The Invisible Ring

Chapter Thirteen

Jared slipped out of the stone building, pausing to take a deep breath of crisp night air. No one would follow him. He’d made it clear since the evening meal that he wanted to be alone. Lia was settled for the night and wouldn’t need him for a little while.

Jared smiled. Lady Ardelia had spent the past two days resenting needing him at all, giving him dark looks and muttering under her breath every time he’d carried her from the table to her mattress. Every time he’d carried her to the privy hole, it had taken her resentment half an hour to thaw enough for her to speak to him again. And every time she’d tried to get around him, he’d remind her of Escort’s Privilege and wisely stay out of reach for a few minutes while she muttered and snarled.

But his “unreasonable” attitude and stubbornness about not letting her walk on her injured leg had produced swift results. By combining his basic healing skills with Thera’s and Lia’s knowledge of healing, they had almost fully healed her knee, enough so that this afternoon she’d been able to hobble around as long as she held on to something—usually Tomas’s shoulder.

Her efforts to resist help from him had irritated and amused him in equal measure. At least she’d had sense enough to restrict her helpers to Thera and the children. It would be ludicrous to feel jealous about them, and he could tolerate Blaed’s courtesies to Lia because Blaed was interested in Thera. But the other adult males . . .

It wasn’t so much jealousy, he decided as he studied the full moon and clear sky. It was the possessiveness and territoriality that was a male’s response to a witch’s moontime.

Especially a witch who was also a virgin. It was the sexual potential of the other males that put him on edge, made him watch them with suspicious eyes whenever they got too close to Lia. After all, they hadn’t known each other when Lia bought them a few days ago—and a few days didn’t buy a lot of trust when balanced against instincts bred into males for generations—and those instincts had been riding him hard since they got back to the clearing.

Or, perhaps, it was the way his own blood heated every time he touched her that was making him edgy.

Fortunately, the other males had decided not to test his self-control.

Shaking his head, Jared walked to the north end of the clearing.

He would have thought a Queen would enjoy a little pampering. The witches who had controlled his life for the past nine years certainly had. Hell’s fire, a pleasure slave who didn’t jump to satisfy the slightest whim could lose what few privileges he had—or worse, find himself tied between the whipping posts.

Then again, Reyna had never been gracious about Belarr’s pampering during the first three days of her moon-time either. The first day she’d snap and snarl at him about his constant fussing, even though it hadn’t been constant. Belarr had the administrative duties as the District Queen’s agent for Ranon’s Wood to handle, as well as three young sons to keep occupied so they would give Reyna some peace. It was like a moon’s blood ritual between them. Reyna would snap and snarl until Belarr would respond with, “When you married me, you granted me the right to fuss.” That would usually silence her. Perhaps it was being so vulnerable that made it hard for her to yield, because on the fourth day, when she could wear the Jewels again and use Craft, she enjoyed Belarr’s pampering.

Once, after Reyna’s temper had been especially harsh, Jared had asked his father why he tolerated being treated that way. Belarr had said, “Even a man who is loved and trusted is feared a little during these days. If showing a bit of temper makes her feel safer, that’s fine with me since there’s no cruelty in it. Besides, this is a small price to pay for the rest of the days . . . and the nights,” Belarr had added quietly, smiling.

Jared smiled at the memory. He didn’t think Belarr had meant for his son to hear that last bit. Or maybe he had. The sons had understood early on that, when it came to Reyna, their father had the dominant claim.

Tomorrow would be the fourth day of Lia’s moontime. Maybe she would let him fuss without snarling at him.

When he reached the edge of the clearing, his smile faded. He looked back at the stone building. Nothing stirred.

Good. This night, which was usually a public celebration, wasn’t something he wanted to share. Not this time.

Jared stepped into the woods beyond the clearing, following the winding footpath through the trees until he reached the narrow creek. Part of it had been diverted to spill over carefully arranged stones into a small, man-made stone pool, then spill over again to flow into a stone-supported channel for a few yards until it rejoined the rest of the water.

Jared closed his eyes. It had been so long, but if he really listened, he could hear the drums in the wind gently stirring the trees, and the water dancing over the stones.

He opened his eyes and called in the crystal goblet. His uncles had given it to him, along with the small silver chalice, after he’d made the Offering to the Darkness. Like the Jewels, he had carried the goblet and chalice with him, hidden from the witches who had owned him because he hadn’t wanted to risk having them taken away from him.

Holding the goblet under the falling water, he filled it and drank, pouring out the last swallow to share it with the dark land.

Filling the goblet again, Jared stepped over the narrow creek and followed the path to the second clearing.

He’d found it the first day they’d returned to the main clearing. While Brock and Randolf had gone out to hunt fresh meat, he’d cautiously probed the clearing’s defensive shields and discovered they extended beyond the cleared land. So he’d followed the path to this small, second clearing, also strongly shielded but for different reasons.

It was a perfect circle that had been seeded with grass. A few feet in from the perimeter, two large stones had been carefully placed to support a slab of granite, forming a small altar. In the center of the circle was a shallow fire pit surrounded by stones.

The land had absorbed the giving done here, becoming a sacred place. Unlike the Sanctuaries that had a formal altar and a Priestess to tend them, these small places were found throughout the Realm of Terreille. Private places, where the Blood came to reaffirm their bond to the land and the life that sprang from it; where they quietly made the descent into the abyss until they reached their cores and opened their inner barriers; where the power flowed through them and they became a channel between the night sky and the dark land, giving one kind of strength and taking back another. It was in places like this that the Blood came to honor the Darkness.

Placing the crystal goblet on one side of the altar, Jared called in the small silver chalice and set it on the other side. Moving with the measured step of ritual, he walked to the fire pit, created a tongue of witchfire, and lit the pile of kindling and wood he’d gathered earlier to create a small bonfire.

Almost ready.

He undressed, leaving his clothes on the path just beyond the circle. Shivering, he returned to the altar and called in the folding knife he’d honed that afternoon. He knelt before the altar, carefully opened his wrist, and let the blood, hot from the vein, flow into the small silver chalice. Once the chalice was filled, he put a warming spell on it to keep the blood heated. Then he vanished the knife, pressed his thumb over the wound, and walked back to the edge of the clearing.

On the edge of Ranon’s Wood was a natural bowl. Surrounded by the grassy slopes was the large dance circle, its dirt carefully sifted and raked. At the new and full moons, the witches gathered there to dance privately with their Sisters. But the full moons after the spring and autumn equinox were the public celebration of the male.

As the sky darkened and the moon began to shine, the males would gather in the streets, quietly talking, watching the women drift casually toward the circle.

As they followed the women, they would hear the drums, the Craft-enhanced sound rising out of the bowl and filling the countryside. Then the Priestess’s voice would rise above the drums in wordless song, calling them to the dance. Another witch’s voice would be added to hers, and another’s, and another’s.

Slowly the males would flow up the slope and down the other side, filling in the spaces that had been left between the women as the Priestess lit the bonfire. One by one, the women’s voices would quiet. The Priestess would tip the large silver chalice and cast the circle with Craft and the blood the witches had offered for the dance. By the time the circle was completed, it was only her voice and the drums, calling.

The Wisdom Dance, the elders’ dance, came first. Standing at the edge of the circle, the Priestess would extend her hand and bring the first man across. She continued bringing men across the circle, finally stepping out as the last man who chose to dance stepped in.

The drums would change the beat. The fiddle and flutes would take the place of the women’s voices. And the men would dance the steps that had been danced since the time of the great Queen Shal.

After the Wisdom Dance, the Priestess’s voice would rise again with the drums. The elder males would come to the edge of the circle and bring across the young males who had gone through the Birthright Ceremony for the Boys’ Dance.

The Wisdom Dance expressed experience and dignity; the Boys’ Dance celebrated high spirits and energy.

Then came the Youths’ Dance for the males who had gone through puberty but had not yet made the Offering to the Darkness.

After the Youths’ Dance came the dance celebrating male power in all its primal glory. The Fire Dance. The dance of sex.

Consorts, husbands, and males who were handfasted could wear short loincloths if they wanted to. The other males, those who had made the Offering but were not yet formally bound to a woman, indicated their willingness to become lovers by wearing nothing but their Jewels and their pride.

A hot dance. A grinding dance whose steps were as formal as all the others and yet blatant and arousing, promising pleasure.

You’re not old enough for the Fire Dance, Jared.

But I’ve made the Offering!

Yes, you have. But in most other ways, you’re still a youth.

I’m ready for the Fire Dance, Father.

Jewels or no, being a man is more than having a hard cock.

But—

We’ll talk again before the spring dance. Everything has a price, Jared. You can’t take a man’s pleasure without taking a man’s responsibilities, too. You may be ready for the one, but you aren’t ready for the other.

Jared watched the fire rise toward the sky.

Had that been part of it? Still sulking like the youth he truly was, had he ignored the warnings and accepted that witch’s invitation in order to defy his father’s judgment and prove he was a man?

Except Belarr had been right. He hadn’t been ready for the Fire Dance. He had briefly enjoyed a man’s pleasure and then paid a brutal price.

Stepping forward, Jared inspected the wound on his wrist. It had already begun to clot.

He called in the knife again, reopened the wound, then vanished the knife. Using Craft and the blood dripping from his wrist, he cast a circle big enough to contain the altar and enough space around the bonfire for a single dancer.

As soon as the circle was cast, he used healing Craft to seal the wound.

He closed his eyes, swaying slightly. He could hear the drums and the women’s voices calling the Shalador males to the dance.

His heart began to beat in time with the drums.

His blood heated.

He opened his eyes.

On the other side of the bonfire was another male, a phantom shape with blazing green eyes and golden skin.

Jared’s breath caught as the wild stranger bared its teeth in a smile that challenged him to embrace—to accept—what it meant to be an adult Red-Jeweled male.

Primal and savage, the Warlord had come to the dance.

The drums got louder.

Returning the smile, Jared began the Fire Dance.

Round and round they went as the music became more urgent, more demanding. Round and round. Skin glistened with sweat from the heat of the bonfire and the heat of the dance.

Emotional chains that he hadn’t known were there broke and melted away. Social restraints burned in the fire.

Faster and faster. Heart pounding. Feet pounding.

Side by side now, they danced, drawing the male fire closer and closer to the surface until it consumed everything else.

The drums became more insistent as the music built to the climax.

Jared kept dancing, dancing, dancing.

His body throbbed as the Warlord, with a savage smile, slowly faded as it filled him, flooding him with a fierce, triumphant hunger.

The drums faded, and the Fire Dance came to the end.

Jared stumbled away from the fire and sank to the ground, exhausted and painfully aroused. His body quivered and burned as he stretched out full length on the cold ground.

Too sensitive to bear the prick of grass, he rolled onto his back and stared at the moon.

He needed. Mother Night, how he needed!

His rational mind supplied a terrifying word for the intensity of his condition.

Rut.

Except for Warlord Princes, Blood males rarely experienced the rut, that savage, almost uncontrollable need for sex. That Warlord Princes went through the rut once or twice a year was one of things that made them what they were—and one of the reasons they were considered so dangerous. During the rut, their tempers rode the killing edge for so long almost anything could provoke them into violent destruction. Other males weren’t safe around a male in rut. Even women weren’t safe from the cold rage that was entwined with hot desire.

What made it so hard to control was that simple release brought no relief from the sexual madness. A male’s need could easily outstrip a woman’s endurance, but a male in rut focused all his energy on one woman and couldn’t tolerate being handled by anyone except her, could barely tolerate other women’s presence since they both excited and enraged him.

Jared started to shake. The rut shouldn’t have happened. He was certain other males didn’t experience this after the Fire Dance. There would have been whispers, warnings. And not every male who danced the Fire Dance had a lover waiting for him when it was done. Hell’s fire, he’d never sensed anything like this in his father. There had always been a light in Belarr’s eyes after the dance, and he’d been impatient for his sons to settle down and get to sleep once they got home, but there had never been any hint of this.

Could it be . . .

Jared swallowed hard, dug his fingers into the earth.

Could this have happened because all the years when he should have done the Fire Dance and hadn’t been able to had funneled into this time, his first time? That all the sexuality he should have celebrated and had to suppress during the nine years of slavery was the reason the hunger was so potent now?

His rational mind would be overwhelmed soon. If he didn’t act in the next few minutes . . .

There was no one in their group who could contain him unless Lia used the Invisible Ring against him. Even if she did, would she use it forcefully enough to contain a male in rut?

Lia.

Involuntarily his hunger sharpened, found a focus.

Getting to his feet, he released the power in the circle he’d created, retrieved his clothes, and dressed.

The fabric pressing against his throbbing cock maddened him, and he bared his teeth in a savage smile. His green eyes narrowed as he picked up the small silver chalice and took a sip of his own blood, pleased by the zing of power and strength it gave him.

“Mother Night,” he whispered, raising the chalice to the sky for a moment. Lowering it, he slowly poured the blood onto the ground before the altar. “Sweet Darkness, accept this offering from one of your sons.”

He drank half the water in the crystal goblet, then poured the rest into the chalice to clean it. He gave the blood-tinted water to the land, dried the goblet and chalice with his shirt, and vanished them. After placing a shield around the fire pit so that the bonfire could safely burn itself out, he left the small clearing.

As soon as he entered the main clearing, he saw her standing in the doorway, wrapped in a blanket. She was staring at the path that led to the lane and didn’t notice his slow, predatory approach until he was close enough to see the sadness in her eyes change to surprise.

“What are you doing out here, Lia?”

“I—I woke up and saw you were gone. I thought—”

She didn’t have time to tell him what she’d thought before he pulled her into his arms and kissed her with rough desperation. He ran his hands over her body, frustrated by the blanket and the layers of clothes that separated skin from skin. He wanted to tear away those barriers so that he could kiss her, lick her, caress her until she was as frantic as he. When she tried to pull back, he tightened his hold and pressed her hips against his so that, even with all the layers between them, there was no way she could miss that he was fully aroused.

He kissed her again, tasted fear—and realized her heart wasn’t pounding with excitement and her body wasn’t trembling because of building passion.

Let her go, a voice inside him warned. Let her go. No woman, especially a virgin Queen, should experience this kind of fear.

The warning disturbed him, but he couldn’t let her go. He had no control over the hands exploring her body. He couldn’t give up the maddening pleasure of rubbing against her.

He felt rage building in response to her fear. For one moment, his mind cleared and horror washed through him as he realized how easily he could destroy her right now.

“Lia,” he said urgently. “Lia, I’m in rut. Your fear is making it worse.” Pressing his lips against her temple, he licked the frantic pulse. “Please don’t be afraid of me, Lia. I won’t hurt you. I swear by the Jewels I won’t hurt you.”

“Jared.” She sounded breathless. “Jared, I can’t—”

“I know. I know. Could you . . .” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Could you hold me? Please?”

The shaking hands that had been pushing at his chest stilled.

Jared waited, hardly daring to breathe.

He stifled a groan as Lia’s hands slowly, hesitantly, slid down his chest and settled at his waist. He forced his hips to stay still. After a minute, she gained enough courage to slide her arms around him and stroke his back.

It wasn’t enough, but as she relaxed against him, it soothed the hunger sufficiently that he didn’t feel so wildly out of control.

After a while, she leaned back and looked at him.

His hands slid up her back and over her shoulders, finally cupping her face. He traced her lips with the tip of his tongue. Since she didn’t protest that action, he kissed her again, this time letting his mouth softly melt into hers.

When he raised his head, he saw confusion in her eyes— and maybe a little hunger.

Looking flustered, Lia turned her head slightly, then frowned at his wrist. “You’re bleeding.”

A different kind of tremor went through him. He wanted her to turn her head a little more, close her mouth over the wound, and lap the drops of blood welling up from his wrist. He wanted to make a small nick in the hollow of her throat and drink from it.

Jared dropped his hands, shaken.

A Queen didn’t accept blood from any but her First Circle.

A male didn’t accept a Queen’s blood unless he was offering to surrender his life to her will. A court contract was a formal, written agreement weighted by honor and Protocol. A blood bond was a lifetime commitment.

“Come inside,” Lia said. “Your wrist needs care and you need something to eat.”

“Lia . . .”

“Come inside.”

She led him inside, walking slowly but more easily. When they reached the kitchen area, she created a small ball of witchlight, enough to see by but not enough to disturb the others.

He stood passively while she used healing Craft on his wrist. He watched her dab an herb paste over the wound. All he could think of as she wrapped some gauze around his wrist to protect it was how good her hands felt and how much he wanted her to stroke him.

“You’re using too much Craft,” he said as she warmed some of the meat left over from dinner and sliced the bread without using a knife.

“Don’t fuss now, Jared,” Lia replied, keeping her voice low. “You can fuss tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

She looked startled for a moment and then sighed. “Promise.”

Pleased by that, he managed to bite back another comment when she used Craft to heat a mug of water for an herbal brew.

A soft stirring. A change in the feel of the room as someone rose and approached them.

Snarling, Jared whirled around.

Thera gasped and took a step back.

The hunger inside him grew knife-edged teeth that savaged his self-control as he caught the slight muskiness in her psychic scent that signaled a sexually mature witch. Lia’s scent was a blend of muskiness and innocence that helped sedate the hunger. Thera’s scent enraged it.

After glancing at Lia, Thera licked her lips. “Lord Jared, if you require—”

“Go away,” Jared snarled. He felt insulted by the offer. Insulted and a little humiliated that she had so little respect for him that she would offer to take him in front of Lia.

Which made him want to hurt her. Badly.

“Go back to bed, Thera,” Lia said softly.

Thera glanced at Lia again and nodded.

Jared stood there, saying nothing, not even daring to look at Lia until Thera was once more tucked in on the mattress next to Blaed’s.

Lia touched his arm. “You need to eat and get some sleep.”

“Do you think I’m such a whore that I’ll willingly go with any woman who snaps her fingers?” he asked harshly.

Her eyes widened. “You’re not a whore, Jared.”

“That’s exactly what a pleasure slave is, Lady.”

She rubbed his arm to comfort him. “Well, you’re not a pleasure slave anymore.” She hesitated. “Thera made the offer out of friendship for you and concern for me. I don’t think it was an easy thing for her to do. Let it go now. You’re not thinking clearly.”

Rage and hurt swirled through him, confusing him. Submitting to her gentle coaxing, he felt a little steadier when she placed the food on the table and then sat next to him, even allowing him to feed her small bites of bread and meat. By the time he finished the meal, he was shivering from fatigue.

“Come to bed now,” Lia said, guiding him to the mattresses. “Can you put a warming spell on the blankets?”

Stretching out on his mattress, Jared nodded.

Her fingers lightly brushed his dark hair. “Sleep, Jared.”

He tried because she’d asked him to. But the spell-warmed blankets didn’t stop the shivering, and the presence of the other males made him tense and angry. He also knew they were all awake now and aware of the reason for his tension . . . and feared it.

Half an hour later, he gave up and crept under Lia’s blankets.

“What—”

“Let me hold you, Lia,” he whispered against her ear. “I need to hold you.”

“You’re freezing,” she hissed, tucking the blankets around them.

He settled her comfortably against his side, offering his shoulder for a pillow. Now that he had his arms around her, the other males didn’t bother him as much. The tension eased. Warmed by the blankets and even more by Lia’s presence, his body relaxed.

Resting his cheek against her soft hair, Jared slept.