Fate Forgotten (22 page)

Athena raised her eyes to his and didn’t smile.
You should not have come.

Then Eve turned and he didn’t care about the goddess, or her thoughts. Except that he wondered how Eve didn’t recognize her from that day so long ago. He shook his head and offered her a smile. Nothing charming. Nothing artful. There was too much pain in her eyes, in her face, for him to behave in any other way but honestly.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked. As if he were any other customer or maybe some stranger she didn’t know.

He tried not to let it hurt. “I hope so.”

She stared at him for a long moment and then turned away again, picking up a box and carrying it behind the counter. The movements lacked her usual grace, and the box thumped heavily on the floor.

“What do you want, Adam? Why are you here? After everything?”

“I wanted to apologize.” When he said it out loud, it sounded small and weak. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

You hurt her more by coming. Why won’t you let her live?

He didn’t look at the goddess.
This is none of your affair. If Thor has something to say to me, let him do it himself.

“You owe me nothing, Adam.” Eve said, her back to him still. “Live your life. Do what you want to do. I’m glad you moved on.”

It was a lie, but he could tell she wanted to believe it. She wanted to think it was the truth. “I thought that I could. I thought I could walk away from you.” The words came to him without conscious thought, but he knew he meant them. She glanced over her shoulder and he thought her expression had softened. “I can’t.”

You made us promises, Adam. We don’t forget. Thor’s personal feelings aside, we have an agreement.

“I told you.” Eve said. “My answer is still the same. I won’t risk the world.”

He ignored Athena, concentrating instead on Eve. She had to understand. This wasn’t about the godchild. “I’m not asking you to. I won’t ask it of you.”

“But you’re here.” She spun and faced him. “You’re here, anyway. Don’t you see that it’s the same?”

Athena’s laugh in his mind was derogatory. Mocking.
Hera was right about her; she is discerning.

Leave, Athena.
“No.” He stepped toward Eve, even as he felt Athena move away. The bell chimed as she left the store. Of course she wasn’t gone. Not really. Just as Thor’s physical absence didn’t mean he wasn’t listening. Watching. Waiting. “It isn’t the same.”

He had come around the counter now, and she had backed up against the shelves behind it. Trapped between the shelves, the wall, the countertop and him. But there was no fear in her face, as there once might have been and her eyes never left his.

“And yet…” She raised her hand to his chest and it lit a fire in his heart.

Sif’s golden touch had been nothing to this. He thought maybe he could understand Thor’s obsession, to have something so pale in comparison. He cupped her cheek.

“This isn’t why I came, Evey. But I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“You’ve apologized. I’ve accepted. If that’s all, then you can go.”

He shook his head. “I wanted to ask you something. For something. I need to know what you know, Eve.”

She stared at him, waiting, her hand still against his chest, over his heart, warm and comforting. “About what?”

He raised his other hand to her face, framing it. It had been a long time since he had been given reason to invade a mind. A long time since he’d rummaged through memories for the things he sought. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he knew that it would. It was never a pleasant experience, no matter how delicate the touch and he hoped she wouldn’t make him try.

“I need to find Michael.”

She pulled his hands from her face and frowned. There was a flash of fear in her eyes, quickly repressed. “Michael? For what?”

“I need to speak with him. I need to know the truth.”

“The truth.” She laughed, bitter and broken. “I’ve told you the truth. He won’t give you what you want, Adam. He can’t give you permission for this. It’s God’s law. He’d just as soon kill you as anything else.”

“Do you know how to find him?”

“This is why you came?” She dropped her eyes, and her hands fell to her sides. “You’re always looking for something, aren’t you? You’re never satisfied with what you’ve been given. There’s always something more. Something you have to have. Something you have to know. Truth. Wisdom. Power. Understanding. The Fruit, the Garden. When will you learn, Adam?”

“It isn’t what you think, Eve. This isn’t about any of that. I need to speak to him, that’s all.”

He hated the hurt in her eyes when she looked up at him. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to find him.” She frowned again, and her eyes lost focus. “Maybe my family knows, but I don’t think they would tell me. One of the many things Ryam made them swear to keep to themselves, perhaps.”

He saw it in her mind’s eye. The image of the man by the smoking tree, and he grimaced. Of course she would bring Thor into this, without even realizing it. He was never far from her thoughts, from her life.

“You’re sure you don’t know? He didn’t leave you some way to reach him, to contact him?”

“No.” She shook her head again. “No. They made it clear they wouldn’t help me any further than they had. Honestly, I prayed that I’d never see them again, after we left the Garden.” Her face paled and she shivered. “I never understood how you didn’t fear them.”

He smiled faintly. “Arrogance, I would imagine.”

“Don’t you know?”

“It was a long time ago.” He shrugged and then stepped back. “I guess I’ll have to start somewhere else then. I just thought perhaps you’d know something I didn’t.”

She was looking at him oddly, her forehead creased. “I don’t understand, Adam. You knew them better than any of us. Reu told me you walked with God. You were his favorite. You knew the angels before the rest of us were even thought of.”

“Yes.” He pulled himself away from her. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. As if he should have known. He
should’ve
known. But there was nothing he could do about that. Not without hurting her. He turned away. “Until you. You’re their favorite now.”

“I don’t think the angels care about humanity one way or the other. Any of us. Maybe especially not us. Michael isn’t exactly reasonable. I don’t know what you think you can accomplish by going to them.”

No. The angels didn’t care. But the gods did. They lined up to protect her three deep. Except for Sif. And who else? He wished he knew.

He turned back and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her against him and looking into her eyes. Was Thor there? Inside her now? Listening to every word? She jerked back almost at once, but he didn’t let go, instead allowing himself to dream. Imagining how hot her skin would be against his, how sweet and soft her lips would be.

She gasped, her lips parting and her eyes widening, and he held her and let her feel it with him. The dream. The desire. The lust. Her eyes closed and she turned her face from his, as if by looking away she could stop it, but she no longer struggled to free herself and her body softened against his.

“I would give you everything of myself, Eve. Pour myself into you, heart and soul until you were filled to overflowing, glowing with love and life, whether Michael forbid it or not. And I would still face him, still search him out to stand before him even if it meant my head.”

There was a hiss deep in the back of his mind, or maybe it was hers? He couldn’t tell anymore because he was kissing her and she was kissing him back with a wantonness that shook him. All it would take was a nudge. The slightest of pushes. He felt her hit the wall, and was dimly aware of the contents of a box tipping and falling over them in a shower of cartons and cigarettes. He raised his hand to her face, trailing his fingers along her jaw and into her hair as her lips parted. But there was a dampness where there shouldn’t have been. She shuddered, sobbed against his mouth.

He pulled away. “Don’t cry, Eve, please.”

She shrank from him, and her legs collapsed a heartbeat before he could catch her. The box above rained more cigarettes into her hair as she sank to the floor against the wall. He crouched before her, but she wouldn’t look at him.

“You have to go.”

“I can’t leave you like this.”

She took a shuddering breath and then another. “Like this is the only way you can leave me.”

“Eve—” but he didn’t even know what he meant to say. He had hoped that if he kissed her, if she responded, it would bring Michael down on them both, but there was no sign. No sign but the hiss that had turned into a growl, and the rumble of thunder in the distance that he knew meant Thor, not the angel he sought.

“Leave!”

It was snarl and sob and it startled him into stepping back, even while she cried harder.

Adam!
Thor’s voice was a roar.

Quickly, please. I don’t know if I can keep him out of the store.
Athena had appeared and was pulling him away by the arm, her grip firm and fast. Eve didn’t even notice.
You should not have tempted him this way, Adam. Not so soon after Sif’s betrayal. He’ll want to kill you, and he so rarely listens to reason when it comes to his wife.
He wasn’t sure whether it was Eve she meant, or Sif, but she sighed.
I should never have left.

And then he caught sight of a man through the glass, his features blurred though it did not stop his eyes from piercing through to Adam’s soul. At last, at last! But Athena didn’t slow, even when they were out of the shop and the man watched with narrowed eyes as she towed him past.

“No!” he struggled in her grasp, but she was a goddess and a warrior besides and he had no hope of breaking free if she would not let him. “Let go, Athena, please! It’s him! Michael! I must speak to him, I must—”

The Chorus roared in his head, even more loudly than Thor’s fury.

Before he fell into the darkness, he prayed that the angel had spared Eve.

Chapter Twenty-two: 665 AD

“Brother!”

They had been dozing in the meadow, watching the goats in exchange for their beds, but Athena sat up at once, frowning toward the shout of their uninvited guest, still hidden from view.

When Thor had arrived with the other two gods, the House of Lions had been quite accommodating. It had been prudent to leave the African coast with the rise of the second prophet, though Thor hated leaving Eve behind when her brother was so near. As far as he could tell, Adam had fathered this new prophet, and then abandoned him. Eve was in Antioch. She had mothered a bishop.

“I thought we had protected these lands,” Athena said.

“It’s only Baldur,” Thor assured her, chasing off a goat which had become interested in her blanket. “Probably because Loki could not come. My brother rarely leaves Asgard.”

He didn’t call out. Baldur would find them easily enough on his own, and he had no wish to hurry this. It had been more than five hundred years since he had been exiled. His return would wait a few more hours.

“What does he want?” Athena asked.

He scratched his jaw. He’d grown in a beard when he had begun goat-herding. She had found it absurd at first, but agreed that if he was to continue haunting Eve’s steps, a periodic change in his appearance might be called for. “I expect he comes on behalf of my father. Probably because I’ve been traveling with you.”

Her lips twisted, rueful. “Then your father will be as disappointed as I have been.”

Athena had been upset by her father’s decision to leave along with her uncles and Thor had not wished to deny her what comfort he could give. Once they had begun sleeping together, it had been difficult to find a reason to stop, as often as they were in company. Ra had been quietly amused by the development, though he said nothing. Thor saw it in his eyes, and something else. A longing, quiet and rueful, but unmistakable all the same. The old god was directing plans for irrigation of the fields from the mountain stream, and re-engineering the indoor plumbing for the manor, leaving them to their own devices.

“Are you truly disappointed by me?”

She sighed and lay back on the blanket, looking up at the sky. “I did not truly expect anything more. I only wished for it.”

He picked pieces of grass from her hair. “Will you come to Asgard? Brave Sif’s wrath?”

“Sif does not frighten me, Thor. If you wish for me to come, for whatever reason, I will. For a time, at least. Assuming your father will allow it.”

He did not have to tell her Odin would be pleased. He did not have to tell her that bringing her with him would reinforce the false truth of their relationship, convincing Odin that he was no longer under Eve’s spell. But his feelings had not altered, and he still sat in the back of her mind, listening, watching, waiting. Loving her.

Athena gave an exasperated sigh. “You think so loudly, it is a wonder Baldur does not hear.”

“The Aesir do not have the same strength, on the whole. There are exceptions, of course. Odin can make his thoughts known when he wishes to, and Frigg and Loki also. But reading minds has never been within their power. That was my gift alone.”