“Surely the Assyrians cannot mean to displace you?”
Ra stood with him by the window, looking out over the city. Egypt reflected its god, Thor thought. Worn and tired, but still living. Still strong in the ways that mattered.
“It is not the will of Ashur, no,” Ra agreed. “But Assurbanipal—Adam—he has no respect for man or god, and Ashur is unwilling to act against him for fear he will leave. In truth, I do not blame him. As long as Adam makes the proper offerings, Ashur’s power grows. It is a heady thing, to be worshipped by the son of Elohim.”
Thor grunted. Eve may not have known him for a god, but the love she had given him had been as powerful as any sacrifice. Truly, even more so. When they had made love, her power had spilled over the whole village, leaving peace in its wake. He could only imagine what Adam’s worship might bring.
“Did you find her family?” Ra asked. “You could not have come so far to speak of Adam’s foolishness.”
“I fear I did not come to speak of Eve, either,” Thor admitted. “My father sent me in the hope that you might have grain to spare, but I could not ask it of you now, even in trade.”
“Nonsense,” Ra said, the lines of his face growing deeper. “You would not come if the need were not desperate. It is for your people?”
Thor nodded stiffly. “The climate has shifted and our people starve. Half the crops have failed, already. We have done what we can, of course, and begun moving our people south, but it has been a hard adjustment, and the southern and coastal villages cannot feed so many on their own stores.”
“Of course,” Ra said, staring out the window again. “When Elohim stirs, the world awakes. But He has slept for so long, I did not think even to warn you.”
“Then it is His way?”
Ra shook his head. “It happens rarely. As I said, He was greatly weakened by Creation. Before the Covenant, it was much more common. He feared for the world, you see. As long as we are at peace with one another, it is nothing to Him if we remain. But He could not rest, knowing we might tear the earth apart. Was there some sign of unrest among the Aesir?”
“No,” Thor said, thinking guiltily of Eve. “None among us would violate the Covenant. Odin would not stand for it.”
“But there is something else?” Ra asked, no longer studying his city, his Egypt. Thor felt his gaze, sharp and searching, and he dared not lie. Not to Ra, who had treated him always as an honored friend. And at least if he spoke with Ra about his fears, it would not return to Sif.
“I married her,” he said. “I had not meant to do it—only to know her better. But she is without equal. And when she began to love me! She is made for it, Ra. Made to love so perfectly that I wonder at the True God’s power. She has no idea of her perfection. Not truly. No understanding of her true godhead. And after Sif’s betrayal…” His jaw tightened until his teeth ached. “It is my fault, what has happened in the North.”
“Enough,” Ra said gently. “She has suffered through more marriages of pain and abuse that I cannot imagine Elohim would stir himself against your love. But it is dangerous, Thor. She does not belong to us. A goddess she may be, but this road you walk will only bring heartbreak to both of you. You would be better served seeking comfort in Athena’s embrace.”
“Athena?” Thor snorted. “What has she to do with any of it?”
Ra flicked his fingers, dismissing the suggestion. “I mean only to say there is no future to be had with her. Will you find her in every life? Court her every century, as if it were the first? Be husband, father, brother, and child to her as she grows from babe to child to woman to decrepit hag once more?”
Yes. The thought startled him all the more for the way his heart twisted with longing. To spend eternity with Eve—it tempted him in a way he had never imagined possible. He had Sif, after all. He was married, and until they had come to this world, he had been content. They both had been. His affair with Eve should have ended with Tora’s death. He had promised himself it would be so.
“Perhaps for a century or two, you would have peace with her,” Ra went on, as if knowing his thoughts. “But she is not made to love you, Thor. She is made to love mortal men, who will age and grow as she does, die as she does. Would you interfere, thwart the will of her Father? Teach her the love of a god so that she would be spoiled by it, ruined for any mortal who might come after?”
“My ability to love is far from perfect,” Thor said, unable to stop himself from arguing like a sullen boy. “My inconstancy has already been proven. I am twice damned by my wife. Would loving Eve so imperfectly be a crime?”
Ra shook his head, his old eyes filled with compassion. “She is of the world, Thor. You are merely in it. Do not forget that, whatever you decide.”
Thor wanted to snarl, to growl, to thunder his frustration. But these were not his lands, and he had not come to Egypt to fight with Ra over Eve. He had not meant to think of her at all. She would not have wanted him distracted by this while his people suffered. And if she had known he was married…
“I have gold to trade,” he said at last, his tone dull even to his own ears, “if Egypt can afford to part with any of its bounty.”
Ra nodded. “Even in times of war, we can spare a little for our friends in the North, but you might have better luck with the Olympians. Speak with Athena and she will see Zeus agrees.”
“And how might I reach her?”
Ra smiled faintly. “Take yourself to Athens and she will find you.”
Athens. Thor grimaced internally. Eve had spoken far too much of Athens. Going there would only remind him of what he should not want. But he had lost too much time already, and he had promised his father he would seek out Poseidon, besides. Odin hoped the Olympian god of earth and sea would know some secret that might help them. But if it was Elohim who had changed the course of the currents, and the flow of magma beneath the surface, Thor did not have much hope.
“My gratitude, Ra,” he remembered to say, offering a short bow. “I wish you good fortune in your conflict with Assyria.”
Ra waved the sentiment away. “We will rise up again. Another century or two, and who can say. Perhaps it will be Adam leading Egypt’s armies in conquering Assyria instead.”
The thought brought him little comfort.
“Thor of the North!” Athena smiled, taking both his hands. Unlike Aphrodite, she did not try to greet him any more warmly. “I had not expected to see you again so soon. Ra sent word ahead of your needs, and if I must give you grain from Athens’ own stores, you will have it for your people, but I expect my father will see reason. He will like having you in his debt.”
“I have gold—”
“Please,” she stopped him, her expression suddenly grave. “The last apples you gave us resulted in more grief than I wish to remember. No. If there is any trade, let it be in some other currency.”
The Athenians had directed him to a shrine, nestled in the heart of an olive grove. A low stone altar stood beneath the oldest tree, with a spring fed pond reflecting moonlight beside it. Athena seemed to shine with the same light, between the silver breastplate and the white of her simple gown. Snakes curled around her upper arms like so much gold. She brushed olive leaves off the altar and sat upon it like a bench, making room for him beside her.
He pressed his lips together. Virgin goddess or not, she seemed to know her beauty and how best to display it with simple elegance. Her skin glowed, moon-pale and perfect, in contrast to the rich brown of her hair, so dark it looked black without sunlight, but she wore no ornamentation, nor did she paint her face as Aphrodite might. Thor dared not give offense, and sat beside her, as far from her as the stone allowed.
Her smile mocked him. “You cannot be nervous of me? If you could resist my sister’s wiles and all of Bhagavan’s court, there is nothing I can offer that would tempt you, were I so disposed.”
He inclined his head politely. “You do not give yourself the credit you deserve, Athena.”
She laughed. “Ar
e all the Aesir so generous? Perhaps I should insist on accompanying you back to Asgard in exchange for grain—but no, you do not have time for such foolishness, and I would not tire you with it.”
“You have my gratitude,” he said. “For anything you might offer us.”
“In Athens we have not much. Perhaps it would see three of your villages through the winter.” Her eyes narrowed just slightly, shrewdly, and he wondered what it was she looked for. One of the snakes slithered from her arm to her wrist, and she stroked its head. “Are you willing to trade more than gold, Thor of the North? Zeus has no sense of urgency for pursuits other than his own, but if you can persuade him, your people will not go hungry this year or the next.”
He arched a brow. “What must I do?”
“There is a feast this night upon Olympus. If you can keep from offending my family, I believe my father would be most likely to grant his aid come morning. Do you suppose you can manage?”
No doubt Sif would take exception to an evening spent carousing with Olympian goddesses, but he had come for grain, and he would not leave without it. And truly, it would be better if she believed him unfaithful in their company than Eve’s.
“Do I have the promise of your support?” he asked.
Athena rose, offering him her hand. “I fear you will not succeed without it.”
With Athena’s help, Thor returned to Asgard with grain for two winters, at least. But even that was not enough. The interior lands became inhospitable, and the Aesir shifted the populations to the coasts and further south. As a result of such migrations, the small fishing village where Thor had lived with Eve swelled with refugees. Where children were too weak to travel, Thor hitched his goats to a cart and drove them, leaving them in the care of Owen’s bloodline until their parents might follow. But the people there told stories of Thorgrim, and those stories were heard by gods, and more than once, Thor saw Sif’s eyes narrow, flashing gold before she banked her fury.
The weather settled, and so did their people, finding new ways to live off the colder lands. And with the crisis past, the Aesir fell back into easier days and older habits. Feasts and celebrations and long nights of drinking in Odin’s hall. Thor remained by his wife, among his people, and waited for Sif’s anger to rise.
For Sif, goddess of beauty and desire, wheat and prosperity, did not forget any slight. And once she learned he had turned his heart to another, loved anyone but her, all peace in Asgard would be shattered.
It was only a matter of time.
Chapter Nineteen: Present
Eve curled up in the library with Ryam’s journal and a cup of hot tea. After the departure of Ryan and Clair with Jean and Mia two weeks before, the rest of the DeLeon’s had started to disperse in dribs and drabs. The only family left was Brienne’s, now, and they were arranging their own departure with Garrit for the next day. Eve didn’t mind having the family in residence, but the cooks and the maids and the other staff required to make the manor run on such a large scale challenged her patience. Servants and maids smacked too much of Adam’s first oppression, and Adam was already on her mind more than she liked.
She frowned and flipped open the journal, scanning the pages for anything that might be about her. One page was taken up completely by the sketch of a man’s face, preserved in a sleeve of plastic. It was roughly done, as if the artist was in a hurry to put it to paper before the image faded in his mind. Even aged and cracked, she could see clearly who the sketch was supposed to be. Something about the jaw line and the shape of the eyes. Eyes which would have been the color of stone, had Ryam been provided with the mediums to color them.
Adam’s face stared at her from the journal. No explanation. No notes. Just the face, and underneath it in the tight script which she recognized as belonging to her late husband, a warning. Prenez garde! Il se souvient d’elle.
Beware! He remembers her.
She closed the book and stared out the window. She had never described Adam to Ryam, never given him the image of her brother, always changing. But there were others who could have. Ghosts who walked when they should be dead, figments of her imagination, projected into the heads of others without purposeful thought. That was how it had begun, in her last life. Her mind had conjured those she had loved in the past into living, breathing men. There one minute, whispering in her ear, and gone the next. And nothing but insanity could have caused her to manipulate the doctors, forcing them to see the phantoms too. She had deserved to be locked up for that. She had deserved every punishment those twisted men designed for her.
No, she hadn’t described Adam to Ryam, but what if she had projected the man who did? Meddled in Ryam’s mind, without even realizing it? She rubbed her eyes and tried to think. Surely she would have remembered if she had been talking to Thorgrim’s ghost. But she hadn’t needed to be present for Thorgrim’s ghost to talk to others in her last life, and had no memory of anything he’d told anyone other than herself. But why would her mind have betrayed her and worse, betrayed him?
Every time she opened the journal she ended up with more questions than answers. Ryam had been much too far removed from her own offspring to have inherited some fluke of telepathy. Aside from his appearance as if from nowhere to make a marriage offer to her father, something she had attributed at the time to the work of rumors spread about the charges she faced, he hadn’t done anything that could have been termed rash. He fought for his king when it was required of him, and minded his own lands the rest of the time. The only way he could have created that sketch was if someone had deliberately implanted the image of Adam in his mind. If it had not been the angels, she was the only one who could.
A knock on the door jerked Eve from her reverie and she looked away from the window, setting the journal aside. Her tea was cold, but she drank it anyway.
Garrit let himself in and shut the door firmly behind him. “I’m not sure you’re ever going to forgive me for sending Mia to Paris.”
“Forgive you?” She watched him drag his fingers through his hair, his agitation palpable enough to make her stomach lurch. “What on earth is there to forgive? Sending her to Paris was an inspired idea.”
He made a sound very near to a snort, as near as a Frenchman came to one, in any event. “Inspired, but not very well thought out.”
“Garrit, what on earth are you talking about? With Ryan, Clair, and Jean, I find it hard to believe that she was able to get herself into any serious trouble.”
His face darkened. “So did we. But somehow, Mia managed.”
She searched his face then, noticing the worry lines around his eyes and mouth for the first time. “Tell me.”
“Adam found her.”
The mug in her hands smashed on the tile floor. All she could see was Lilith, the first woman made in the Garden, shattered in body and mind. Unable even to think for herself, when he had finished with her.
“I don’t know how.” Garrit said. “He was supposed to be in our custody. Safely away. No one ever could have foreseen this. What interest could he possibly have had in her?”
“Garrit, what did he do? Is she all right? Has he hurt her?” It all came out in a rush. She had a horrible picture of Mia, bruised and abused crying somewhere.
He took her by the arms and pushed her back into the chair she had been sitting in. She didn’t even remember having stood. “He doesn’t appear to have harmed her. Yet.”
“My God, Garrit. Any detail at all? Or do you not have any information?”
“She met him at one of Jean’s clubs and he hasn’t left her side since. No one even realized who he was until it was too late! I should never have let her go off with them. Between Ryan and Jean, we may as well have spelled the whole thing out.”
She hid her face in her hands and tried to focus on not hyperventilating. As long as he didn’t hurt her. What was he after? “He probably did it on purpose. Prevented them from recognizing him. I can’t imagine he isn’t fully capable. Especially after what he did to your parents to
get himself here.”
“I am so sorry, Abby. We should have been looking, tracking him somehow. We should have known he was free.”
She stood up, holding her hand out to stop him. “I never should’ve let my guard down. I knew he wasn’t through with me. It was only a matter of time. If I’d been keeping tabs on him, this never could’ve happened.”
“Jean says she’s convinced herself she’s in love. It’s been a week, Abby. What the hell are we supposed to do about this without exposing everything? Mia’s smart. She’s caught on to far too much already.”
In love? Adam didn’t know the meaning of the word, never mind forcing someone else to feel it. Lust, perhaps. But not love, and not in any way that he was capable of maintaining. Not even Lilith, brainwashed as she was, had loved him. But what could she say? Telling Mia she didn’t love Adam would only make her more stubborn.
“I can’t, Garrit.” The words caught in her throat. “We can’t do anything.”
He stared at her.
“I can’t police her life and I’m not her parent.” Her mind raced while she considered what she could actually do. Much too little that did not turn her into her brother. If she used her power to force Mia from him, then what? She had spent a lifetime struggling against moving down that path, even in her subconscious mind. She would not take free will from her sister, of all people. She wouldn’t let Adam do it either. But if Mia really loved him, Eve had no choice now.
“Adam would’ve married someone else’s sister, or daughter or cousin and we wouldn’t have been the wiser. If it’s Mia he wants, and Mia who wants him…” She went to the window. The sun had disappeared behind black clouds and thunder rumbled, like an ache in her bones. The land outside looked gray, and even through the window she could hear the dogs barking, and the horses in their stable objecting to the coming storm.
She pressed her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes. She could protect Mia, at least. If she kept her sister close enough, Adam wouldn’t dare to violate her. That was the best way. The safest way.
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