The Invisible Ring

existed. No blurring of Blaed’s psychic scent, no sense of Craft. Just a masking of an essential difference between Blaed and the rest of them.
    Jared felt a chill run up his spine that had nothing to do with the falling temperature or the rain. He studied Blaed as if he’d never seen him before. A good-looking face that would mature into a handsome one. A well-toned body that needed to fill out a little more. Medium-brown hair that was long enough for a woman to run her hands through it. Hazel eyes that reflected a temperament that hadn’t sharpened yet.
    Looks meant nothing. It was the potential within the flesh that had to be considered carefully—and, also, who would recognize that potential and want to shape and hone it into a fine, sharp weapon.
    “You know the Sadist.” Jared didn’t make it a question.
    Blaed paled a little. “I think he’s the reason I ended up at Raej so quickly. My training was . . . accelerated.”
    Jared snorted. “I’ll bet the part of the training you were supposed to be learning got accelerated, too.”
    Blaed’s eyes widened.
    Jared’s lips curled up in a twisted smile. “He trained me, too.”
    There was no need to put into words that uneasy mixture of revulsion and excitement, the embarrassment of feeling like a voyeur when the young men who were being trained watched an experienced pleasure slave play a woman’s body until mild arousal became blinding heat and she screamed throughout a prolonged climax. No need to talk about the shame they’d felt because they had stiffened and ached for release while Sadi rose from the bed as flaccid as he’d been before the first kiss. No need to talk about the private lessons, those times when that bored, cold expression that so effectively masked the Sadist’s thoughts and feelings was set aside and they’d seen enough of the man beneath to feel trust and terror.
    “I take it there wasn’t a Warlord Prince serving your previous Queen,” Jared said.
    “Only him.” Blaed shrugged. “Minor Queens usually can’t lure a Warlord Prince to serve in their courts. And Territory Queens usually won’t let a minor Queen keep an enslaved Warlord Prince because he’s too hard to control.”
    Minor Queens usually didn’t get a chance to hold the Sadist’s leash, either—unless the High Priestess of Hayll was rewarding them for some reason.
    “How long were you in that court?”
    “Six months altogether. He was there for the first four, then the contract that that Queen had with Dorothea SaDiablo ended and he was ‘loaned’ to another Queen.”
    “Queens don’t usually give up a freshly trained pleasure slave,” Jared said thoughtfully. “Even if he is a Warlord Prince. She did know you were a Warlord Prince when she acquired you?”
    Blaed nodded. “Although once he put the spell around me, everyone seemed to forget that. After he was gone, she became uneasy about using me, for no reason I could figure out, and sent me to Raej.”
    There could have been other spells Sadi had wrapped around Blaed to cause that uneasiness and ensure that the young man would end up at Raej quickly—spells the Sadist wouldn’t have mentioned.
    “Why?” Jared said quietly, thinking out loud. “Why would he go through the effort of making sure you ended up at Raej, where you’d just be sold to another witch?”
    Blaed hesitated. “He was there when I was being sold. When it got down to his Lady and the Gray Lady being the only ones still bidding on me, his Lady stopped bidding all of a sudden. I think he ... arranged . . . that so that I would end up with the Gray Lady.”
    Jared swore under his breath. The Sadist and the Gray Lady. What in the name of Hell was he supposed to think about that ?
    Nothing, for the moment. Finding that clearing before they lost the light was the first priority.
    They reached the lane. Hoping it was wide enough to accommodate the wagon, Jared waved at Thayne, who was leading the horses, and then pointed to the lane.
    Thayne waved back.
    As Jared and Blaed walked down the lane, looking for the entrance to the clearing, Jared thought of one thing that would change now that everyone knew Blaed was a Warlord Prince. “Since a Warlord Prince is a higher caste than a Warlord, that makes you the domin—”
    “Forget it,” Blaed said sharply. “I wear the Opal; you wear the Red. That still makes you dominant as far as Jewel rank is concerned. And you’re older than I am.”
    “Not by that much,” Jared muttered.
    “By enough. And you made the Offering to the Darkness