"Where are we?"
"Olympus. I have something I wanted to show you."
The mirror before her shimmered and changed. It no longer reflected them.
Instead it showed her the past.
She saw an ancient canvas tent with a bloodied man tied to a wooden frame inside it, being tortured. His screams rang out as he begged for mercy in Latin while another man beat him with a barbed whip.
Cringing, Tabitha covered her ears until the beating stopped and another man dressed in Roman armor stepped forward.
It was a young Valerius. His dark face was in need of a shave and his armor was spotted with bloodstains. He looked tired and ill-kempt, as if he hadn't slept in days, but still he held that regal air of superiority.
He threw water into the man's face. "Tell me where they're marching to."
"No."
The Latin words echoed in her head along with the sight of Valerius ordering a soldier to beat the man more.
"It was your lover who blinded me," Zarek snarled in her ear as the mirror clouded, then cleared to show her the image of two small boys.
One lay on the ground, curled into a ball while the other beat him with a whip. One of the lashes cut deep into the one boy's eye, causing him to scream as he covered it with one grimy hand.
"I'm the one on the ground," Zarek snarled in her ear. "Valerius is the one beating me mercilessly and you fucked him."
Unable to watch the cruelty, Tabitha turned and ran into someone else.
She started to fight until she glanced up to see Ash looking less than pleased.
"What are you doing, Z?"
"I'm showing her the truth."
Ash shook his head at the former Dark-Hunter. "I can't believe you married a justice nymph and have yet to learn anything from her. There are always three sides to every memory, Z. Yours, theirs, and the truth, which lies somewhere in between the two. You're only showing her a single sound bite to prove your point. Why don't you give her the whole clip?"
Ash turned her back toward the mirror. "I'm not going to lie to you, Tabby, or try and sway your opinion. This isn't Zarek's memory or Valerius's. It's just the untarnished, objective truth of what happened to them."
She saw the child Valerius again as a man in a toga who looked remarkably similar to Zarek stepped forward. He had to be their father.
Laughing, he patted Valerius on the shoulder. "That's it, my son. Always strike where they're the most vulnerable. You'll make a fine general one day."
The child Zarek glared at both of them as if he could kill them where they stood. Their father jerked the whip from Valerius's hand and commenced to beating him again.
His face horrified, Valerius ran from the room, sobbing. He looked as if he were going to be ill as he stumbled across an old Roman courtyard until he fell down by a huge fountain in the center of the atrium. He braced his folded arms on the edge of the fountain and lay his head down.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he repeated over and over again as he cried.
His father came running out of the house, toward him.
"Valerius!" he snarled as he came up to the child. "What are you doing?"
Valerius didn't answer. His father pulled him up from the ground by his hair.
The horror on the boy's face seared her.
"You pathetic little worm," his father sneered. "I should have named you Valeria. You're more woman than man."
His father backhanded him so hard the sound echoed and sent several birds into flight. Unbalanced by the blow, Valerius fell back to the ground.