Fate of the Gods 01 - Forged by Fate (5 page)

“Not like that, Adam.” She couldn’t keep the resentment from her voice, or the anger from her face. Her nails dug into her palm, but she didn’t dare touch him even to slap him. “You won’t violate me. Not then and not now.”

He crossed the room, and had her by the arm before she even thought to move. His anger, his frustration, washed over her in pounding waves of red light and burning heat. Her breath caught, her mind throbbing.

“You will give me what I want, Eve.” His grip was hard, and he twisted her elbow. “It has always only been a matter of time.”

Then he let her go and left the room. She rubbed her arm and wilted against the windowsill. Her head ached from his attempted invasion, but he hadn’t managed to break through her defenses. Whatever power he had, he hadn’t quite mastered it. Of course, he’d probably never needed to learn any kind of subtlety.

She followed the black cloud of his anger as he stormed out of the house and drove off, until he recognized that she was following his mind, and he was gone.

Eve joined the others for dinner. The dining room table was covered with take-out boxes of various sizes, serving forks and spoons sticking out of them. René, Garrit’s father, had heaped his plate high already. She sat down in her usual seat beside Garrit, and he smiled.

Juliette glanced behind her. “
Oú est Ethan?
”

She didn’t meet Juliette’s eyes. “Ethan had another engagement.”

Garrit passed her a carton and she served herself. He’d ordered beef adana kebabs and there were already two of them on her plate. Probably to keep René from eating them all. Garrit knew she loved them.

“
C’est bizarre
. I was under the distinct impression he wished to spend several weeks here,” Juliette said. “He seemed adamant about it.”

Eve tried to smile with some kind of reassurance as she served herself from a container of tabouleh. She could have used another hour to herself before dinner, crying with relief that he was gone and no one would die today, but she didn’t have it. And they needed to know. It would be their lives and their blood spilled, in the end.

“Ethan was not exactly the man he led you to believe he was. It’s no fault of your own. My brother has always been brilliant at games of deceit.”

There was absolute silence. Eve could feel them absorbing her words, and then winced at the white-flare of their shock. After fighting against Adam’s invasion of her thoughts, filtering out their emotional responses took more effort than she had the patience for. She pinched the bridge of her nose against the throbbing behind her eyes. It had been a very long time since she’d had to exercise those particular muscles.

“We had no idea, Abby, or we would never have brought him.” René said.

Eve let out a breath, steadying herself. She didn’t want them to see her fear or her worry, and absolutely not her pain. “I know.”

Garrit was watching her, but she kept her gaze on her plate. The timing of all of this was atrocious.

“Am I the only person at the table with no idea of what’s going on?”

She flinched at his accusation, bitter and needling, more than his tone. If she didn’t meet his eyes now—she lifted her gaze, her expression carefully neutral.

“The man your parents brought to meet me, Ethan, is Adam.”

Garrit’s jaw tightened and his mouth thinned into a line of frustration. Better than anger, she supposed. He pushed his plate away and stood up, his gaze going from Eve to his father. Garrit shook his head just once. “Excuse me.”

She watched him leave the room, and sighed. “I’m sorry. He only discovered last night I'm Eve, and he’s upset I didn’t tell him myself, earlier.”

“He needs only time, Abby. He loves you,” Juliette said.

“
Quel imbécile,
” René mumbled. “You are the same woman, still, and he should not blame you for not seeing what was before his nose.”

Eve tried not to smile. René was the same sort of man that Ryam had been, from his dark eyes to his imperturbable attitude. It helped to remember that. Ryam had always kept her safe.

“I did point that out to him. I’m afraid it didn’t make it any easier for him to swallow.”

René laughed, his eyes warming. “You are good for him, Abby. A man needs a woman who will speak plainly, though at times he may not care for what she says. DeLeon men, doubly so.”

“René will speak with him,” Juliette said. “He is not so stubborn he will not listen.”

René nodded, unfazed that his wife had volunteered him to an unenviable task. He served himself another helping of hummus.

“Thank you,” Eve said.

Juliette smiled. “
Bon.
Now, tell us what you have planned for the wedding. Garrit says you would have it here, at the manor? I think the courtyard would suit you, with the chapel doors thrown wide. Is that what you had in mind?”

“Yes.” Eve glanced at René. He rolled his eyes and went back to his dinner. But it was a relief to change the subject. To think about her marriage. She’d be safer then. They all would be. “Garrit was worried about the weather, but I think if we rent a pavilion tent, it would be just fine.”

“
Oui, parfait!
You will want the shade from the sun, in any event. Have you thought of what you will serve? I know a pastry chef
trés bon
. He would be pleased to create your cake.”

Eve grinned. “Would you be willing to arrange an introduction? I’d love it if we could do some of this together.”

“
Ma chérie,
I’ve only been waiting for you to ask.”

Garrit was reading Ryam’s journal when Eve found him in the library. She hesitated at the door. Giving him space was all well and good, but she hadn’t exactly counted on Adam’s arrival.

He looked up at her and smiled. “It’s all right, Abby. I was waiting for you.” He set the book down.

“I wasn’t sure you were ready to talk to me yet.”

He shrugged and then waved her to a seat across from him. It was the seat Adam had occupied not hours earlier. She sat down and tried to pretend her brother had never come, but her hands were shaking, and she pressed them against her knees to stop it.

“
Papa
found me after dinner,” he said. “He was worried you and I were having problems. He called me a damned fool.” Garrit grinned.

“Your father has never been one to mince words.”

“No. And he makes it very difficult to argue.” His gaze drifted back to the book. “The truth has always been staring me in the face. I just chose not to see it.”

She looked at her hands, forcing herself to open them from the fists they had become. “I should’ve told you.”

“I should’ve
known
you.” His tone was grim. “What kind of DeLeon am I, if I can’t even recognize you for who you are?”

“The kind who wasn’t looking.” She shrugged. “You had no reason to see me coming. I didn’t come to you for sanctuary. I didn’t use any of the traditional phrases that should have alerted you. I didn’t even mean to find you. It was pure happenstance that we ended up in the same university at the same time.” She grimaced. “And the last time a man learned what I was, he had me locked up.”

“Lord Ryam knew you on sight.”

She sat back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. There were more pressing issues than her late husband’s insight, but it bothered her anyway. “I’m beginning to suspect Ryam had more secrets than I did. Which is saying quite a bit.”

He studied her for a moment, his lips pressed together to keep from smiling. “I thought you could read minds.”

“Ordinarily, yes. Among this family, it takes a bit more work. And Ryam had a stronger mind than many.”

“But Adam had no problem with my parents.”

“Adam has no respect for the privacy of anyone else’s mind, though he left me with the impression it was mostly your mother he mined for information. Your father he only had to charm.”

“It would take much more than charm to make my father break his vow. Aren’t you familiar with it?”

She shook her head, but had no trouble imagining it. “I can’t say I’m completely surprised.”

Similar vows had been made periodically, but she didn’t recall telling Ryam anything that might provoke him to that kind of measure. Of course it didn’t have to be Ryam; the last time she had met with this family, she hadn’t been in her right mind. She might have said anything.

He opened the journal to a marked page, and handed it to her. “Our family heritage. I was made to take it also, though I never really understood it until now.”

Eve read the page he indicated. She read it again, to be sure she understood, and swallowed against the tightness in her throat.

Watch for Adam,
it said.
Now that he has his memory, he will come, and he cannot be allowed near to her, for the sake of all the world. Guard her!
And there was more. More of the same.

She would have remembered if she had told Ryam any of this. She was certain of that. It wasn’t the kind of conversation that was easily forgotten, nor was it anything that wouldn’t have come up if it had been known generally within the family. For a dizzying moment, she wondered if Thorgrim had haunted her more than once. It was a long moment before she trusted herself to respond to what she was looking at, and not to the ghost of insanity breathing in her ear.

“How is this possible?”

“
Quoi?
”

She looked up, clearing her throat and forcing herself not to think of men who should have been dead having conversations with the living. “Until today, when he arrived here, I had no clue that Adam’s memory had been restored. He isn’t supposed to remember anything, Garrit! From one life, to the next. He isn’t supposed to know me, never mind be able to find me this way! But here in this passage, written over five hundred years ago, is a statement by the man I was married to, of his foreknowledge of the very event that took place today. How is it possible?”

“Did you not tell him yourself of the danger?”

She shook her head, staring at the page again. “There are many things in this world I have no trouble taking on faith, Garrit. But this—” she reread the passage again and, putting aside the peculiarities of her last life, tried to consider things reasonably, logically. “It says he received word. Who could he have received word from? I couldn’t have missed an angel knocking on our door. And I can’t imagine Michael deigning to do so, or bothering to speak with a mere mortal, regardless.”

She didn’t quite repress the shiver that ran down her spine at the idea. She would not have been unaware if the angels had come a third time. Michael had made it very clear that if she ever saw him again, it would mean her death. Ghosts would have been preferable.

“I think he would’ve mentioned an angel coming down from on high.” Garrit smiled wryly. “Maybe it was just something he guessed at. Deduced from something you said.”

She regarded him for a long moment. It was clear he didn’t find the
how
important, only the application of the knowledge. “Perhaps.”

It wasn’t important right now. What Ryam knew or didn’t know five hundred years ago, what Luc, Garrit’s great-grandfather, had thought when she had arrived on his doorstep out of her mind, none of it mattered. She forced herself not to think of the distraction. And absolutely she couldn’t afford to lose herself in that past life and those memories. Adam himself was the problem now and she couldn’t afford to court insanity.

“As it happened, you seemed perfectly capable of dispatching him on your own,” Garrit was saying. “I wonder why we swore a vow at all, if it is so easy as that.”

“He left because I was engaged to you. But he’ll be back, Garrit. If not in this life, then the next. He will keep coming for me, any time he thinks he has half a chance.” Until Michael grew tired of it, and killed them both outright, along with who knew how many countless others. Would she be reborn if he killed her with the sword? Her stomach twisted. If Adam knew, he had never told her. “He is nothing if not persistent. Pig-headedly so.”

Garrit leaned forward, taking the book from her and setting it aside, covering her hands in both of his. “You will be safe with me, Abby. I promise you. I will keep you safe.”