Page 31 of Boxed In

Before Luke could enjoy that state of affairs, he felt the warrior getting ready to assert himself.

And Olivia didn’t help by asking, “What’s he thinking now?”

Luke struggled to keep the warrior’s pointed observation silent. But Zabastian forced the issue by muttering, “That you should learn your place!”

She folded her arms across her chest and turned to face him. “That’s what he’s thinking?”

“I’m afraid so. But he’s operating on assumptions he learned a thousand years ago—when social conditions were quite different. If you remember your ancient history, women weren’t exactly equal partners back then.”

She glared at him. For several moments she kept her lips pressed together. Then she said, “Okay, Zabastian. You’re here now. But you never explained how you ended up in that box.”

“Um.”

“How?” she pressed.

Luke was as interested in the answer as Olivia. He kept his eyes focused straight ahead of him, and the words he spoke came out like someone throwing rocks. “I was being punished.”

“For what?”

“The Master of the Moon is very strict about how his servants behave.”

Luke knew the man hated to say more. But at the same time, he seemed compelled to admit his sins. Since Luke had been carrying this man’s consciousness around inside himself for the past six hours, he felt the warrior’s internal struggle.

The answer rose up from deep inside the man’s psyche. “I killed a woman,” he said.

Olivia gasped, and Luke felt his own jolt of shock. He’d been in the ancient warrior’s mind, but only on the surface. From the first, he’d considered the guy a badass. He hadn’t known how bad.

Olivia shifted her body so that she was leaning as far away from him as she could get in the car. “Care to explain that piece of information?” she said.

“She was a woman named Devona, a priestess in the Temple of the Moon. She was new to the sacred sisters, and she was impatient to acquire more power for herself. She saw that Alana was in line to be chief priestess, so she poisoned her.”

Luke felt the warrior’s pain reverberating inside himself. But that was only part of the equation. The sentiments he heard inside his head were from another, more violent time, an ancient age when the rules of life were different from today’s. But whatever the rules had been, the warrior had violated the laws of his society.

Olivia was watching him, watching the play of emotions across his face. “You loved Alana?” she said, her voice not quite steady.

“Yes,” the warrior said, his tone soft. “We were very close. She called me to her, and she died in my arms. She suffered for many days, and she had time to think about who had hurt her and how it happened.” He dragged in a breath and let it out. “She remembered that Devona brought her a drink the night before she got sick.”

“That’s not much evidence.”

“It was unusual. That was why Alana noted it. When she told me what Devona had done, I . . . went crazy.” His voice grew hard. “I am a warrior. I am trained to act. I forced Devona to confess.”

“You think that a confession under torture is valid?”

He made a harsh sound.

“Maybe you were wrong,” Olivia said.

“I was not wrong!”

“Then you killed her?”

“Yes. But I should have let the priests take care of her punishment. They were angry that I had overstepped the bounds of my . . . commission.”

Luke wasn’t sure he could have asked any more of the warrior. But Olivia still had questions.

“And they put your spirit into the box?” she asked. “For all that time?”

“I have been out of that box seven times over the years. Each time I have defended the sacred object.”

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