by Dahlia Lu
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 23rd 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!”
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.
Chapter Four
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 23rd 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 23rd 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 plays 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 repeating 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 fro
m 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 23rd year because Death will not let her live to see her 24th 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.