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drew a long, ragged breath and waited for what was inevitable.

Chapter 3
    Astrid sat on the edge of the bed as she checked the wounds of her "guest." For four days now, he had lain in her bed unconscious while she watched over him.
    The tight muscles under her hands were firm and strong, but she couldn't see them.
    She couldn't see
him
.
    Her eyesight was always forfeit when she was sent to judge someone. Eyes could deceive. They judged things very differently from the other senses.
    Astrid must always be impartial even though at the moment she didn't truly feel that way.
    How many times had she gone in with an open heart only to be fooled?
    The worst case had been Miles. A rogue Dark-Hunter, he had been charming and amusing. He had dazzled her with his vibrancy and ability to make everything a game. Whenever she had tried to push him to his limits, he had laughed off her tests and shown himself to be a good sport about everything.
    He had appeared the perfect, well-balanced man.
    For a time, she had even fancied herself in love with him.
    In the end, he had tried to kill her. He had been completely amoral and ruthless. Cold. Unfeeling. The only person he had been able to love was himself, and while he was nothing but scum, in his mind, he had been wronged by mankind so it was okay to do whatever he wanted to them.
    And that was Astrid's biggest problem with Dark-Hunters. They were humans who were usually recruited from the sewers. Spat upon by others from the cradle to the grave, they were hostile to the world. Artemis never took that into consideration when she converted them. All she wanted was a soldier under Acheron's command. Once they were created, Artemis washed her hands of them and left them for others to monitor and maintain.
    At least until they crossed whatever line Artemis had drawn. Then the goddess rushed to have them judged and executed, and though she had no proof, Astrid suspected Artemis only followed that protocol to keep Acheron from being angry at her.
    So Astrid had been called multiple times over the centuries to find some reason to allow a Dark-Hunter to live.
    She never had. Not once. Every one she had judged had been dangerous and raw. A menace who threatened mankind more than the Daimons they pursued.
    Olympian justice didn't operate quite the way human justice did. There was no assumption of innocence. On
Olympus, once accused, the defendant must prove himself worthy of mercy.
    No one ever had.
    The closest Astrid had ever come to clemency had been Miles, and look how that had turned out. It terrified her to think of how close she had come to judging him innocent and then having him set loose on the world again.
    That experience had been the last straw for her. Since then, she had pulled herself away from everyone.
    She wouldn't let a man's beauty or charm trick her again. Her job now was to get to the heart of this man on her bed.
    Artemis had said Zarek had no heart whatsoever. Acheron had said nothing. He had only given her a piercing look that told her he was depending on her to do the right thing.
    But what was right?
    "Wake up, Zarek," she whispered. "You only have ten days left to save yourself."
     
    Zarek came awake to a pain that was indescribable, which given his brutal background as a whipping boy and slave was hard to believe. Especially since as a human being, pain had been the only certainty in his life.
    His head throbbing, he shifted, expecting to feel cold snow and ground underneath him. Instead, he was struck by how warm he felt.
    I'm dead
, he thought wryly.
    Not even his dreams had ever left him
this
warm.
    Yet as he blinked open his eyes to find a fire blazing in a hearth and a mountain of quilts over him, he realized he was very much alive and lying in someone else's bedroom.
    He looked around the room, which was decorated in earth tones: pale pinks, tans, browns, and dark green. The log-cabin walls were the upper-crust kind that denoted someone who wanted the look and feel