Dark Devotion: Dark Series 3 Read Online Free Page A

call upon the Norns again – three women who knew all that has been, all that is and all that will be. After striding over to his desk, Odin picked up the bespoke letter opener and pressed the tip to his finger. Blood welled instantly. He approached the fire burning in the hearth and allowed three drops of his blood to fall into the flames – one for each of the three sisters.
    “Skuld, Verdandi, Urd, I summon you to me,” Odin announced. The fire hissed with each droplet of blood, consuming the small part of him hungrily, yet nothing more happened. He turned around, unbuttoned his suit jacket and rolled his shoulders. He didn’t like to wait. It only confirmed his fall in station. He walked toward the window and peered out once more. His paranoia was getting worse with each passing day.
    “You called for us, All-Father?” Verdandi’s voice was a gentle caress, a whisper that could barely be heard over the crackle of the fire. He spun around.
    The three sisters looked as different from the other as they could; Urd had black hair and eyes, Verdandi had blonde hair and blue eyes and Skuld had red hair with green eyes.
    “I did,” Odin said. He sank into his wing-backed chair and crossed his legs at the ankle, studying all three of them. “What took you so long?” he demanded.
    Urd gave him a disapproving look, something she would not have dreamed of doing one hundred years ago. “We’re here now. What do you want?”
    He bit the inside of his cheek. The impertinence of the woman was infuriating. “I need information.”
    “Clearly,” Urd shot back. Odin settled back in his chair and leveled her with a hard stare. Crossing her arms over her chest, she jerked her chin up a little and stared right back.
    He could antagonize the woman, but he didn’t have time for that. Instead he shifted his attention to her sisters. He knew that both Verdandi and Skuld still feared him. “Verdandi,” he said loudly. The woman flinched a little, her blue eyes widening as she looked at him. “I need to know about Loki.”
    “All-Father?” she replied.
    “I need to know how to … kill him,” he said carefully.
    Verdandi’s gaze flickered first to Skuld then to Urd. She looked at her oldest sister for a long time, an unspoken conversation passing between them. “Kill your brother?” Verdandi eventually replied.
    “Isn’t that what I said?” he ground out.
    “Forgive me, Odin,” Skuld said, “but there is no way.”
    “There must some way to kill him, just as there is a way to kill …” He clamped his lips shut. Urd snorted derisively. Biting his tongue, he added, “Loki must have a weakness.”
    “There is a way to kill the Trickster.” Urd walked toward him. She was the only one of the three who was curvy – more seductive. “Loki’s greatest weakness is his family,” she said smugly. “Only a true blood relation can kill him.”
    That was a fact Odin had already been aware of. Loki had four children. The first was Hel, the woman who became the goddess of the underworld; the second was Jormungand, a giant serpent who encircled the world; the third was Fenrir, the monster wolf that was still bound under the earth as far as Odin knew; and finally there was Sleipnir, Odin’s former eight-legged steed. To his knowledge, all of Loki’s children were fiercely protective of their father, even more so since his imprisonment.
    “None of his children would attack their father,” he said, feeling hope drain from his body.
    Heavy silence fell onto the room. He was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he did not take any notice of the Norns anymore. They could have faded away from his presence for all he knew, and when he finally looked up, Urd and Skuld indeed had. Verdandi, however, remained.
    “All-Father,” she said quietly. “Urd will not tell you this, but I will.”
    Odin’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
    “Do you remember what happened on Alfheim over fifteen hundred years ago?”
    He studied the