Fate Forgotten (28 page)

Somehow he didn’t think he would be able to fit the DeLeon estate in a box. The DeLeon family, to his understanding, was supposed to be her foolproof lock box. She kept everything with them. He’d seen the vault.

Well. He would find a way. And it would be a perfect gift for Eve. He smiled sadly. Her birthday was coming up, and he had always sent her something during the last five years they’d been apart. Flowers at the least. This year he wouldn’t disappoint her.

“You said you speak on behalf of our Lady,
Monsieur
Carraig. Is she here?”

Eve’s eldest great-grandson was a boy he remembered as precocious, but charming. He had been named Ryam, for his grandfather. The DeLeons did love their family names. Looking at the middle-aged man he had grown into, his face lined with a seriousness that the child he’d known had always lacked, Adam was quite certain that Eve would have heart failure. Even he had looked twice, Ryam’s face and eyes bringing back flashes of memory of Reu in the Garden. Unfortunately, the only thing he remembered clearly was a sense of his own righteous indignation, which wasn’t helpful in the slightest.

“
Monsieur
DeLeon, it is kind of you to meet with me on such short notice. I’m sorry to say that your Lady is not with me, but she has granted me all authority in this matter. You do realize what you’re doing don’t you? Selling this estate? Her home?”

Ryam collapsed into a chair, all poise and grace draining from him. “I had hoped she wouldn’t have to know.”

Adam shook his head, leaning against the edge of the desk. He had usurped the real estate agent’s office for this meeting, not wishing to tempt fate by crossing into DeLeon lands quite yet. The last thing he needed was trouble from Thor complicating things further. “Somehow I think that it would be impossible for her not to notice when she came home to find her family gone, and the place turned into a museum. What possessed you to make this kind of decision?”

“If it were up to me alone,
monsieur
, we would not be selling. Unfortunately, my father chose to bequeath his legacy in equal measure to all his children. My other two brothers do not share my feelings. I tried to talk them into selling it to the family, or to me, but coming up with the kind of money they were looking for was impossible.”

By all rights, they ought never to have run out of funds. Unless someone hadn’t passed on the secrets of Asgardian gold, and someone else had melted down the source, money never should have been a problem for the House of Lions. Adam watched the man wriggle in the chair as he stood over him, his hair seeming to gray visibly with stress, and thought of how miserable Eve was going to be because Alexandre’s son hadn’t done as he was told, as tradition dictated, and passed the estate in one piece to his oldest son, with all its secrets intact. Garrit hadn’t even believed in Eve before he met her, but he never would’ve sold his family’s land, and these boys didn’t have his excuse of long dissociation. They had seen Eve, felt her, touched her. She had held them in her lap as babes.

“This is going to break her heart.”

Ryam’s face became ashen. “But you have made an offer. Surely this means you do so on her behalf, in her name. It will be hers.”

He felt something then, in the back of his mind. The lightest of touches, but he would recognize it always. She so rarely reached for him.
Eve?

Adam.

He was taken aback by the distress in her mind, the ache in her soul.
What’s wrong?

Bad dreams.
There was a flash of flame and smoke, and crying people.
I didn’t mean to disturb you.

You’re never a disturbance. I was just thinking of you anyway. I’m sitting with your great-grandson. These men of yours favor their ancestor prodigiously you know. Alex didn’t so much, but Ryam is the spitting image of his founding father.

But why?
He felt her confusion, even a touch of anxiety.
Why would you meet with them?

They’re selling DeLeon Castle, Eve. I came to try to stop them, or at the very least ensure I was the one who bought it. I’m sorry.

A maelstrom of emotion ripped through her, and he flinched, turning away from Ryam. All of it sorrowful. All of it shock and misery. He thought she might be trying not to cry, and he wished that he were there with her. Comforting her.
Adam, they can’t!

I’m sorry, love. I’m sorry.

There must be something…
But despair settled and he followed her thoughts. She had no wealth, no power. She had nothing to offer them, nothing to provide. She couldn’t even afford a flight to speak with them herself. If only she could, perhaps she could make them see sense—
Adam. Will you lend me some money?

He smiled, knowing at once what she asked of him.
Your tickets will be waiting for you at the nearest airport. I’ll make the arrangements at once.

“
Monsieur
Carraig?”

He cleared his throat and turned back to face Ryam. “Forgive me. This isn’t as simple as that, Mr. DeLeon. Her wealth, unfortunately, is all yours. Everything she owns devolves to you, her family, each time she dies. You see the difficulty? She has no resources of her own that are not in the hands of your family already. If you sell this estate, it leaves your family, and she has no way to keep track of you to pass it on. No way to ensure it returns to you intact.” To say nothing of the protections Thor had afforded it, all of which were bound to the lands themselves, but if they had melted down the gold, the likelihood they understood the rest of what they would lose was unlikely.

“I don’t understand.” Ahh, yes. There it was. The first mote of suspicion. Ryam studied him through narrowed eyes. “What exactly is your relationship with our Lady? How do you come to know her?”

Adam ignored the question. It would be made clear to them in time, or it wouldn’t. Either way if Ryam were stupid enough not to figure it out on his own, he had no business knowing at all. “I have made arrangements for your Lady’s arrival. She will no doubt want a better explanation from you and your brothers. Will you meet with her in two days? Give her at least this satisfaction?”

Ryam shifted uncomfortably, his mouth pressed into the same thin line that Garrit had often affected in his irritation. His eyes shifted to the window behind him, but there was no thunder, no rain, no flash of lightning. Still, the man looked rather sick. “I can’t deny her, can I?”

“Not without betraying everything your family stands for, Ryam.”

He nodded. “Two days, then. I’ll speak with my brothers.” Ryam stood, and without a farewell, left the office.

Adam watched him go, and hoped that by the time they met again, with Eve, he had a different story to tell. One in which they declined to sell.

Chapter Twenty-eight: 1018 AD

Thor sat in the shadowed corner of the tavern, cloaked and hooded, and watched Eve laugh and tease a patron as she refilled the other man’s mug. It was a special kind of torture to inflict upon himself. After every meeting spent with Ra and Athena, every expedition to talk another god into agreeing to their cause, every time he did anything that took them a step closer to returning Adam his memory, he found Eve.

Athena had long ago stopped trying to talk him out of these trips, and Ra had never begun to try. This life of hers was more convenient than the others. He had become a regular customer easily. Sometimes she even spoke to him, and it made his pulse quicken, and his guilt flare. So he drank and made sure to tip her well.

“I did wonder why London had become so overcast.”

Thor did not look at the man who sat down beside him. Did not have to raise his eyes to see the leer on Loki’s face. He knocked back what was left of his beer and slammed the mug to the tabletop to signal for more. “Any native will tell you it has always been so.”

“Proof only that you’ve been meddling in the minds of men.” Loki shrugged, leaning back in his seat and kicking his feet up on the table. “You’re so mind-numbingly predictable, Thor. And Odin was so sure that you had changed. That Athena had broken the woman’s spell over you.”

“It drives you mad that Athena won’t even look at you, doesn’t it?” Part of him wanted to see Loki try his luck with her. Athena hadn’t shared Thor’s own bed in nearly two centuries, but he knew she would not take another lover. And if Loki tried to force her, she was more than capable of handling him. He would be a bloody pulp by the time she was through.

Loki chuckled, dropping his feet and lowering his voice. “Have you bedded her recently?” He made a noise which was unmistakable. Lust and appreciation and arrogance rolled together obscenely as he stared at Eve. “Is she not full of spirit? All these millennia, marrying and remarrying. She must be an exceptional whore.”

Thor ground his teeth, determined to say nothing that would encourage Loki. Nothing to give away how infuriated he was by such a statement. Such a slur.

Eve refilled Thor’s mug and smiled warmly, though he did not let her take too great of an interest in him. Every time she tried to look at his face, he distracted her with something else. Even if it was only the call of another patron who needed his glass filled. He couldn’t let her recognize him.

Loki grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into his lap, murmuring something in her ear that Thor couldn’t hear. Eve’s smile was fixed to her face, incongruous with the look of disgust in her eyes, and she pushed him firmly away, tsking him. Thor’s hands became fists, and
Mjölnir
weighed heavily on his hip.

Loki let Eve go, and laughed. “Mead, woman!” he called after her.

She glanced over her shoulder, her expression darkening for just a moment before she noticed Thor watching, and it cleared again. The smile she offered him was vaguely reassuring. As though she recognized some malevolence in his eyes, or some offense at her treatment.

He grunted and looked away. She probably felt it. His fury. His frustration. His disgust. She had always been adept at reading his emotions. He imagined she had only honed her skills over the years. Become more finely tuned to the people around her.

“But I’d forgotten. You’re still bound by Odin, aren’t you? Forbidden to touch her.” Loki sighed. “A shame, really. Perhaps I’ll just have to do it for you.”

Thor was on his feet before he even registered his own intent, and Loki was pinned against the wall by the hand at his throat, his toes reaching for the floor. He could feel the other god’s pulse against his fingers, and tightened his hand until it slowed and Loki’s face began to turn purple.

He leaned in close, and heard himself growl. “I believe I made it clear to you Loki, that I would not suffer any interference in her life. You will not touch her.”

Loki clawed at Thor’s hand and arm, his nails gouging and leaving trails of blood. Thor ignored it. But then another hand touched his shoulder. A touch he couldn’t ignore. Would never wish to. All conversation in the tavern had ceased and the silence thundered. Or perhaps it was the thunder which thundered. He did not care which when he looked into her eyes. Those green eyes that had no match. The eyes he dreamed of. The woman he dreamed of.

“Please,” she said. “Let him go.”

He couldn’t look away from her. The hardness in her eyes was what surprised him most, though. She had always been so warm, so loving, but in this there was no tolerance. No understanding. Her grip on his arm tightened, and he felt heat spreading from the point of contact. Heat, and a compulsion to do what she asked that had nothing to do with his love for her. Maybe she hadn’t trusted him with all her secrets, after all. Or maybe she had not known her own strength then. Her own power. Did she even realize she was using it now?

“I will not have men killed in my tavern,” she said. Her voice was low, but firm. It brooked no argument, and if he had been a man, he doubted very much that he would have the faculties to do anything but obey. “Release him.”

He didn’t want to let Loki go. He didn’t want to let this moment pass. Still, he relaxed the hold he had on the other god’s neck. “As you wish.”