The Dark God's Bride Trilogy, #3 (6 page)

“What is that?”

“Haven’t we
gone over this once before, apprentice?”

“I don’t think so...”

He sighed. “The earth’s veins are the pathways in which the source of life flows through. Each individual vein is usually no more than several meters wide and incredibly hard to locate if you don’t know what to look for. All of these veins are connected at three points on the earth’s surface. These points are the earth’s power veins. So far, I’ve only located one.”

“I see. If that’s the case then the power veins must be around here somewhere,” Amara guessed. “Now I understand why you linger around here.”

“Why can’t you focus the way you are now during my lessons?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really care about reanimating the dead.”

“I’ve taught you other things, too.”

“Anyway, so the last element you need is a total solar eclipse?”

“Correct. However, a total solar eclipse can only be seen at any surface point on earth once every 360 years. Since there are three power veins on earth, there is an opportunity every 120 years if you know the location of the other power veins.”

“In theory, a powerful Necromancer would appear every 120 years.”

“In theory,” he chuckled mockingly. “The last person to succeed was born in the BC.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“I don’t know what happened to her.”

“The Necromancer was a woman?”

“The books said that she was a nameless Egyptian priestess who served Osiris, the god of the underworld. In Egyptian mythology, Osiris was dismantled by his brother, Set, and the pieces were scattered across the land. The part that most people don’t know is that the priestess was tasked to find the missing pieces of her god by the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris. Isis asked the priestess to collect the souls of 10,000 dead before the summer solstice of that year. When the priestess returned with the souls of 10,000 dead, Isis used the souls to make the priestess an immortal. Together they set out to find the missing pieces of Osiris. Once they found him, or most of him, the priestess used her powers to resurrect the dead god.”

“… Did she succeed?”

“Yes. Osiris was brought back to life and he conceived a child with Isis. The priestess was never mentioned in the text again.”

“What do you think happen to her?”

“Isis probably sacrificed her in the process,” he hiked his shoulders. “I don’t really care. She was just Isis’s tool to resurrect her dead husband. The important part is that she had the powers to resurrect a god! That’s the kind of powers that most people couldn’t even begin to fathom.”

“I suppose it’s too late for you to stop now. After you’ve accomplished all you want to accomplish, you should spend more time with your wife.”

“Amara… I know I haven’t expressed myself before but… I really… appreciate you taking care of Elizabeth and my daughter in my place.”

“Do try to be careful. Gemma needs a father.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But if something were to…”

Amara furrowed her brows in annoyance. “Stop leaving a will. Just be careful.”

He gave her his signature wolfish grin. “Good night, apprentice.”

“Happy hunting, Shiran.”

After Amara cleaned up the mess in the bathroom, she went straight to bed. She just wanted to get some shut eye. As soon as she closed her eyes, she was disturbed by a loud, obnoxious motor noise. When she opened her eyes again, it was already daytime. She felt like she hadn’t slept at all.

She lazily got up from the bed and pulled up the curtains to let light into the room. She raised her hand above her brow to block out the stinging sunlight from hitting her eyes directly. She looked outside and saw a crew of people working on the land. The yard was being mowed, the weeds were being pulled, dead flower bushes were being replaced by fresh live ones, and the exterior of the mansion was being restored. She had been so busy trying to keep the interior of the mansion livable that she didn’t have the time to take care of the outside. The mansion was simply too big for a single person to keep maintenance and she hadn’t been able to get anyone to come by for months.
Noctis must have paid them a fortune just to show up
, she thought.

Amara glanced at the digital clock and decided that she should warm Gemma’s baby formula ahead of time so the baby wouldn’t have to cry for her breakfast. As she was about to slip into her sneaker
s, she felt something strange moving at the tip of her toe, and instinctually withdrew. She jumped onto the bed when she saw something was crawling out from the inside. It was black and had many legs—

She shrieked.

Noctis materialized in the center of the room and then marched toward her. His eyes followed the direction her finger was pointing. There was a black spider with a red spot on its back crawling out of her sneaker. He moved quickly and squashed it beneath his black boot. He turned to her in a blurred motion and grasped at her ankle.

“Were you bitten?” He asked urgently while he was inspecting each of her feet individually.

“I… I don’t know.” She nervously swallowed. “I don’t feel any pain so I don’t think so. I think I pulled my foot away before it could strike.”

He inspected them once again, closer attention this time, and then met her gaze. She thought he was going to say something, but he remained silen
t. When the fear rush went away and her heart became still again, she gave him a small smile because she acknowledged that he still cared for her.

He sighed and then asked, “It is essential that you answer the truth. Have you practiced necromancy?”

She had never messed with the dead so she could give him a conscience clear answer. “No,” she said.

“Are you certain?” He pressed on.

“Yes! I admit that I used to practice summoning art, but never necromancy. Shiran said it wasn’t the same thing. I haven’t collected a single soul or raised any dead.”

“Used to?”

“It exhausted me and gave me terrible headaches. Sometimes I couldn’t get out of bed for days. Shiran said my powers were growing exponentially and my body couldn’t handle that kind of abuse. I only make use of it in desperate situations nowadays.”

He was staring into the distan
ce, so absorbed in his thoughts that he hadn’t even blinked. There was an expression line between his brows that enhanced his already intimidating presence. His lips thinned and curved into a barely noticeable frown.

Amara held her breath when his gaze returned from a far journey and set upon her. She had an irrational fear that he would notice she was studying him. She smiled at him once more, but this time was to hide the embarrassment that was burning at her cheeks.

But he had noticed.

Amara intentionally diverted her gaze and turned her attention to anything but the blue of his eyes. The most eye-catching thing in
sight was the blood red tattoo-like seal around her ankle. It was partially blocked from view by the hand still wrapping around it. Realizing that he was following her gaze, she diverted her attention to something else. She began looking for anything that would not induce a damn heart attack.             

“You are confined to this room until I figure out what is going on around here,” he issued an order.

“Confined? You can’t make me stay in here. I have a lot of chores to do.”

“You should not be doing chores in the first place.”

“But Lizzie and the baby…”

“I will have someone see to them.”

“How long do I need to stay in here? This is no solution.”

“No,” he said as he left the bedside and pressed his palm against the surface of the wall. A barely visible film that spread like liquid quickly coated the entire room before it disappeared from view. “It’s a stalling tactic until I pinpoint the problem and come up with a solution.”

Amara was surrounded by uncannily silence and stillness. She couldn’t even hear the lawnmowers running anymore. Even the sunlight shining into the room seemed strange. Usually she could see the nano-particles dancing festively in the light rays, but now they were frozen in their place. It was then that she realized that he had time-sealed the room.

She blinked at him.

“You know more than you let on, Amara. Will you tell me now or do you want me to find out on my own? Either way, I will get to the bottom of this.”

“You’ll just be wasting your time. The Oracle said that it
is almost always impossible to change the hand that Fate dealt.”

“So you admit that you know what is going on around here?”

“No, I can’t say that, but I do know that when Death comes calling, one should obey. That is the natural order of life.”

“I don’t give a damn about the natural order of life! Now answer me, who is this Oracle?”

“The Oracle is… a wise woman who could divine all of the answers of life. She is also Artemis’s mother and a good friend of my father. She was the one who told me…”             

His eyes were inviting her to continue.

Was there any point in hiding it? “…that I would not be able to live past my 23
rd
year.” He didn’t say anything so she went on. “I’m not one to believe in superstitions, but I’ve asked around about the Oracle. She had never been wrong about any of her predictions.”

“
You knew
,” he said condemningly as though she had done some unforgivable crime. “
How long have you known?
”

She slowly raised her hand to show him all five fingers and said very softly, “…
Five years.”

“And when was I going to be told of this if I had not queried?”

“Why would I—” she dropped her sentence when she saw an ugly expression on his face. She then gave him the short and honest answer, “I didn’t plan on telling you.”

“Never?” he pressed on.

She shook her head.

“How could you be so careless with your life? You have no right to surrender your life without my permission!”

She was offended by his choice of word. “Permission?!”

“You need my permission!” He retorted. “My consent! Your body, your heart, and your life are not your own to do as you please anymore! They’re
mine
and you have no rights to give any part of it away! I am the one who determines your fate. I am the one who determines if you should live or die, not you and most definitely not this ‘natural order of life’!”

He was coming at her like a fully enraged bear. All that was missing was
the pelt, some fangs, and some claws. All of the other elements were there. He caught her ankle in his hand and lifted it to her eye level. “This is proof that you belong to me,” he said, referring to the blood seal that was permanently engraved in her skin. “I shield you, I shelter you, I provide for you, but in return, everything that you are belongs to me.
That is our covenant, Amara!
”

His callous hand tightened around her ankle and yanked it past his side. Amara lost her balance; her back hit the soft mattress. He bent over her, one hand cupping the back of her neck while the other one was digging into her dark raven hair. The room was filled with his harsh breathing and her own. He muttered something in his language and then his mouth came down for a hard, punishing kiss. The hunger and intensity of his demanding kiss startled her. He ended the kiss abruptly and pulled himself away.

Amara propped up on her elbows and kept her expression blank. Perhaps it was because she didn’t know what else to replace it with. She pressed the back of her hand against her slightly bruised lips and returned gaze for gaze.

So it was all a stupid covenant. The blood seal on her ankle was nothing more than a dog tag so she could be returned to her owner if she went missing. And she had foolishly thought there was more to it than that. It was laughable that she had believed what he said that day and she was laughable for believing that a man like him could love her. She should have known better, but her head was floating on some girlish dream that maybe, just maybe, it could be true.

It was time to put her head back on her shoulders and taste the morning coffee. Perhaps he was in love, but he wasn’t in love with her. He was in love with his sense of duty and with his desire to father a child. He was obsessive about holding on to her just for the sake of possessing her. The blood seal on her ankle was the mark of ownership. How incredibly laughable. 

“If you recall,” she said softly and steadily with a derisive undertone. “I didn’t enter this covenant of ours by my own will. Surely, you haven’t forgotten how it happened.”

“Would that have made any difference?” he jeered.

“It wouldn’t make a world of difference where you are concerned.”

“Then where lays the problem?”

“The problem is I don’t need you to shield me, to shelter me, or even to provide for me. I can stand firmly on my own two feet. I’ve been on my own long before you appeared in my life. I’m not some naïve girl who
hasn’t seen the ugly side of the world or some weak woman who can’t make it on her own. I have nothing to gain from this so-called covenant and there was never any need for me to make that kind of trade-off. If you’d left the choice to me, I never would have agreed to it, so don’t use the covenant against me as though I was a willing partner in this! I haven’t agreed to anything!”