Cursed by Fire

by Jacquelyn Frank

  “Very well,” Selinda relented. “Something to drink, then, Hanit. But you must not let anyone see you. You must make certain no one knows I am still awake.” She would have denied her pagette entirely, but she knew that to deny her too long would make the pagette highly agitated and stressed. The woman lived to serve her, to see to her every last whim or need, and when she was thwarted from that it seemed to almost physically pain her. They had grown close very quickly in the full turning since Selinda’s former pagette had died. Now Selinda could not imagine her life without her trusted servant.

  But Hanit’s agitation was rubbing her own nerves raw. She was anxious enough as it was, going back and forth in her mind about what she must do next. She must somehow convince Dethan to stay in spite of the danger it would present to him.

  Oh, but why would he? she thought with dismay. Why would he want to willingly entangle himself in a mess she prayed daily to be delivered from? Many thought she was so fortunate, so lucky to be the grandina, living in comfort and wealth in a big fortress at the very hub of the city, able to look down upon them all in safety and security.

  Or so they thought. But they did not have to live every day knowing they were promised to Grannish, a man who clearly despised her. Since she could not think of any slights or arguments prior to their engagement that she might have perpetrated against him, she could only assume it was because he did not want to marry her. Or so she had thought at first. Until one day, before she had truly understood who and what he was, she had pulled him aside into the privacy of the grand’s council chamber.

  “My lord Grannish, I wish to speak with you,” she had said hastily, her hands nervously twisting the ends of a long red silken scarf she had been wearing to protect her throat from the chill of the first flush of fall.

  “What is it?” he had asked her impatiently once he had checked to make certain none could see or hear them.

  “I wanted to make an offer to you that should make you very happy. You see, it is very obvious that you do not like me and that you do not wish to marry me. My father must be pressing you into doing this and I can see how unhappy it has made you. I truly do not wish for you to be unhappy. I am certain you are loath to wake up to this every morning.” She reached a shaking hand to touch her veil where it lay over her scar. “I thought that if we went to him together, as a joined force, and convinced him that we would be much happier otherwise, he would have no choice but to release us from the commitment and find other solutions if indeed he seeks to reward us.”

  “Really? Is that what you think we should do?” he asked archly, one thin brow lifting in abject curiosity. Then his hand came out like a shot, grabbing her around her arm and jerking her forward, against his body. “Yes,” he hissed into her shocked face, “it is true I have no desire to wake up to the horrifying visage you bear every morning. In truth the very idea disgusts me to my soul. But as repulsive as you are in the flesh, you are three times more contemptible in your sniveling weakness and your sheer idiocy. You think I want to give up the chance to be grand?” He laughed then, a rolling, overloud sound that echoed off the high ceilings of the chamber. “I have wanted to be grand all my life and now it is here in my grasp.” He looked down at his hands, where they were locked around her, and gave her a shake. “I have known all along what it would take, that it meant I would have to marry in order to achieve it. I have worked and slaved, catered to your father”—the way he said “father” was an utter sneer—“putting up with his moods and maneuvering him away from his ridiculous ideas, all the while keeping other vipers in their place. Truly, it is an exhausting job.” He sighed, as if under the strain of a mighty weight. “And you think I am going to throw it all away because you don’t want to marry me?” He laughed again, this one even more derisive than the first. “As if you have so many options! Even with the opportunity to become grand, your hideousness has put off anyone of decent noble blood. There have been no suitors—not a single one has applied to your father because yes, as you say, they are loath to wake up to your mangled face every morning. I am all you have. So you will shut up and you will be a dutiful wife. I will piss my seed into you and get you with my progeny and try to forgive them for the inferiority of their mother. I will build a dynasty on you and you will take them to breast and see they grow up strong, then I will take them from you before you can warp idiocy into their impressionable little brains. And all the while you will smile and wave to the crowds”—he grabbed her hand at the wrist and waved it, the limp appendage flopping about—“and you will shut up. Maybe if you perform your duties sufficiently I will not kill you once your monthly woman’s blood stops and you can no longer bear me children. And if you think,” he said, his hands tightening on her until she cried out and almost sank to the ground in her pain, “that you will run and cry to your father and tell him all that I have told you, I will deny everything and I will remind him what a flighty, fanciful thing you are, that you merely mistook something I said. And you know what? He will not even care. Oh, he loves you, that much is true, but he does not respect you any more than I do.”

  He shoved her away and she went stumbling back, stepping on her long skirt and tumbling to the hard stone floor, skinning both of the palms she put out just in time to protect her face from hitting the stone.

  “If I hear one word from your father about this, I promise you, you will not enjoy the consequences. So do yourself a favor and do not even try it.”

  She had not heeded him then. She had known in her heart that her father did love her, that he would never marry her to such a cruel and odious man if only he could see the truth of it. She had run and told all.

  He had laughed.

  “Darling girl,” he had said, patting her fondly on her cheek. “Surely you are mistaking the matter. I know Grannish well and he is an honest and honorable man. I think that you are afraid of your upcoming nuptials and are beginning to make things up in your mind. Grannish is as polite and even tempered a man as I know.”

  “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 gr
eat 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 t
he 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.