“Will you,” she murmured, a small catlike smile curving her lips.
“I do not believe you are a male whosubmitsfor anyone. Even Queens.”
Zai did not respond. It would be a waste of breath.
She saw right through him. She knew exactly when he was paying lip service and when he spoke truths.
“Your name, Hunter,” she demanded. “If that is what you really are.”
“Zaidu,” he answered. “I was Gaia’s Master Hunter. The Commander and Consul know of me.”
Ashlu tilted her head a little, and the Dark Ones on her left and right each inclined their heads in confirmation.
She never took her eyes off Zai.
“Zaidu,” she repeated, rolling his name off her tongue.
“‘Solitary, emotionless, bold hunter.’ How aptly named.”
Zai did not recall who gave him his name. He never knew his parents. Perhaps it had been Queen Gaia who named him. He had been one of her deadliest, sharpest tools, after all.
“What made you go astray, Hunter? I am rather shocked my mother hadn’t gutted you on the spot.”
Oh, she had.
A muscle ticked in Zai’s cheek in memory.
That day, long ago, when he opened his eyes after someone had knocked him out, he’d been suspended and stretched naked between four chains, secured from the ceiling and embedded into the stone ground.
He’d been stabbed, sliced, flayed and whipped, his wounds repeatedly salted so they couldn’t heal properly. There was not a single part of his body that hadn’t bled, not an inch that didn’t burn with the most hellish agony.
He didn’t know why she bothered to have the tattoo carved into his face; she certainly didn’t intend for him to live.
For countless days and nights, she tortured him within a whisper’s edge of death, but always managed to keep him just this side of it. Until, one day, she rode out with the legions to combat the Elementals that had banded together to challenge her.
She didn’t return.
And Zai was forgotten in his hellhole prison in the bowels of the citadel.
Over time, he healed enough and had shrunk enough from starvation that he managed to work his wrists and ankles loose of the iron chains.
He’d escaped.
Not for the thousandth time, he wondered what possessed him to come back here. And to break free a liger beast who loathed him even more than Gaia had.
Clearly, he was tired with his Immortal existence, as Ashlu pointed out. Either that, or insane.
“If I truly betrayed Gaia, I would not be standing here now,” he said.
Ashlu scrutinized him with narrowed eyes.
“Then howdidyou betray my mother…untruly?”
“I led the annual Hunt against the Beasts for hundreds of years,” Zai replied. “The Commander and Consul can attest to my effectiveness.”
Again, both males inclined their head while Ashlu kept her gaze locked on Zai.
“Over time, instead of culling the animal population to keep them contained, Gaia grew increasingly bloodthirsty, hunting them for sport. It became more about glorified violence and spectacle than a demonstration of power. I feared she would push the Beasts too far, with dire consequences. She was incensed when I refused to do her bidding. Thus the brand, but not the death.”