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."