“The witches in charge of the training saw her, too. They didn’t know, or care, who she was, only that her presence there was important to me. One of them walked over to me and fondled me through my clothes. And there was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing they’d done to me up to that point that had humiliated me quite that much. In a way, it’s ironic that I felt so much shame because Shalador boys look forward to the day when we’re old enough for the Fire Dance, for the time when we’ll step into the dance circle and display ourselves to every woman in the village. I wouldn’t have been dancing for my mother, but I would have danced in front of her and never given it a thought.”

“That’s different,” Lia murmured. “That would have been your choice, and it was part of the male rites among your 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.”