Fate of the Gods 01 - Forged by Fate (4 page)

He stood outside the small hut, shifting to catch a glimpse of the interior. It was all shadow and brick, a half-filled loom the only furnishing he could see beyond the bed, itself not much more than a mattress of straw. But from the soft, fretful cries, it seemed Eve had finally given birth to her baby.

Thor had watched over her for months, hiding himself from the Egyptian gods and gleaning what information he could from Eve’s daughter, Miriam. It had been an easy thing to cultivate a friendship with the young girl as her mother became heavy with child and Miriam had been sent to the well in Eve’s place. He had stopped her from being whipped at least half a dozen times, disgusted that anyone would raise a hand against a girl of seven simply for struggling to raise water from a well.

“A little brother!” Miriam whispered into the dark where he had cloaked himself outside the window.

“A great blessing,” he murmured back. Neither the midwife nor Eve noticed. Their heads were bent together over the baby, and Eve wept as the child nursed. The sound of her suffering had been like needles in his heart until it was broken by the babe’s wail, healthy and strong.

“It will be impossible to hide him, Yocheved. If you wish him to live, he must be sent away. Smuggled from the city,” the midwife said.

“We’ll be stopped if we try. The Pharaoh’s soldiers will find him.”

Thor didn’t dare try to manipulate Eve—such a thing would violate every law of conduct between the gods—but it took only the merest thought to influence the midwife.
The river,
he told her.

“Let Miriam take him to the river,” the midwife said. “The soldiers will not stop a little girl, and if you lay him in a basket, it will float long enough to take him out of the city. If it is God’s will that the baby live, he will be saved.”

God’s will or not, this child would live. Thor had already seen too many die in this world. Too many lives wasted for nothing but the pleasure of their king. He would not allow the child of a goddess to suffer the same fate. Eve hesitated, seeming to stare straight at him through the window of the hut. He held his breath and emptied his mind of all thought but the baby’s safety. If she felt him, let her feel his reassurance, nothing more.

She dropped her eyes to the baby at her breast, and then kissed the small round head. “My boy,” she said. “Know my love.”

Eve hummed softly while she wrapped the boy in his blanket, laying him in a basket of reeds. The tune stirred memories of milk and warmth in Thor’s mind, and he shook his head to clear it. He had no time for distraction. If it was to be done, it must be done quickly. He urged them on silently until Miriam slipped out the door, the basket an awkward burden in her arms.

“I’ll carry him,” Thor said, stepping out from the shadows. Miriam was strong for a girl her age but the basket was a third as big as she was. He took her hand, cradling the basket in his other arm. “Quickly now. The fastest way to the river.”

She tugged him to the right down an alley, and he let her lead. If he used his power to travel through lightning to the water, it would give his presence away, and he could not risk being found by Ra or any of the others. They slipped through the dark streets and Thor did what he could to ensure that they were empty. When they did cross the path of one of Pharaoh’s guard by the water, he caused the man to think he had heard his wife’s voice, and they passed behind his back down the bank and out of sight.

“Did God send you to save my brother?” Miriam asked.

He looked down at her small face, lit by the moon, and squeezed her hand once before letting go. “Yes,” he lied. “But you mustn’t speak of it to anyone. Not even your mother.”

“Mother says that it’s the angels who do God’s work, now,” Miriam said, her forehead creased. “Are you an angel?”

He shook his head. “Just a friend. Will you keep this secret, Miriam? So your brother will live?” She frowned, but nodded, and he smiled. “Good girl. I’ll take him to safety by the water. Go back to your mother, now. She’ll have need of you.”

Miriam pressed her lips together, turned, and ran.

Thor followed her flight with a light touch in the back of her mind to be sure she did not meet any trouble, and then waded into the water with the basket. He knew exactly where he would take the baby, where he would be safe even from the pharaoh. After all, why would the king question his own daughter if she presented him with a child gifted to her by the gods?

Chapter Four: Present

“Abby?”

Garrit’s mother stood in the doorway when Eve looked up. She hadn’t meant to lose so much time, sifting through her memories.

“Juliette.” She rose from her seat to greet her with a kiss. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were here already.”

Juliette smiled. She was stunningly beautiful, with bright blue eyes and dark hair. Charming, too, which she would have to be to marry into the family. The DeLeon men had always had an overabundance of charisma, but they generally preferred women who weren’t bowled over by them when they took wives. Eve had never been sure if that had been a result of nature or nurture.

“Garrit told us you had a difficult day. I hope you don’t mind the interruption, but Ethan was most insistent that you would wish to see him right away.”

“Ethan?” Eve frowned trying to remember anyone by that name. The door swung open the rest of the way, and she saw the man standing behind Juliette. Her pulse jumped as he locked eyes with her, an arrogance pulling at the corners of his lips. “Oh!”

“
Merci, Madame
DeLeon,” he said, smiling with so much power that Eve took an involuntary step back.

Juliette nodded, returning the smile and stepping out of the way. “I’ll leave you to your business. We’ll see you at dinner, Ethan?”

“I would be thrilled to join you.” He watched her leave before slipping into the room and shutting the door behind him. His attention turned to Eve, then, and he studied her with stone gray eyes she knew too well.

“Eve.”

She straightened under his inspection and raised her chin. “Adam.”

She would not give him the satisfaction of fear or discomfort. Not in her own home, among her own family. Even though looking at him brought back the memories of Michael’s threat. She closed her hands into fists to keep them from shaking.

He wasn’t supposed to remember. Michael had promised her that much, and she had witnessed it for herself in past lives. Never before now had Adam ever recognized her, ever known to come looking for her, ever remembered who he was. Not since Creation. The punishment for his sins.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your family was kind enough to share with me the details of this part of your past.” He was glancing over the books in the library. “Or at least some of them.”

She stepped behind a table, keeping it between them. “Because you forced them to.”

He inclined his head. Not quite a nod, but an admission. “It was no small effort. In particular, your future father-in-law. His mind is quite strong.
Madame
DeLeon was no trouble though, and very informative. It appears René keeps no secrets from his wife.”

The idea that he had wriggled his way into their minds, manipulating and controlling her own family made her taste bile. “You have no business here, Adam. And frankly, I’m not sure how you remembered to find me at all.”

“Time heals all wounds, Sister.”

“I’m your sister now, am I? I thought you had intended to have me as your wife.”

“Clearly you’re otherwise engaged at the moment.” He smiled that smug and powerful smile again. “Not that I would object if you changed your mind. He’s not good enough for you.”

“That line is getting old.”

He picked up the journal from the table beside him and opened it. “Your late husband’s?”

She nodded stiffly, resisting the urge to rip the book from his hands before his very presence in the same room could taint it.

“‘Anessa has agreed to become my wife. Her father was glad to be rid of her, and I am relieved that I can save her. We will depart directly for my estate. The sooner she is out of the public eye, the better. I can keep her safe in the country.’” Adam stopped reading aloud and laughed. “So noble of him to rescue you. What were you then? A nobleman’s daughter?”

“I was.”

“And what was your crime that your father was so happy to see you gone?”

She shrugged, not wanting to give him even that much information. Her hands closed around the edges of the small end table. At this point, she wasn’t above throwing furniture.

He stepped forward, all of the smugness leaving his expression, replaced with an earnestness she had never thought to see in his face. It was more terrifying than the arrogance, and for a moment she remembered another life, when if it hadn’t been for the war and the angels, and knowing what would come, she might have welcomed him. But not today.

“I can give you more than this, Eve.”

“More was your dream, not mine.” She sat down in a chair, hoping he would do the same. That he would be forced to keep some distance between them.

He did, but barely, perching on the edge of the seat across from her. “Yet here you are, about to become the wife of a very rich man. If you want money, I can make you a queen, Eve, an empress.”

They’d had this conversation once before. In a golden city, while his memory had still been lost. Did he realize it? It made her head spin to hear the words again. She would never forget any of it. “That has never been my ambition.”

Adam closed the book and set it back down on the table. He leaned forward, placing his hand on her knee. “We were made for each other, Eve.”

She tried to ignore the way his touch clouded her mind. Heat spread up her thigh, tempting, inviting. More of his games. It had to be.

She brushed his hand from her leg and rose, needing more space between them. The last of the sun cast a red glow through the window. She watched it set, hugging herself and waiting for her mind to clear and her thoughts to organize into the truth she had known for too long.

Michael would not like this. She could still see the angel’s cold face as he whispered the punishment he would rain upon her and all her line if she forgot the lessons of the Garden and let Adam into her body.

If Adam had come to her in her last life? She shook her head. She couldn’t even think of it. He hadn’t, and she hadn’t. Besides, she had been too distracted by her past husbands to have noticed him anyway, lost and drugged into memory and dreams. If it were a choice between Thorgrim and Adam, it would always be Thorgrim. Regardless of her sanity.

She kept her tone even and cool and hoped he didn’t notice her trembling. “Michael would as soon see us both dead than allow it. He’d rather burn the world himself than give it into your keeping.”

“Michael has been absent for millennia. This is what you were made for, Eve. For me. To love me.”

“I was made to correct your mistakes. So that our people would survive and live to their potential, instead of being ground beneath your heel. I was made to love everyone but you.”

His silence was the sound of a thousand men marching out from Troy, and she felt his eyes on her, staring, searching for some weakness to exploit. No. She wouldn’t remember that now. She wouldn’t give him a way in. Whomever he had been then, as Paris, he wasn’t the same man now.

“At least help me find the Garden. I’ll go there and bother no one. Exile myself to prove that all I want is you.”

She turned back to him, frowning. Even if she had believed him, and she didn’t, it made no sense. He honestly thought the Garden could be found? Perhaps time hadn’t healed everything, after all.

“It was burned to the ground, Adam. Gone, all of it, wasted.”

His eyes hardened to slate, and the room was suddenly too warm. She felt his mind touch hers, insinuating itself into her consciousness like a worm burrowing into freshly turned soil. She clenched her jaw and shut her mind of everything but the memory he searched for. The Garden, scorched to ash, flared brightly into her mind. He was unbelieving at first, then angry, trying to force himself deeper, pressing against her thoughts and the image of smoke and cinder. She imagined her thoughts, her memories into stone, forcing him back.