A cacophony of noise burst forth, like thousands of bells ringing without warning. She covered her ears to try to stop it, crying out and dropping to her knees. Dimly, she felt Reu suffering beside her, even as she thought her ears might burst.
“Silence!” Michael called.
The noise ceased at once, replaced with the soft sound of wings against the air, like the thrum of a heartbeat. She looked up at the angel, his hand still on his sword, ready to draw it forth. The way his eyes gleamed with anticipation sent another chill down her spine, her skin prickling.
“Please,” she heard herself say. “Reu only ate of the fruit because of me. To help me.”
Michael’s lip curled and she knew she had no secrets from him when he looked on her. His grip on the sword relaxed. He dropped to the earth before them and folded his wings to his back. “You are Eve.”
She swallowed, unsure of what her identity meant to the angel. “I am. And I ate of the fruit, knowingly. To save the others from Adam.”
“God’s first son has long flaunted His law. We expected better from His favorite daughter.” The angel’s eyes narrowed as it studied her, and he reached out, touching her neck with cold fingers. “Adam oppresses God’s people with violence.” That flash of anticipation rose again, and Eve shivered. “This will not go unpunished.”
At these words, the bells sounded again, louder than before. Reu groaned in pain, though this time Eve felt none with the angel’s hand still touching her.
“Quiet!” The angel’s gaze had shifted to Reu, and Eve saw him mark the black and blue at Reu’s side. Michael’s hand fell from her and he stepped back, waiting for them to rise to their feet before speaking again. “Your brother has the fruit?”
The sight of Adam, gripping the fruit tightly in his hand rose into her mind. “Yes.”
“He has lost the right to live in God’s Garden. He will be cast out, just as you have been.” The angel raised a hand and two white garments were dropped to him. He tossed the shifts to the grass before them and they lost their brilliance and purity, the white dulling into cream and gray. Michael stared at Reu. “Your sacrifice is noted, but you are still bound by your oath. Adam has twice come too close to his desire. Do not fail her when he is among you once more, for now that they have eaten of the fruit, all will be lost. We will have no other choice but to act, and you will suffer for the results.”
“I know my oath.”
The angel nodded and spread its wings, rising once more into the air. “Though you have sinned willfully, it was for greater purpose, and this will be forgiven only so that you may serve. God’s fire will mark you as the true leaders of your people.” He drew the sword of flame, swinging it to the earth like a bolt of lightning, spraying dirt and fire to reveal stone and something else, glinting in the light. “Strike the rocks and metal together over dry grass and branches, and flame will serve you. It is the last protection we will offer.”
Reu nodded. “Thank you, Michael, for your mercy.”
“The Grace of God is with you both. Protect creation and God’s law. Live and serve and give your people peace.”
They all rose higher into the sky, moving together so precisely none touched one another, but no sun pierced through their shadow. Eve watched them go, hoping that she would never have cause to meet with them again.
Chapter Twenty-four: 343 BC
Thor kept a closer watch upon Eve, then, though he had not wished to dwell so deeply on what he could not have. Loki had been as distracted by Hathor and Aphrodite as Thor had hoped, and returned to Asgard, strutting and boasting, which in turn had only driven Sif to greater levels of irritation. Somehow, he had not taken Sif’s response to Loki’s pleasures into consideration, but watching her snarl and hiss with jealousy made his stomach twist. Surely she could not have loved Loki, of all the gods. Loki, who had teased and taunted her mercilessly in the first years of their marriage, blaming her for Thor’s distance.
Or had it been something else, all along? He did not want to credit Loki’s accusations regarding Ullr, for he had raised the boy as his own and could not bear the thought that he might have been born of willful betrayal. But he did not know, now, for how long he had been cuckolded. How long had Odin known of it, or suspected, and said nothing? How long had all of Asgard laughed at him while Sif had bedded others behind his back, and he too blind, too in love, to see?
He tried to remember, to think back to those first days when Sif had looked on him with more than friendship. Just after Jarnsaxa had welcomed him to her bed. No one had been pleased with him for consorting with a Jotun, even a Sea Giant, for all Odin had welcomed Aegir into their halls with all his daughters and named him friend and ally. Had it only been jealousy that had motivated Sif, then? But surely he would have seen it, known it in her touch, if she had not truly loved him.
Thor swallowed more mead and brooded, his mood black enough that thunder rumbled overhead. None of the others in Odin’s hall dared disturb him, and even when Baldur sat beside him, his brother remained silent, but for his call to one of the Valkyries for a pitcher of mead.
It was Sif who brought it. “Drinking yourself into a stupor again, husband?”
Thor lifted his gaze from the mug in his hands to his wife, and it was as though he saw her, truly, for the first time. Golden hair gleaming, burnished, glowing skin, darkened from so many days spent in the sun, and for all the beauty in her face, the banked fire in her eyes offered no warmth. Sif wore a string skirt, stopping above her knee, and the short tunic left her navel bare. An ivory bangle, carved from boar’s tusks, wrapped around her slim wrist.
Thor went still, lightning buzzing in his ears, and the room fading into shades of gray and white, too bright. He caught her arm just above the wrist, the delicate ivory brushing against his finger, smooth as silk. The ivory he had carved with his own hands, filling the grooves of stem and leaf with heated gold and scorching his mortal fingers in the process. His gift to Tora, to Eve, at their wedding feast. The bracelet he had taken from her wrist the night she had died, and kept hidden among his things all these years.
“Do you like it?” Sif asked, her eyes flashing gold. “It was a gift from Loki, after he returned from his exile.”
Thor stood so swiftly, the bench beneath him unbalanced. His fingers tightened around Sif’s arm, and though he could feel Baldur’s hand on his shoulder, he could not hear his brother’s words over the thunder of his thoughts.
“And the clothes, too?” he asked her, his voice rough. “Did he choose them for you as well?”
She bared her teeth in what was meant to be a smile. “What’s the matter, Thor? Aren’t you pleased by the lengths with which I’ve gone to satisfy you?”
“The bracelet is mine,” he growled.
“Is it?” she asked, all innocence. “I wonder what use you could have for such a bracelet, if not to gift it to your wife.”
“Take it off.” Baldur’s grip had turned painful, bruising, but Thor ignored it.
Sif lifted her eyebrows. “What of the clothes? Would you have me remove them as well, strip naked in the middle of Odin’s hall?”
“The bracelet, Sif.” It was all he could do not to crush the bones in her wrist and tear it from her arm. He wanted to, Odin help him. The clothes were something else. Not Tora’s, he was nearly certain, and nothing he had made for her as a symbol of their love. But she wore them now simply to taunt him. And he had no doubt that Loki had been part of it, nor did he care that he had played into their hands, allowing himself to be provoked. The bracelet was all he had of their life together, put behind him in the hopes of reconciling his marriage—a marriage he was beginning to suspect she had never meant to honor.
She sneered, twisting her arm free as if his hold were nothing. “And in return for overlooking this consort of yours, this whore of a goddess you took as your wife, what will you give me?”
“Enough, Sif,” Baldur said. “If the bracelet belongs to Thor, it is his right to ask it of you.
”
Her lip curled, but she slipped it from her wrist, the gold vines within the ivory glinting in the light. Thor did not dare move, watching her fingers. Sif was as much a warrior as the rest of the Aesir, more than capable of snapping bone. Instead, she flung it at his chest so hard it stung him through his tunic. He caught it, but barely, and though he wanted desperately to check it for damage, he did not dare give Sif the satisfaction.
“And where is your justice for me, Baldur?” she asked. “What price ought Thor pay for his disloyalty?”
“Perhaps I paid already,” he said, barely stopping from snapping the ivory himself in his anger. That she would stand there before him and speak of disloyalty—“After all, there is Ullr, isn’t there?”
She flushed from chest to cheeks. “You dare!”
“It was not I who broke the trust of our marriage. And after what has happened, I dare not take you at your word.”
“Thor,” Baldur groaned. “Please, you must not—”
“No?” Thor snarled, rounding on him. “How long did you stand by and watch as she betrayed me, brother? How long has Asgard been laughing behind my back, thinking me a fool? No!” Lightning struck the hearth with a sharp crack, scorching the beams and the air around them. Baldur stepped back, and even Sif flinched, her face pale. “I have had enough!”
The lightning came again, then, white and hot with his rage and filling the hall with thunder so loud the stones cracked beneath his feet.
“Thor, please,” Baldur said, even his light shadowed in the brightness of the hall. “You will…”
But Thor let the room dissolve, lightning racing through his veins, through his heart, until he stood suspended in its liquid heat, his whole body alive with current.
The last thing he heard before leaving Asgard was the sound of Loki’s laughter.
“Back so soon?” Athena asked, teasing.
Thor did not so much as turn from the view of the palace stretched below him, all cavalry and soldiers, and the king who demanded more and more again, then turned to his son, snapping orders. The boy raced to obey, glory in his eyes, determination in every line of his body, in spite of its limitations.
“Adam is too hard on his son,” Thor said after a moment, determined to keep his other thoughts to himself. Perhaps if he focused on Adam, now Philip the Second of Macedon, he would not be tempted by desire for Eve.
He had not thought overmuch where the lightning should take him, only that he must flee. First, to the House of Lions, who had hardly known him, and then here. As near as he would allow himself to Eve, hidden in Athens as some fool’s wife, where she would barely be given the right to see the sun. It infuriated him to think of it.
Athena came to stand beside him, looking out at the palace and the army being drilled. “He plans to conquer the world. Of course he is hard on him. But Alexander is brilliant. Where Philip fails, his son will succeed.”
Thor grunted. If Alexander were so brilliant, Athena had no doubt had a hand in it herself, and he dared not argue against such a scheme. Adam pressed into the North and the East already, expanding the influence of Macedon, and as such, Macedon’s gods. As if the Olympians did not have enough already, with their fingers in Rome and Etruria thanks to Aeneas, and only limited by Carthage to the south and west, and the Celts and Gauls to the north. Anyone with eyes could see it would be only a matter of time before the Olympian gods reached even to the borders of the North Lands, for Odin’s influence expanded further south every year. Before long, the Olympians would swallow even the House of Lions—unless…
“Would your family object to my presence this night?” Thor asked. “For once, I come only for myself.”
“You should know by now you are always welcome at our table, Thor. My father will be pleased to have you as his guest.”
“And have I your word you will not abandon me? I fear I will offend Aphrodite unforgivably if I do not have some excuse in your company.”
Athena laughed. “Is not Sif enough excuse?”
Thor unclenched his teeth only with an effort, though his jaw was still tight, and he felt the burn of lightning in his eyes at even the mention of her name. She had shamed him so totally in Asgard, and no doubt Loki had completed his humiliation while he spent his days in Aphrodite’s bed, spreading word of his blindness to any god who would listen.
He forced himself to breathe, to release the tension knotting his shoulders and turning his hands into fists, and only when he had controlled himself again, did he answer: “Not anymore.”
Placed in Olympus, even Baldur’s skáli would look humble and dull, and Thor’s brother was by far the most elegant architect among the Aesir. Thor had seen the city before, but something about the mountain retreat made him strain to see everything again, as if for the first time. Olympus shone more brightly than Asgard ever would, filled with statues of gold and silver, littered with luxury. Huge aqueducts even carried running water through the buildings, and turned immense wheels where the water fell, to power parts of Hephaestus’s forges.
Sif would have loved it. He had meant to bring her here, before he had learned of her affair with Loki. He had even spoken with Hephaestus about building her a fine skáli in the Olympian style, with hot running water for the bath so that she would no longer have to heat it in cauldrons over the hearth fire while he was away.
“Ah! The Odin-son returns to us!” Zeus slapped him on the back between the shoulder blades so heartily that large and powerful as Thor was, he almost stumbled forward a step. “And what favor do you ask of us this time?”
“I travel for my own pleasure,” Thor answered, bracing himself before another of Zeus’s gestures knocked him off his feet. “Though, I must admit I do not come without purpose, all the same.”
Zeus clapped him again on the back. “You would shock us all the more if you did not! Come, then, and we will speak of it before the wine is poured—Athena, call to your brother, that we might have a proper feast for our guest. You will accept our hospitality, of course, since this business you bring is only your own?”
“If you do not fear my wife’s reprisals,” he said, following Zeus into a strange garden, fenced with gold and silver. “She will turn her ire to your daughters.”
The plants were nothing he had ever seen upon the earth, with leaves of purple and blue, and rainbow fruits. A hissing sound came from beyond his sight, and the smell of wood smoke and heated metal hung thick in the air. A dragon, Thor thought. He had heard of one kept in such a garden as this, guarding the prizes of Hera’s collection.
Zeus laughed. “My daughters are well able to protect themselves from jealous wives, and Aphrodite has been quite anxious to see you since she learned of your wife’s infidelity. I believe she hopes for an opportunity to assist you in avenging the slight to your honor.”
“At the cost of her own husband’s?” Thor snorted. “Though I am flattered and honored by Aphrodite’s interest, I would not do to Hephaestus what has been done to me. It would be unkind in the extreme after the welcome he has given me.”
“Would you have Athena, then?” Zeus asked slyly. “I am certain you would find her just as willing, virgin though she is. Surely Odin would not refuse you the right to divorce, and Olympus would be happy to gain you as a son-in-law. With one marriage, we could have an entire continent beneath our feet, our families working as one!”
Thor shook his head. He had always known Zeus was ambitious, but he had not ever thought his desires reached so far as that. “I would not do Athena the disservice of a marriage built on less than love.”
“No,” Zeus said, his eyes narrowing. “I do not suppose you would, after all. My daughter is as ever most discerning. And I suppose she knows what has brought you here, as well?”
“In this, I did not consult with her first,” Thor admitted. “And I fear it is a very large favor—more than I have any right to ask.”
“Indeed?” The king of Olympus sat down, a vine climbing up and around to offer him a
throne. No—not a vine. A tail, mottled brown and green against the earth. And behind Zeus’s head, a pair of bright, glowing eyes appeared. The dragon was all but invisible, its hide matching the plants and trees around it to perfection.
Thor was rather relieved when Zeus did not offer him a similar seat, but only leaned back in his strange throne, studying him, and waved a hand indicating he should continue.
“I wish for lands of my own,” Thor said, his words even and his voice steady. He did not let himself stare at the dragon, or allow his gaze to return to the beast with any frequency.
Zeus’s gray eyes sharpened, and Thor understood for the first time why one of his symbols was the eagle. “Oh?”
“There is a settlement on the far side of the Alps which looks to me, and I have promised them my protection. The lands are not yours yet, but they will be, and I would have your permission to work within them as I see fit, that I might honor my vow.”
Zeus tapped his fingers against the dragon’s hide. “You are not wrong, Odin-son, it is more than you have any right to ask. And how can you be certain the lands will fall into our hands, and not your father’s?”
“If they fall into my father’s hands, I will be free to act as I must. I need not apply to him for permission.”
“And the Celts?”
Thor smiled. The Olympians were not the only pantheon whose influence reached beyond its borders. “The men on the mainland already turn to Odin. Those who don’t will be swallowed by Rome before long. Is that not your intention?”
“Had I spoken to Athena first, she would have warned me not to tempt you,” Zeus grumbled. “Now that I have, I can hardly deny our hopes for the continent. But why come to me, and not Ra, who holds our vows?”
“Athena is my friend, and to you and your people, I owe a debt.”
Zeus grunted, scratching his jaw. As he shifted, so did the dragon, cat-eyes gleaming pale green. “My daughter was right.”
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