Chapter 3

For the next two weeks, I stayed in the east wing.

My three brothers were busy preparing the wedding for Daphne. They never came to see me.

Occasionally, I would pass them in the corridors.

Orion had the guest list in hand. Pyron was personally preparing the wedding circle. Zephyros was scouring every corner of the realm for flowers Daphne liked.

Exhaustion lined their faces, but they smiled in a way I hadn't seen in a long time.

Yet everything they were preparing should have been mine.

Seven days before the wedding, I went to the Sunset Cloud Sea to check on my dowry.

That sea of golden clouds was a gift from my father on the day I was born, and my mother had filled it with golden roses.

On the day of the wedding, it would become part of my dowry.

When I arrived, Daphne was standing in the center of the Cloud Sea.

My three brothers were directing servants to take down my solar crest and replace it with laurel patterns common in the mortal world.

Zephyros spotted me, and his expression turned guarded immediately.

"What are you doing here?"

"This is my Sunset Cloud Sea."

"We know."

"Once Daphne marries into the Northern Realm, she'll probably never come back to the divine realm. We're just borrowing this place for her wedding. After she's gone, the Cloud Sea will still be yours."

I warned them.

"You'd better not touch it. Father already put it on my dowry list."

Pyron sneered.

"There you go again.

"Father gives you so much that you can't even keep track of it all. Now the moment you see us setting up for Daphne, you claim it's your dowry."

Daphne came over, batting those wide eyes of hers, and took my hand.

"Helias, I didn't know this place meant so much to you.

"I don't need any dowry. Just please don't be mad at our brothers because of me."

She tugged at me, and on her wrist was the Dawn Light pendant I had given her.

As a mortal, she could only endure the gentlest trace of sunlight through the pendant.

My gaze settled on the pendant.

"The solar power in the wedding circle is too intense. You shouldn't be near it. You should leave."

Daphne's eyes filled with hurt.

"But I just wanted to see my own wedding."

Zephyros immediately stepped into my line of sight.

"She's been careful enough. Do you have to scare her?"

"I'm not trying to scare her!" I snapped.

The words had barely left my mouth when Daphne suddenly reached out and touched the unsealed core of the circle.

Scorching sunlight blazed up her arm in an instant, and she screamed as she fell to the ground.

Pyron quickly sealed the circle's core, Orion carried her to safety, and Zephyros whipped around to face me.

"You knew she didn't have divine blood. Why didn't you shut down the circle beforehand?"

"I already told her to leave."

"You just said she shouldn't be near it!"

Zephyros shouted, "You were deliberately vague, waiting to watch her make a fool of herself!"

Daphne held her burned arm, tears brimming, and spoke up for me.

"Don't blame Helias. I just wanted to see the wedding circle so badly that I touched it by accident.

"She did warn me. I just didn't understand."

Orion's expression only grew darker.

"See? Even now, she's still defending you.

"Helias, you've known every divine art since you were a child. You couldn't possibly not know that a mortal can't tell the circle's core from ordinary divine power.

"If you didn't want to give her the Sunset Cloud Sea, you could've just said so. Why did you have to drive her away like this?"

I looked at them and didn't bother defending myself.

It had been like this for five hundred years.

Whenever Daphne made a mistake, they found excuses for her first.

Whenever I tried to explain, they accused me of using my powers to bully a mortal.

Pyron took out a healing salve and carefully applied it to Daphne's arm.

Zephyros still wasn't satisfied.

He even issued a decree without Father's authority. "To keep you from causing any more trouble, from today onward, the Sunset Cloud Sea is sealed off by all three of us. You are not to set foot here again before the wedding."

I asked, "Let me ask you one more time. What if I told you that I'm the sister being sent far away?"

The anger in Zephyros's eyes turned to disbelief, as if I were beyond all reason.

"Stop being ridiculous! There's no way Father and Mother would let you marry Hephaestus!

"You've been pampered for a thousand years. The Northern Realm has no palace servants, no Mother to suppress your curse. Just a volcano and a husband who can't stand on his own two feet.

"Could you really bear that?"

I was silent for a moment.

"...I could."

Daphne suddenly gasped in pain.

They rushed to her side. No one looked at me.

I turned and left the Sunset Cloud Sea.

Behind me, the barrier slowly closed, shutting me out from my own dowry.