The Invisible Ring (26 page)

Amazing how fast a pouting witch could change into an alert Queen.

“What compromise?” Lia asked, watching him a little too sharply.

“Well, I thought you might like to sit on the driving seat for a while. But you have to promise not to throw your boots at me, and you have to promise to keep the blankets tucked around you so that you don’t get chilled.”

“There’s not much difference sitting on the driving seat and sitting in here,” Lia said calmly. “So I’ll stay here.”

Jared rubbed the back of his neck. “Sure there is. You can get some fresh air, see some of the countryside . . . hum to the horses.”

Lia’s smile was far too knowing and smug for his liking. “Having trouble with Boots and Button?” she asked sweetly.

Jared raised his eyebrows. “What kind of names are those?”

Lia shrugged. “They answer to them.”

“What did you name the saddle horses?”

“Flirt and Handsome. If the bay had been a stallion, I would have named him Stubborn, after you.”

Jared smiled wickedly. “That’s not the only thing a stallion and I have in common.”

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

He liked the way she blushed, the way she suddenly turned shy.

“So do you want to go out and hum to the horses or stay in here with me?

” he asked.

If he hadn’t found it so amusing, he would have been insulted by the speedy way she burst out of the nest of blankets.

He carried her outside, ignoring her mutters about walking, and presented her to the horses—and tried not to resent the cooing and petting they received. Then he settled his bundle of witch on the driving seat, tucking the blankets around her to his satisfaction.

“Well, that was simple enough,” Blaed said as he and Jared watched the happy horses and Thayne set off at a brisk walk.

“Simple as could be,” Jared replied, dropping a hand on Blaed’s shoulder.

“Especially since you’re going to keep her company.”

“But—” Blaed looked wistfully up the road.

Jared followed the direction of Blaed’s attention. “It
was
your idea to have Lady Lia sit out here, Blaed. Not that I told her that. So there’s no reason for her to feel annoyed with
you
.” He gave Blaed a friendly punch in the arm and smiled too innocently. “Tell you what. You look after my Lady, and I’ll look after yours.”

Knowing there was nothing Blaed could say to that, Jared jogged up the road to join Thera, leaving Blaed to entertain Lia.

Frustration felt so much better when shared.

* * *

“No.”

“Too bad.” Knowing Blaed was watching, Jared threw one arm around Thera’s shoulders.

Thera turned her head and stared at the hand so close to her teeth.

Resisting the instinct to jerk his hand away, Jared hoped she’d let him keep all of his fingers.

“I have an idea,” Jared said cheerfully. “Why don’t you just think of me as another older brother?”

“I don’t have a brother, older or otherwise.”

“I don’t have a sister. Let’s pretend.”

Her huff turned into laughter.

It jabbed his heart.

He’d thought she was in her late twenties, about his own age. Now, with her face softened by humor, he wondered if she was even close.

“Where are you from, Thera?” Jared asked, curious about her.

The laughter died. The softness disappeared from her face, making it look older again.

“Nowhere,” she said tightly.

He heard the pain in her voice and wanted to ease it without betraying Lia’s confidence about their being set free. “Perhaps, when we reach Dena Nehele, you can persuade the Gray Lady to let you return to your family.”

Because he was touching her, he felt the fierce grief that flashed through her before she was able to lock it away again.

“I have no family,” Thera said coldly.

Sorry for having brushed against a heart-wound, Jared tried to find something else to talk about. “Blaed likes you.”

“Blaed’s a fool,” she snapped.

Thinking of how Blaed looked at her, with too much of his heart in his eyes, Jared’s sympathy for Thera rapidly faded.

“Tell me,” he said politely, “does being a bitch come naturally to you, or do you have to work at it?”

He’d expected her to lash out at him. It unnerved him to see tears fill her eyes and spill over.

“Thera,” he said softly, trying to hold her close to comfort her while she struggled to break away from him.

She stopped fighting and rested her head against his chest. “It’s safer to be a bitch. Can you understand that?”

“Yes, I can understand that,” Jared said, gently wiping the tears away with his hand.

“It’s hard to let go of a useful weapon. Hard to trust.”

“I know.” He hugged her once, then eased back, pleased when she didn’t shake off the arm draped companionably around her shoulders.

After they’d been walking for several minutes, he broached the question that had nagged at him for the past few days. “What were you doing at Raej, Thera? Why was a Green-Jeweled, unbroken Black Widow submitting to the humiliation of the auction block?”

“To escape. Why else?”

Dry, sharp amusement lit her green eyes for a moment. When it faded, Jared looked into a spiritual desert.

Thera took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “My mother wasn’t very bright.” Her laugh was tinged with bitterness. “The landens always think being Blood and using Craft has to mean we’re all very powerful, very wealthy, very intelligent. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re any of those things. We’re just Blood.

“She was pretty and gentle and had an innate sweetness that made her shine. Or it would have if she’d stayed in her home village living a life that suited her. But one day, a Warlord from the Province Queen’s court rode through the village and saw her. Courteous and admiring, he spent the afternoon with her, carrying her market basket and acting as if he’d never seen anyone quite so wonderful. Then he rode back to the court, and she was pleased to have been admired.

“A few weeks later, the Province Queen summoned her to the court and offered her a place in the Fifth Circle. She was awed, flattered, and overwhelmed by the way the aristo members of the court acted.

“He was there, a favored Second Circle male. He gallantly offered to escort my mother through the intricacies of court life. Since he was the only person she knew there, she accepted his company with open arms. He couldn’t bear to be away from her. He begged her to marry him. And he begged to see her through her Virgin Night.

“He broke her. An accident, they said. It happens sometimes. Even with all the care that’s taken, it happens sometimes. So sorry.

“Of course, he couldn’t marry her after that. Neither his family nor his Queen would grant permission for an Opal-Jeweled Warlord to marry a broken witch who wasn’t aristo. But she could be his lover, and in his heart she would always be his wife. It didn’t take her long to discover there wasn’t much difference between being a lover and a slave. At least, not in a court that had spread its legs for Hayll.

“He liked to hit. He enjoyed hurting anything or anyone who was weaker.

He used to slap her to excite himself before he mounted her.”

“Why didn’t she leave him?” Jared asked.

“She had signed a contract to serve in the court. The Queen wouldn’t release her. Staying with him protected her from the other males.”

Something fierce began to glow at the back of Thera’s eyes. “He didn’t think she’d challenge him about anything. But when I had the Birthright Ceremony and it was time for her to formally grant him paternal rights, to give him a claim to me, she denied paternity. Said it wasn’t his bloodline that ran in me.

What could he do? Granting paternity is a public ceremony, and there are no second chances, no retractions.

“She sent me to her sister. My aunt had left the home village a few years before—I never found out why.” Thera paused for a moment. “Auntie had a lover, a Purple Dusk Warlord. They’d never formalized their union in any way. There were no records to link one to the other. He was a good man, solid and strong, easy-tempered. He worked hard for the first hug I freely gave him.”

Jared smiled sadly. He could imagine the pleasure and relief the man had felt when he finally overcame her sire’s viciousness. “What was his name?”

Thera shook her head. “He had a sister, a Sapphire-Jeweled Black Widow who lived in another village. She was a force to be reckoned with, and males who tried to force themselves on women, Blood or landen, usually found themselves impotent for weeks afterward. She spent a few days each month with her brother and Auntie. She had friends in her own village; she also had enemies. So she spent those first days of her moontime where she had the protection of the one male she could trust.

“She was born to the Hourglass, like me. Like calls to like. I’d barely settled in with Auntie when I met her. The next day, she began my training.”

“You were very young to begin training in the Hourglass’s ways,” Jared murmured.

Thera nodded. “Yes. Because of that, there was a lot she couldn’t teach me.

I wasn’t mature enough mentally or emotionally to endure it. It wasn’t formal training. More like I’d show her how much I could do of what she’d shown me the last time. Sometimes we took the next step in that lesson; sometimes she began something new.

“She never actually said anything, but we all understood that her training me had to be a secret, that my being a Black Widow had to be a secret. By the time I reached puberty and would have been recognized for a child of the Hourglass, I’d learned how to mask my psychic scent well enough to fool even a darker Jewel.

“The ugliness had started by then—Queens and darker-Jeweled males muttering about Black Widows being dangerous, how they were emotionally unstable because of their journeys into the Twisted Kingdom, how only Hayllian witches had the lifespan and the maturity needed to handle the Black Widows’ Craft. The males began to break young Black Widows—for their own good, of course.”

“Bastards,” Jared snarled softly.

“The month before I turned eighteen, the Black Widow showed up unexpectedly. She said she’d been thinking about me while she was weaving a tangled web of dreams and visions. She said if I didn’t make the Offering to the Darkness before the next moon, I never would. And if I didn’t have my Virgin Night before the Offering, I would never reach my nineteenth year.”

Thera leaned against Jared. Surprised by her sudden weariness, he slipped his arm from her shoulder to her waist to support her.

“Auntie’s lover saw me through my Virgin Night,” Thera said quietly. “He wasn’t happy about it, but there was no one else we could trust, so he accepted his duty. He was generous and kind. When it was over and we were sure my inner web was intact and I still had my Jewels and my Craft ... I think he was more relieved than I.

“A week later, we went to a Sanctuary a couple of days’ ride from Auntie’s village. The Priestess there and the Black Widow were friends. I made the Offering and came away with the Green Jewels.

“The day after I turned eighteen, my sire sent a message. My mother was dying and asked to see me.”

“You went back to the court,” Jared said, his temper simmering.

“I went back.”

“It was a trick.”

“It was a trick,” Thera agreed.

“Your mother wasn’t dying, was she?”

“Oh, yes, she was,” Thera replied too calmly. “He’d tortured her. After what he’d done to her, there was nothing she
could
do but die.

“She hadn’t asked for me. She hadn’t wanted to see me. The anguish in her eyes was all the warning I needed. I was the last cruelty, you see. She’d thwarted his having any control over me, so now he’d take me. He wanted her to know that all the sacrifices she’d made, all the pain she’d suffered was for nothing.

“He dragged me into the next room. There was a grille in the wall beside the door. There was no way she couldn’t hear what was happening in that room.

“He raped me.”

“Wait a minute!” Jared protested. “You said he wore the Opal. You outranked him. You were stronger.”

“She dragged herself to the grille and pleaded with him to stop. She couldn’t really talk, couldn’t really form words. Not that it would have made any difference.”

“Thera!” Red mist coated the road and land around them. Jared shook his head to clear the rage from his vision.

Thera stared at nothing. “When he found out he was too late to break me, he beat me.” Her eyes frosted. She looked fiercely triumphant. “And I let him.”

“Why?” Jared’s voice broke.

“To buy time. I’d slipped under his inner barriers just enough to find out why he’d done this. Revenge, Jared. He knew where Auntie lived. He’d learned enough to know about her lover and the Black Widow sister. He planned to have them all killed because my mother had defied him. He intended to make sure I had no one to run to if I managed to get away from him again. But he’d wanted me under his control before he ordered the executions. That was his first mistake.

“So I fought hard enough to enrage him, to excite him with the spilled blood. And while he raped me again, I sent a message to Auntie on a distaff thread and told her to leave, to vanish and never look back. The Green was strong enough to reach that far. I knew they’d warn the Black Widow.

“Even Auntie wouldn’t have recognized me when he was done. My mother died the next day. The day after that, he sold me to an acquaintance. He never told the man who I was. Since I couldn’t speak clearly, my owner gave me a name. By the time the bruises and swelling went down, I’d woven illusion spells around myself. I didn’t look like a fresh, young eighteen-year-old.” Thera laughed harshly. “I drooled a lot. Staggered around glassy-eyed.

Anytime a male sat down, I’d climb into his lap and ask him if he’d like to be castrated because I was sure it would make him feel better not to have those nasty urges.

“The son of a whoring bitch couldn’t sell me fast enough.

“I’ve had nine owners in the past year. Sometimes the old one remembered to tell the new one my name. When he didn’t, I took another name, confusing the trail even more. My sire tried to keep track of me, you see. He never found my aunt or her lover or the Black Widow. Different names, a different place. They vanished like dreams.”