Chapter 175: Plea
Herod leaned against the cold bars. "I need to speak with Lucas."
Zoe gave a sharp, humorless laugh. "Keep dreaming. You’re not exactly on his dinner guest list."
"Zoe, please." Herod’s hands curled around the bars again, but this time in plea. "I’ve accepted my fate. But I need to know. Before I die. Please... I need to know if Edith is out there. If she’s... alive." He looked at her now with unguarded pain. "I know I don’t deserve to be a father. Spirits, I barely deserve to speak your name. But if I had known... if I had known about you, Zoe, things would have been different. I would have fought for you. For her. Please... give me this."
Zoe stared at him. For one terrifying second, she saw the truth in his eyes. Not the tyrant. Not the king. Just a broken man who’d once believed in love and was now grasping for its last thread.
"When girls my age were attending school, learning to read and write, I was training to be an assassin. When others were going to festivals to find their mates, I was being sent on missions. I was beaten, tortured, raped, all in the name of toughening me up. And you think I will do you a favor?"
She stepped closer to the grate, her eyes burning with fury. "You will die, Herod. You will die a cold, painful, and lonely death. And I will smile over your dead body. You will not get a proper burial. Your body will be left for vultures to feast on."
Turning on her heel, Zoe stormed out of the dungeon.
*****
"Lucas, you cannot sentence Herod to death," Ava said softly.
He stopped abruptly with his belt he was fumbling with, his eyes narrowing. "What?... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you, but for goddess’s sake, what?!"
Ava turned to face him. "I know he has done unforgivable things, but you do not have to kill him. He is Zoe’s father."