Adam.”
Adam stared at him, his open hand turning into a fist. “You forget yourself, Reu.” He twisted free from Reu’s grasp. “I am lord here, and Eve will be my wife.”
“I will not.” She raised her voice so the others who had begun to gather would hear more clearly. Her refusal would be known to all of them. “I will not be your wife, Adam.”
“You dare?” He tore his gaze from Reu to glare at her. His anger was a force against her mind, but the fruit had given her greater strength, and his will did not touch her. His eyes narrowed and his voice was cold and hard. “You are not just refusing me, you are giving up the world I offer you. Your only chance for happiness. None of the others will give you what you need. Do you forget I am your only equal?”
“You’re right,” she said softly, and he began, almost to smirk. But she went on. “Reu is not my equal. He is my better. And yours as well.”
He lunged at her, dropping the fruit to wrap both his hands around her throat. There were no words now, just incoherencies as they fell to the ground. Images of her body bruised, her face bloodied until she huddled, whimpering in the dark—the punishments he would inflict on her for such an insult, seared upon the backs of her eyelids.
She clawed at his hands, trying to pry his fingers away as she choked. It was worse than anything she had ever experienced before, and tears flowed down her cheeks into her ears. She dug her nails into his skin, drawing blood.
Reu drove his fist into Adam’s face, and she could breathe again. Adam’s lip split open, but he smiled a terrible smile.
Eve saw what he meant a moment before he acted, but her wordless shout wasn’t fast enough to stop Adam from kneeing Reu hard in the groin. Reu dropped like a rock to the ground, on his knees, bent over and wheezing with pain.
Adam kicked him in the ribs, sending him shoulder first into the dirt.
Eve’s vision swam. She crawled to Reu and cradled his head in her lap. He groaned.
“You chose wrongly, Eve.” Adam grabbed her by her arm and dragged her away from him through the dirt, pulling her roughly to her feet. “But I am merciful. Change your mind now, and I will pretend none of this happened. Marry me, and perhaps I’ll even let Reu stay in the Garden as your pet.”
She shook her head. “No.”
He threw her back to the ground and spit in her face.
She wiped it from her cheek, staring at her hand. Beads of blood rose from the scratches and scrapes on her palm, skinned again when she fell.
“Then I have no use for you. Seth, Lamech. Take her and her dog and cast them out of the Garden. Bar the gates behind them. If I’m lucky, the angels will kill them for their sin.” He picked the fruit back up from the ground and turned his back on her.
She felt hands grab her, but she pulled free and climbed to her feet without help. “Maybe you should wait to see what happens before you eat the fruit yourself, Adam. If they kill us, they’ll surely come for you, too.”
“Anyone else who defies me will suffer the same fate as these two.” His voice was even and cold, and he pretended that he didn’t hear her, even as she felt him consider her warning. “Eve will watch Reu starve and die outside these gates, as any of the rest of you would in his place. Assuming the angels don’t interfere before then. For they have sinned, not by eating the fruit, but by denying their God. Elohim is dead and gone, his rules with Him. I am your God now, and you will all obey me, or you will die. That is your choice.”
And then Lamech grabbed her again, and Seth lifted Reu to his feet. The two men dragged them to the gate and threw them out of the Garden without another word.
Chapter Twenty-one: 460 BC
There was nothing odd about a god leaving Asgard to walk the earth, Thor told himself. He repeated it when he did not find Sif feasting with the others in Odin’s hall, and again when he saw no sign of her in the cottage they shared. He repeated it a third time when a word with Heimdall confirmed that she had taken the rainbow bridge to earth, and Loki had been whispering stories of Thorgrim in her ear.
“But not only that,” Heimdall said. Thor had found him on the bridge, of course. It was not for fear of the other gods that he guarded it, though Bifrost was the only way they might come in or out of Asgard without the express permission of Odin. Heimdall guarded against the gods that had not yet come—those who searched for new worlds to claim as their own, after tearing the last apart with war. And he guarded also against the dead, for Bifrost was the only path left to that realm, and it had been filled with enemies of the Aesir. Somewhere in Niflheim, Surt still longed for vengeance and destruction, though he had lost his flaming sword.
“Loki spreads rumors of a goddess, a daughter of the True God who walks the earth,” Heimdall told him. Every rumor whispered in Asgard travelled to Heimdall’s ear, and from there, to Odin’s. “The Trickster claims she is the reason you remained so long away.”
Thor grunted, pretending disinterest, but his blood ran cold. “And Sif?”
Heimdall shrugged, his golden teeth flashing in a joyless smile. “Sif goes in search of such a goddess, to see the face of the woman who be-spelled you.”
“Sif travels on a fool’s errand.”
Heimdall said nothing, but even his silence spoke volumes. Thor was only grateful Heimdall would not speak of anything Odin did not wish shared freely. What Heimdall had seen or heard of Thor’s affair with Eve would never pass through his lips to any other.
“If she travels beyond our lands, she is bound to cause trouble when she meets this supposed goddess,” Thor said.
“I have no doubt that is her intent,” Heimdall replied. “Loki has accused you of affairs with no less than three other goddesses, though oddly, he did not name Freyja. It seems you prefer despoiling virgins.”
He ground his teeth. “If Sif truly believes I am capable of such, I am surprised she returned to my bed at all.”
“None in Asgard would court her while she remains your wife, Thor. If she wishes revenge, she will have to find a partner elsewhere, now that Loki is forbidden from having his way. But I have heard there is a Trickster god among the Celts. Did you not meet with them in your travels?”
Lugh. Yes, he had met with him and his brethren, but he had not cared overmuch for any of their ilk. They were worse than Bragi when it came to plain speech, and fought fiercely among themselves. Lugh had not been the worst of the lot—a thunder god as well as a mischief maker and god of war. But the combination of powers made him unpredictable in the extreme. If Thor was considered short tempered, Lugh’s temper was kindling, already sparked, looking for an excuse to blaze. There was always the chance the right wind would blow to bank his anger into laughter, but it wasn’t something to be relied on.
“Is that where she went?”
Heimdall cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowing as he listened. Behind him, his hall stood on the steep cliff that marked the edge of Asgard’s open fields and rising mountains. His hearing was too acute to give him any peace closer to Odin’s hall, and for as long as Thor remembered, the guardian had always lived alone.
“If so, she has been and gone. I hear her voice in our lands, now. In Thorgrim’s village. She asks for stories in exchange for blessings upon their grain and stores.”
Of course she did. And if he followed her now, demanded to know what she had learned, it would only make her all that more determined. Thor gazed out over the bridge, heat and light shimmering and distorting the curving earth below. As long as she did not find Eve, that was all that mattered. And Eve was well away from the North Lands. Beyond even the Olympian lands, he thought, from the pulse of her light, burning in the back of his mind.
All these years later, he could not shake her from his thoughts, and when she grieved, he felt the pull of her pain, the ache of it echoing in his heart. Late in the night, after Sif slept, he found himself reaching for her,
