AN: Wow, long chapter. Please, don't start hoping now

yxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxy

Past a thousand years ago and some years...

Her older brother was her hero. He could never do anything wrong in her eyes. Arvid was her protector and her caretaker. He was always by her side playing with her or teaching her something new.

As she was getting ready for what should have been the greatest event in her life she thought back to the simpler times. Wishing her brother was there to stand up for her.

"Irene, you should never do anything you do not believe in. Don't ever let anyone tell you that your opinion or dreams aren't important or worth it," she could hear Arvid saying as if he was right behind her.

Those words were said when he was still alive. Before he died defending their village.

Dawn barley broke and the sun was only just rising up, but a young pair of siblings was already making their way though the woods on the edge of their town.

"Arvid! Do wait for me, brother. I'm not as fast as you are," a small child with round hazel eyes, which were narrowed with annoyance at her brother, exclaimed.

"Do keep up, slow poke," the older child called over his shoulder, voice breaking as he talked.

"Your voice sure sounds funny," laughed the little girl as she stumbled over a root. "It does not!" she could hear him pouting.

"Mother says that it is as it should be for a man of my age. She told me every man's voice does it, when they grow," Arvid explained proudly slowing down to walk with his sister.

"It does?" she asked, before remembering. " Wait a moment. You aren't even a man yet! Arvid, you are just thirteen years old and you didn't even do the hunt with father, " she realized and corrected him.

"You shouldn't lie to me. Mother says that it's bad manners," the girl added so that her brother could understand what he did was wrong.

"Argh, Irene! That is how it's said," the young man tried to make his little sister five years his junior understand. "Naturally I do still have to go hunting with father. I can't wait," he rambled with a big grin on his face.

Suddenly he felt nervous and unsure. He glazed at his sister out of the corner of his eyes as they strode together past pine trees and bushes."Do you believe, that I could do it? Do you think father will be proud?"

"Why are you even asking, Arvid?" Irene couldn't believe he asked her something so absurd.

"Your hunt will be a big success and father will be proud, as will we all be," she told him earnestly, grabbing his forearm and putting herself in his way to look him straight in his warm brown eyes.

"Thank you, little sister," he choked out, eyes suspicious wet."I wish...I wish that father could be as proud of me as he is always of you," Irene confessed to him her chin falling onto her bust, starring at the ground to their feet.

"He is," Arvid told her. In response he got an unbelieving gaze from Irene. "Well, he should be. I know that I am proud of you," the brown haired boy stated while smiling down at his sister and petting the top of her head.

"Father thinks my dreams are stupid and he often told me that I should stop being silly, give up my dreams and do as he says, that I should only be the perfect wife someday. When he is comparing me with Maeve I get the feeling that I am not got enough and my dreams are worthless," Irene whispered into the quietness of the woods.

"Irene, you should never do anything you do not believe in. Don't ever let anyone tell you that your opinion or dreams aren't important or worth it!" Arvid replied as he gripped onto his sisters slim shoulders with both hands.

"You are Irene, my favorite sister and Maeve is Maeve, our nosy sister. While Maeve might be a perfect bride and competent wife in father's eyes, she is also rather arrogant and selfish," he remarked with an air of absolute confidence around him.

"I don't want you to be Maeve. I like that you are active and curious, extremely stubborn and often bossy. Do you think that Maeve would investigate the woods with me or that I would want to take her with me?" his kind eyes screaming at her to have faith in his words.

"And please do not worry about marriage yet. When the time comes I will talk to father and we will direct him to the man you will want," he closed the subject and hugged Irene with one arm into his side.

Of course, Irene tried to argue and protest against this arrangement, against her fiance and future husband. Pleading with her father to let her marry someone else, to let her marry Elijah's brother, to let her marry Him.

The only thing she hadn't tried and never could would be running away. Irene had her little sister, Farah, to look after. Farah was the reason she would stay.

She would be her hero, just as Arvid was her hero.