“Father would see you, Thor,” Baldur said, catching him on his way into Odin’s hall. “Let Tyr go to guard our people this night.”
“Better if it is you,” Thor said. He did not dare ignore his father’s summons, but nor would he send the Norse god of war so near the House of Lions. Tyr would send the Gauls to sack the rich settlement without a thought. But Baldur he might trust not to abuse an innocent people. His brother would not attack a party that had taken no side. Athena, I must send a brother in my place.
Baldur smiled, gripping his shoulder in reassurance. “If that is what you wish, I will see they are treated justly in your absence.”
I will meet him, and care for your Lions, she answered. Do what you must.
“Athena waits for you at the head of the Roman column,” he told his brother. “See that she is treated fairly as well.”
Baldur nodded, and with a brief and brilliant flash of silver light, he had gone. Thor took another moment to search the hall, noting Sif with a pitcher of mead laughing among the Einherjar—Odin’s warriors, chosen from the slain. It made him ache to see the way she looked on them, the light in her eyes and the seeming joy in her heart as she teased and flirted. She had looked at him that way once, and the more he saw of her now, the more he could not help but think it had all been a lie. A game to her, to see how long he might be fooled. It felt as though he had woken from a dream to fall into a nightmare.
Thor forced himself to turn away, and then he went to find his father.
Odin sat alone upon Hlidskjalf, his one eye half-closed, and a raven upon each shoulder, muttering in his ears. Behind the throne, two wolves lounged upon the rushes, ears pricking at Thor’s entrance. They were new additions to Odin’s menagerie, and from what he had heard in the hall, a gift of the Trickster. At best it made them trouble, and at worst, spies. But Odin was no fool. He would not keep them in his presence if they did not serve his purposes, somehow.
Thor closed the door silently behind him, and waited. From the high seat, a god could see the entire world with a single glance, but only Frigg and Odin themselves were permitted use of the silver throne. A lesser god would go mad seeing everything at once. Some even claimed it was because Frigg had already lost her mind in the seas of fate that Hlidskjalf did not trouble her, but Thor was not inclined to believe his step-mother insane. Inclined to riddles, perhaps, but nothing worse. Certainly she had always shown Thor more understanding and compassion in his youth than he had ever received from his father.
“There is trouble in my house, Thor,” Odin said, his gaze still unfocused. Even his voice was distant. “And my son falls prey to the Trickster’s wiles.”
“Not Baldur, surely.”
Odin grunted, brushing the ravens from his shoulders. They squawked, flapping to the rafters and settling there to stare at Thor in accusation. “Sif’s foolishness is one thing, but yours, Thor? Did you not learn your lesson from Jarnsaxa, that you credit Loki’s lies as truth?”
Thor flushed, his jaw tightening until his teeth ached. “You are wrong, Father, I have learned too well. It seems there are none among the Aesir willing to speak the truth when it comes to my wife.”
“And if we had spoken, would you have heard it?” Odin scoffed. “Your loyalty has always left you blinded. To Jarnsaxa, to Sif, to this daughter of Elohim, and before them, to the Trickster, himself. Do you still not understand, Thor? Ymir woke because of you! All the Jotuns you terrorized at the Trickster’s behest, calling to their father, drawing him from his slumber. And now you would see us all destroyed a second time, cast out into the void with no people, no world to retreat to!”
“I have done nothing but make peace in this world, at your command.” Thunder growled outside, and Thor’s hands balled into fists. He had not been the only one terrorizing Frost Giants in those days, and until Thor had involved himself with Jarnsaxa, Odin had been all too happy to overlook his excursions with Loki. Indeed, Odin had overlooked him altogether. “What happened with Ymir was Loki’s doing, and if in my fool youth, I served as his tool, where was my father to stop him? To stop me? Or is that what you did—is that what Sif was?”
“Jarnsaxa was beneath you!” Odin rose from his high seat, and the wolves rose with him, heads low and hackles rising, responding to his father’s fury. “Sif saw the truth, even if you could not. She knew her duty. But you, you are your mother’s son, more interested in what lies beyond the next mountain than in your family, loyal to everything but me!”
“All the wisdom in the universe, and this is what you believe.” Thor curled his lip and lightning flashed outside, leeching the color from the room. But even after it had faded, Thor saw only blacks and grays and whites.
His whole life, orchestrated by his father, manipulated by Sif to bind him to Asgard, to the Aesir. He could never have believed it, no matter what the Trickster said, but to hear it from Odin’s lips—his body buzzed and crackled with lightning, fire licking at his veins, but his head was clear. For the first time in eons. Odin’s wolves slunk back into their corners, tails between their legs.
“How many Jotuns did you betray,” Thor asked quietly, his voice utterly calm, “then call upon me to defend Asgard when they dared object? And every time, I did as you asked, without question, without a moment’s doubt. Every time I slaughtered them, to prove myself, to make you proud.”
“Until Jarnsaxa bewitched you,” Odin said, throwing it all away with a flick of his fingers, and the bite of bitterness in his words. “Until she gave you two bastard sons and whispered peace in your ear. Well, I have given you peace, Thor. I have given you this world, where you need not war, and still you betray me! Still you turn from us! For what? What is it this earth goddess promises that I have not already given?”
“The only thing I ever wanted of you, Father,” Thor sneered. “The only thing I ever asked of my wife. Though fool that I am, I did not know the lie until I experienced the truth. Love is what she promised me, and unlike you and Sif, it was no hollow thing.” His skin burned white hot, static skating over his body, tickling his palms, but he would not accept its pull. Today, he would not storm away from Asgard, would not flee his father with the expedience of lightning. Today, he would stand firm. “And as long as she lives, as long as she thinks of me with fondness and the memory of our life together brings her comfort, I will honor her for it. I will love her above all else in this world and the next. And there is nothing you can do to stop it.”
Thor turned his back on his father, on his king, with deliberate insult, and left the hall.
Chapter Twenty-eight: Present
Eve was unpacking her things when she realized it was missing. In spite of weight restrictions, she had brought several books along with her on their honeymoon, to read on the beaches of Mau Piti. Garrit had teased her, but when she had lain out in the sun, she noticed he brought a few of his own, too. Pleasure reading. And neither one of them would have brought anything so delicate as the journal.
“Garrit?” she called back into the hall.
He laughed when he found her in the library. “Checking to be certain everything is still in its place?”
She smiled, but she didn’t mean it, distracted by the absence within the glass case.
The humor in his expression faded almost immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t find the journal.” She pulled books from the cabinet, careful of the more fragile items. Old leather fragmented and flaked in her hands. Garrit had mentioned sending several for restoration and recopying, but surely he wouldn’t send the journal without telling her. She put the books back gently. “Did you do something with it?”
“No.” He checked the cabinet again, and the end table near her favorite chair. “Did you leave it in the bedroom?”
She frowned. “I don’t remember taking it out of the library. I left it right here.” She touched the spot beneath the bronze lamp. A scrap of paper poked out from beneath the base, tucked there as if to keep it from being lost.
She pulled it out and unfolded it.
You’ll get it back.
She stared at the script until Garrit took the paper from her. A muscle along his jaw twitched, and he murmured something in French she didn’t catch. A curse, she thought, flinching from his anger, poorly banked. “Adam.”
“He said he wanted to read it while he was here. I wouldn’t let him.” She should have known it would only encourage him when she refused to allow it.
He crumpled the note in his fist, his eyes dark. “Predictable of him, really. The man believes he is above any decency of manner. I begin to think he does not understand the word no.”
“You don’t know him.” She took the paper back, opening it up. In all these years, she’d never seen his handwriting. During her life as Helen, no one but scribes and record keepers wrote anything, though she had made it her business to learn what she could.
Garrit tilted her head back up with a finger beneath her chin. His lips were pressed into a thin line as he searched her eyes. “Neither do you, Abby.”
She pulled away from his hand and looked back at the note. The whole situation made her resentful. Of Adam. Of Garrit, for being right. “So what do we do?”
“Call Mia and ask her to return it. I doubt she’ll believe he stole it, but we could say it was mistakenly packed with their things.” He shrugged. “If I have to, I’ll go retrieve it personally.”
“You don’t think he’ll give it back willingly? He hasn’t yet broken his word, has he?”
He turned away, running his hand through his hair. “He hasn’t had a choice, Abby. Crossing into our lands is one thing, thieving a family heirloom is something else entirely.”
“Garrit, that doesn’t make any sense.”
He sighed. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
She studied the way his shoulders tensed while he talked. The uneasy way he looked toward the window. The way everyone had been jumping at the thunderstorms. Even Ryam. And Adam, keeping his own secrets. Or maybe they were the same secrets. All of it.
“What exactly is going on?”
He looked back at her then, his lips pressed thin. There were too many lines in his face, for a man who wasn’t even thirty. “There are things at work here that are so far beyond me I wouldn’t be able to explain even if I wanted to. Even if I was permitted.”
“Permitted?” She took his hand and pulled him around to face her. “I could lift it right from your mind, Garrit.”
“But you won’t.” It was said so quietly, his gaze holding hers. “Will you?”
She dropped his hand as though he’d burned her. She wanted more than anything to think there was something more about her family, something she didn’t understand, something that would keep them safe. God’s protection, perhaps, lingering somehow through Reu’s children. But stealing the knowledge from Garrit’s mind was a step closer to Adam. And the idea of doing that to her own husband made her sick.
Garrit nodded, some of the lines around his mouth easing. “There’s another copy of the journal in the vault. The original. I cannot promise it’s legible anymore, but we might restore it if the other is lost.”
She looked at the door, unable to meet his eyes. She’d been tempted, so tempted to simply take the answers she sought, and Garrit stood there, more relaxed with every word, trusting her in spite of it. “I’ve been meaning to go down there anyway. It’s been nearly five hundred years since I looked at any of it.”
“It would take you months to sort through it all.” He caught her hand as she stepped back and pulled her into his arms. “Abby, I love you. If I could tell you everything, I would.”
“But you can’t.”
“I’m sorry.” He rested his forehead against hers, his hands framing her face.
She closed her eyes and wished that Adam had never come into her life again. That things could go back to the way they were, without any secrets.
She touched his face. Ran her fingers through his hair. And then she kissed him. Her husband. Her family. Her love.
Having just arrived home from their honeymoon, a kiss was the only encouragement he needed, and for a time, it was enough to make them both forget what they were fighting about.
Eve lay awake in bed for a long time afterwards, wondering if she carried a child. Motherhood had never frightened her after the first time. She had always known it was part of her purpose, part of what made her unique. Her children, with rare exception, were always born strong and healthy. And those exceptions had been miscarriages, early in the pregnancy, and only in situations where she hadn’t cared for her body as well as she could have. God had made her strong, but the babies in her womb were only human. Mortal and weak, as Adam would have said.
She had known her fair share of poor households, and lives of poverty. She had been a pauper more times than she could count. In those lives, she had been careful of pregnancy, seeking to avoid bringing a child into the world until she knew she could care for it properly. Simple things that ordinarily she wouldn’t worry about for herself. Food, water, shelter, clothing. But as a woman of means, in the DeLeon household where any child would be celebrated and cared for, there was no reason to worry. No reason to wait. Garrit would make a fine father, as Ryam had. It was only Adam that worried her. So close now, no matter how far away he was, as the husband of her sister. It wouldn’t be the first time he had threatened a child of her body. Or the first time his presence had been a threat to her and her family.
She pressed her hand to her belly, below her navel. Would whatever protected her here on the estate also protect her child from his threat? Did she dare trust that Adam would keep his word, and do no harm to her family now that he was married to Mia?
“Abby.” Garrit’s hand covered hers on her stomach, and he kissed her cheek as he pulled her against his body. “You’re worrying again.”
She turned her head to look at him and smiled to see him studying her. He must have been watching her for some time. “How can you tell?”
He raised his hand to her face, smoothing the hair away from her forehead. “You scowl.” He touched his fingertip to the spot between her eyebrows. “And your brow wrinkles right here.”
“You imagine it, I think.” She kissed his temple and nestled against him.
He tucked her head beneath his chin and she felt him sigh. A contentedness leached from his body into hers without conscious effort and eased her mind into a pleasant lassitude. “Ma jolie femme. Always with the weight of the world on your shoulders. I never imagined I would be here, in the heart of this madness, but I would not trade you for anything in the world.”
“Even when I frustrate you to the point of shouting?”
He chuckled. “Even then. Those same things that frustrate me, I love.” But she caught the shift in his mood as the silence stretched between them. “I could wish your damned brother hadn’t stolen that book.”
“He’ll return it.” She wasn’t sure what made her so certain, but she was sure. “I think he just wanted to understand.”
He shifted slightly, his body stiffening beside hers. “You forgive him too easily.”
“It was a long time ago, Garrit. It’s only right to allow that people change, and most do so within decades, never mind the generations he’s spent suffering for his sins.” She propped herself up on an elbow to see his face. He was scowling at the ceiling and she smoothed the lines away. “But this isn’t about forgiveness. The weight of all those years of war and pain, being unable to learn from the mistakes of each previous life, but forced to look back on them all at once from this lifetime. I pity him for it, more than anything.”
He raised his hand to her face again, caressing her cheek. “I fear I was not raised to sympathize with his plight.”
“Maybe it’s for the best that you don’t.” She contemplated her stomach again. “I sometimes forget there are other things worth fearing in this world beyond my brother’s arrogance.”
His hand covered hers again and he studied her. �
��What is it that’s worrying you?”
She sighed and lay back on the bed, covering her eyes with her arm and trying not to let her memories crowd out her present. She couldn’t repress them all, but she was married now. She did not need to fear Michael as a married woman and she would not terrorize Garrit with her nightmares.
“The last time Adam knew himself and knew me, he wasn’t above threatening my children.”
“Ahh.” His touch became almost reverent, even as his mood blackened and his voice dropped to something rougher than whisper. “I am certain this will not be the last time I say it, and I wish I could offer you some kind of proof. But you have no reason to fear for our children.”
She pulled her arm away to meet his eyes. “How can you be sure?”
He shook his head. “Because he wants you, Abby. Even if he could harm them, if he’s half as smart as you are, he must realize harming the people you love will only drive you further away.”
“Marriage isn’t in any way the commitment it used to be. He could just as easily leave Mia as stay with her.” She frowned at her own words. And Garrit’s explanation troubled her deeply. He was right. None of this would end in this life. Married or not, as long as they both lived, as long as Adam remembered, Michael would be watching. And if somehow, she forgave him, learned to treat him as a brother in truth as well as word, let her guard down for even a moment.…
“It wouldn’t serve his purposes to do so, and if he did we’d all be better for it. Though, he seems to me too traditional for divorce.” His scowl deepened. “Not unlike you, much as I prefer not to consider the things you have in common.”
She shivered, more from her own thoughts than his words. “I don’t like to think about it either.”
“Then do not think at all, mon amour.” His fingers twined through hers and he brought her hand to his lips, kissing her palm. “Not of him.”
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