“So I’ve admitted he’s Amun, have I?”
No, he hadn’t. He’d only questioned her thoughts on the matter, probably trying to confuse her. “I don’t care who he is.” Either way, he belonged to her. That was a fact she couldn’t argue, even with herself. “I just want to see him, make sure he’s okay.”
“Want, want, want.” He tapped a finger against his chin. “Who said anything about giving you what you want?”
She popped her jaw, still refusing to show him emotion. “Why are you here, Defeat?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute. First, I have some questions for you.”
“And I have every intention of answering them,” she said, sugar sweet.
“You will if you want to see your…man again.” The last was gritted, as if the prospect bothered him.
“You just told me I wouldn’t get what I wanted.”
“No, I didn’t. Think back. I asked you who said you would.”
True. Bastard. But would he honor his word? The Lords of the Underworld were not known as givers in her world. “After you just taunted me with never seeing him again, you expect me to believe you’ll escort me back to his room if I give you answers you won’t believe anyway?” Or bring Amun here, she thought, but didn’t say the words aloud. No reason to put ideas into his head if they weren’t already there.
He shrugged. “You’re right. I was merely taunting you. Can you blame me, though? You bring out the worst in me, and I struck back.”
She wanted to yell at him to continue but remained silent, waiting.
“So,” he prodded. “We gonna do this? Answers in exchange for a little sightseeing?”
“Yes,” she gritted out. She had no other recourse. He might be lying, but she was willing to risk Hunter secrets on the hope that he’d follow through. And that’s what he would demand, she thought. Secrets. “Let’s hammer out a few details before I start spewing info. When will you take me to him? A few years from now?” She wouldn’t put such a trick past him.
A muscle ticked below his eye. “I’ll take you immediately following our conversation.”
“As if you’ll keep your word,” she said, raising her chin another notch. She might be willing to risk everything, but that didn’t mean she would be stupid about it. The terms needed to be laid out flat, ironed and starched. Just in case. To do that, she would have to provoke him. Some things had to be offered without her prompting.
His eyes narrowed to tiny slits, the top and bottom lashes catching and twining. “Challenge me, then. Challenge me to keep it.”
Like that. Had she challenged him on her own, he would have punished her. “Is he even alive?” Even asking, she wanted to cry. You can live without him, she reminded herself. She just didn’t want to.
Oh, God. He already meant that much to her? Despite who and what he might be? Despite how he would hate her?
“Yes,” Defeat said. “He is. Though his condition has worsened.”
Her heart thumped against her ribs. “How many questions? There has to be a limit.”
He gave another negligent shrug. “Five. And your answers had better be truthful.”
How will you know if they are or aren’t? she almost asked, just to taunt him as he’d taunted her, but she didn’t. The outcome of this was too important. “All right. I—I challenge you to take me to see Micah—Amun—after I answer five questions honestly.” If he punished her for the challenge, anyway, it would be no more than she deserved for allowing him to trick her.
Defeat’s pupils gobbled up his irises as he jerked his head once in a stiff nod. “I accept.” His hands fisted. “Satisfied?”
She’d seen that reaction before, recognized it as what he’d claimed. Acceptance. “I’m as satisfied as I can be in a place like this.”
Those pupils continued to grow, as if she’d said something provocative. And maybe she had—a virile man would see her words as an invitation to satisfy her physically, and this man was more virile and invitation-happy than most—but it had been unintentional. She wasn’t attracted to Defeat. He was beautiful, yes, but he lacked Amun’s intensity. She also wanted to throw up in her mouth a little every time she looked at him.
“What’s your first question?” she demanded.
He didn’t hesitate. “What the hell are you?”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I’m human.”
Fast as lightning, he struck out, his fist pounding into the bar and rattling the very foundation of the cell. “Already you’re lying. You can materialize weapons out of thin air. That’s not something humans can do.”
She gave no reaction to his fury. “If I can, why haven’t I produced one since being here? And I promise you, I would have sliced your throat from end to end if I’d had even the slightest opportunity during our trek.”
Now a muscle ticked in his jaw, but at least he didn’t strike out again. “An easy boast, almost believable. Maybe you just wanted a ticket into this fortress.”
“To do what? Expedite my torture?”
“You were Bait once. Maybe you’re meant to be Bait again.”
“Then you were an idiot to bring me here,” she lashed out.
His nostrils flared with the force of his renewed fury, but he said nothing else.
“This is getting us nowhere,” she said, as calmly as she was able. “The weapons didn’t simply materialize when we were in the jungle. I hid them from you until I found the opportunity to use them.” And that was the God’s honest truth. “That, and you’re kind of a dumbass.”
He exhaled, the breath seeming to drain his fury. “Well, that’s an improvement over stupid and idiot.”
Gentle, amused teasing. From him. Shocking. Or was he trying to throw her off balance? “I answered. Honestly. So, second question.”
The gentleness faded, only a single thread of the amusement remaining. “If you’re human, how are you alive? I watched you die. Which is a nice way of saying I fucking murdered you!”
“I’ve been reanimated.” She didn’t mention how or how many times. He hadn’t asked. “That’s two. Next.”
He shook his head. “Not done with that one yet. If you’ve been reanimated, and I’m guessing that’s just a fancy way of saying you were brought back to life, a god aided you. Only a god has the power to reanimate a body after a beheading. And even then, I’m not sure it’s possible.”
Silence enveloped them. He stared at her pointedly. She stared back.
“Well?” he demanded, spreading his arms as if he were the last sane man in the universe.
“Well, what? You didn’t ask a question.”
The muscle in his jaw started ticking again. “Who aided you?”
Aided was not the word she would have chosen. Cursed, maybe. “A creature very much like you. I think. I didn’t see it, only know I had a reaction to it the first and only time it touched me.” And that’s all she would say on the matter. Even if he asked for more. “That’s three. Next.” Why hadn’t he asked her about the Hunters?
“Rhea, then,” he said, as if that explained everything.
Haidee schooled her features, unwilling to show him the depth of her confusion. Rhea, the supposed queen of the Titans? Haidee had heard of her, of course. A small group of Hunters even worshipped her. But why did Defeat assume the woman was responsible for Haidee’s curse? Or “infection,” as the Bad Man had called it? “Two more questions to go. Better make them good.”
“When I saw you with…him, kissing—” he’d almost said a name, she realized, but had managed to stop himself in time “—were you interested in him as a man or as a possible escape route?”
Of everything Defeat could have asked, why that? “Why the hell do you care?”
His traced the tip of his tongue across the seam of his lips. “I don’t believe our bargain involved explanations on my part.”
Fine. “The man.”
There was a beat of silence before he gave her a reaction. A flash of that fury, quickly gone.