The Dark God's Bride Trilogy, #3 by Dahlia L. Summers Page A

but he conceitedly reserved the possibility that those tears were for him. That possibility made him feel warm inside, but it also made him wonder if he was a bit sadistic.
    “It’s all my fault…” she muttered. “You shouldn’t have come.”
    “I came all this way for you and the only thing I get is ‘you shouldn’t have come’.”
    “You really shouldn’t have come. I’m here because I’m supposed to be here.”
    “You are still alive,” he reminded her, “and even if you weren’t, haven’t I said that if you died without my permission, I would come here to drag you back to the land of the living? Don’t take my words so lightly.”
    She sniffled. “I thought… I thought you were through with me. I didn’t think you would come to get me.”
    Was there even a possibility of that happening? He had a what-was-mine-I-keep philosophy, but he wouldn’t go as far as diving head first into the Realm of The Dead to retrieve something he was ‘through with’. He was angry with her – enraged even – but he could never be through with her. His being here was proof of that.
    She sunk her pearly white teeth into her bottom lip. “How do I stop the bleeding?”
    “The wounds will heal in a matter of hours. Just ignore them.”
    “But you’re in pain.”
    “When I was a child, I was trained to acquire a high tolerance for pain in the event that I was captured by the enemies and tortured in interrogation.”
    “… How?”
    “We used species of non-toxic ants that can deliver mind-numbing pain if bitten.”
    “Oh!” She cringed at his description. The memory was as distant to him as a dream he once had, but her reaction made him recall all of his childhood training as if it was happening. His lips curled upward and formed an amused smile.
    “My older brothers made fun of me during my training, and years later, I made fun of my younger brothers during their training.”
    “Kind of like hazing or a rite of passage?”
    He shook his head. “We were just being men. It wasn’t mandatory to go through the training, but we all wanted to compete with each other. In those days, all boys dreamed to become great warriors.”
    “Yourself included?”
    “My brother, Liven, is one of the greatest warriors throughout the land. He was the biggest and he was the strongest. My father takes pride in having him as a son. My goal had been to surpass him as a warrior. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. I lost to him countless times before I won my first fight against him. I’d fought him so many times that I learned all of his strengths and weaknesses. Liven may be strong as a bull and as built as a tank, but he’s not flexible enough or fast enough. That was when I realized, it all comes down to knowing your enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. I never lost to anyone since.”
    “Do you miss your brothers?”
    He sighed at her question and then changed the subject. “Do you feel better now?”
    She nodded and sat up on her own. “I can breathe easier now. I think my lungs were just temporarily upset.”
    “Good,” he pushed to his feet and pointed at the snowcap ped mountain in the distance. “We need to cross that mountain before it gets dark.”

Chapter Eight
     
    The higher they climbed up the mountain, the colder the atmosphere became. There were fewer and fewer trees too. There were thin layers of grass between the rough terrains at the foot of the mountain, but now everything was covered in a blanket of snow. Amara was in no way dressed for the weather. Worse yet, she was damp from head to toe. It was not enough that she had to fight through a foot of snow, but she also had to fight the high-speed wind blowing in her face. Her body heat was escaping fast and she grew seriously worried.
    Noctis, however, had no sense of the cold. He continued to lead her forward. When he looked back to check on her, she smiled at him. Complaints would have gotten her nowhere. They needed to make this journey, and they were