Read Online The Dark God's Bride Trilogy, #3 by Dahlia L. Summers - Free Book Online Page A

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.
    He dematerialized from the small fortune telling shop and rematerialized at the second floor hallway of his home. He folded his hands into fists when he saw the door to their bedroom was wide open. He had locked Amara in their sealed bedroom as a precaution before he left. Seeing it opened was a good indication that something was horribly wrong.
    He strode into the empty bedroom and then into the adjoining bathroom and closet. His bride was nowhere in sight. He returned to the bedroom to investigate. There was no sign of struggle, and her shoes were still next to the bed. He checked the lock on the door to see if it had been tampered with, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The time-seal he had placed on the room was still intact.
    He checked the rest of the mansion just to be sure his suspicions were valid. The servants informed him that they haven’t seen anyone around the house with the exception of the sick woman and the baby.
    There was one other way of finding her. Three years ago he had asked the goddess Gaila to bind her to him. The goddess had engraved a seal made of wheat and his blood into her ankle as part of the ritual. To find her, he simply needed to find the seal made of his blood. He grazed the back of his hand with his fingernail to let out a small amount of blood and concentrated on tracing the seal.
    But he couldn’t locate his bride or the seal. Panic was beginning to set in.  
    Noctis shifted back to the small fortune telling shop. The Oracle was aware that he was back, but she didn’t look up from the white queen in her hand.
    “Death has her now,” the Oracle answered the question he had not even asked. “The solar eclipse is nearing. He failed to take her life so he must keep her prisoner in the Realm of The Dead to prevent the event that the prophecy has foretold. That is what I would do if I was in his place.”
    “So she’s still alive…” Strangely, he didn’t seem to care about any other details except that she was still alive. The next question he posed stunned the Oracle and startled himself . “Do you happen to have the directions to get to the Realm of The Dead?”
    The Oracle lifted her eyes from white queen in her hand and set them on him. Her facial features appeared stunned, but not surprised. He never knew there were distinctions between the two until now, but he could see the difference like day and night. He speculated that she knew there was a possibility of this happening, but she hadn’t anticipated it to. 
    He had once warned his bride that if she died without his permission, he would go to the Realm of The Dead and drag her back to the world of the living. At the time he was saying those words to her, he hadn’t realized how literal he had meant it. He had also promised that it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience for either of them.
    “You would go to the Realm of The Dead to retrieve her even when you resent her?”
    “I don’t resent her,” he clarified. He couldn’t understand what gave the Oracle the idea that he was resenting his bride. “She is the one resenting me. I did not treat her as I should have…” He didn’t feel like sharing his thoughts with a stranger, or anyone for that matter. He knew what the score was. He didn’t treat his bride as he should have in the past and he was being punished for it every time he so much as looked at her. She would never give him her forgiveness and that was one of the many things he must live without.
    He should have done the right thing by her by giving back her freedom. He should have gone to ask the goddess Gaila to dissolve their covenant, but he didn’t want to do the right thing. Everything ha d its price and he was willing