Fate of the Gods 01 - Forged by Fate (37 page)

“She would make you a very fine wife, Thor,” Ra said at his shoulder. “If I were free to choose…” The Egyptian god sighed the rest away and smiled dryly. “I fear I am too old to give her what she deserves, now, but she would make a better match for you than Eve, if you could turn your heart.”

“My father is not wrong about me, Ra. Once my heart is set, it does not change so easily.”

But for a moment, that moment, he almost wished it could.

Chapter Thirty-four: Present

Eve slipped away to the library, hoping she might escape both the DeLeons and the Watsons for a time. It was a struggle to find a comfortable position anymore, but she leaned back in an armchair with her feet up, hands resting on her stomach, and felt some of the knots in her back unkink. When she concentrated, she could feel the baby inside her, contented and calm. The unique mind and presence within her own body had always fascinated her, utterly trusting, so totally innocent, untouched by the world but still part of it.

“Am I intruding?” Adam asked.

She looked up, surprised to find him in the doorway. He had seemed to be avoiding her since his arrival, though she wasn’t sure if that had been his own idea, or Garrit’s. “Only if you’re intending to fuss over me. I’ve had quite enough of that for one day.”

“No.” His lips curved, then thinned in what she thought might have been a repressed smile. “I wouldn’t dream of insulting you that way.”

“It isn’t an insult.”

“Isn’t it?” He came into the room, perching on the edge of the ottoman beside her feet.

“I appreciate their concern,” she answered, trying to keep the note of challenge from her voice. She didn’t have the energy to fight with him, and she was just uncomfortable enough that she wasn’t interested in defending her family, either. “But Garrit fusses over me enough without his parents and his aunt doing it too.”

He tore his gaze from her stomach to stare at the book in his hands. Ryam’s journal, by the dates on the spine. “They’ve made an art of hating me, haven’t they?”

“You shouldn’t have taken it.”

“I thought it might answer some of my questions.” He met her eyes and smiled, offering it to her. “He loved you a great deal to go to all this trouble. To set his family the task of caring for you in perpetuity.”

She frowned slightly as she took the book, following his thoughts. He was thinking about what Juliette had told him. The things he had forced her to tell. “You don’t know who they are, do you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I understand your question.”

“This is Reu’s family, Adam. My House of Lions.”

The warmth drained from his face almost at once, and he stood up, turning away to the window.
No wonder they hate me so much.

“They don’t hate you.”

He laughed, but it was an awful sound. Bitter and angry. “Even you hate me.”

She sighed, watching him lean against the frame of the window, his head bent. The last few days had been easy. He had behaved himself perfectly. Garrit hadn’t even had cause to gripe. Not that it meant he relaxed at all. But she felt at least they had come to some kind of truce. René had been as reasonable as she had hoped, and Juliette as calming. The change in Adam had been fundamental, though she couldn’t quite identify it. He had been no more and no less than kind. His arrogance and the hurtful sarcasm of his last visit all but gone. If she was honest with herself, she found it more disconcerting when he was nice, and she saw glimpses of Paris.

“I don’t hate you, Adam.” She wouldn’t lie to him. It was fear, more than anything. Anxiety for what his presence could result in. Maybe she shouldn’t worry. Maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe she was safe. But that was no reason to tempt fate.

He turned to look at her. “But you don’t trust me.”

“No.” She hadn’t trusted Paris, either, and that Adam hadn’t threatened her at all. But she wanted to trust him now. That was the most frightening part.

He smirked. “I’m not sure I would trust me either. Though I think your husband distrusts me enough for both of you.”

“They have a long memory, this family—Oof.” The baby kicked and she stroked her stomach, trying to soothe it.

He sat down again on the ottoman, reaching for her, and then stopped suddenly, his hand suspended over her stomach.

“May I?”

She raised an eyebrow at his tone, so strangely reverent. “If you like.”

He pressed his hand to her stomach and she tried to ignore the heat of his touch, the way it seeped into her body. The baby kicked again, and his eyes lit. He smiled, and it was the most artless expression she had seen on his face since he had arrived before her wedding. Full of an innocent joy. Like the day in the Garden when he had offered her strawberries for the first time. Her heart started to race and she scowled. The baby, feeling her stress, began moving more forcefully and she winced.

He pulled his hand back at once, almost guiltily. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s fine. It isn’t you.” She closed her eyes to soothe the mind within her. So undefined but so sensitive. The baby calmed and she looked up at Adam. “See? All better.”

He smiled, but it was forced, as though he were distracted.

Adam?

He shook his head and stood up, walking to the door. He stopped before he opened it, but he didn’t look at her.
They’re right to mistrust me.
There was an anguish in him she hadn’t noticed before, an ache that ran deep and made her own heart hurt. “I’m sorry for disturbing you. I just wanted to return your book.”

And then he left, the door swinging shut behind him.

She stared after him for a long moment, at the place where he had been, puzzling over the exchange. If they were twins, shouldn’t she have some idea of his thought process? If they were so similar, how were they so different? Adam was the most confounding man she had ever known.

She picked up the journal and let it fall open in her hands. The sketch of Adam in its plastic sleeve stared back at her.

Maybe she was being unfair. It seemed more and more lately that the title of most confounding really belonged to Ryam. At least Adam she could question. Ryam was still baffling her centuries after the fact.

She wasn’t sure what was worse: not knowing the answers, or knowing Garrit seemed to have them but was forbidden to tell her.

They served lamb for dinner, and Eve did her best to ignore the associations. Juliette must have made the menu, she thought, and Garrit must have decided she didn’t need to be bothered by it. As if choosing a main course was going to send her into early labor.

She hadn’t eaten lamb since Troy. Eve stared at her plate and pressed the memories back into the darkness where she had kept them locked away. Before she had married Menelaus, when she had still believed she might escape her fate and the horrors of war with Troy which would follow, she had fled to Athens, throwing herself upon the mercy of Theseus, its king. She hadn’t thought, even for a moment, that she would fall in love—but Theseus! Her throat closed, tears pressing behind her eyes. Theseus had sacrificed a lamb to the gods every day for the two years of their marriage, until her brothers had come and stolen her back to Sparta. For lives afterwards, she hadn’t been able to even smell lamb stew without her stomach turning into knots. If it hadn’t been for Theseus…

She rubbed her chest, over her heart, trying to dispel the ache of his loss. Another husband who had loved her more than she deserved. Thinking of Paris was preferable, but with Adam sitting across the table, she didn’t dare.

You’re not eating.

She nearly bit her tongue in surprise, but she brought a piece of the lamb to her mouth and swallowed before she could taste it.
You were saying?

Adam’s eyes narrowed, but the stone in them had softened to storm clouds, and she could feel his concern.
You can’t afford not to eat with a baby in your womb, Eve. Is there something wrong with the lamb? I didn’t think you could suffer from cravings or morning sickness.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the baby.
Except it had, once. A baby she had born for Theseus, and lost. How many hours had she spent on her knees, praying to Michael to let her keep her child? She’d even made offerings to Poseidon and Aphrodite, Hera and Zeus, desperate enough to beg even for their intercession. For nothing. False gods, and worthless angels. How did anyone ever convince themselves of faith?

“Are you all right, Abby?” Garrit asked, frowning. “You look a bit gray.”

She forced a smile. “Just fine, Garrit. I bit my tongue, that’s all.”

You’re lying.

Eve didn’t look at Adam, but kept the smile on her face until Garrit went back to listening to her mother. Something about how she wished they would purchase a summer home in England, so she would be able to see her grandson when he was born.

Eve?

The way he said her name brought Paris to her mind, and she latched onto the memory to chase away the sorrow. Paris, at least, had never fed her lamb. Not that he hadn’t sacrificed enough of them to Aphrodite.

Adam was smiling at Mia as he poured her another glass of wine. He’d done the same for her, once, at a banquet in Sparta. She could still see the lines of Paris in his face. The curve of his ears, the straightness of his nose, the strength of his jaw. He had changed, of course, skin color, face shape, the rise of his cheekbones and the color of his hair, but the essentials stayed the same.

He turned to look at her, his forehead furrowing in the same place hers did. A wrinkle between the eyebrows that could have been her own. She realized she was staring and looked away, focusing on the napkin in her lap, but he was already in her head. Gentle, but present, like a lazy day in a hammock with an insect buzzing in your ear.

Paris?
He asked.
What about Paris?

It had been sloppy to let her mind wander, but it had been that or cry with old grief, and at least the scene these memories could make would go unnoticed.

Nothing,
she said, even though he wouldn’t believe her.

There was a long silence, while he listened and she tried not to think about it. It didn’t work. It never did. Not thinking of something inevitably brought it to mind, even if all that came was the thread of reminder.
Not Paris. Not Troy. Not Helen. Not Theseus. Oh God, please, not Theseus. Not Helen. Not Troy. Not Paris.

You knew me?

Mia was talking about the car she was going to buy, asking her father what he thought. She turned to Adam, asking him if he agreed. Somehow he managed to have the right answer, though Eve could feel his mind churning with the memories slipping through the cracks of her consciousness. Paris, holding her in a dark room. The whites of his eyes had been the only thing she could see, but she would have known his touch anywhere. The warmth of his hands against her skin, one palm pressed against her cheek, turning her face to his.

Helen,
he said.

The wineglass in Adam’s hand slipped and spilled, the red liquid crawling across the table to her plate, staining the linens the way blood had once stained the fields of Troy. She stared at it, to keep from meeting his eyes. Watching it draw closer and closer. She couldn’t bring herself to stop it.

“
Merde!
” Garrit blotted it with his napkin, and shot Adam a dark look.

“Forgive me,” Adam said, mopping up the spill on his half of the table. He cleared his throat, and did not so much as glance in her direction. “A shame to have wasted a cup of such a good vintage, too. The wine your family makes is exceptional, Garrit. Is there any way I might buy a case?”

“Oh! Yes!” Mia said. “That would be perfect! It isn’t as though Abby can drink wine now, anyway.”

Eve closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, emptying her mind as she exhaled. She could feel the baby, and let its consciousness fill her thoughts, crowding everything else out.

“Of course,” Garrit answered through his teeth. “I’ll see what we have in the cellar after dinner.”

“I think I need to go lay down,” Eve mumbled.