Chapter 1

Outside the cavern, the sky thundered. I take no notice of what is happening, right now.

“Winter,” he caresses my hair, pulling strands of my dark hair out of their braids. My eyes sting from how I had been crying. I know what he wants to say, yet I can’t manage to say a word. My heart hurts. I push him away from me and take a few strides forward.

His name is Lu Han, the orphan that my parents took in when I was no more than a child of six. Apart from the fact that he is the lost child of my mother’s senior, I do not know much about his past, because he rarely speaks. Over the years, I followed him wherever he went, not letting him out of my sight. I discovered that when Han is lonely, he likes to hide in a cavern in the woods away from Tuyi, the village we live in or on the soft grasslands of the neighbouring meadow.

Eventually, one day, he began opening up to me. When I was fifteen, we shared a kiss, We began meeting alone in the cavern, starting a forbidden relationship. Though we kept to our boundaries, I knew one day, it would all change. I planned. When I reached eighteen, we would reveal the truth to my parents. That we were in love and wanted to get married.  

But it all changed when I was a few days short of my eighteenth birthday. My mother revealed the engagement between Han and my older sister, Autumn. To my shock, Han remained silent. My mother stepped forward and connected Han and Autumn’s hands.

Why didn’t he say anything?

Autumn’s eyes brightened with joy, smiling bashfully at Han. An auspicious date was set in a month to come. That, mother said, was because my older sister would be turning twenty-two, and due to superstition, she had to marry before her birthday.

What hurt me the most was that my mother had never considered my feelings. 

My mother was a dimension-traveller. To begin with, she is a demon-slayer, endowed with innate powers since she was born. She had come to the world for a purpose. But when she was seventeen, during a brawl with a demon, she accidentally went to the future and met my father. For a while, she was stuck in the future, learning to adapt to the ways of life and what she called technology. My father chose to put everything down when he met my mother. 

I longed for a love like that, but Han was nothing like that. He had chosen to follow his adoptive parents’ plan for him instead of our almost three years relationship. But there was no way I could endure having to put down my feelings. Since young, I had always been an outcast. My mother had always seen me in a different light, for being the odd one out among her three children. I was the youngest among them, and also the only one among them to have no powers manifest. Yet, instead of revealing her hatred towards me, she treated me coldly.

I was also the rebel of the family. I would wear very revealing outfits and modify my school uniforms when my elder siblings and I went to school. That, in no way, meant I was a flirt. I kept myself intact, all for Han.

But in the end, it was him who had forsaken me.

“Winter,” he beckons to me again as I watch our surroundings with a blank expression in my eyes. My robe is dripping with water from the rain earlier, but I make no move to warm myself under the small fire he has set in the corner. I just want to know, how long he will take to come to me, seeing me in this state. 

Tonight is my eighteenth birthday and the same night that I found my strength to provoke Han. As expected, none of my family remembered, but Han had left me a gift. I left him a note to meet me at the usual place, but we ended up drenched by the sudden downpour.

“Winter, I’m sorry,” he just says apologetically, without changing his tone. I don’t want to look at him and continue staring into the void. “Please say something to me.”

How can he expect me to be happy after all this had happened? My heart tears with pain every time I see him hold my sister’s hand. I wished dearly that the person whose hand he was holding is me, not my sister. 

He walks closer towards me finally, and out of the blue, he kneels just before me. Before I can stop him, he hugs my leg and begs.

“Winter, please. Your sister has a weak heart, and I can’t bear to hurt her feelings or Godmother. I know you can get through all this, without me. I’m not worth your love, Winter.”

I shove him angrily, my eyes blazing with rage. My fingers tingle with heat as I zap him with all my strength, but the magic in me just sizzles away. I know it is because I can barely control my powers, making me seem a letdown in my mother’s eyes.

“I hate you, Lu Han.” I punch him again and again, but he rises and grabs me, holding me so tightly to his chest that I can barely breathe.

“Tell me what I can do to make you feel better, Winter. I can’t bear seeing you like this. Forgive me, Winter.”

My heart numbs hearing his soft voice. I know that he is weak and immature, unable to go against the will of my mother or to hurt my sister. Yet, in this way, he has chosen to hurt me. On the other hand, I couldn’t let him go.

So I decided, that I would have him just for one more night.

“Kiss me,” I order him. He does as he is told, without daring to say no. His lips touch mine nervously, taking his time to make contact. Unlike the previous kisses we have shared, he seems afraid. I take his hands and firmly place them on the ribbon of my robe.  

I bite hard on his lips, meaning for him to remember me forever. Then I guide his hands to undo my robe, allowing it to fall to the ground of the cave noiselessly. I pull on the strings of my undergarments, undoing them quickly and revealing my nakedness to him for the first time.

“Make me yours, Lu Han. Just for one night,” I whisper, with my eyes still filled with tears. He seems puzzled by my words as if he doesn’t know what to do. I pull off his robe, making an advance to him in the way he should have done with me. 

“Are you sure, Winter?” he asks me, slipping out of his pants. “Won’t you regret it?”

I gaze at him intensely, showing him through my eyes how strong I can be in my decisions.

“I want you to take me now. Spend the night with me. Tomorrow, you can go back to my sister and prepare for your wedding,” I stated bitterly.

He takes my lips into his again, this time kissing me so ferociously as if there was no tomorrow. All of a sudden, he is behaving so haphazardly, like he doesn’t care anymore. He holds me down on the icy floor of the cave and takes me right there. His force tears me apart as I let out scream after scream.

Eventually, everything that remains of our relationship is just a hazy blur.

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