The Invisible Ring Quotes
"In a world where magic is power and social status is everything, the color of the jewel you wear determines the course of your life."
"After suffering nine years of torment as a slave, he murdered his owner and escaped—only to be caught and sold into slavery once again."
"Purchased by a notorious queen, Jared fears he will share the mysterious fate of her other slaves—never to be seen again."
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"This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental."
"Opal is the dividing line between lighter and darker Jewels because it can be either."
"A Queen who rules the Blood; is considered to be the land’s heart and the Blood’s moral center; as such, she is the focal point of their society."
"He had worked too long and too hard to let some Gray-Jeweled bitch who would die in a few decades anyway spoil his plans."
"He didn’t trust that stranger, even feared its presence. It wasn’t him. But he would use its savagery one more time for just one reason: He wanted, needed, to get home just long enough to see his mother and take back the words he’d had years to regret saying."
"They called him the Sadist because he was as cruel as he was beautiful. Owned by Dorothea SaDiablo, he’d been a pleasure slave for centuries and wore the Ring of Obedience."
"No slave who went into her Territory ever came out again. No slave survived being owned by the Gray-Jeweled Queen who was standing outside the pen, so silent and so still, looking at him."
"Now all he believed in was cold hatred and rage. He was a Red-Jeweled Warlord from Shalador. He was Blood. He’d fight her, and die in the fighting. That was better than cringing and cowering while she tore him apart piece by piece."
"Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding."
"Be careful, little man," she said in an awful, quiet voice before she turned around and walked out.
"I’d—I’d rather walk." He took a deep breath. Took another.
"What he had lost, what the wild stranger had taken away, was the fire and passion that made a Jeweled male a Warlord."
"One action would have been considered a challenge; the other, a lack of appreciation."
"Pleasure slaves were considered geldings who still had their balls. At least some of them did."
"I won’t be long, darling. Why don’t you amuse yourself? I want you hot when I get back."
"Pet slaves had their uses, especially when it came to spying on other slaves."
"She’s a minor Queen from one of the Hundred Families. Her tendency to voice questionable opinions has caused great embarrassment and distress for her family."
"You’re just a bastard some landen bitch had because a Warlord’s dangle got stiff. You don’t deserve to sit in the wagon. You don’t deserve to eat up our food. You don’t deserve to live."
"He has every right to his share of the supplies. He has every right to be treated with courtesy. He has every right to live, you selfish little prick!"
"Lady! It’s the males’ right to discipline their own."
"This isn’t her fertile time, so she’ll still have that asset when her family contracts a marriage for her."
"If we walk together, we'll both have some time and privacy for thinking."
"Despite your Jewels, you don't have balls enough and you aren't man enough to serve her."
"You're the one who wears the Red, Warlord. So show some balls and do something."
"And you haven't done anything I would have done differently."
"It's my moon-time. I don't have to spread my legs when it's my moon-time."
"He said a Warlord Prince my age, being used as a pleasure slave, would be twisted out of all recognition or have the heart torn out of him."
"You can't help being what you are, any more than men like Brock and Randolf can help being wary of what you are."
"Because I'm standing on the edge of the same battleground."
"A moment later, Blaed let out a shout that had Jared scrambling to his feet, expecting an ambush of some kind. When nothing happened, he swore with all the creative violence he could muster."
"Do that again without a good reason and I’ll break your neck," Jared snarled.
"Why would a Warlord Prince put a Sapphire trip wire across the lane?" Jared asked Blaed.
"Wasn’t meant as a trip wire," Blaed replied absently as he continued to study the bushes. "You were supposed to sense it and stop."
"Hell’s fire," Jared muttered, watching Garth trot toward the others.
"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."
"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."
"He didn’t want to imagine what had been added to that Ebon-gray spell, but he was certain it would be able to smash through Red and Gray shields—and smash through their minds as well."
"The Blood honored the Darkness because it meant endings and beginnings; it was the fertile dark of land and womb that nurtured the seeds of life."
"The only thing he’d be granted is the chance to whore his honor for the illusion of freedom," Jared snapped. "He’d never really be trusted, never really be free. He wouldn’t be wearing a Ring he could feel or see, but he’d be trapped by it all the same," he finished softly.
"Freedom from pain. Freedom from the constant physical reminder that your body belonged to someone else who could use you, hurt you, sell you, maim you simply because she wanted to. Freedom to have a lover, maybe even children. Freedom, for the price of giving up honor."
"You may own my body, but you’re never going to own my soul."
"Is wearing the Invisible Ring making you suffer?" "Yes!" "Good!"
"Lady, you’ve got a lot of brass to call anything anyone else does stupid or dangerous."
"You don’t need a pleasure slave," he snarled as he stomped to the wagon, "you need a keeper."
"Hell’s fire, Lady," Jared growled as he tried to loosen her hands. "This can’t be the first time a man has offered to undress you."
"You’re a virgin. Hell’s fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful, you’re a virgin."
"There are no slaves in Dena Nehele," she said coldly, and shifted just enough to let him know his touch was no longer welcome.
"Home?" Jared’s voice broke. His heart started again with a leap. "You send them home?"
"What do you know about my people or my family?" She swung her legs off the bench and sucked air through her teeth. "And don’t you dare insult my father!"
"What kind of man would stand back and let you do this?" "What would you have done if your Queen ordered you to let your daughter go?" "I would have fought it!" "He did! He lost."
"By breaking or enslaving the strongest and the best, they keep the rest of the people submissive, too afraid to fight or speak against them."
"She refused." "One of the witches in her First Circle volunteered to go to Raej to buy the Queen’s nephew. She took two guards with her. None of them came back."
"It became a subtle way to fight Dorothea. Some of the males went home, fiercely determined to keep Hayll’s taint from spreading. Others settled in Dena Nehele or one of the surrounding Territories."
"Did she ever find her friend’s nephew?" Lia shuddered. "Yes. The fourth time she went to the auction."
"My father would say you haven't grown into your skin yet."
"Even a man who is loved and trusted is feared a little during these days."
"When you married me, you granted me the right to fuss."
"Everything has a price, Jared. You can't take a man's pleasure without taking a man's responsibilities, too."
"No woman, especially a virgin Queen, should experience this kind of fear."
"Please don't be afraid of me, Lia. I won't hurt you. I swear by the Jewels I won't hurt you."
"We were ready for them. A perfect ambush about a mile from that bridge."
"I’m an intelligent woman, a skilled Healer. Why am I living in a house with four males?"
"She hadn’t wanted to see me. The anguish in her eyes was all the warning I needed."
"I do not understand this Darkness that the Blood honor. It is not... evil?"
"I know I should put it away, but, Hell’s fire, it feels good to wear it again."
"Banked, that’s true, except for those times when it becomes too fierce to control and I have to surrender to the bed and give in to the rut."
"A Queen doesn’t have to explain herself to any man."
"Gran has an arrangement with all of the rogues in the Tamanara Mountains."
"The fight did provide a reason for the explosion."
"It felt like falling headfirst into a giant spittoon."
"I may not like him, but if you let that Black Widow bitch tend Garth, he’s liable to walk out of that wagon with one arm instead of two."
"We were pretending to have a fight in order to create a distraction."
"What went wrong in the village? We left to get some supplies. We came back."
"It’s not like the tangled web that almost trapped you. It’s less and more and worse."
"Hell's fire, Jared, I'm not a trained guard."
"Serving in a First Circle's not easy, is it?"
"Then, if we're lucky, we'll all be destroyed completely."
"There are good reasons why the dark-Jeweled Blood are feared, Jared."
"I do wear a Ring. I wear the Invisible Ring."
"Get her on the bed. We'll finish this discussion later."
"The first rule of a sickroom was that no anger, no fear, no violent emotions were permitted because they could be absorbed into a healing, neutralizing or even destroying a Healer’s efforts."
"Being tired is no excuse for being an idiot."
"If you expect to be of any use to her tomorrow when she needs you, you’ll eat and get some rest tonight."
"You’ve heard what they would admit to, what the scars on their bodies won’t allow them to deny. But they aren’t going to tell you about the other kinds of wounds or the deep scars you can’t see."
"No man would tell a young Queen about the kinds of twisted games that are played in those courts. We’re all scarred, Lia. We’re stripped of our honor and our pride."
"Daemon’s golden eyes turned to hard, yellow stones. 'Because she stands against Dorothea.'"
"You may have heard the women the Gray Lady brought out of Raej talk about being enslaved and the brutality they endured, but you don’t know what it’s like for the males. You can’t."
"As bad as it is for a Jeweled male, it’s ten times worse for a Blood male whose inner barriers can be pried open by any Jeweled female who wants to toy with him."
"Tomas might have lived another year or two. But if you hadn’t bought him, he never would have known kindness, never would have known what it was like to serve a Lady who cared about him."
"If you want to avenge Tomas, continue to be the strong Queen you are. Don’t let Hayll’s shadow fall over Dena Nehele."
"May the Darkness grant you a safe and speedy journey."
"Hell’s fire! What had the High Priestess been thinking of to loan the Sadist to a witch who’d had half of her brains bred out of her?"
"It appears someone else was as bored as I was if keeping track of everyone else’s movements was the best entertainment available."
"You go on, Jared. Find out what’s happened to your people."
"Whoever said males were sensible obviously never met either of you."
"They raped some of them, just like they raped the land."