The Dark God's Bride Trilogy, #3 (7 page)

He chuckled as though she had shared with him something humorous. “So we are back to where we’ve started.”

“This is funny… how?”

“Everything you’ve pointed out is nothing new to me. Underestimating you as being as naïve or weak would reap unforeseeable consequences. I’ve had enough of those. As for our covenant, I
did not ask because I knew you would not enter into it on your own accord. You would have resisted futilely and ended up hurting yourself in the process. I had to do things my way.”

“It’s because you always have to do things your way that we’re locked in this exhausting power struggle. Don’t you think that wanting to control my fate is a bit too ambitious? You don’t even have any control over your own.”

“I don’t need to have control over my own fate, Amara, but I must have power over yours.”

“…
Why?”

He didn’t answer her question immediately. There was a long moment of silence
that stretched on and on. He studied her face the way an artist would study his subject before he immortalized it in painting. “Must there be a reason for everything?”

There was a sinking feeling in her belly again.

For a woman who
could divine all of the answers to the world’s mysteries, this alleged Oracle wasn’t hard to find. Noctis thought it would take him at least a week to learn of her whereabouts, but he found her in a matter hours. He just needed to ask the question and the immortals would spill everything they knew. They gave him direction to a small fortune telling shop in the lively part of the city.

Noctis sneered at the neon sign in front of the shop: ‘Mystical Palm and Tarot
Card Readings $10. Walk-Ins Welcome.’

It appeared that he had wasted a trip. He seriously doubted a true Oracle would set up shop at a place like this and waste her gift on trivial matters for a nominal fee. He was expecting to find her at a temple, or at least, in some remote corner of the world. But since he was already at her doorstep, it may be worth his time to investigate into this ‘Oracle’.

The bell at the door rang as he entered. The shop was dimly lit by glowing stones and numerous novelty items. The walls were covered in purple ‘psychic’ texts and tacky illustrations of the supernatural world.

“You should not have left your home today,” a female voice said from somewhere behind the oriental room divider. Noctis ventured forward to look behind the divider. The voice belonged to a young woman who could not have seen her thirtieth year. She couldn’t possibly be old enough to be Artemis’s mother if she were mortal. He could tell that she was a beautiful woman even behind a mask of makeup. Dark, heavy liner sharply contrasted her light greyish blue eyes, making them appear even lighter by comparison. There was something very familiar about them, but he couldn’t pinpoint why.

She smiled at him. “But I’m honored that you’ve graced my place of business. It’s not every day that a fallen god sets foot in here.”

Noctis lifted a brow. “The Oracle, is it?”

“I suppose that’s what they call me, but you can call me Mrs. Herald if it makes you feel more comfortable. What about you? Should I address you by your given name, Summit, or your other alias, Noctis? Or would you prefer your highness or some other esteemed title?”

“I have no preference or do I care how you address me.”

“Of course you would want to get straight to the heart of the matter,” she said, still retaining a tranquil smile on her face. “I just thought that we get the formalities and your skepticisms out of the way first before we have a heart to heart. I’ve wanted to meet you in person for some time now.”

“Have you?” he asked with the same coolness.

“But I had no way of getting to where you were being held. It was shall we say ‘tricky’? It’s good that you’ve found your way here, although it may not be the best time. It’s already too late for me to tell you to go home.” She sighed.

“I don’t understand where you are getting at.”

“Never mind. Just ask me what you came here to ask.”

“Since you are the Oracle, I assume you already know every question I wanted to ask.”

“Not precisely, but I do get the general idea. I know that you came to me because you want to know the fate of your mortal bride. You want to know who or what is behind all of the recent incidents aiming at her life. You wanted to know why. Did I get everything?”

“You said she would not live past her 23
rd
year. Is that true?”

The Oracle blinked at his question. “I certainly did not. She must have misunderstood me. I told Amara that her
mortal life
would end on her 23
rd
year. However, I have not revealed to her how and why. It was better that she didn’t know. Wait,” she called out to him when she saw him turning. “Don’t leave yet. You haven’t heard everything.”

“I got what I came here for,” he said.

“Amara cannot know of her own tragic fate, but you can. That is the reason why I brought her to you.”

He sprung around to face her. Blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. He remembered that the goddess Gaila once told him that he and Amara were never meant to cross each other’s path. What the oracle had just professed hit him like a brick. “What did you just say?”

“You must never speak a word of what I am about to tell you.”

Noctis nodded, agreeing to her condition.

Her voice soft and heavy with grief, the Oracle confessed, “Amara is my youngest daughter.”

“How dare you speak such lies?”
he spat out accusingly.

“The very first moment I laid eyes on my daughters, I could already see the full cinematography of their lives. Life held very few surprises for me until I gave birth to Amara. You could not imagine the horror or the dark powers that I
saw in my vision. I saw death, plague, and destruction following her every footstep. I saw a man at her side who whispered sweet poisonous words into her ear. And I saw Death, himself, come to bind her in chains. She would forever be a prisoner in the Realm of The Dead. I’ve devoted my entire life to Fate, but Fate had shown no mercy on my poor daughter. I didn’t want my vision to come true. I wanted to change her fate. I wanted my daughter to have a chance at a normal life.

“I thought that I was being clever by giving her to a kind couple who couldn’t conceive. I thought that I had saved her by removing her from everything that has to do with magic. Before I left her, I made sure I read her future again. It was different that time. I saw her live out a normal life and die of old age in her bed. I visited her often throughout the years to read her future. Every time my vision was slightly different from the last. Sometimes things that I hadn’t seen coming and were not supposed to happen would happen. Like when her foster mother passed away from a strange illness. Or when her foster father remarried and then passed away soon after. Or when she ran away…

“She found me on her own a decade later to ask for a favor. She had asked me to open a portal to Hell so she could go visit her other foster mother, Kali. I could not open the gate between realms, but I knew people who could. I called in favors from friends and asked them to take Amara to her home.

“What really frightened me was how her fate had reverted back to what I saw in my original vision. I should have known that changing Fate wouldn’t be so simple.” The Oracle rounded the table at the center of the room and then slightly leaned over the chessboard on it. Light fingers began moving the pieces on each side. “Changing Fate is like playing an intricate game of chess. Every piece play
s a specific role and any single piece can change the game, but that doesn’t mean it can change the outcome. I spent the next two years divining and mapping out every possible outcome of my daughter’s life if I were to change any single variable. That was until I saw you in my vision.”

“You
saw
me?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes.” The Oracle picked up the white knight on the chessboard and moved it next to the white queen that was being surrounded by black pieces. “I saw repeat
ing images of you when I was reading Artemis’s future. You were at odds with her future mate’s clan. It was pure curiosity that I looked into your past, but the more I looked into your life, the more I realized that your past was quite similar to Amara’s future. I started adding you as the variable to the equation and unexpectedly opened up another world of possibilities. There were more bad outcomes than good, but I saw something that I…” The Oracle abandoned that sentence and smoothly transitioned to the next. “Amara’s best chance lies with you. Only you can protect her and help her fill another important role. That was the reason why I delivered her right to you on that day.”

“So it was
your
damn fault,” he said through gritted teeth. His fierce blue eyes were glaring at his worst enemy. “
You
did this to me!”

“Would you truly rather you had never met her?”

“
Yes!
” he retorted without spending a moment of thought on it. “I was fine the way I was. I was fine until you sent that… that stubborn, headstrong, scheming little grey-eyed mortal to sabotage me!”

“If you hadn’t met that scheming little grey-eyed mortal, you would have abducted the real Kali. You would have angered Lucifer into sealing you away the second time. If you hadn’t met that scheming little grey-eyed mortal, there would have been nothing to anchor you down. You would have gone insane.”

“I would rather lose my sanity and not know it than be insane and know it. Do you know what it’s like for me to look into those grey eyes knowing that all she could ever see in me is a cruel and vindictive beast? She asked me if I was too ambitious in wanting to control her fate as though there was some other way for me to hold on to something that was never meant to be! If it was possible, I wish I had never…” Those grey-blue eyes were haunting him again. He could smell the sweet scent of jasmine nectar and feel the warmth of her soft lips on his even when there was no physical reality. “I wish I had never…” But he couldn’t finish what he thought he wanted to say. A small part of him feared that if he had finished the sentence, it would come true.

“I had no idea that was how you felt,” the oracle said as she exhaled. “Seeing the future is like reading the pages of a history book before it is written. Perhaps, I had made a miscalculation. In that case…” The Oracle grabbed the white queen into her fist and then angrily swiped all of the other pieces off the board. The pieces flew off the table and scattered on the ground. “I am defeated. You are not the variable I was looking for. Return to your home and forget what you’ve seen and heard here.”

“You have not revealed to me what is to become of Amara’s fate.”

The Oracle was looking down at the white queen in her hand with a heavy expression. “It no longer has anything to do with you. You are not the variable I was looking for.”

“What does that even mean?”

“There is nothing left I can do. I did all that I could, but I still failed her. I truly thought you could save her.”

Noctis grabbed the chess piece from her hand and tossed it aside. “I am not a very patient man, and I have never had a knack for games, so tell me in as few words as possible: what is to become of my bride?”

She lifted her chin and looked directly into his eyes. “Do you care for her?”

His patience thinned. “Answer me!” he bellowed.

“Her mortal life will end on her 23
rd
year because Death will not let her live to see her 24
th
birthday. He will not stop until she is dead, but she cannot die by his hands because he has no jurisdiction over the living. If the emissaries from the Realm of The Dead should fail to take her life before the day of the solar eclipse, she will inherit a dark power like none you have ever seen. She will have all of the powers of the dead to wreak havoc on the living. She will not be herself anymore, but the very manifestation of plague and pestilence and famine. I tried to keep that man away from her, but he still found her. I tried to have him killed but he always managed to elude me.”

“Who?”

“He is the one who would give her this dark power… this devastating curse. He would have been her lover in another reality, but I interfered. I arranged for my daughter to meet the homeless Elizabeth in the event that Amara and the Necromancer should meet. Destiny had been altered but not changed.”

“Who is this man?”

“Can’t you guess?” the Oracle asked.

He contemplated and could only think of one person. “
The Necromancer?
”

“You won’t be able to kill him. He’s not a variable that can be changed. Even Death himself is not having any luck with it. That is the reason why Death is aiming at my daughter.”

“Are you saying that if I could get rid of the Necromancer, Death would not pursue my bride? Do I have your word on this?”

“It is too late for that,” she repeated the first sentence she had said to him
. “You really should not have left your home today.”

He had always hated talking to indirect people, but he was skilled at reading between the lines. Something didn’t feel quite right and not because the Oracle was hinting it at him. Ever since he and his bride entered their covenant he could always sense her presence, but just now, it was as if she had evaporated from the face of the earth. He felt the need to return home immediately.