He could not decipher what was wrong with him.

Winter looked like a stranger to him now. Well, a beautiful stranger. He could not pinpoint exactly when this sudden change in her had begun. Maybe with puberty, he thought. But he started to think of her more than just best friends, more than her protector even if he was not her guard. Heck, he felt like her personal guard.

Granted, his sudden change to her did not spurt over night. It was not because she was growing more gorgeous by the minute. At least, not just that. His feelings grew throughout the three hundred sixty-five days that came with the twelve months and the four un-changing seasons. It came every hour to the minute watered down to the very second he would spend with her. He was her only friend, as she was to him. They grew up together. She had already captured his heart before she would capture the heart of suitors, thaumaturges, peasants, servants...

He was scared. He could never obtain her because she was unattainable. His father was a lowly guard. She was a princess. He was a nothing. She was more than a something.

He wished he could rewind to the old days. Those days where the days seemed brighter because as kids they did not know any better. Those days where his feelings would not be so conflicting, changing like the seasons on earth he looked up on his port-screen. That day when he leaned in to steal a kiss from Winter at ten and she eight, not knowing it would bring him here. He did not know what was running through his mind with the intention of kissing her. Maybe that's how this thing, this unknown yet inevitable and predictable thing planted and sprouted. They were not exposed to the differences between them; how close yet so far their worlds are. How close and so far their worlds would be once Winter would be at a marriageable age. Stars above, Jacin was not ready for that. He would never be ready for that. Why was he thinking of these things at fourteen? Maybe because he would have to take the aptitude test pretty soon, and the fact that he would aspire to be an intern as a doctor. The fact that he knew it was more than unlikely he would be placed under Artemisia's palace for it. He did not know. He was scared of the unknown. He was scared of leaving behind his only friend.

But once Levana mutilated her beautiful face for the sake of defying lunar society to unintentionally make her even more beautiful, teaching the cold moon to shine bright at night, he could not help it. He could not help but snap out of his in-denial, his resistance.

He had came to the fact that this princess, his princess, his best friend, his beautiful love but non-existent lover was the person whom he loved. The person Jacin loved the most.

He realized he loved her.

He loved Winter.