The Invisible Ring

watching him, wearing a friendly but challenging smile.
    Since he had the lighter-ranked Queen, the first move was his. Meeting her eyes for a moment, Jared smiled as he moved a Warlord Prince onto the battlefield and accepted the unspoken challenge.
    She moved her Queen.
    The game began.
    His father had told him chess was a game of the heart as well as the mind, that it was a kind of training ground because it showed you your own weaknesses. Which was why you didn’t play it with an enemy.
    When he was young and first learning the game, that hadn’t made much sense. But later, as he watched his father play with friends who dropped by for an evening game, he began to understand. Belarr always tried to protect the Healers on the board as well as the Queen, sacrificing any male piece if it could block the attack.
    Reyna, on the other hand, tended to use the Healers as protection for other pieces, even the Blood males and witches who were the pawns in the game. Her Healers, Priestesses, and Black Widows were usually captured long before any of the stronger male pieces.
    When he’d pointed this out to her one time, she had shrugged and told him to care for his own.
    He’d told his father about this quirk in an otherwise intelligent woman, thinking Belarr would find it as amusing as he had.
    Belarr, too, had shrugged, but it wasn’t as lighthearted a movement as Reyna’s had been. He’d carefully masked whatever he had been thinking and said, “Healers and Queens don’t play the game well.” Then he’d abruptly changed the subject.
    At the time, Jared had thought Belarr’s reaction was due to Reyna’s returning home completely exhausted from a long and difficult healing. Now, watching the Gray Lady’s Queen scamper around the board attacking, protecting, risking capture, the memory became shaded with a different meaning, a deeper understanding.
    He passed up a couple of opportunities to capture, initiating attacks on the other side of the board where she had to use the stronger male pieces. Even then, she sacrificed a Priestess instead of a Prince.
    He swallowed the anger that was building up inside him again. It was only a game, a way to relieve her boredom. But, Hell’s fire, didn’t the woman have any sense? You didn’t sacrifice the distaff gender while there was still a strong male left standing unless there was no other move.
    When she moved her Queen to protect a Blood male that couldn’t escape capture, his temper finally snapped.
    “Lady,” he said through gritted teeth as he took the Blood male, “it’s an insignificant piece. You shouldn’t be risking your Queen for a pawn.”
    The air in the wagon chilled so much he could see his breath.
    Startled, he looked at her.
    The gray eyes that had been warm and friendly a moment ago were icy, hard, and reflected a fury that came from so deep within her they reflected nothing at all.
    Never breaking eye contact, she reached out and deliberately knocked over her Queen. “There are no pawns.”
    Looking away, she began gathering up the captured pieces that were lying beside her on the bench, carefully setting each one into the box.
    Watching the jerky movements of muscles clenched in anger was worse than feeling the lash.
    “Thank you for the game,” she said stiffly, feeling around for the last piece. “I’m tired now. I wish to rest.”
    As she picked up the last piece, a Blood male, her fingers closed protectively around it.
    The cold dismissal stung, but he accepted it. After double-checking that all the pieces and the dice were back in the box, he slipped it into the cloth bag and left the wagon. He returned the game to Blaed with faint thanks and hurried away.
    No one approached him. No one asked what had happened. Even Thera took a long look at his face and left him alone.
    Not a game to be played with an enemy, because it exposed the heart’s weaknesses.
    All these long years later, he understood the quarrels between Belarr and Reyna as he never had before. Despite their Craft and their courage—or, perhaps, because of it— Healers didn’t have a strong sense of self-preservation and would drain themselves to the breaking point before they’d back away from a healing. Which was why, by Blood Law, every Healer had to be served by at least one Jeweled male unless she had a Jeweled consort or husband who would assume the duty of protecting her from herself.
    Was that why courts had originally formed around Queens? To protect them from giving too much of