1 ~ To Love the Boy Who Will Leave Me ~

Content warning: this following chapter contains material that may be harmful or traumatizing to some audiences. Read at your own discretion.

The foreign image glared back at her from the dirty mirror. At first, she had thought it was an illusion. A painting, perhaps? The silk-like hair that tumbled in silver tousles of waves below her waist. An ethereal hue of silver that she had never seen before. It gleamed under the rays of sunlight that kissed the crevices of the cramped room, as if strands of light had been woven into its display. How oddly strange and beautiful, she thought to herself.

She gazed into a pair of doll-like eyes that complimented the silver colour of her hair. They were a strange shade of pale green and stared back at her from the mirror with an unwavering stubbornness. Like ice green fire, she thought to herself as she reached a trembling hand out to touch the cool glass of the dirty mirror in front of her. The young girl in the mirror mimicked her shaky touch while her eyes continued to burn with ice green fire.

Underneath smudges of dirt, her skin resembled delicate porcelain. In fact, every part about her seemed delicate. She looked as if she would shatter into a million pieces if you weren't careful. Like untouched snow after snowfall, the girl in the mirror's skin glowed. Long silver hair. Fierce ice green eyes. A delicate mien. This surely could not be Illia. The small girl's body that she now inhabited looked no older than four or five years old.

The reflection that stared back at her from the mirror was not her and she knew it. Like an angel that fell from heaven, the doll-like girl was someone she had never seen before. She felt her stomach toss and cursed silently under her breath. If only she had looked like this in her past life, then perhaps she would not have died so cruelly. It was almost as if someone had placed her in a never ending dream. No, not a dream. It was a nightmare. Perhaps Illia would have been able to enjoy waking up in the body of an angel like child, but despite looking like a fairy, there was one thing that seemed awfully astray. Her scars.

Illia looked down at her trembling fragile hands. Surely enough the horrors of abuse had been carefully etched into the pale skin of the body she now inhabited. She couldn't understand why the world was so cruel. It was worse than the nightmares of her past life that burned gruesome images into the back of her heavy eyelids whenever she closed them. Hands that were calloused and scarred. Arms with twisted scars from whippings. Purple blotches. Surely enough, they were all there. Like a carefully painted picture, her arms were lined with them.

She looked up at the rays of light that struggled to sneak in between wooden beams that met in a series of arches. Dust coated every corner of the room like fresh snow and the slanted roof was filled with difficult to reach corners. The attic was crammed with all sorts of knick knacks and old furniture. The air was tinged with a heavy scent of mold and grime. It was as if someone had thrown her into a room with old belongings, discarded as if she was nothing but a worn down doll.

In the corner of the room, a feeble boy slept in a heap on the floor with nothing but a thin rag for a blanket. His hair was a wavy mess of blond strands almost as bright as sunlight, tousled in every direction. His chest rose in a steady pattern as his peaceful breaths cut through the heavy silence. He looked about the same age as her, with a similar pale complexion and features that mimicked hers. She watched as his heavy lashes fluttered open softly, revealing the same ice green eyes that she marvelled at earlier in the mirror.

"Winter," He called out softly into the room of forgotten things.

A sudden wave of chills enveloped her entirely. Her stomach began to churn with both hunger and fear, as cold beads of sweat slid down her ashen face. Her chest grew tighter and she swallowed down the awful bile that rose up in her throat. Long silver hair. Pale green eyes. Gruesome scars. A cramped attic. She was pretty sure that he had just called her Winter, meaning she was currently staring at the one person who would abandon her and leave her to die.

~***~

He was grotesque. His eyes were glazed over with a twisted expression of hatred and his alcohol tinged breath made her stomach churn with fear. He walked with a weakened balance, toppling over to one side while clutching lifelessly onto a glass bottle. She could hear Aiden drawing in shallow breaths between muffled sobs behind her. She instinctively stood in front of him, shielding him from the intoxicated man who stumbled towards them with eyes seeping aggression.

"Fucking brats," The man said with slurred words, "I'm gonna be rich because of you."

The bottle slipped from his weak grasp and shattered into pieces once it hit the dusty floor. The metallic scent of the spilled brown liquid filled the air, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. The man cursed and stumbled backwards in an attempt to regain his balance.

"You bitch," He spit with disgust and eyed the weak child shielding her brother, "This is all your fucking fault."

Winter shut her eyes. She tried to think of something else. Anything else. She pictured golden wheat fields under a soft blue sky and smiled softly. The man struck her with a violent hand and pain eroded from her cheek. The golden plants blew softly with the wind and Aiden smiled at her from a distance, his hair shining like the wheat field under the glow of the sun.

"Fuck," The man cursed as he wobbled unsteadily, "You better hope you're dead when I come back."

Winter watched Aiden from a distance in her dreams until the heavy slam of the attic door drew her back into her harsh reality.

"You're bleeding," Aiden managed to say between trembling lips.

"It's okay," She whispered to him softly, "I'm okay."

The Cursed Winter was a heart wrenching story about the daughter of a tyrannical King. The King ruled over the Silvermondian Empire and was known for his gruesome behaviour and cold mien. He had several concubines, but it was widely known that he favoured one of them more than others: Winter's mother.

Winter's mother, upon discovering she was pregnant, fled the Kingdom in an attempt to save her child from the vicious political war that awaited him after birth. She was severely beaten and bullied by the other concubines out of jealously, and didn't wish for her children to suffer from the same fate.

After running away, she was kidnapped by a group of mercenaries who planned to use her unborn child as a way to gain power and money. Winter's mother came from a faraway Kingdom, as a peace offering to the King, and had beautiful silver hair: a trait that was rare within the Silvermondian Empire. After fleeing from the Kingdom, her hair was what eventually led to her downfall. It was a distinguishable trait that everyone knew the King's favourite concubine possessed.

Winter's mother eventually passed away during childbirth, unwillingly leaving not one, but two children with Imperial blood. She gave birth to a pair of twins: a son with golden hair, and a daughter with silver.

It was impossible for a female child with Imperial blood to be born. Winter's existence in itself was a miracle. When the King finally discovered the whereabouts of his children, he took Aiden with him and left Winter to rot in the attic because he did not believe Winter to be of his own blood. Aiden eventually grows up and becomes the next heir to the throne, killing his brothers and the King, and fighting his way through a political war.

The attic was extremely cold and the lingering scent of alcohol enveloped the stuffy room entirely. The screaming pieces of Winter's heart that had been struggling to make sense of her situation faded into whispers when she embraced her shaking twin brother. She didn't understand how she came to live in this world. She didn't understand how she could exist inside a novel she read in her past life.

The two children clutched onto one another. All they had in this small attic filled with broken things were each other. All Winter could do was love the boy and hope he wasn't going to leave her.