the confusion of Lord Karsten’s collapse that made her curious about him. The stables were dark and cool and smelled like horses and fresh straw—none of the foul odors that would hint of slovenliness. Rialla felt herself relax in the familiar atmosphere. The horse she was leading whinnied piercingly at the scent of the unfamiliar animals. A stable boy appeared from a nearby stall. He tossed Rialla a friendly smile and reached for the reins, saying, “The healer’s beastie, eh? Here now, I’ll cool

she had about the healer. She had been so worried about Laeth that she had forgotten what his imprisonment would mean to his slave. Ren had promised that she wouldn’t remain a slave, no matter how the bones fell, but she’d rather not risk it. She also would rather not see Laeth executed for a crime he didn’t commit. The problem was that she couldn’t do anything about Laeth or her impending return to slavery. She was effectively immobilized on the wrong side of the Darranian border, with a tattoo

rest breaks. Rialla sat quietly a little apart from the others, but close enough to listen to the other slaves gossip softly together. Most of what they said was unimportant; they were too conscious of Rialla to talk about Lord Winterseine or anything else interesting enough to get them into trouble should the Master hear about it. If she continued being unobtrusive, they would forget her, but it was going to take time. With a sigh, Rialla relaxed and closed her eyes. Carefully she lowered her

firmly in her right. “Have you forgotten? I am an empath.” The unexpectedness of her move kept Winterseine momentarily motionless, and then it was too late. Rialla caught him in a maelstrom of emotion. This time there was no room full of people for her to draw upon, only Winterseine himself. She ignored her instinctive revulsion and sought the faint trails of destructive emotion that he kept hidden from himself in the far recesses of his mind. She ignored the rage that had more than a touch of

happened: Terran had knocked her away from Winterseine in the moment before she would have joined him in perpetual madness. The emotional torment she’d just been through precluded any sort of emotion at all. She couldn’t even manage to be worried about Tris. There would be time enough for that, she supposed, if Terran allowed her to live long enough to discover how Tris had fared. She could hear Terran mutter over his father, but she didn’t think that even the power of the gods could restore