by Anne Bishop
“Open your mouth, pretty boy,” the guard said with a sneering smile as he came toward Jared. “You know how to do that.”
Jared clenched his teeth.
Vicious pleasure filled the guard’s eyes as he held the gag in front of Jared’s mouth. “Open your mouth, or I’ll break your teeth.”
The steward appeared in the doorway between the rooms and huffed with annoyance. “We’ve no time for this. She’ll be here soon. Besides, he’s already bought. If there’s any fresh damage, the bitch will demand compensation.” His voice shook a little, leaving no doubt about the kind of compensation the Gray Lady would demand.
Another flash of pain came through the Ring of Obedience. Jared kept his teeth clenched and tried to ride it out, but it didn’t end, didn’t end, didn’t end until he opened his mouth in a breathless scream.
With a satisfied grunt, the guard shoved the gag into his mouth and buckled the straps behind his head.
The wide leather collar was too thick and stiff to yield to the pressure of bone, so opening his mouth had forced his head back. His tongue worked relentlessly to keep the leather ball from sliding too far back. His stomach twitched, threatening to respond forcefully if he choked. And his mind . . .
It was during his third year as a pleasure slave, serving in a Black Widow’s court. She wasn’t Hayllian, but she’d been a protégée of Dorothea SaDiablo and had relished the lessons on how to cripple the male spirit. He remembered what it felt like to lie on his back, tied hand and foot to the bed, wearing a gag like this one. Already dosed with safframate, a vicious aphrodisiac, he’d had no control over his body’s merciless need. He’d lain there, helpless, while she played with him and rode him until he screamed.
Something had twisted inside him that night, and he’d felt the first flash of savagery. But it had taken six more soul-killing years before his father’s training and the ingrained honor and respect Blood males felt for the feminine gave way to hatred strong enough to let him fight back. Six years between that night and the night that savagery had broken free and he killed the Queen and her Prince brother. But two years ago, he’d secretly rejoiced when he’d heard that that Black Widow had played one game too many with the Sadist—and had lost.
A slap on the belly brought him back to the wash-down room and the current source of pain.
The guard bared his teeth in a smile. “Since you ain’t going to the salt mines now, the least we can do is bring a little of the salt mines to you.”
The other guard grinned as he opened a large sack and poured coarse-grained salt into the half barrel of water. Using Craft, he raised the half barrel and guided it across the room.
Jared closed his eyes as the half barrel floated toward him. He ignored his quivering body.
He would make a brutal dive down into the abyss until he reached the full strength of his Red Jewels. He would gather every drop of strength he had. And as he dove, he would place a Red circle around the building to form a psychic boundary. Then he would unleash all the power he had gathered. That Red strength would hit that boundary and turn back on itself. Even if someone survived the initial unleashing of that much dark power in a small space, the backlash would finish the destruction. They would all die— and so would he, because he wasn’t going to hold back any of that Red strength to shield himself.
I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry.
He dove into the abyss.
The wild stranger rose to meet him, smashed into him, stopping his descent.
Damn you, LET ME DIE! Jared screamed as he tried to slip past the part of himself that had become his enemy and reach his Red strength. Let me —
The half barrel of salty, frigid water flooded over him. Jared’s muscles locked around his lungs. The open lash wounds burned. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.
With a scream of rage, the wild stranger dove back into the abyss, going so deep he could no longer feel it, could no longer find it.
Sagging, Jared felt the pull in his shoulders as his arms took his weight. The plan he’d had a moment ago to destroy himself became less than a memory. The past nine years of slavery pressed down on him until he thought his shaking body would snap under the weight.
He wasn’t broken. His psychic power was still there, but, somehow, the wild stranger had taken away the will to use it.
I’m a Shalador Warlord. I am Blood.
The words sounded pathetic and empty now.
The guard removed the gag, pulling out strands of Jared’s dark hair that had gotten caught in the buckles.
Jared absorbed the new pain, idly wondering if a soul could bleed to death, if that’s why he felt so weak and hollow.
He was dimly aware of the guards untying him, half dragging him into the next room, then cuffing him to another set of iron posts. The steward appeared in front of him and said something that sounded sharp, but the words were murky smears, and he couldn’t hold on to them long enough to understand them.
Someone removed the wide leather collar.
His chin sank to his chest.
His mind drifted until fingers gently lifted his chin and he found himself captured by hard gray eyes. They looked into him as if his inner barriers were completely crumbled, and there was nothing he could call his own—no thought, no feeling she couldn’t examine and discard as a worthless trinket. He cringed as memories of his family kept trying to surface. He didn’t want her to have his memories of his younger brothers, his aunts and uncles, his cousins, his father. His mother. No, he didn’t want her to have his memories of Reyna, especially not the last memory of her standing there, bleeding from heart-wounds his brutal words had caused.
The gray eyes still held his, but the fingers drifted down his shivering body, brushed over the hair at his groin, gently circled him like a different kind of Ring, and finally circled the Ring of Obedience. He felt the tight band of gold expand until he felt nothing at all.
Turning slightly, she flicked her right hand toward the wooden table in the room. The guards’ startled gasps didn’t completely muffle the other sound—like a heavy coin spinning, like a child’s hoop that finally loses speed and circles round and round, lower and lower until the ground claims it.
“Lady!”
The shocked exclamation meant something, but Jared felt too empty to react. His body hurt so much it didn’t even register the usual discomfort that came from the Ring of Obedience—the discomfort that effectively kept a man’s attention focused on the threat of pain.
“Hell’s fire, Lady, Ring him!”
The psychic scents of the males in the room stank of fear.
Jared frowned and wished his thoughts weren’t so fuzzy. Ring him?
He slowly realized it wasn’t a heavy coin on the table, but the Ring of Obedience. The one he’d worn for the past nine years.
Before he could even try to shake off the emotional lethargy and physical weakness, to comprehend what it meant, Grizelle’s fingers closed around him again and squeezed lightly. He gasped as pain shivered along his nerves.
Light flashed from her fingers, blinding him. A clap of thunder shook the building. The unmistakable feel of power filled the room.
Grizelle stepped back and calmly stared at the nervous guards, the shocked escort, and the sweating, hand-wringing steward. “You have nothing to fear,” she said. “He wears my Ring now.”
The steward pointed a shaking finger at Jared’s groin. “B-but, Lady, there’s no Ring.”
“Ah,” Grizelle said. There were so many nuances in that small sound, so much ice in the calm smile. “But there is. He wears the Invisible Ring.”
Jared’s heart began to pound. The Invisible Ring?
The ghost of a memory drifted just out of reach.
The steward chewed his lip. “I’ve never heard of such a Ring.”
Jared had. But how? Where?
“The witches in my family have been using it for generations,” Grizelle said. She gestured toward the Ring of Obedience lying on the tabl
e. “It’s ten times more powerful than that little toy.” Then she paused. “Would you like a further demonstration?”
The men hastily assured her there was no need.
Jared closed his eyes. Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful. Ten times more powerful. Ten times more painful. How was he supposed to survive that?
He wasn’t.
No one survived being owned by Grizelle. And now he knew why.
He let his mind drift again, no longer interested in what was happening in the room. More senseless smears of words. Female anger boiling up like a violent storm on the horizon. Whimpers. Hands untying him, walking him to the final room. He stood where he was placed, passive.
Ten times more powerful, and he couldn’t even feel it. Maybe he was numbed by too much pain. Maybe it was too subtle to feel after so much agony.
If only he could remember what he’d heard about how it worked, or why it was different from the Ring of Obedience.
Then again, maybe he should be grateful that he didn’t remember.
The door opened behind him and the escort, who had stayed in the room to keep an eye on him, snapped to attention. “Lady?”
Damn. Something had happened while his mind had drifted. The escort’s voice held cautious fear, a familiar tone that meant a dark-Jeweled witch’s temper was one careless word away from exploding.
“The clothing you requested will be here any moment,” the escort said. Jared heard the man swallow. “Is there something else, Lady?”
It took all of Jared’s self-control not to turn around to see what she was doing. It took all of his concentration to identify the quiet sound of a lid being unscrewed from a jar.
“I want to look at those wounds,” the Gray Lady said. “They need to be properly cleaned and this healing salve applied. I’ve plans for this one. I don’t want him dying before I get any use out of him.”
Her voice made Jared’s skin crawl. Her psychic scent unnerved him. Even without the wild stranger’s presence, it produced a kind of lust in him that went beyond the body’s desires, the kind of lust a dark-Jeweled male felt in the presence of a dark-Jeweled witch. It made him crave her touch, made him want her hands on him.
He hated her for that most of all.
The escort hesitated, then said, “I can take care of it, Lady.”
Relief flooded Jared when Grizelle left the small room. It would be better to feel another man’s rough hands than have those gentle fingers touch him again.
When the guards delivered the clothes and the healing supplies a few minutes later, Jared’s world narrowed to a fierce craving for water. He thought of asking the escort if he could drink from the basin—he would have drunk anything at that moment, no matter what had been added to the water to clean the wounds—but the man’s angry growl killed the words before they could form. As he suffered the sting of warm water and cleansing herbs while the escort washed his back and belly, he wondered if Grizelle had known what kind of torment this would be or if she simply didn’t care how long he’d been without water.
Jared endured the cleaning in silence, but he gasped when the escort smeared the healing salve into the lash wounds on his back. It felt icy after the warm water. It also quickly numbed his skin.
Released from a little more pain, he started remembering the advice Daemon Sadi had given him the year they had spent together.
Daemon had called it balls and sass. If a male went into a court cringing, for whatever reason, and regained a little strength or showed a little temper, it would be regarded as defiance by the Queen and the witches in her First Circle, and as a challenge by all the other males who feared losing their place in the court’s pecking order. However, if a male went in with balls and sass, forcing the Queen and the other witches to remember that the danger of a dark Jewel couldn’t be dismissed just because a man wore a Ring and was called a slave, he was treated more cautiously, faced fewer challengers among the males, and was thought of as a chained predator instead of as prey. In some courts, it meant the difference between surviving or not.
“I can do that,” Jared croaked when the escort started smearing salve on the belly wounds. He wasn’t sure about that, wasn’t even sure he could stand up much longer since he was quickly reaching his threshold of physical endurance. Balls and sass were a fragile shield, but, right now, they were all he had. “I can do that,” he said again.
“Shut up,” the escort snarled as he hurriedly applied the salve.
Jared studied the grim face, the shadows in the eyes that avoided his. The escort was a Warlord who wore the Purple Dusk Jewel. How did he survive looking at the bruised, naked bodies of his Brothers? How did he survive looking at the ones who had been maimed or broken or shaved? Did he go home to a lover or a wife he felt some affection for? Did he have children he cuddled and played with and loved? Or had he picked up a witch at the auction one year, one already broken and barren, whom he mounted without considering her feelings or well-being? What did he think of the males bought and sold here? Had he ever looked up one day and seen a man he’d called a friend standing on the auction block?
Ah, the shadows in the eyes. The worry behind having to escort someone like the Gray Lady around the slave fair. Look well, Jared thought as the man finished applying the salve and stepped away. Look at the price you may have to pay for one error in judgment.
As if the thoughts had been sent on a psychic spear thread, the escort looked Jared in the eyes. Seconds passed in strained silence. “You’re nothing but a pretty mouth, a dangle for the Ladies to play with,” the escort snarled.
Jared smiled savagely. “I’m a Red-Jeweled Shalador Warlord. I’m stronger than you’ll ever be, can unleash power you can only dream of. And I’m still here.”
The escort’s jaw tightened. His breathing became harsh. “Get dressed. Your dangle’s for private viewing now.”
The clothes had been dropped on a rough bench next to the small table that held the basin. Jared forced himself to look away from the basin full of dirty water, but not soon enough.
With a fiercely pleased look in his eyes, the escort used Craft to vanish the basin. “You may wear the Red, but you’re still a slave, you’re still Ringed. I might not know the power you wielded when it was yours to command, but I’ll walk out of here a free man, have a cold dipper of water whenever I want it, have a tankard of ale once I’ve seen the Gray Lady safely onto a Coach, and tonight I’ll mount a woman like a man’s entitled to. And you? You would have gotten down on your belly and licked the bottom of my boots for a sip of fouled water.”
“I won’t deny it,” Jared said. “But you, free? For now, maybe. The only difference between service and slavery is a circle of gold. If the Red can be chained, how long will the Purple Dusk stay free? If the right amount of gold marks changed hands tomorrow, how long do you think it would take to turn the handsome escort into a handsome slave?”
The escort’s face flushed a dull, angry red. He raised a fist.
Jared didn’t speak, didn’t move. He just glanced at the door leading into the hallway and smiled knowingly. He watched the escort fight to hide the clashing emotions, saw the moment the man realized he wouldn’t be able to justify the “discipline.”
Lowering his fist, the escort spat out words like they were gristle. “In five minutes, I’m chaining you and taking you out of here.” He flung open the hallway door but stopped in the doorway and stared at Jared with burning eyes. “I hope she cuts you apart a piece at a time.”
“I imagine she will,” Jared said, after the escort slammed out of the room. By force of will, he managed the couple of steps needed to reach the rough bench. Spreading the shirt, he sat on it carefully, grateful his shaking legs didn’t have to support him for a minute.
Jared, if you’re going skin-swimming at the pond, remember to spread the towel on the log before you sit on it or you’ll have splinters where you least want them.
Where’s that, Mother?
Ask y
our father.
So he had. Belarr had studied his son for a minute, muttering something about why couldn’t they have had one girl so he could return the favor. Then Belarr had sighed and explained what he thought Reyna meant. That’s the way Belarr always phrased it: I think what your mother means is . . . As if, despite being a strong Warlord, he felt the need to hedge when it came to explaining a woman’s words, especially the words of the woman he’d married.
Sighing wearily, aching in ways that hurt deeper than physical wounds ever could, Jared pulled on the coarsely woven trousers and slipped his feet into the poorly made leather sandals. He picked up the scratchy shirt but couldn’t bring himself to pull it over his head. Taking a careful breath, he turned toward the full-length mirror attached to the room’s back wall. In the building where pleasure slaves changed hands, the entire back wall was a mirror. He understood the reason for that. He didn’t want to think about why they’d put a mirror here, where it didn’t matter if a slave looked well-groomed when he emerged.
His fingers shook as he lightly brushed the buttons on the trousers’ fly. Psychic sense, physical sense . . . he just couldn’t feel the Invisible Ring. There was no way to tell how fine-tuned it might be, no way to know where the shifting boundary was between what was permissible basic Craft and what would bring agonizing punishment.
“Balls and sass,” Jared muttered. Hard to judge the risks when there were no reference points. But he just couldn’t pull that shirt over his head without doing something to protect the wounds. He’d listened to men scream when a shirt that had stuck to lash wounds was pulled off their backs, tearing off the fresh scabs with it. He’d seen what those men had looked like when the wounds finally healed.
Basic healing Craft. A thimbleful of power. That’s all he needed to create a tight protective shield around his back and belly that would keep the shirt away from his skin.
Taking another careful breath, Jared created the shield and waited.
Nothing. No surge from the Ring, no angry footsteps in the hall.
Swallowing hard to push his heart back down his throat, Jared pulled on the shirt and studied the man in the mirror.