The Invisible Ring

people.”
    “Yes,” Jared whispered, not sure he could bear her understanding. “So I went up to her, and I told her it was her fault. That all of it was her fault. That it was because of her that I was Ringed and would never know any pleasure with a woman. That if she’d been a different kind of woman, this wouldn’t have happened to me.
    “Then I told her I hated her, and I walked away.
    “I looked back just once. She was on the ground, curled up in a tight ball. No one stopped. No one touched her or tried to help her.”
    “Oh, Jared.”
    “I blamed her for a long time because it was safer to blame someone else. But I couldn’t forget the look in her eyes when I said those things. I couldn’t forget seeing her on the ground.
    “When I stopped blaming her, the only thing I wanted to do was go home. I even made a couple of timid attempts to escape, but I was too terrified of the agony the Ring can produce to manage it. So I used to lie in my bed and imagine that I’d gotten home somehow. Just for an hour. Just long enough to see her, to talk to her. Just long enough . . . And now I’m home, and it’s too late. I’m too late, and I’ll never be able to take back the words.”
    Lia held him while he cried. He had no tears yet for his father and brother. There would be time enough to mourn them later. There was no room in him to grieve for anyone but Reyna.
    She held him long after the last tear.
    “What was she like?” Lia asked softly.
    Jared wiped his face on his coat sleeve. “Compassionate. Generous, stubborn, strong, loving, patient, courageous.” Like you .
    Lia took his hand. “There’s something I want to show you.”
    She led him to the back of the greenhouse and pointed to three large, glazed pots. Each one was divided into two sections and contained two seedling trees. “Someone must be caring for them. They’re the only healthy plants here.”
    Love formed a lump in Jared’s throat that was sharper than grief. “Those are our luck and love pots,” he said, his voice husky. “And these”—he brushed a leaf with his fingertip—“are honey pear trees.”
    Lia leaned over, brushing her fingers over the leaves and thin trunks while she crooned to the little trees.
    “Reyna gave each of us one of these pots on our sixth birthday. Luck and love, she called them. There’s a hollow in the base. In the spring, we’d write down a wish or a dream or a desire and then fold the paper and pass it through the base into the hollow. Then we could plant any seeds or seedlings we wanted in the pot. They were ours to care for. Some years they grew. There were a lot of years when the seedlings started out well enough, but then we’d forget about them.
    “She never touched them. I planted honey pear seedlings one year because I wanted a honey pear tree that I didn’t have to share with anyone. I drenched them whenever I remembered and then forgot to water them for weeks at a time. When they died, I got mad at her. She waited through my undignified tantrum and then quietly told me that the plants were a symbol, a way for me to learn that no one else could nurture my wishes or dreams or desires. If I wanted them to thrive, I had to take care of them myself.”
    “These seedlings can’t be more than a year old,” Lia said. “So she must have planted them and tended them for you.”
    “Yes.” Two honey pear trees for each of her sons— even the son who had walked away from her.
    “What happened to the papers you tucked in the hollows?” Lia asked.
    “We’d take them out after the harvest to compare what had happened during those months to what we’d written.”
    “Did you get your wishes if the plants thrived?”
    “Sometimes.” Jared smiled crookedly. “Although one year I had to wait until the next horse fair to get the pony I’d admired so much because it wasn’t for sale until then.”
    Lia smiled with him. “Is your last wish still in the hollow?”
    Jared’s smile faded. It had been years since he’d thought about the luck and love pots. “I don’t know.” He took a couple of deep breaths before using Craft to pass his fingers through the pot’s base.
    His fingers brushed against paper. Touched sealing wax.
    Frowning, he drew the paper out of the hollow. When he turned it over, he saw his name written in a feminine hand.
    “I’ll wait outside,” Lia said.
    “No, you—”
    Lia touched his arm. “I won’t go far.”
    Jared watched her until he felt convinced she wouldn’t wander out of his sight. Then he settled on the stool Reyna had kept in