“You are a victim. To your life,” she said. “But you are not to blame, so do not think that you are. You have made every effort to shape the future to the better. In fact, recently you have taken a great step toward the future. Very recently.”
“Is it … is it the right choice, this step?”
“Hmm. Perhaps it is. Or perhaps it is not about right or wrong. It is about better or worse. You will not have made anything worse,” she said.
“Encouraging,” Selinda said wryly. She would have rolled her eyes if she weren’t afraid of it hurting her head.
The mem chuckled. “Now, now. Sometimes that is the best kind of future. One that does not get worse.”
She had a point. Right now Selinda would settle for things not getting any worse. After Grannish’s threats today, things could very easily get worse.
“What else do you see?”
“Well, it is the soul and mind and heart runes that have me most intrigued. This heart rune, it is the symbol for fire and light. And the mind rune is a very powerful rune. But the soul rune is blocked. It is as though … as though what you really are is being kept inside. Yes! I have seen this combination before! It was in a young man who used to have these terrible chest pains … like your head pains … and it turned out that he was a latent mage! He needed to tap into his power and release it. Once he did, he never had pain again. Does magery run in your family?” she asked quickly, seeming to grow very excited.
“No! And everyone knows you have to have a mage bloodline in order to be a mage!” Selinda sat up, shoving the runes off her body. “What trickery is this?” she demanded to know. “Did Grannish send you? Is this his idea of a joke?”
“No! Your ladyship, no! I promise you this is no joke,” she said imploringly, holding out a calming hand. “I would not joke about something so serious. A magess who does not use her gifts is a waste of an important talent, but it is also highly dangerous to her. Please … I beg you to listen to me. If you do not believe me, then at least try to do something … try to use your magery on something.”
“Like what?” Selinda asked suspiciously.
“Well … here!” Mem Josepha hurried to the table nearby and poured water from the pitcher into a crystal glass. “Water. It is as pure an element as you can find, and in some way every mage has the ability to bend water to their will. Take the glass in your hands and focus on it. Concentrate all the pain in your head into this glass of water.”
Feeling foolish, Selinda did as the mem said. Of course she didn’t believe she was a magess for even a second, but she would entertain the mem.
As expected, nothing happened. The glass of still water just remained a glass of still water.
“Well done,” the mem said with satisfaction.
“Well done?” Selinda asked incredulously. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Nothing?” the mem asked archly.
“No! Nothing! And this isn’t funny anymore.”
“How does your head feel?” the mem asked persistently.
“It feels …” Better. Significantly so, Selinda realized with surprise.
“You see? You were able to release some of your power after all!”
“But the water didn’t do anything,” Selinda said with confusion.
“And you expected to go from nothing to casting fire or ice in the blink of an eye?” Mem Josepha chuckled. “Dearest, you did not walk without crawling first and you did not crawl until you learned to roll over.”
“Do not be so familiar with me,” Selinda snapped. She didn’t believe this. Not any of it. And she certainly had more important things to worry about. It was already coming around to the evening meal, and soon it would be juquil’s hour and she would be required to go to her new lover’s bed. “Thank you for your services. You are dismissed. Hanit, see her out,” she said shortly.
“Very well, my lady,” the mem said graciously, gathering her runes back into her bag and giving Selinda a respectful bow. “If you need me further, you may call on me any time, day or night, and I will come to you. And my lady?”
“Yes?” Selinda sighed in a cross between irritation and exasperation.
“I am yours,” she said. “I am true to only one other person above you and that is my goddess. You need never fear my loyalty. Serving you serves my goddess and that means everything to me.”
The statement of devotion did much to soften Selinda’s irritation toward the other woman. She wasn’t sure she believed her, but just hearing the statement made her feel better.
“Very well. Good night to you, Mem. Hanit will see you paid.”
“Thank you, your ladyship.”
With another bow, the priestess slipped out of Selinda’s rooms.
CHAPTER
TEN
The difference in how Selinda felt by the time she went down to join the others at table was remarkable. Especially considering she ought to be more concerned about the impending encounter come juquil’s hour. But that was some time away and she allowed herself the luxury of not thinking about it.
There was nothing relaxing about their meal. She felt the ominous presence of Grannish seated next to her—he had since switched seats with Dethan, seeing him settled across the table and down a few seats, as was befitting his station. But she felt it was more to make a point. Grannish held all the power in that household and he was making sure she knew it.
Still, she found herself looking over toward Dethan often. He looked haler and heartier than she had remembered from earlier. Had he grown even more muscular? Was such a thing even possible? She could see the massive width of his shoulders under his shirt and, she noticed, the vest he had been wearing earlier was gone, only to have appeared on a page now seated at the servants’ table, which was set aside from the masters’ table. The body servants, personal pages and pagettes, were allowed to dine at the same time as their masters because it made them readily available at all times. The household servants were another matter entirely. Like their masters’ table, the servants’ table was arranged by rank. Hanit sat close to the head of the table and Selinda could see that her pagette’s interest strayed often to the new page. Almost as often as Selinda’s attention drifted to his master.
Was it her mistaking or did he look almost completely free of his burns and scarring? She remembered them being more prominent that morning. They had been nearly bone deep the night previous. None of it should be possible, and yet it was. She wondered if anyone else had taken note of the difference between day and night. Then again, by morning he had appeared mostly healed … though the differences might not be noticed unless one was obsessing over his appearance as she was.
It was still light out, sunset an hour away. The main dining room was dark and shadowed for the most part. It was lit brightly by lamps, but lamps cast shadows and played tricks on the eyes. Perhaps she was seeing it all wrong to begin with.
But she didn’t think so.
Once again Dethan did not make it entirely through the evening meal before he was hastily excusing himself. His page, after some urging by Hanit, immediately followed. Strange. What kind of page needed to be told how to behave?
Dethan had procured horses for himself and his page earlier that day from the stables, but it was only his horse he had made certain was saddled and ready to go half an hour before dusk, giving him thirty minutes to make the ten minute ride to the cavern, which allowed plenty of time for potential holdups or trouble.
He had no intention of telling Tonkin what was about to happen. He had come prepared this time with a cloak, intending that the darkness and the folds of the garment would hide the worst of his punishment’s results from any curious eyes.
“No, Tonkin. Go finish your meal and find your bed in your room adjacent to mine. I will not need you anymore tonight.”
“Are you certain, my lord?”
“Most certain. Good eve and good night.”
He urged his horse onward and headed out of the bailey at a gallop.
She had braided her hair and pinned it decoratively to her head. Then she’d found herself fussing. Primping in other ways. This time she had painted her lips, although in a more subdued fashion than the brilliant sunset colors. She didn’t want to look too eager. Then she’d perfumed herself—not too heavily like some women did, choking anyone in range, but lightly. Sweetly. Using her most delicately scented perfume.
With a touch of lotion to soften her hands, she deemed herself ready and presentable. But just as she was about to go, her stomach sickened with nerves. She reached out and grabbed on to Hanit, in whom she had confided everything.
“My lady, perhaps you should rethink this bargain. If he should get you with child …”
“I believe that is partly his purpose in this,” she said in a soft, heated whisper. “And it is not an idea I am adverse to. I’d rather a bastard child than one of Grannish’s. But the child would be in danger every day of its life as long as Grannish remained in favor. It would need a strong father and protector.”
“Strong or not, nothing can defy poison. Grannish’s favored weapon,” Hanit reminded her with disgust.
“I know. I think the only reason my brother lives is because he is a backup plan. Grannish cannot marry him, but he could control him. Be king by proxy.”
“My lady, that would require your father’s dea—No! He would not dare!”
Selinda looked at her hard. “Wouldn’t he?”
“I … I suppose he would at that. I forgot about his earlier threats.”
“How could you? I never will. I am thinking of them even now as I ready to do this thing.” She took a deep breath. “I am to be off, then,” she said shakily and moved herself out the door.
Once she had left the safety of her rooms, she moved with haste through the fortress, terrified with every minute that she would be seen. Earlier a page—not Dethan’s new one—had been sent to tell her that Dethan’s rooms had been moved. She was grateful for this because it meant she had a shorter distance to go. However, it took her past the rooms of those who would recognize her. Luckily most of them would be safe in their beds by now.
She stopped in front of his door, nervously hoping she had the right rooms. She was about to push in on the handle when a sudden hulking presence came up behind her, covering her hand with his. She squealed a short, crisp sound of panic and jerked about … only to look up into the burned face of the man she was supposed to be meeting. She gasped in horror at the sight and smell of him. He looked even worse than the night before and this close she could smell the burnt flesh on his body; he overwhelmed her with his presence. He hushed her gently, then used her hand to open the door. She hurried into the room and he staggered in behind her. The first thing he did was drop his cloak from his shoulders and skim out of his pants, all the while gritting back sounds of torment. The feel of the clothes must have been agonizing.
Selinda leapt into action, helping him toward his bedchamber and into his bed. He could only bear to sit up on the edge of it, gritting his teeth and breathing hard through them.
“What is this?” she demanded to know. “Why does this keep happening to you?”
He remained stubbornly close-mouthed. With a sound that was a hybrid of frustration and anger at him, she marched back through his sitting room and banged on the door to the opposite suite room, raising the page from his sleep. He came to the door looking grouchy and tired.
“What’s this, then? Can’t a man get some sleep?”
“You are a page,” Selinda reminded him. “You are beholden to your master at any time of the day or night.”
“Well, if I’d known that, I might not have taken the job!”
Selinda stared at him incredulously. “Your master needs you direly and you are complaining about having a job most would kill for in these times?”
That brought him up to his full height, which was not inconsiderable. He rivaled his master in both height and build. He had stood out amongst the prettier page boys that night at supper.
“Right. Sorry, my lady.” Then he seemed to recognize her and his eyes went a little wider. He hastened to bow to her, but she stopped him impatiently.
“Enough of that. Go to the kitchens and fetch me a bottle of hyaita juice, some kettle greed, gloaming goat, and juni beet juice. Do you know where the kitchens are?”
“Found them first thing,” the man said with a pat on his belly and a chuckle. “Will anyone be there? How will I know where all these things are and what they are?”
Selinda sighed with impatience. “You are right and I am sorry. Go find my rooms and fetch my pagette. Tell her what I need and you can go together. Now, be quick about it!”
“Yes, my lady. Right away, and I don’t mind seeing that pretty Hanit again, I do say!” And he was off like a shot before she could say anything further in reprimand. “You could have put a shirt on,” she said to the empty room. No doubt the page was going to shock her conservative Hanit.
She moved back into the bedroom.
“Now, you are going to tell me what is going on right this very instant,” she said sternly to Dethan, her hands on her hips. “And I will not accept any dithering about it. The truth. Right now!”
“It’s a curse,” he said after only a moment in which she was certain he was considering arguing with her. “I’m to be burned, every night, from dusk to juquil’s hour.”
“Oh my sweet merciful gods,” she breathed. That was why he left in the middle of dinner!
“The gods are anything but merciful, I assure you,” he said bitterly. “It is they who have cursed me. And rightfully so. I was a man of much arrogance and am made to suffer for it.”
“And the other part?” she asked.
“What other part?”
“The part where you heal with incredible rapidity.”
He laughed bitterly. “Another part of my curse, although this was self-inflicted. I am immortal. I cannot be killed.”
She gasped with disbelief. “That’s impossible!”
“Oh, it is quite possible, I assure you. I have been burned to the bone, chained in the eight hells, every minute of every day for the past … What is the turning, anyway?”
“The turning? It’s twenty and twenty-two.”
“Gods, it has been nearly two hundred full turnings.”
“Two hundred full turnings!” she cried. “You’ve been … But that is … Oh my gods.” She knew it was true. Every last bit of it. She knew it because she could see it in his face.
“I don’t want anyone to know. Not even Tonkin.”
“Someone is eventually bound to notice. I have. And it would be best if your man was by your side for this. Where do you go every night?” Understanding rushed through her. “You go to the mouth. You go back into the hells.”
“Not fully. I can barely make myself cross the threshold of the mouth.”
“I can imagine why.” Sympathy tugged through her.
“Do not feel badly for me. I am not an innocent victim. I am made to suffer because I deserve to suffer.”
“No one deserves this,” she said harshly. “And certainly not two hundred full turnings of it. How did you get out? Did you somehow escape?”
“Weysa set me free. Not entirely, as you see. But she gave me my days back and I am grateful for that.”
“So … you knew that every night you would be weak and injured?”
“Yes,” he said.
Understanding dawned in her eyes and she sagged into a sitting position on the bed beside him. “You knew. You knew you couldn’t touch me in this condition! You made me worry and fret, and all this time …”
He reached out
then, snagging her wrist and pulling her eyes to his with the action. “I will not be this injured the whole of the night. I will heal. And you are mine until just before dawn. I promised you that you would be able to test my abilities as a lover and I intend to deliver on that promise.” But the moment he saw the anxiety clawing its way up into her eyes, he eased. “But only when you are ready, my lady. You think little of me if you think I will force myself upon you.”
She cleared her throat and looked down at their connected hands. “And if I never want to … to …?”
“Oh, you will want to. I promise you that.”
“I could easily say I don’t. Whether I mean it or not.”
“You mean you would lie. Somehow I doubt you will do that. You are not the lying sort.”
“How do you know what sort I am?” she asked softly, looking down again. “You barely know me.”
“I know enough. I know enough to know you are honest. That you are strong and brave, that you are a champion of those less fortunate than you are. I know you would have kissed that barbarian had I not stepped forward, because he had been promised a prize and you were willing to live up to that promise however repugnant you found it. Tell me … was that one of Grannish’s ideas?”
She flushed and lowered her lashes, but not before he could see the fire of anger entering her eyes.
“He loves to humiliate me at every opportunity. He probably paid that barbarian to win. It is just the sort of machination he likes to take part in.”
“That sounds a little paranoid,” he mused.
“With good cause,” she muttered.
“No doubt. Tomorrow I am to inspect the city guard and I wish to begin to accept volunteers of additional troops. Conscription will come later.”
“It seems a sound plan,” she said.
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