Scarlet From Gold (Book 3) Read Online Free

sat in the pews to rest in the shady setting, cooling off after the warmth of walking through the bright sunshine outside.
    As they sat, and Marco leaned against the wall in repose, there came a knock at the door, and then a mermaid entered the chapel.
    The three men gawked in astonishment at the beautiful creature, which somehow managed to walk upright by undulating along the length of its tail.
    “I’ve been so worried about you Marco,” the feminine voice crooned as the mermaid slumped to a sitting position next to him.  “After we were separated in the cave I didn’t know if you were alive, but Gawail insisted that you were.  ‘The blessed one will not die here, not now; he has much to do,’ the pixie told us,” she spoke confidentially as her fingers raked through the astonished Marco’s short hair, then came to rest on the back of his neck.  The tips of her fingers gently dipped between his golden torq and the back of his scalp.
    “I’m going to have to divorce you, my love,” she said.  “Asterion is my destiny.  He’ll make me very happy, and I’ll do the same for him. 
    “Of course, your neckpiece is an unusual one, and we won’t be able to easily remove it, and I wouldn’t want you to anyway, which is selfish of me, but I’d like for you to remember me in some way, so I’m going to place my name back here,” she confused him by saying.
    “Plus I’ll put your other beloved’s name here too, and I’ll even put the third name in place for you, so that someday you’ll know you’ve met your destiny,” her fingers suddenly were all in place around the torq, tightening it against the front of his neck as she pressed her hand between the metal and the back of his neck, then squeezed the metal tightly.  She leaned into him and astonished him by placing a soft kiss upon his lips, just before there was a shocking jolt at the back of his neck.
    “Marco!  Marco, wake up!” Dex shook his shoulder.  “It’s just a dream,” the old man told Marco as the young pilgrim woke with a start from his dream.
    “Are you awake?  Everything okay?” Dex asked, as Marco stared about wild-eyed.
    “Are we?” Marco began to ask as he looked around the tiny room.  Pivot sat in the other pew, looking at him, but no one else was present.  “We’re alone?  No one else came in?” Marco asked.
    “I don’t think so.  We were resting, and suddenly you shouted.  You had that odd hand of yours pressed against your neck, and it seemed like there was a spark, and then I shook you awake,” Dex explained.
    “My torq,” Marco said after a second’s consideration.  “Is there anything written on it?” he asked, as his hand brushed across the back of the metal band.
    Dex peered at the back of his neck.  “There’s a word – Pesino.   And another word – Mirra.  And a third word – Ellersbine.  Those are what? Names?” he asked.
    “They are; they’re names,” Marco confirmed.  He knew that now.  The mermaid had been named Pesino, and he had married her.  And the second name was his beloved, the dream had told him.
    “What’s the second name?” Marco asked Dex to repeat.
    “Mmmm, Mirra,” the man repeated directly behind Marco.
    “I don’t know it,” Marco said.  “And the last one?”
    “Ellersbine,” Dex read, the moved back.
    “That doesn’t mean anything either,” Marco commented.
    “It was just a dream,” Dex repeated, “but maybe some part of your memories is trying to tell you something.”
    Pivot stood up.  “We probably ought to start walking again,” he said as he shrugged his small pack of belongings onto his back.
    They returned to their pilgrim’s walk, as Marco obsessively thought about the strange dream.  He couldn’t imagine why a mermaid would claim to be married to him; was he a fisherman in his previous life, used to living on the sea, he wondered.
    They stopped that night in a small village, and slept in the stables of an inn that had a swift