Many short stories on a journey, starts with a princess who looks at herself in the mirror because her parents don't

My memory is kind of cloudy but I remember the first chapter explained the story of the unloved princess which then becomes a thing in the kingdom where they want someone who can get the princess to look away from the mirror. Afterwards, there are two characters; we get introduced to a girl born in the morning or during daytime and her character is more bright but somehow I feel like her story was a bit sad too. Then the boy character was born at night to mute parents I think and townspeople thought he couldn't talk but he actually could, he just never felt the need to. The boy and girl don't know each other but they travel their own respective journeys (which are filled with short stories regarding characters they meet or hear about) so the chapters go back and forth from wherever they are and they both head towards where the princess is until their journey brings them to meet each other. I think the boy ends up staring at the princess for days silently which is what eventually gets her to look away from the mirror but he doesn't end up with her (I also think there might have been a prince character who was in love with her? I'm not sure). The quiet boy ends up with the morning girl who was about to leave I think.

I remember one of the short stories was about a beautiful blacksmith's daughter who loved horses. The husband was a horse tamer or breeder and he originally got her to marry him because he managed to obtain this beautiful and strong horse breed. But that horse would not work or breed I think, and he eventually made the decision to put the horse down and when he returned home, his wife had hung herself.

I borrowed this book from a classmate back in secondary school (around 2011-2014) and she had bought it from a scholastic book catalogue. The stories in the book were a little sad or gloomy yet I still wanted to read it until the end.