Fate Forgotten (42 page)

“Dr. Williams has been working quite closely with her, if you’d like to speak with him, but I’m afraid he won’t be willing to give you any further information, either.”

“I’d like to see her, first, for myself,” he said firmly. “To see her condition with my own eyes and offer her the reassurance that I mean to see her taken care of.”

Dr. Meek paused by the door, his lips pressed together. “Mr. Sonnungar, I know that you mean well, and it is obvious that you have a great deal of affection for your cousin, but you should know in advance—I doubt very much that she will recognize you. Her mind is—it is a very delicate situation.”

Thor stared at the door, wishing he could see through it, or at the very least, rip it from its hinges. “I see.”

Meek unlocked the door and entered first, but Thor didn’t hesitate to follow, almost treading on his heels.

“Evelyn?” Meek’s voice was low and gentle. “You have a visitor, my dear.”

His heart constricted at the sight that greeted him. Eve sat in the corner of the room, her arms wrapped around her legs, pulled tight against her chest. She rocked back and forth, her eyes unfocused and she made no sound in response, did not in fact, seem to hear them.

“Eve?” Thor said, stepping forward.

Her head snapped toward them, her lips moving silently as her eyes locked on his face, then widened. She scrambled to her feet, her fingers clawing at the gray cinderblocks behind her.

“Ah.” Meek smiled. “Good. You recognize your cousin, my dear? Mr. Sonnungar?”

Thor shook his head just slightly, seeing the confusion in her eyes.
Not yet,
he tried to say without words.
Wait until he’s left.

She swallowed. “You see him?”

Meek raised his eyebrows. “But of course, my dear. Mr. Sonnungar and I have been speaking with one another for several weeks. He’s expressed a large concern over your care, and I thought it would be best to reassure him.” He turned to Thor. “She’s been seeing people, you understand. Hallucinations, dreams. But Dr. Williams never mentioned a cousin. They’re usually men she claims to have married in previous lives, when we can goad her into talking about them at all. One named Thorgrim in particular.”

Thor’s throat closed and he had to clear it twice before any sound would come out. Eve was staring at him still, her face white. “Thorgrim, you say?”

“Oh, yes,” Meek went on. “She seems particularly affected by him. From what I understand, he’s a bit of a Viking. Have you heard the name before?”

“Yes,” he managed to say, but his eyes were burning and he closed them before either the doctor or Eve would notice. He turned his face away, taking a long, slow breath.

“Of course Mr. Newcastle wouldn’t know,” he said, after he’d gathered his wits. “Thorgrim was her fiancé. He was thrown from his horse and died of a broken neck just before the wedding. They were—” He had to stop and clear his throat again. Thunder rumbled outside, and the rain fell with the noise of snare drums against the roof. He opened his eyes and met Eve’s. “They were very much in love.”

“Really!” Meek’s excitement lit his face. “Really! Well. Well, I must say Mr. Sonnungar—Don. I must say, this is quite a breakthrough. We hadn’t realized—well, of course we hadn’t realized. But a trauma like that, and then her marriage to another man, yes. Yes, certainly that could have caused a break, if she did not ever get over the grief of it. Wonderful!”

Thor grimaced, ignoring the doctor to step closer to Eve. She was shuddering, her eyes filled with tears. He took the blanket from the bed. “Here.”

She shrank back, sliding down the wall again.

He crouched and tucked the blanket around her body.

“How?” she breathed. “How are you here?”

He glanced back at the doctor. “Can I have a moment alone with my cousin?”

Dr. Meek’s forehead furrowed briefly. “Well, yes. Yes, I think it can be permitted in this instance. Especially if there’s anything else—Yes, of course.” He walked back to the door. “Knock three times when you’d like to leave, Mr. Sonnungar, and someone will let you out again.”

Thor grunted an acknowledgement, turning back to Eve as the door shut and locked behind him. She looked much too thin, with navy circles beneath her eyes. He brushed his fingers against her cheek and she flinched away, her skin chilled to the touch.

“Eve,” he whispered. “What have they done to you?”

“Not here,” she mumbled, covering her ears. “Can’t be here.”

“No,” he agreed. “I shouldn’t be. But I couldn’t stand by—” He pulled her hands away, forcing her to look at him. “In order to speak to you, I had to tell them I was your cousin. If they find out I’m not, they won’t let me see you. Can you remember that?”

She shook her head. “
Ek skil eigi.
”

He sighed. At least she knew him. Or why else would she be speaking the old tongue? He took her face in his hands, searching her eyes for some kind of recognition even if she said she didn’t understand. Understanding was much more than he expected.

“If they ask you, my name is Donar Sonnungar.
Ek heiti
Sonnungar
.
” He ducked his head to keep her eyes locked on his. “
Skilur þú?
”

She wrapped her fingers around his. “Sonnungar?”

“
Já.
” His lips twitched. “For Thor. You remember the gods? Remember, you were named for him too? Because of the storm, the night you were born, and the way you laughed at the thunder. My Tora.”

A strangled sob rose, ragged with agony, and her eyes filled with tears. Even though she trembled, her fingers tightened around his, pressing his hands against her cheeks. “My Thorgrim.”

“Always yours,” he promised. “I’m going to set you free, Eve. I swear it.”

“You can’t,” she whispered. “It isn’t safe.”

“Safe?”

“I’ll hurt them.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “Like Adam. I’ll hurt them.”

He wanted to tell her he’d never let her hurt anyone that way. He wanted to tell her she was wrong. But once he freed her, it would be impossible for him to stay. His father would never allow it. Even this was disobedience, if he learned the truth. Punishable by death, if Odin so desired. He wiped her tears away with his thumb and kissed her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair. It smelled—strange. Familiar in all the wrong ways. “I should have come sooner.”

She fell into his arms, her hold so weak. He could feel her ribs, and the ridge of her spine at the small of her back. She should have smelled like sunshine and spring, but what clung to her was acrid, with the tang of venom… And then he felt the welts through the thin gown she wore.

She cried out, her back arching beneath his touch, twisting free.

The color leached from the room as lightning struck outside.

“They whipped you.” His voice sounded flat even to his own ears. “To the bone.”

She leaned against the cinderblocks, and for the first time he saw the blood on the wall where she had pressed her back against it while the wounds healed. More than once, by the smears. The room flashed white again.

“He said it was my fault.”

“What was?” he asked.

She turned her face away, her skull making a hollow thunk against the cinderblock. “I couldn’t save our son.”

Dr. Williams refused to see him, though Dr. Meek had tried to reason with him. “After the information you were able to give us about this Thorgrim, I would think that the benefits would outweigh—well, there’s nothing to be done. I’ll continue to speak to him on your behalf, Mr. Sonnungar. It’s obvious to me that your contributions in this case could be invaluable.”

Thor rubbed his face, still staring at the door behind which Eve was locked. He had left her sleeping after she’d cried herself out. There were puncture marks on her arm, ringed with a vile green. He’d seen their kind only once before, a long time ago, on another world. But the scarred skin of her back had shocked him even more, when he’d finally coaxed her into showing him. Her ribs were a mess of black, blue, and green bruises, along with her stomach.

Thor wanted to grab the man by his collar and shake him. “She’s being beaten.”

“Ah,” Meek gave him a sidelong look. “That was quite unfortunate, yes.”

“Unfortunate?” He struggled to quiet his tone while thunder rumbled outside. “Do you think that beating her is going to help? That she’s going to get better if someone breaks her spine with a switch?”

Dr. Meek made a strangled noise, stepping back, and Thor only realized he had followed when Meek’s heels barked against the wall with a click. The smaller man’s shoulders were hunched and Meek pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Now, Mr. Sonnungar—Don. That—that had nothing to do with her treatment, of course. I did my best to treat her afterwards, but there’s nothing that we can do—that is, it was a domestic dispute, and how a man disciplines his wife—”

“
Disciplines?
” he roared. “When she’s cowering in a corner and barely conscious of who she is, you let that fool beat her as punishment? For losing her child! Do you have any idea what that would have done to her already?”

He slammed his fist into the wall. The tiling cracked and dust fell to the floor.

“Mr.—Don. You have to understand, that we can only give her the care she needs for as long as she remains with us,” Dr. Meek began, his voice low. He cleared his throat and went on with more confidence. “And while she’s here, I believe the frequency of her beatings is much decreased. She is safer here, Mr. Sonnungar. Surely you realize that?”

Thor pressed his forehead against the cool tile of the wall, forcing himself to breathe through his teeth instead of growling. He unclenched his jaw. “Forgive me, Doctor.”

“Quite all right, man.” Meek’s hand fell briefly on his shoulder, but dropped away at once when he glared. “Your distress is, I assure you, understandable. I felt similarly myself, when I learned of what had happened. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for you as her family.”

He grunted. “And the abuse of her husband, has that factored into your considerations of her mental state?”

“Of course, Mr. Sonnungar. But the fact remains that a mind must have a—a genetic predisposition toward this fragmentation.”

Thor stiffened, turning slowly to face the doctor again. Meek fell back at once. “You haven’t sterilized her.”

“Well, no. Not as yet, though it would be a kindness to her. Her husband refuses to allow it, determined that she should give him a son. It seems he was concerned about infidelity more than her health. Of course, once she had been admitted, we realized what he’d heard. Just another symptom of her disease…”

He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, closing his eyes. The relief he felt made him almost dizzy, and he grasped the wall in order to keep upright. To sterilize Eve of all people. By all the gods, what was this world coming to? The war that had just ended would only be the beginning.

“Thank you,” he said at last. “That is the best news I could hope for.”

Meek cleared his throat. “You understand that Mr. Newcastle has only delayed the procedure. Until she gives him his child. After that…”

Thor pressed his lips together. There would be no after that. He would have her free before then. He had to have her free before then. That kind of trauma—he did not want to think what it would do to her, when she was already so fragile. And the venom. If a god was involved, it explained much. With the distraction of the war, he had not been watching her as closely as he should have been, only relieved that she was so far away from the front. He had not realized the significance of her silence, and when he had checked on her last, she’d been dreaming of Thorgrim. He should have known. He should have come sooner. Would have, if there had not been such a threat to the House of Lions. Now he wondered if even that had been orchestrated to keep him away.

“How long ago did she miscarry?”

Meek’s gaze slid away as he hemmed. “Well, now. That kind of information—”

Thor grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and jerked him forward until his face was inches away. “You’re telling me you think her
husband
has her best interests at heart? That Frank Newcastle, after beating her bloody, has more of a right to make informed decisions about her health than I do, as her cousin, related to her by
blood?
”

Meek scrabbled at his hands, trying to pry his fingers free. “The law—”

“Your oath, doctor,” he growled right over his sentence, before the man could infuriate him even further, “is first to do no harm. Sworn to Apollo himself!”

He let Meek go, and the doctor stumbled back into the wall, breathless, his eyes wide and his brow beaded with sweat.

“What you do to the other women in this ward, I have no right to judge,” Thor went on, struggling to control his tone, “but Evelyn is under my protection. Do you understand me?”

Meek swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing repeatedly. “Of course, Mr. Sonnungar. Yes. Yes, of course.”

The rain drummed in Thor’s ears, though there were no windows in the hall. He closed his eyes, burning again, and pinched the bridge of his nose. Inhale. Exhale. He could not let his temper get the best of him, not if there were gods involved. But seeing her that way, knowing that Frank Newcastle was responsible for placing her in their hands, for abusing her so completely, and these men, these doctors had done nothing to stop it, made the color leach from his vision. Other men and gods might see red in their anger, but Thor saw lightning white.