Fate of the Gods 01 - Forged by Fate (17 page)

She let him pull her to her feet and kept her hand in his as they walked. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

He sighed and looked at her, his eyes dark. “You’ll see, soon enough. Though I wish I could keep it from you. Make sure you go with the other women to bathe today. It will be safer for you that way.”

“Safer than what?”

“Than if he takes you himself.” His hand tightened around hers. “Remember what I told you, yesterday. Try not to let him separate you from the others. I’ll keep close, but he’ll be looking for my interference. He might try to send me away.”

The cave was still deep in shadow. Hannah sat near the mouth, grinding the bark between two stones. She smiled at Eve as they passed inside, but said nothing. The others were still sleeping. Reu sat down in the dirt and she dropped to the earth beside him. After sleeping in the grass, the stone chilled her. She shivered and slipped beneath his arm.

He sighed again and tucked her head beneath his chin. “He’ll be angry if he finds us this way.”

“He’ll be angry no matter what.” She curled up against his body and closed her eyes. It was still dark enough to sleep, and she was tired and cold. “I’ll protect you. I’ll tell him I made you keep me warm.”

Reu laughed softly in her ear and wrapped his other arm around her to draw her closer. “You can try.”

Then he fell silent, and she listened to his heartbeat, and the way his breathing slowed. The warmth of his body lulled her back into sleep, but his voice followed her into unconsciousness.

“It’s worth any beating he might give me.”

Something hit her hard in the side, painfully, and she twisted away from it with a gasp even before she opened her eyes.

Adam was standing over her, his expression hard and his eyes like stone. “Get up.”

Reu helped her to her feet, putting himself between her and Adam when it looked like he might strike at her again. “Lord Adam. Did we disturb you?”

Adam ignored him, staring at her.

“I was cold. The stone chilled me.”

His eyes narrowed. “We’ll search the Garden today. I trust that will settle your curiosity from yesterday. You’ll have no reason to get lost in the trees again.”

There was no question in her mind about why he was doing this. It wasn’t for her curiosity. It was for him. For the fruit. Whatever that meant.

Adam’s gaze flicked back to Reu again. “Organize the others and send them into the Garden in pairs. I want a sample of every fruit from every tree brought back. Anything unfamiliar. You’re to taste nothing until I’ve seen it. Is that understood?”

Reu nodded, though his forehead furrowed. Adam stared at him until he left, but Reu glanced back at her from the mouth of the cave before he disappeared and she saw the promise in his eyes. He wouldn’t be far.

Eve dropped her gaze to the dirt, hoping Adam hadn’t noticed. He tilted her chin up, forcing her head to the side to look at her cheek.

She didn’t stop him. Even as his thoughts flooded her mind.
Next time I’ll be sure to strike her below the neck. The bruising mars her beauty.

“I wish you hadn’t made me hurt you, Eve. I’ve only ever wanted to honor you. To keep you by my side.”

“You didn’t have to hurt me, Adam,” she said softly. “You don’t have to hurt any of us.”

He grunted, his fingers tightening on her chin. “If you had only waited to speak to me privately, instead of challenging my authority in front of the others, all of this could have been avoided. Look what I offer you, now. A chance to do all the exploration you like. Because you desired it. I would always give you what you desire, if you would only ask.” He shook his head, his eyes hardening again. “And then I find you here, sleeping in the arms of that dog. He’s beneath you.”

She pulled her face away. Reu had promised to keep her from Adam, if it was what she desired. Promised to protect her as well as he was able. But at what cost to himself? Would Adam cast Reu from the Garden when she refused to join him in his chambers, when she refused to let him have her body beneath his? Would he make her watch while he beat Reu for his kindness to her?

“I was only cold. The stone was so cold on my skin after the heat of the sun all day. It wasn’t his fault. I commanded it of him.”

“It’s cruel, Eve, to make a man love you when you already belong to another.”

She looked up then, studying him. They were alone in the cave. “I thought I was your equal.”

He sighed and stroked her arm.
She still doesn’t understand.
“And that’s why we belong to one another. Because we are equals. Because I am the only one who can love you the way you deserve. And you’re the only woman who can satisfy me. We’re meant to be together, Eve. We’re meant to rule them.”

“Is that what Elohim told you? That we were meant to be together?”

His eyes flashed with anger. She saw it clearly in his mind. It was the voice from the void, the same voice that had called her to life and put air in her lungs.

‘She will be your sister.’
The voice belonged to the old, gray man. The body Adam had abandoned to the storm. But in Adam’s mind, Elohim’s forehead was creased with troubled lines, his expression grave.
‘Your twin in every way. Made to complement you perfectly. And she will live on as long as you will. Reborn in every life as you are. But you cannot take her as your wife. Not now. She cannot love you, yet, and you are forbidden to force her. Teach her everything you’ve learned from me, but let her live her own life.’

She felt Adam’s frustration, his anger, and then his determination, and his knowledge that God could no longer stop him. It was involuntarily thought and he shoved the memory away just as quickly as it had come. But it was too late. She had seen it. The truth of it. She was not his.

She pulled away from him and stumbled back into the stone wall of the cave, wrenching herself free of the memory and the thoughts and feelings that had followed. Adam’s possession. She would not be his.

Adam frowned, “Eve?”

She braced herself against the wall. “I’m not supposed to be your wife.”

“You don’t even begin to understand what you’re talking about.” He was angry again and he grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. “You are what I say you are, Eve. All of you are bound by my words, now. You’ll do as you’re told.”

You’ll love me.
She felt that same heat again, as it burned her cheeks and her body where his hands touched her, leaching into her through his fingers and his palm. Her heart began to race and she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even look away. He pulled her closer and she felt him hard and hot against her. It burned inside her, body and mind. His will, his command, searing itself in her thoughts, forcing its way through, trying to take root.
You’ll love me, and you’ll want me as much as I want you. There’s no one here to stop me. God can’t save you. Just like He didn’t save Lilith.

She shoved at his shoulders with a gasp, clawing at them, digging her nails into his skin.

He jerked away. Blood beaded from a crescent moon on his arm and for a moment, he stared at it, his expression so strange, so different from anything she’d seen before. As if he could not understand, could not comprehend. Then he looked up, his eyes flashing with anger, his jaw set with rage.

He grabbed her again, twisting her by the wrist until she cried out. “You’ll learn your place soon enough, Eve. It’s only a matter of time.”

Adam threw her from him, and turned away.

She landed on her knees, skinning her palms in the dirt. Tears pricked her eyes at the sting, but she climbed to her feet and ran from him. Ran from the heat and the desire he had flooded her with, but had never been her own, would never be her own. When Reu called her name, she didn’t stop. She didn’t care if he followed her. She didn’t care if she ever saw any of them again. She didn’t want to do this anymore.

She didn’t even want to live.

Chapter Fifteen: 903 BC

Thor held the hand of his wife as the last breath left her, pressing it to his face. Even knowing she would be reborn, watching her die was the most difficult thing he had ever done. Without his power, he could not follow the journey of her spirit as it left her to find its new home. He could not close his eyes and search for the bright light of her immortality among men. He was even too old and too decrepit in this body to carry her to her burial.

Soon
, he promised himself, gently removing the ivory bracelet from her wrist. It was the only thing he would allow himself to keep, a token of their marriage, of their love.

He closed her eyes for her and let in the women to prepare the body. Tora, his Eve, had not wished to be buried as a Chieftain’s wife had the right, in a hollowed oak beneath a mound of earth. She had begged him to send her empty body out to the water on one of the fishing boats he had built with his own hands, and let it burn. He had agreed. Her body didn’t hold her spirit; there was no point in treating it as though it might.

He walked to the boat prepared for the funeral. It was nearing dusk, now, and when it fell, the night would cloak his features to the others. He waited on the rocks where they had spoken of their marriage for the first time. Long ago, he had passed the leadership of this village to the son Eve had born him, a fine man, with very little of his father in him. His hair was Eve’s, his eyes were Eve’s, even his build was slighter and less powerful than his father’s. Some trick of Odin’s, he was sure, to keep him from betraying himself with a godchild and exposing this village to Sif’s wrath and Loki’s treachery.

It mattered little. Owen had been a strong man and a good leader, and Eve’s blood was as potent as any god’s—certainly more suited to life among men. Owen had never thrown lightning bolts in his rage, or spoken into the minds of others. He had never traveled through lightning to far-off lands or exhibited uncommon strength. All for the best. Owen’s people had never had cause to distrust him. Nor did they distrust his son, when he had taken the leadership of the village at Owen’s urging, or his grandson, who stood as priest and chieftain now.

Owen lived a long life, like his mother, but each generation after aged less gracefully with the dilution of Eve’s blood. Even so, they were a healthier people, stronger in all the ways that mattered. Her granddaughters bore children more easily than any of the other women, and her grandchildren’s children and grandchildren rarely suffered from the illnesses which plagued the rest of the village during winter and spring. Even if they did not live a century at a time, they still lived longer; to sixty or eighty winters, instead of forty.

One more task, and then Thor could leave them all in good conscience. The women carried the body of his wife to the boat, and laid her down gently. He stroked her silvered hair as it fanned out behind her head. They had wrapped her in old woolen blankets, the better to burn, and put sweet smelling oils on her skin. There was nothing of his Eve left here. Nothing more to tie him to this place, to this humanity he had taken and worn as a mask.

Others had gathered behind him, called by Owen. They were silent now; the only noise the shuffling of their feet on the pebbles that littered the beach, and the hushed movement of the wind from the sea through the trees.

Thor pushed the boat out into the water, wading with it almost to his waist before giving it a final shove. Then he turned his thoughts to home. To Asgard. To Odin, his father. He waited for the changes to begin.

Thunder rolled from far off, and all at once, he felt the power he had lived so long without flood through him, lightning in his veins. His eternal and immortal youth returned with his strength, and he bade the wind blow the boat out deeper into the water. He watched it until it was almost lost to him in the dark, and then he looked to the heavens. Great storm clouds blotted out the moon and the stars, making the sea black. He called the skies down upon it.

Lightning cracked through the darkness, bathing them all in white light and igniting the little fishing boat in the distance. Those behind him on the beach murmured in surprise, some even speaking brief prayers for his ears.
Thor, god of thunder, god of the skies, bless us and protect us
.