t know which one was worse, if Abner froze them to kill them because they were not what he wanted, or if they were merely locked away inside, unable to move or flee this castle, powerless to try to reclaim their old lives.
Although, I realized, taking a single spin as I mentally counted, there were far too many in here. Too many girls, too many women who’d marched to this castle with Winter’s messenger with the hope of becoming his bride. Dozens stuffed in here. They were each caught out of their own time if they ever miraculously came back to life by unfreezing. It was quite possible their villages might not even exist anymore.
How long had Abner tried to find a bride? How long had he been in search, only for each and every one to end up like this? It made my stomach sick.
“This is what will happen to you, if you marry my brother,” Ishan’s warm voice broke into my thoughts, and I wrapped my arms around myself, not knowing what to do or what to think. It was all too much. “This is my brother’s greatest shame. I would not see you added to their number, Morana.”
I did not know how I could gaze upon these frozen statues and deny what Ishan was telling me. I could not say I was not afraid of Abner or what he was capable of, nor could I dare say I wanted to stay here and go through with it.
But, at the same time, I remembered the sadness hidden in Abner’s 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.