“All I’m saying is Garth seems to understand some things. Maybe it’s a holdover from his training. Hell’s fire, I don’t know. But we’d be fools not to pay more attention to what sets him off.”

“All right,” Brock said. “I’ll—”

The door opened.

Brock and Blaed released their supportive hold on Jared’s arms.

Jared walked toward the Gray Lady, alone.

In the light coming through the open door, her gray eyes looked almost black from exhaustion. Her voice quavered when she quietly asked him if he was all right. She looked frail, and he suspected her pride was the only thing keeping her on her feet.

Her frailty made him want to push her until she struck out and proved she was still strong and powerful.

“Thank you, Warlord,” she said solemnly.

“I live to serve, Lady,” he replied, his voice lightly laced with bitterness to hide another emotion he didn’t want to acknowledge.

Tears filled her eyes. She turned and retreated into the room as quickly as she could manage with her injured knee.

Jared rocked back as if she’d slapped him. Shame filled him until he wasn’t sure he could stand beneath the weight of it. He tried to dredge up enough anger to burn away the shame, but it wouldn’t come.

Swallowing hard, Jared looked behind him. Brock and Blaed had discreetly disappeared to finish the chores.

“Jared?” Tomas stood in the doorway. “You coming in or you going to stand there letting the rain in until Thera gets mad enough to hit you with a skillet?”

“Maybe it would help,” Jared muttered as he followed the boy inside and firmly closed the door.

Silence strained tempers already frayed by fear and exhaustion, broken only by the scrape of utensils against plates and murmured requests to pass something that couldn’t easily be reached. They choked on the food that had been bought with a young witch’s life, but they ate it. Their bodies needed fuel. Landens might envy the Blood’s magical powers, but they didn’t understand the price that went with it; didn’t understand how fiercely that inner fire could burn, especially in those who wore the darker Jewels; didn’t understand how quickly it could consume the body that housed it if no other fuel was available.

So they ate in silence, never meeting one another’s eyes, each one wondering whose life might pay for the next meal, the next shelter.

Jared sighed with relief when the meal finally ended.

Thera picked up her plate and walked over to the kitchen area of the large single room to begin cleaning up. Within moments, the only ones left sitting on the benches on either side of the long wooden table were Jared and the Gray Lady.

He’d deliberately sat at the opposite end on the opposite side, as far away from her as he could get. Now, with the others dallying with the last chores in order to stay away from her and nothing but the long table separating them, he looked at her for the first time since she’d met him at the doorway and thanked him.