The Dark God's Bride Trilogy, #3 (30 page)

Nala lifted her eyes to him and saw the bewildered expression on his face. His eyes were focused past her. At the same time, she caught a glimpse of a man from the corner of her eyes. She thought he was Damian, so she turned to face him. But he wasn’t Damian.

Nala inhaled a sharp breath when she saw her other half standing by the door with a darkening expression on his face. She immediately replayed the conversation she had just had with Noctiam inside her mind to determine exactly how much Trent had heard. Even before then, she could already tell that he knew. Her plan, everything, was falling apart like a castle made of sand. She felt faint from the loss of blood, but Noctiam placed a hand behind her back to keep her standing. She blinked several times to refocus her vision.

“…Nala, of all the things you have ever done…”

He was angry with her. He would leave like he always did. She launched herself at him before he could disappear and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist “Trent! I can explain everything!”

“Don’t touch me!” Trent thundered as he shoved her away from him. She would have crashed against the kitchen counter if Noctiam hadn’t caught her in his arms. Trent’s blue eyes lit up in pure rage and stormed out of their home.

Noctiam gently pressed her head against his chest to shelter her from the flying debris. “Take back your core, Nala.”

Nala stared at the golden core and saw the reflection of a very exhausted woman staring back at her. She saw a ghastly pale face of dying woman. Her lips curled up into a satirical smile as the feeling of bitterness rose to her brittle heart. It had all been a lie. She lived over three thousand years as Nala.
Nala the Striking, Nala the Unrivaled, Nala the Coveted
. But it was the worn out face of a dying girl named Raya that finally reflected the true image of the woman she was on the inside.  

“No. I want you to place a curse on it. I want you to implant the last of my memories in it so that it would serve as a lesson. I will never allow myself to fall in love with him again!”

“Nala…!”

“A part of me still wants to give him one more chance. I will gamble with him one more time. If he cannot accept me, then I just want to disappear.”

“Nala…”

“I’m so very tired…”

She choked up another gulp of blood and fainted.

“You are a fool, Nala,” Noctiam lectured as he held her in one arm and the golden core in the other. “You are wholly devoted to a man who
won’t even allow himself to share the tiniest bit of affection with you. He would never be able to accept you for who you are. He can never see your true worth. His heart is deeply anchored to the human world and because of that he sees the world through the eyes of a mere mortal man. He is a blind man who could not see the happiness within his reach. He could never have you because he would not allow himself to love you. That is why you will always belong to me, Nala.”

The mortal girl
walked right into his chest as she was exiting the restroom like an insect flying into a web. He caught her by her elbows when she recoiled back to eliminate the possibility of her running. He got her right where he wanted her.

The girl gaped up at him with her large grey-blue eyes. She did not appear to be surprise
d to see him. She was only surprised at the fact that someone was blocking her way when she hadn’t expected it. On the contrary, he was the one who was flabbergasted about how he was able to track her down. It seemed uncannily instinctual to him.

The girl had the most amazing eyes he ever
saw on a woman. He never saw them in bright lighting before, only in the darkness of the cellar under candlelight. They stood out in the dark like two luminescent pearls so he always assumed they were grey. He didn’t see the blue and silver gradients in her eyes until now. The amount of blue and silver was minuscule, but they added just the right touch of saturation and vibrancy to her eyes.

The waterfall that was her hair was as dark as the midnight hour. Her face was a little above average, but there was something aesthetically pleasing about her that he couldn’t draw his eyes away. He couldn’t figure out what it was about her that
drew him in. Was it her soft plump lips or was it the youthful brows that framed her innocent face?

Innocent!
He grimaced. She may look innocent but he needed to remind himself that she was a scheming woman who plotted a murder out of jealousy. He could no sooner use that word to describe her than he could use it to describe himself. They were the same kind of people.

Instead of being fearful, she seemed happy to see him.

“For a woman with short legs, you certainly traveled a considerable distance from where we were,” he said with unmistakable scorn in his tone of voice.

“I may be short but my legs are proportional to the rest of me,” she sensitively disputed.

Noctis was staring down at her with his blue eyes. He could see that she was perfectly proportional. No parts of her body were too big or too small, too long or too short. The smile that touched his lips lacked sincerity.

“That smile of yours is very disconcerting,” she said with brutal honestly
. “Predatory even.”

“Oh?” He drawled. They were the same kind of people indeed, because very few people could distinguish the intentions behind his facial expressions. 

“Am I the prey by any chance?” she asked him in a casual tone of voice. So casual it made him lift a brow. If she knew she was the prey than how could she still be looking up at him so calmly unless she, too, was an expert in masking her emotions. “But you’ve caught me at a bad time, you see. How about we reschedule an hour from now?”

He shrugged off her suggestion. “Now is as good a time as any.”

She glanced down the hall with a worried expression on her face. He felt irritated beyond belief that he did not have her undivided attention. She was thinking about the man in the room down the hall.

He clutched her chin and forced her to look at him and only him. “You must look at me when I am speaking to you,
Amara Spelling
.”

“You remembered?”
she asked, her voice ever so hopeful.

“When I was coming down with these agonizing headaches, my mind was flooded with thousands of images. They all flashed by too rapidly for me to comprehend what had transpired.”

The hope died out in her heartbroken gaze. “…So you don’t remember me.”

“I remember you. Much of you,” he lied, emphasiz
ing the last three words as he glided the back of his fingers down her cheek. She stared into his eyes to find the truth. A saddened expression cast over her delicate face.

“No, you don’t,” she said without a trace of doubt.

“How can you be so sure?”

“If you remembered me, really remembered me, you wouldn’t look at me the way that you are now.”

“In what way am I looking at you?”

“You are weighing, and judging, and evaluating me. If you want to know something, just ask me. There is no need to pretend.”

“Then I will start with why did you keep me chained like
an animal
?”

“Do you really think I have that kind of power?”

“No,” he said condescendingly, “but I want to know who your accomplices are. I don’t just want your life. I want the lives of everyone who plotted against me. If you confess now, maybe I will feel merciful and grant you a quick death.”

She replied without reserving a second to think it over
, “That’s a kind offer, but I think I will pass it up.”

“Are you sadistic, I wonder?”

“You will not allow yourself to hurt me.”

He frowned at her bold statement. “I dislike conceit in a woman.”

“You dislike a lot of things,” she murmured succinctly. 

Noctis
furrowed his brows. “Are you not afraid of death, woman?”

“Everybody is afraid to die. It’s just that I’ve come really far in the last three years. I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

“Are you just plain senseless or is your love for me what makes you blind?”

“Maybe both,” she admitted regretfully.

The mortal was not giving him an inch. She was not afraid of him and she was not intimidated by him. He could see that it was not an act. It was a shame that she hadn’t taken him up on his offer because now he would have to employ unfavorable tactics.

His hand moved up from her elbow and wrapped it around her bandaged forearm. He knew how this got
there and it was still a fresh wound. She winced at the lightest touch. He tightened his grip on her forearm and she furrowed her brows. The blood drained from her face in an instant. It was then replaced by cold sweat from the pain.

“Who are your accomplices?”
he asked in an interrogative voice.

She didn’t answer his question so he tightened his grip a little more. Her pain was visible on her delicate face for him to see, but she stood firmly and looked up at him with those resolute grey eyes. She made no sound to express her pain, no resistan
ce, and not a single word begged for his mercy.

“Who are they?”
he asked impatiently because the duration that she made him wait was making him uncomfortable. The beads of sweat were making him uncomfortable. Her silent bearing was making him feel extremely uncomfortable.
“Speak!”
he urged her. “Confess those names and all of this will be over.” He would grant her a quick death.

Warm blood
seeped out of the white bandage and soaked his hands. It overflowed and dripped onto the ground between them. She still hadn’t said a single word of confession or of protest.

“Dense woman! Don’t you feel pain at all?”

“I definitely can feel pain,” she finally opened her mouth to answer him. “You are hurting me, Noctis,” she said softly. He didn’t know why he released her when he had no prior intention to. His body was acting on its own. He shot a glare at her and she smiled sweetly at him in return.

“I admire your courage. If you hadn’t murdered her, I would have spared your life just for that reason.”

“Murdered who?” the mortal inquired. The mortal’s youthful brows drew together in a puzzled expression, but then she became relaxed again once she had come to the realization of something. “If you mean Rion then yes, I was partially responsible for her death,” she calmly admitted. His blood was beginning to boil under the confession. “But I wouldn’t go as far as saying I murdered her,” the mortal finished the rest of her sentence. “She was the one who brought it upon herself.”

“You
—!” He gritted his teeth and grasped her neck neatly in his hand. “Are you aware that you are admitting to the crime?”

“I’ve committed no crime.”

“So why did you kill her? Was it purely out of petty jealousy or some other reason?”

“I did not kill Rion!” She continued to deny his accusation even when he was constricting her throat.

“I should kill you in the most horrible fashion for what you’ve done to me!”

He heard a bitter laugh coming from her. She was looking back at him through misty grey eyes. He found it strange that she hadn’t shed a single tear when she was in sweat-breaking pain, but something he said triggered such a reaction. “What have I ever done to you, Noctis? Instead of leaving you alone by yourself, I
volunteered
to stay behind. I’ve kept you company and cared for you and withstood session after session of our verbal abuse! I tried so hard to be good to you! So tell me! Really! Tell me
what did I do to you
that won me your contempt? Am I really the evil bitch that you made me out to be? How could you stand here and accuse me of murdering your wife?!”

Another woman’s voice was breaking his concentration. “
Why haven’t you killed her yet?
” He diverted his attention to the woman standing at the end of the hall. It appeared that Daniela of the Lycan clan followed him all the way to this place. The mortal was right about him disliking many things. He disliked being followed and he disliked doing things on other people’s terms.

“Stay out of this!”
he warned the female Lycan and then returned his gaze to the mortal.

The mortal was glaring back at him. She looked hurt and he had a feeling that it had nothing to do with the bleeding on her arm. “I should have been more determined to walk away from you that day. I shouldn’t have placed my trust in you. I tried so hard to fight for you, for us, but now I realized I was just being a fool. I give up. Do you hear me, Noctis? I’m giving up on you and I’m giving up on us. If you feel the need to seek retribution for Rion then just finish the deed and let it end here. Let ‘us’ end here.” She closed her eyes and said with deep regret, “Loving you was a mistake.”

The air pulsated around them. He hesitated. Why was he hesitating? Why was there a painful throb inside his chest when she wanted to break all ties with him? Were there ties between them to begin with?

“Kill her already!”
the female Lycan urged him on.