"Yes, I do."
Folding his arms over his chest, he moved away from her so that he could stare out the dark windows of the room, into the elegant courtyard in back. "I was a genetic screw-up of titanic proportions and I've never understood why. I've spent my entire life trying to understand why I give a single shit about anyone when no one ever gave a damn about me."
His profanity shocked her. It wasn't like him to speak that way and that alone told her how volatile his mood was. "There's nothing wrong about caring for other people."
"Yes, there is. Why should I care? If I died right now, no one would miss me. Most of the people who know me would openly rejoice."
Her throat tightened at the truth of his statement and yet the thought of him dying...
It hurt to an unfathomable level. "I would care, Valerius."
He shook his head at her. "How could you? You barely know me. I'm not stupid. I've seen the people who are your friends. None of them look like me. None of them act or speak like me. All of you mock anyone you see who looks or acts like I do. Your kind hates us. You dismiss us. I'm rich and cultured, I come from a noble Roman family, therefore I must think myself above everyone else, so it's okay to be vicious and cold whenever I'm around. We have no feelings to hurt. How could a Roman nobleman give a single rat's ass for a slave? And yet two thousand years later, there she stands and here I am, a noble watchdog for a humble slave because she was afraid of the dark as a child, and I once made a promise to her that she wouldn't have to sleep in darkness."
His words touched her so deeply that it tightened her chest and almost succeeded in bringing tears to her eyes.
The mere fact that he'd kept his vow to a simple slave...
"Why was she afraid of the dark?"
A muscle worked in his jaw. "She'd been the daughter of a wealthy merchant in a town my father had destroyed. He'd brought her back to Rome intending to sell her at market when my grandmother saw her and thought she'd make a good companion. My father made her a gift to my grandmother, and Agrippina lived in terror all her life that someone else would come for her in the dark of night and destroy her world again."
His gaze turned haunted. "She found out the hard way that the light can never keep the real monsters away. They could care less who sees them."
Tabitha frowned. "I don't understand."
He turned to face her with a menacing glare. "Do you know what asterosum is?"
"No."
"It's an ancient drug that completely paralyzes your body, but leaves you completely able to see, hear, and feel. Roman physicians used it whenever they needed to amputate."
He winced as if something painful went through him. She felt the agony of it in her own chest.
Valerius wrapped his arms around himself as if that could protect him somehow from the horror of his past. "It was the drug my brothers gave me the night they came to my villa. I had just taken over the Celtic city of Angaracia. Instead of razing it to the ground and killing everyone as any other male in my family would have done, I negotiated a surrender with the Celts. I thought it would be better if their children didn't grow up to hate Rome and strive to avenge their people as so many had done before them." He laughed bitterly. "It was my fatal flaw."
"How could mercy be a flaw?" she asked, aghast.
And even as the words came out, she remembered the sight of his father. In Valerius's world, it would have been a crime.
Valerius cleared his throat. "Most of my assignments were in the outer provinces, fighting the Celts. I was the only Roman of my time who had ever been truly successful against them, mostly because I understood them. My brothers hated me for that. To them, the only way to conquer a people was to destroy them."
"So they thought to kill you?"
He nodded. "They came into my house and drugged me. I lay on the floor completely helpless as they destroyed everything around me. After they had ransacked my hall, they took me out into the back courtyard to kill me. It was there they discovered Agrippina's statue."
Tabitha looked up at the white marble face from his past. "Why did you have her statue there?"
"Like my grandmother, I thought she deserved to be saved. To be preserved. So, I commissioned the piece for my private garden not long after she came to live with me."
A vicious stab of unwarranted jealousy went through her. He might not have loved the woman, but he obviously felt deeply for her. Especially since he'd spent thousands of years keeping a promise to her.
"How did she end up with you?" she asked quietly.
He drew a deep, ragged breath. "My grandmother had summoned me home from the battlefield because she knew she was dying and she was afraid for Agrippina. She knew the temperament of her sons and grandsons, and Agrippina was a very beautiful and delicate woman who had grown to mean a lot to her. I was the only one who had ever come to call on her that she didn't have to keep from Agrippina's bed. So she asked me to take Agrippina into my house and to keep her safe from the others."
Tabitha's throat tightened at his kindness. "You fell in love with her?"
"I loved the idea of her, she was beauty incarnate. Soft and kind. Things that had never existed in my world before. Whenever I was home, I spent hours watching her from afar as she went about her duties. And I often wondered if someone so beautiful could ever love something as vile as me. Then I would castigate myself for wanting the love of a slave. I was a noble Roman general. What did I need with a slave's regard?"