The Dark-Hunters (157 page)

The two boys burst out laughing. “This wretch? There is no Roman blood in him.”

His father moved forward. He buried his hand in Zarek’s hair and pulled his head up so that his brothers could see his scarred face. “Are you sure he’s not related?”

They stopped laughing.

Zarek held himself completely still, unable to breathe. He’d always known of his parentage. He was reminded of it every day when the other slaves spat in his food and threw things at him or hit him because they dared not take their anger and hatred out on the rest of his family.

“What are you saying, Father?” Marius asked.

His father shoved Zarek’s head against the post, then let go of him. “I sired him on your uncle’s favorite whore. Why do you think he was sent to me as an infant?”

Marius curled his lip. “He is no brother of mine. Better I should claim Valerius than this scab.”

Marius approached Zarek. He bent down, trying to make Zarek meet his gaze.

With no other recourse, Zarek closed his eyes. He’d learned a long time ago that to look his brothers in the face would mean an even harsher beating.

“What say you, slave? Have you any Roman blood in you?”

Zarek shook his head no.

“Are you my brother?”

Again he shook his head.

“Are you calling my noble father a liar then?”

Zarek froze as he realized he’d been tricked by them again. Panicking, he tried to pull away from the post. He wanted to run away from what would come over this.

“Are you?” Marius demanded.

He shook his head.

But it was too late. The whip cut through the air with a frightening hiss and bit into his back, slicing through his bared flesh.

*   *   *

Zarek came awake shaking. He struggled to breathe as he scrambled to sit up and look about wildly, half-expecting one of his brothers to be here.

“Zarek?”

He felt the warmth of a tender hand on his back.

“Are you all right?”

He couldn’t speak as old memories flared inside him. From the moment Marius and Marcus had learned the truth until the day Zarek’s father had bribed a slaver to take him, his brothers had gone out of their way to make Zarek pay for the fact they were related.

He had never known a single day of peace.

Beggar, peasant, or noble, they were all better than him.

And he was nothing but a pathetic whipping boy for them all.

Astrid sat up and wrapped her arms around his waist. “You’re shaking. Are you cold?”

Still he didn’t answer. He knew he should shove her away from him, but right then he wanted her comfort. He wanted someone to tell him he wasn’t worthless.

Someone to tell him that they weren’t ashamed of him.

Closing his eyes, he drew her to him and laid his head on her shoulder.

Astrid was stunned by his uncharacteristic actions. She stroked his hair and rocked him slowly in her arms. Just holding him.

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

“Why? It won’t change anything.”

“Because I care, Zarek. I want to make it better. If you’ll let me.”

His tone was so low that she had to struggle to hear what he said. “There is some pain that nothing heals.”

She laid her hand against his stubbled cheek. “Such as?”

He hesitated for several heartbeats before he spoke again. “Do you know how I died?”

“No.”

“On my hands and knees, like an animal on the ground, begging for mercy.”

She flinched at his words. She hurt so much for him that she could barely breathe from the tightness in her chest.

“Why?”

He stiffened and swallowed. At first she thought he would pull away, but he didn’t move. He remained there, letting her hold him.

“You saw how my father got rid of me? How he paid for the slaver to take me?”

“Yes.”

“I lived with that slaver for five years.”

His arms tightened around her as if he could barely stand to admit that to her. “You can’t imagine how they treated me. What I was forced to clean up.

“Every day when I woke up, I cursed to find myself still alive. Every night I prayed to die while I slept. I never had a single dream of escaping that life. The idea of running away doesn’t occur to you when you’re born a slave. The thought that I didn’t deserve what they did to me never entered my mind. It was what I was. All I knew. And I had no hope of anyone ever buying me to get me away from there. Every time a customer came in and saw me, I heard their sharp intakes of breath. Saw the blurry shadows of their horrified sneers.”

Astrid’s eyes teared up at his words. He was such a handsome man any woman would kill to have him, and yet his looks had been brutally ruined. For no reason other than cruelty.

No one should be maimed and degraded the way he had been.

No one.

She pressed her lips to his forehead, brushing his hair back from his face as he continued to confide in her what she was sure he had never confided to another living soul.

There was no emotion in his voice. Her only clue to the pain he felt was the tenseness of his body.

The fact that he had yet to let her go.

“One day a beautiful lady came in,” he whispered. “She had a Roman soldier as her escort. She stood in the doorway wearing a dark blue peplos. Her hair was as black as the midnight sky, her skin smooth and unblemished. I couldn’t see her very clearly, but I heard the other slaves whispering about her and they only did that when a woman was truly exceptional.”

A stab of jealousy went through Astrid.

Had Zarek loved her?

“Who was she?” she asked.

“Just another noblewoman, wanting a slave.”

Zarek’s breath fell against her neck as he toyed with a strand of her hair between his callused fingers. The tenderness of that gesture wasn’t lost on her.

“She neared the cell where I was cleaning out the chamber pots,” he said. “I dared not look at her and then I heard her say, ‘I want that one.’ I assumed she meant one of the other men. But when they came for me, I was dumbstruck.”

Astrid smiled sadly. “She recognized a good thing when she saw it.”

“No,” he said sharply. “She wanted a servant to warn her and her lover whenever her husband came home unexpectedly. She wanted a slave who would be loyal to her. One who would owe her everything. I was the most wretched creature there and she never failed to remind me of that. One word and she would have sent me right back to my hell.”

He pulled away from her then.

She reached out to find him sitting just beside her. “Did she?”

“No. She kept me even though her husband was livid at my presence. He couldn’t stand the sight of me. I was so repugnant. Crippled. Half-blind. I was scarred so badly that children used to cry whenever they saw me. Women would gasp and avert their eyes, then shuffle out of my way as if afraid my condition might rub off on them.”

Astrid winced at what he described. “How long did you serve her?”

“Six years. I was completely loyal to her. I would have done anything she asked of me.”

“She was kind to you?”

“No. Not really. She was merely
kinder
to me. She didn’t want to look at me any more than anyone else did. So she kept me hidden in a small cell, and only brought me out whenever her lover came to visit. I would stand by the gate and listen for the guards to greet her lord. Whenever he returned while they were together, I would run to her room and rap on the door to warn them.”

That explained a lot to her about his death. “Is that how you died? Did her lord catch you warning them?”

“No. On that day, I went to the door to warn her, but when I got there I heard her crying out in pain, telling her lover to stop hurting her. I rushed inside to find him beating her. I tried to pull him off. But he turned on me. He finally heard her husband outside and he left. She told me to leave too and I did.”

Zarek fell silent as the memory of that day tore through him anew. He could still see the small cell that was his room. Smell the stench of it and his wounded body. Feel the sting of his face and neck where Arkus had punched him repeatedly as he tried to pull the soldier off Carlia.

The soldier had given him a beating so severe that he’d expected it to kill him. He’d been so sore and broken afterward that he could hardly move, hardly breathe, as he limped back to the hole where Carlia kept him.

Zarek had been sitting on the floor, staring at the wall, wishing for his body to stop hurting.

Then the door had crashed open.

He’d looked up to see the blurry image of Carlia’s husband, Theodosius, glaring at him with raw fury contorting the old man’s face.

At first Zarek had innocently assumed the senator had found out about his wife’s infidelity and his own part in warning her whenever he came home.

It hadn’t been.

“How dare you!” Theodosius had pulled him up by his hair and slung him from the cell. The man had beaten and kicked him across the villa’s courtyard all the way back to Carlia’s rooms.

Zarek had spilled into her bedroom, just a few feet away from her. He lay on the floor, beaten and bloody and shaking, with no idea why he had been attacked this time.

Helpless, he waited for her to say something.

Her bruised face ashen, she had stood there like a tattered queen, clutching her torn and bloodied gown to her ravaged body.

“Is this the one who raped you?” Theodosius asked his wife.

Zarek’s mouth had gone instantly dry at the question. No—he couldn’t have heard that correctly.

She wept uncontrollably as her female attendant tried to comfort her. “Yes. He did this to me.”

Zarek dared to look up at Carlia, unable to believe her lie. After all he had done for her …

After the beating he’d received from her lover to protect her. How could she do this to him?

“My lady—”

Theodosius had viciously kicked him in the head, cutting off the rest of his words. “Silence, you worthless dog.” He turned on his wife then. “I told you you should have left him in the cesspit. See you what happens when you feel sorry for creatures such as this?”

Then Theodosius had called for his guards.

Zarek had been summarily pulled from the room, and taken to the authorities. He’d tried to protest his innocence, but Roman justice followed one basic principle: guilty until proven innocent.

His word as a slave was nothing compared to Carlia’s.

Over the course of a week, his Roman judges managed to torture a full confession from him.

He would have said anything to get them to stop their painful torture.

He’d never known more pain than he did that week. Not even his father’s cruelty could match the instruments of the Roman government.

And so he’d been convicted. He, a virgin who had never touched a woman’s flesh in any way, was going to be executed for raping his owner.

“They dragged me from my cell and led me through town where everyone was gathered to spit on me,” he whispered woodenly to Astrid. “They jeered and tossed rotten food, calling me every name you can imagine. The soldiers untied me from the wagon and dragged me to the center of the crowd. They tried to stand me up, but both my legs were broken. Ultimately, they left me there on my hands and knees so that the crowd could stone me. You know, I can still feel the rocks raining against my body. Hear them telling me to die.”

Astrid struggled to breathe as he finished his tale.

“I’m so sorry, Zarek,” she whispered, aching for him.

“Don’t patronize me,” he growled.

She leaned against him and pressed her lips to his cheek. “Believe me, I’m not. I would never patronize anyone with your strength.”

He tried to pull away from her, but she held him fast. “I’m not strong.”

“Yes you are. I don’t know how you stood the pain of your life. I’ve always felt alone, but not the way you have.”

He relaxed a degree as she leaned against his side. She wished she could see him now. See the emotions in his dark eyes.

“You know, I’m not really crazy.”

She smiled. “I know you’re not.”

He let out a long, tired sigh. “Why didn’t you go off with Jess when you had the chance? You could be safe now.”

“If I leave you before the judgment is complete, the Fates will kill you.”

“So what?”

“I don’t want you to die, Zarek.”

“You keep saying that and I still don’t know why.”

Because I love you.
The words lodged in her throat. She wanted desperately to have the courage to say them out loud to him, but she knew he wouldn’t accept it.

Not her Prince Charming.

He would growl and push her away because in his mind such a thing didn’t exist.

He didn’t understand it.

She didn’t know if he ever would.

Astrid wanted to hold him. To comfort him.

But most of all, she wanted to love him. In a way that made her ache and soar at the same time.

Would Zarek ever allow her or anyone else to love him?

“What can I say to you so you’ll believe?” she asked back. “You’d laugh if I said I cared for you. You’d walk off angry if I said I loved you. So you tell me why I don’t want you to die.”

She felt the muscles of his jaw working underneath her hand. “I wish I could get you out of here, princess. You don’t need to be with me.”

“No, Zarek, I don’t. But I
want
to be with you.”

Zarek winced as she spoke the most beautiful words he’d ever heard in his life.

She amazed him. There were no walls between them now. No secrets. She knew him in a way no one ever had.

And she wasn’t repulsed by him.

He didn’t understand her. “I don’t even want to be with me most of the time. Why do you?”

She gave him a shove. “I swear, you’re like a three-year-old. Why? Why? Why? Why is the sky blue? Why are we here? Why does my dog have fur? Some things just are, Zarek. They don’t have to make sense. Accept them.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then you have worse problems than Thanatos wanting you dead.”

He thought about that for a little while. Could he accept what she offered him?

Did he dare?

He didn’t know how to be a friend. He didn’t know how to laugh from pleasure or be nice.