The escort’s face flushed a dull, angry red. He raised a fist.

Jared didn’t speak, didn’t move. He just glanced at the door leading into the hallway and smiled knowingly. He watched the escort fight to hide the clashing emotions, saw the moment the man realized he wouldn’t be able to justify the “discipline.”

Lowering his fist, the escort spat out words like they were gristle. “In five minutes, I’m chaining you and taking you out of here.” He flung open the hallway door but stopped in the doorway and stared at Jared with burning eyes. “I hope she cuts you apart a piece at a time.”

“I imagine she will,” Jared said, after the escort slammed out of the room. By force of will, he managed the couple of steps needed to reach the rough bench. Spreading the shirt, he sat on it carefully, grateful his shaking legs didn’t have to support him for a minute.

Jared, if you’re going skin-swimming at the pond, remember to spread the towel on the log before you sit on it or you’ll have splinters where you least want them.

Where’s that, Mother?

Ask your father.

So he had. Belarr had studied his son for a minute, muttering something about why couldn’t they have had one girl so he could return the favor. Then Belarr had sighed and explained what he thought Reyna meant. That’s the way Belarr always phrased it: I think what your mother means is . . . As if, despite being a strong Warlord, he felt the need to hedge when it came to explaining a woman’s words, especially the words of the woman he’d married.

Sighing wearily, aching in ways that hurt deeper than physical wounds ever could, Jared pulled on the coarsely woven trousers and slipped his feet into the poorly made leather sandals. He picked up the scratchy shirt but couldn’t bring himself to pull it over his head. Taking a careful breath, he turned toward the full-length mirror attached to the room’s back wall. In the building where pleasure slaves changed hands, the entire back wall was a mirror. He understood the reason for that. He didn’t want to think about why they’d put a mirror here, where it didn’t matter if a slave looked well-groomed when he emerged.

His fingers shook as he lightly brushed the buttons on the trousers’ fly. Psychic sense, physical sense . . . he just couldn’t feel the Invisible Ring. There was no way to tell how fine-tuned it might be, no way to know where the shifting boundary was between what was permissible basic Craft and what would bring agonizing punishment.