"Anne Bishop - Black Jewels 00 - The Invisible Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bishop Anne)

in the room to keep an eye on him, snapped to attention. "Lady?"
Damn. Something had happened while his mind had drifted. The escort's voice
held cautious fear, a familiar tone that meant a dark-Jeweled witch's temper
was one careless word away from exploding.
"The clothing you requested will be here any moment," the escort said. Jared
heard the man swallow. "Is there something else, Lady?"
It took all of Jared's self-control not to turn around to see what she was
doing. It took all of his concentration to identify the quiet sound of a lid
being unscrewed from a jar.
"I want to look at those wounds," the Gray Lady said. "They need to be
properly cleaned and this healing salve applied. I've plans for this one. I
don't want him dying before I get any use out of him."
Her voice made Jared's skin crawl. Her psychic scent unnerved him. Even
without the wild stranger's presence, it produced a kind of lust in him that
went beyond the body's desires, the kind of lust a dark-Jeweled male felt in
the presence of a dark-Jeweled witch. It made him crave her touch, made him
want her hands on him. He hated her for that most of all.
The escort hesitated, then said, "I can take care of it, Lady."
Relief flooded Jared when Grizelle left the small room. It would be better
to feel another man's rough hands than have those gentle fingers touch him
again. When the guards delivered the clothes and the healing supplies a few
minutes later, Jared's world narrowed to a fierce craving for water. He
thought of asking the escort if he could drink from the basin-he would have
drunk anything at that moment, no matter what had been added to the water to
clean the wounds-but the man's angry growl killed the words before they
could form. As he suffered the sting of warm water and cleansing herbs while
the escort washed his back and belly, he wondered if Grizelle had known what
kind of torment this would be or if she simply didn't care how long he'd
been without water. Jared endured the cleaning in silence, but he gasped
when the escort smeared the healing salve into the lash wounds on his back.
It felt icy after the warm water. It also quickly numbed his skin. Released
from a little more pain, he started remembering the advice Daemon Sadi had
given him the year they had spent together. Daemon had called it balls and
sass. If a male went into a court cringing, for whatever reason, and
regained a little strength or showed a little temper, it would be regarded
as defiance by the Queen and the witches in her First Circle, and as a
challenge by all the other males who feared losing their place in the
court's pecking order. However, if a male went in with balls and sass,
forcing the Queen and the other witches to remember that the danger of a
dark Jewel couldn't be dismissed just because a man wore a Ring and was
called a slave, he was treated more cautiously, faced fewer challengers
among the males, and was thought of as a chained predator instead of as
prey. In some courts, it meant the difference between surviving or not.
"I can do that," Jared croaked when the escort started smearing salve on the
belly wounds. He wasn't sure about that, wasn't even sure he could stand up
much longer since he was quickly reaching his threshold of physical
endurance. Balls and sass were a fragile shield, but, right now, they were
all he had. "I can do that," he said again.
"Shut up," the escort snarled as he hurriedly applied the salve. Jared
studied the grim face, the shadows in the eyes that avoided his. The escort