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"It was a trick"

"It was a trick," Thera agreed

"Your , was she?"

"Oh, yes, she was," Thera replied too calmly "He’d tortured her After what he’d done to her, there was nothing shecould do but die

"She hadn’t asked for uish in her eyes was all the warning I needed I was the last cruelty, you see She’d thwarted his having any control over me, so now he’d take me He wanted her to know that all the sacrifices she’d ed rille in the wall beside the door There was no way she couldn’t hear as happening in that room

"He raped me"

"Wait a minute!" Jared protested "You said he wore the Opal You outranked hirille and pleaded with him to stop She couldn’t really talk, couldn’t really form words Not that it would have made any difference"

"Thera!" Red mist coated the road and land around thee fro "When he found out he was too late to break me, he beat me" Her eyes frosted She looked fiercely triumphant "And I let him"

"Why?" Jared’s voice broke

"To buy tih to find out why he’d done this Revenge, Jared He knehere Auntie lived He’d learned enough to know about her lover and the Black Widow sister He planned to have them all killed because my mother had defied hied to get away froain But he’d wanted me under his control before he ordered the executions That was his first e him, to excite hiain, I sent a e to Auntie on a distaff thread and told her to leave, to vanish and never look back The Green was strong enough to reach that far I knew they’d warn the Black Widow

"Even Auntie wouldn’t have recognized me when he was done My mother died the next day The day after that, he sold me to an acquaintance He never told the avewent down, I’d woven illusion spells around hteen-year-old" Thera laughed harshly "I drooled a lot Staggered around glassy-eyed Anytime a male sat down, I’d climb into his lap and ask him if he’d like to be castrated because I was sure it would es

"The son of a whoring bitch couldn’t sell h

"I’ve had nine owners in the past year Sometimes the old one remembered to tell the new onethe trail even more My sire tried to keep track of me, you see He never found my aunt or her lover or the Black Widow Different names, a different place They vanished like drearief for her made him ache "You’ll never look for theo The name doesn’tthe last bastard into putting me on the auction blockno name, no land, no people I became no one and anyone I’d intended to snare some illed fool ouldn’t even be able to reot me out of Raej, I, too, would vanish"

Thera bit her lip and shook her head "But Lia boughtaway froered by what she’d told him, Jared stood in the road for a full minute before he hurried to catch up to her When he was an arth behind her, he said, "Then your name isn’t Thera?"

She looked over her shoulder What he saw in her eyes chilled him "It is now"

"Landens" Randolf made the word for the non-Blood of each race sound like an obscenity

Ignoring Randolf’s surliness, Jared rubbed his chin The village nestled in the lowland aplace looked fairly prosperous From a distance, anyway His father had always been fair about the tithes required froes that were bound to Ranon’s Wood, but he’d seen ragged, half-starved people in other Territories ere stripped of so h left for the whole village to get through the winter le" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>