Cursed by Fire (11 page)

“Father, please! I am not mistaking anything! Look … look at my hands where they were scraped upon the floor from when he pushed me down!”

Her father barely glanced at her hands, but he frowned and she took it as encouragement. “In a few hours’ time the bruises on my arms will also be visible. Please, Father, do not make me marry him!”

“Daughter,” he said grimly, looking her in the eye, “I trust Grannish with my life and yours. With the lives of all in this kingdom. He has served us very well and deserves to be grand. And you should know … there have been no other suitors, nor are there likely to be any. I love you and therefore find you beautiful, but this”—he reached up and stroked a thumb over the ridged scar on her face—“has kept any other decent man away. I’m sorry to have to be truthful to you. No one else has asked for you.”

“I don’t care,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I will serve as granda alone, and when I die Drakin will become grand and his children his heirs.”

“Your youngest brother is sickly and will not live beyond his maturing years,” her father said grimly. “I have come to face that. If I want my dynasty to continue, I need you to bear children. And before you say it, you know that any child born outside the marriage bed would be constantly called into question.”

“Why?” she demanded to know. “It is my body that has our bloodline within it and a child will be born of that body, married or not! In fact, it is more possible to assure a bloodline from a woman than it is from a man! A woman grows the baby of her blood, expels it from her womb, but no one can ever know who the father truly is, marriage or no! Why, it is said that Lord Harkness has fathered none of his children, that all were gotten by the affairs of his wife! And yet they will inherit his titles and his lands.” She scoffed. “It’s foolish and ridiculous.”

“Be that as it may, if you want a respectful life, you will marry and bear your children legitimately. If you do not like Grannish … well, you must find a way to like him. He does you a great honor by taking you into his arms and his house. Try to remember that.”

“More like it is I who do him the honor,” she said acidly. “He wants nothing more than to be grand.”

“Well, who wouldn’t?” her father asked with a low chuckle. “Everyone wishes to be grand. You cannot hold that against him. Now, give me a hug and a smile. I will talk with Grannish and we will clear the matter up between us.”

“No!” she cried, in a sudden panic.

“Well, then what do you want me to do?” he asked, clearly exasperated.

“I … I just don’t want to marry him,” she said quietly. Dejectedly.

“I’ll speak with Grannish and have him come to you in my presence and reassure you. Now off with you. Go and do those things you women always do to pass the time. I’ll hear no more about this.”

And he had sent her away.

He had been true to his word, calling her into the room with himself and Grannish, and Grannish had smiled and simpered, had said all the right reassuring things, but all the while she had looked in his eyes and she had seen the rage boiling just beneath the surface. So she had meekly accepted his words in front of her father.

And she had feared.

Within hours she had been stricken with sickness, her stomach in flux, with painful cramps, nausea, and vomiting. She had been thoroughly sick, sweating violently one moment, then chilled the next. Was it a coincidence, or was it Grannish’s retribution? She was convinced it was the latter. She had been sick for three days and it had taken seven more before she had been up to her usual health. She had been poisoned. She was sure of it. And suddenly she saw her brother’s illnesses in a whole new light. What if Grannish was poisoning her baby brother in an effort to make certain she was the only heir? What if the illnesses and accidents that had taken
the lives of her older siblings had not been accidents? Jorry had been heir first and promised from birth to a beautiful and sweet-natured young woman named Glenna. But Jorry had died while swimming, a strong swimmer somehow drowning in a shallow pool. It was believed he had hit his head on a rock, rendering him unconscious in the water. But what if the strike on his head had been deliberate?

And then Kyna, who became heir after Jorry had died. A strong boy suddenly stricken with illness, taken from the world in less than two days in a vicious, suffering form of death.

Leaving her as the next heir. The first female in line for the throne. The first access to grand available to Grannish. But that did not explain her younger sisters’ deaths by plague. If she so repulsed him, he could easily have had her murdered as well and taken one of her younger sisters to bride. Indeed Arra had been lauded as a great beauty and had been much sought after in spite of her young age. But that beauty had withered and died.

Or maybe Grannish had planned on Selinda’s death but had been waiting until it would not look so obvious on the heels of Kyna’s death … only the plague had taken her sisters naturally, thwarting that possibility.

She would never know the truth unless somehow she got him to confess it to her. Even so, he was perverse enough to admit to it freely, then watch her flail about trying to get her father to listen to her, all the while stroking her father into believing her emotional or even mad. Gods above, perhaps that was his eventual goal. To make everyone think her mad. Selinda shuddered at the thought, knowing that rich or poor, lowborn or highborn, those with madness found true equality in treatment, and it was not a pretty life to lead. Indeed she would wish herself penniless and worse disfigured
before she would wish herself to be proved mad. The asylum … it was outside of the city walls, the belief being that madness was contagious. Outside the walls, the asylum was largely undefended. The Redoe sacked it regularly, doing what they willed with the inhabitants and their keepers. And she had heard stories … such horrible stories …

Her thoughts had brought her breathing to panicked levels, her fists clenching so hard that her nails were digging into the soft flesh of her palms. She licked the sweat off her upper lip and stared all the harder out the window. Soon. He would come back soon. He
must
come back.

Oh my beloved goddess, please let him come back. I ask you for so little, and even this is in relation to the prayers I most frequently send up to you. He is your instrument to aid me. I know it. I see it! I swear to you I will not let this gift go to waste. I will—

Her prayer froze in her head as a body appeared in the light of the bailey. He walked in, his gait off center and almost … staggering. Drunk, she thought bitterly. He had taken some of his gold and gone off to carouse. She should not be shocked; indeed she was not shocked. She knew of men and their fallibility. But it made no difference to her. He had earned his celebrations tonight. She would have thrown a party for him herself had she been able to.

Selinda hastened to her feet, stumbling when she realized her legs had cramped up from sitting so long in one position. She shrugged off her shawl, bent to look quickly into a mirror, and made certain to arrange her hair so it fell over the left side of her face. Then, feet bare upon the cold stone, she flew out of her rooms and down the back stairwells. She was cautious enough not to be seen, knowing Grannish had spies around every corner, but she had to risk this … or the opportunity
would be lost. He might leave if she didn’t do something, and she desperately wanted … no,
needed
him to stay.

She headed through the back corridors toward the rooms she knew he’d been given. She was just around the corner from it when she saw a light coming in her direction. She ducked into the thick arch of another doorway, squeezing herself into the shadow and cover it provided her. He was wearing a hooded cloak and being led by a page boy.

“Do you need any other assistance, sor?” the boy asked.

“No,” came the rough reply. His voice sounded more harsh than it did drunk, she thought. His words were not slurred but were hoarse. “Go,” he commanded of the boy. She could not see him in the shadows of his cloak, but she could hear the dismissal in his voice. As could the page no doubt because he departed quickly after that, leaving him the lantern he’d used to provide light along the way. Dethan then moved into his rooms and shut the door behind him. Selinda silently crept up to the door.

Dethan barely managed to place the lantern on the rickety little table the room provided before stumbling toward the bed. He should have waited longer, he told himself. Should have let himself heal more. Instead he had crept into town, stolen a cloak, and headed back to the fortress, driven by one thing and one thing only: the idea of a bed. He had not known the comfort of a bed in hundreds of years. Or at least it had felt like hundreds of years. He still did not know how long he had lain chained in torment. He had already seen many strange new things in the world. Building materials alone in the finer parts of town, this fortress included, set things apart. Not all the stone was the harsh gray of unmatched rock hewn from the ground, but there were
large matching slabs of it in wondrous colors polished and smooth. There was also the carriage the grandina had traveled in. And the finely tooled tack on the horses.

But none of that mattered to him right then. All he cared about was that the bed was sturdy. Whatever the comfort level, it would be more than he’d had before.

That was when he heard it. The creak of the door on its hinges. Another difference. In his day hinging had been with leather. These were metal and squeaked noisily. He waited until the door shut, pretending he had not heard it. He waited until the person came closer, then, just when the bastard reached out to attack him, he whirled about, grabbed the outstretched arm, and swiftly moved to snap the assailant’s arm in two at the long bone by yanking it hard in a lever of counterforce and the drive of his elbow.

But at the very last instant before his elbow struck down he found himself looking into frightened eyes of stunning teal. Shocked, he stopped himself from further injuring her. As it was, he may have already dislocated her shoulder. He placed a hand on her breastbone and shoved her away from him. She stumbled back, tripping on the hem of her gown, the sound of the fabric tearing filling the room as she struggled to regain her balance.

“What are doing you here?” he demanded roughly of her. “Do you realize I could have ripped your arm off?” He found himself checking to be sure she hadn’t had a weapon after all. She had none that he could see.

“I’m sorry, but I needed to talk with you,” she said in earnest. “I did not mean to startle you, but I was afraid to knock and someone was coming down the hall. I could not afford to be seen.”

“Yes, you would not wish to be seen with one such as me,” he said bitterly.

“It is not my honor I am worried about. Although I
am expected to be chaste until my wedding day, I promise you I do not care about that. In fac—”

“Chaste,” he said incredulously. “A woman is expected to be chaste until she is wed?” He scoffed. “I have never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. What has chastity to do with honor? Either you are true or you are not. That is where your honor will lie once you are wed. As for chastity, why would you not want to know if your lover can perform to your satisfaction? You cannot know this unless you try him out to begin with. To be ignorant of that until you are wed and saddled with the man is ludicrous.”

“It does not matter. Women rarely have the choice of the man they are going to marry anyway. Highborn women at least. Sometimes I think it might be better to be poor and without a title. Then one might choose freely about … many things.”

“You only say that because you have never been poor,” he said in a rumble of irritation. “I think the mud farmers of your city would wish otherwise if it meant constant food in their mouths and fine clothes on their backs.”

“Listen to me, I did not come here to argue the merits of being wealthy,” she said with exasperation. “And will you please pull back your hood? I cannot see you!”

Before Dethan could stop her, before he even knew what she was doing, she reached up and shoved back his hood. All it took was one look at him and she released a horrified gasp. She stumbled back, catching herself on the rickety table.

“My gods! What happened to you?”

And that was as long as her horror lasted. The next instant she was near him again, her lithe body and full skirts pressing against him and causing him pain, but at the same time they felt so good that he bit back the sound of agony brewing behind his lips. Her delicate
fingers flew near his face, as though she would touch him; yet knowing she would hurt him if she did so, she kept an inch of distance between her fingers and his face.

“By the queen goddess, you must be in agony!” she cried on a fierce whisper. “Come, you must sit.” She tugged at his cloak, urging him toward the bed, and he found he had little choice but to obey her. He had longed for that bed for hours. Had dreamed of it while his body burned over and over again. Had dreamed of her in it with him. But that had been a thought brought on by the madness of pain. Brought on because he had needed anything to keep him from thinking about how badly it hurt.

“This is nothing,” he told her, his voice low and rough. His throat still burned from the fire. And it
was
nothing. Nothing compared to how it had looked an hour ago.

“Sit!” she commanded in her grandina tone of voice, the one with which she was denied nothing by anyone. He obeyed her once more and sat down on the bed. “Stay here. Take off that cloak. The roughness of it must be killing you.”

She reached out and shoved the cloak from his shoulders, exposing the full horror of his burn-riddled body. His very naked body. He could have stolen clothes, he supposed, but the idea of putting them on was just one pain too many.

“Oh. Well … never mind,” she said, her fair cheeks flushing in the lamplight as her eyes stumbled over his dormant cock. Dormant because it was barely regenerated from being burned to near ashes. Otherwise, just the touch of her pretty blue eyes on him might have given him temptation to rise and greet her. Funny, that thought. It was as though becoming erect was second nature … and it was not. Not any longer. He had not
reacted in the ways of a man for much longer than he had been alive originally. He had been thirty summers when he had become immortal and had first been thrust into the hells. He must have been down there nearly ten times that long.