Like Kyrian, he had been crucified.
"I'm so sorry."
Stiff and formal, he withdrew his arm and straightened out his sleeve. "Don't be. I find it oddly fitting given my family history. He who lives by the sword..."
"How many people did you crucify?"
She felt his shame before he turned and headed away from her. Unwilling to let him go, she rushed after him and pulled him to a stop. "Tell me, Valerius. I want to know."
The agony on his face tore through her. His jaw ticced. "None," he said after a long pause. "I refused to ever kill a man like that."
Tears pricked her eyes as she stared up at him.
He wasn't what Kyrian and the others thought. He wasn't.
The man they described wouldn't have hesitated to humiliate or kill someone. And yet Valerius had.
He cleared his throat and looked as if the words pained him. "When I was a young boy, I saw a man executed. He was one of the greatest generals of his time."
Tabitha's heart paused its beating as she realized he was talking about Kyrian.
"My grandfather tricked him and then spent weeks interrogating him." His breathing was labored, his entire body tense. "My father and grandfather insisted my brothers and I be brought in to witness it. They wanted us to learn how to break a man. How to strip the dignity from him until there's nothing left. And all I saw was blood and horror. No one should suffer like that. I looked into that man's eyes and I saw his soul. His strength. His pain. I tried to run and they beat for me for it, then brought me back in and forced me to watch."
He gave her a fierce, tormented stare. "I hated them for that. Two thousand years later and I can still hear his screams as they raised his broken body up and carried the once-proud prince out to the square to die like a common criminal."
Tabitha covered her own ears as she imagined what it must have been like for Kyrian to die that way. She knew from her sister that his death still haunted him, too. Though Kyrian's nightmares were much fewer now than they had been when he and Amanda had first married, he still had them. He still woke up in the middle of the night to make sure his wife and child were safe.
Some nights, he didn't sleep at all for fear that someone would come and take it all away from him again.
And he hated Valerius with an unreasoning vengeance.
Valerius took a deep breath as he saw the way Tabitha cringed. He cringed too, just not openly.
His heart had carried the guilt and horrors of his childhood throughout time. If he could go back in time, he never would have sold his soul to Artemis. Better to die and silence the resonance of his father's cruelty than to live interminably with all of their voices echoing in his mind.
He was sure Tabitha hated him now, just like the others. She had every right to. What his family had done was inexcusable. It was why he made a point to avoid Kyrian and Julian.
There was no need in reminding either one of them of their past lives in ancient Greece. It would be even crueler now that both of them had happiness in the modern world.
He'd never understood why Artemis had moved him into New Orleans. It was something his father would have done to ensure that the two Greeks had no peace whatsoever.
But that was something he would never speak of. And should he ever cross paths with Kyrian and Julian, he knew better than to apologize. He'd tried that once centuries past with Zoe, who had been killed by his brother Marius. The Amazon had run him through, trying her best to kill him.
Valerius had been forced to overpower her.
She had spat on him. "Roman filth! I'll never understand why Artemis allows you to live when you should be gutted like a squealing pig."
Over the centuries, he'd learned to just hold his head high and carry on regardless of what the other Dark-Hunters thought. He couldn't give them peace from their pasts any more than he could have peace from his own.
Some ghosts refused to be exorcized.
Now Tabitha knew the truth and she would hate him as well. So be it.
Valerius turned to leave.
"Val?"
He paused.