Winter's Bride - Candace Wondrak Page 0,1

do this, but she’d gone off, asking me—no, practically begging me—to do it for her.

I’d already dealt with the cows earlier, so I had simply shrugged and agreed to do her part.

Once both buckets were full, I grabbed them and started the trek back to the house. The village I lived in was a small one, one where everyone knew everyone else’s business, one where there wasn’t a single stranger. It got old, honestly.

Plus, with me being nineteen and all, my parents had been on my case for a few years now, telling me I needed to start paying serious attention to the boys who wanted to marry me. But that was the problem: they were all boys. Completely uninteresting in every way. They were farmers, like their fathers and uncles. Anyone who had a different job in town, like the local blacksmith or carpenter, was highly sought-after.

As far as I knew, the village had never had its own spinster living on the outskirts of town, and I did wonder what my parents would say if I told them that’s what I’d rather be. The old lady who lived by herself, who took care of the forest animals who wound up at her door, rather than an old, married lady popping out kids.

They’d probably laugh at me and tell me to just pick one of the boys who had expressed interest in me.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I made it back to the house. I came around the back of the small, one-story home, blue sky with a few puffy white clouds above. It was a few degrees too cold, and when the wind blew, it only exacerbated the chill creeping up my spine. The warm, summer days when you were immediately drenched in sweat were actually some of my favorites.

Setting down the buckets near the back door, I was about to walk into the house when I overheard my parents talking.

“Aela came to me when I was at the market earlier,” my ma spoke, her tone telling me she wasn’t too happy. “She had a few words to say about Ember and her daughter.”

I froze, careful not to make a sound as I listened.

Pa harrumphed, saying in his low, gravelly voice, “I’ve told that girl dozens of times to stop running around with her. It doesn’t look good on us. They’re too old to be running around all the time like they did when they were younger. She’ll turn off potential husbands—”

I kept myself from rolling my eyes, just barely. Husbands and marriage; it was all my parents seemed to be able to talk about nowadays.

It was a moment before I heard my ma’s voice say, “Aela said she found them in the back field, and when she did, they were both indecent.”

Indecent? What… like naked? I didn’t know what else the word indecent could mean, not in that context. It didn’t matter, though; I’d heard enough. I pushed away from the house, leaving the buckets near the back door.

My parents tried pushing me, but I just didn’t care. Ember, on the other hand, cared too much. She wanted to make them proud, but at the same time, she had to make herself happy. Wasn’t that what mattered, at the end of the day? Your own happiness? It should.

I took the long way through town, my dress blowing all around as I made my way to where I thought I’d find her. Just off the main trail that led out of town, there was a small waterfall. Ember and I used to play there as kids all the time, and even though it was surrounded by trees, I could’ve sworn I always felt the sun kissing my skin.

And, just as I suspected, Ember was there, along with Aela’s daughter, Sorsha. They sat on one of the large rocks lining the waterfall’s pool, their boots unlaced and off, tossed haphazardly on the grass. Their arms touched; they sat especially close.

I heaved a sigh. Ember was… she was never too good at lying or hiding things. She was as innocent and naive as they came, always wanting to believe in the best of people, even if they didn’t deserve it. She never acted as if she cared about any of the boys in town, and now I started to understand why.

“Ember,” I spoke her name, causing my seventeen-year-old sister to leap to her feet and spin to face me.

She had her mouth open, like she was going