Free Cursed by Fire by Jacquelyn Frank Page A

brightly, “I daresay this isn’t the topic for proper dinner conversation. You’ve put us all off our meals. Come, tell us a funny little story to chase away this doom and gloom.”
    “Why tell a different story when this one is already so humorous,” Dethan said, his frown anything but amused. “You sit here dining, joking, going to the fair, posturing, and preening, and all the while the beasts outside are whittling away at your defenses. I have hardly heard of anything funnier.” Dethan moved to get to his feet, disgusted with the lot of them. “I’ll take my leave before your barbarians make it to the dinner table,” he said.
    “No!” To everyone’s shock, the grandina came out of her seat and grabbed on to his arm. She leaned so much of her weight into her grasp that his biceps bulged to a heftily rounded mass of muscle. “Please do not give up on us. We are not as ignorant as we seem. Surely we are not as unworthy. Please, I beg of you to stay.”
    “Selinda!” Grannish snapped, his tone appalled and his expression aghast. “A grandina does not beg anything from such common filth!”
    “Quiet!” she hissed at him, that defiant fire Dethan had seen earlier rearing its head with a vengeance. It raced over her features beneath the veil, causing every muscle in her body to stiffen. It was as though it took every ounce of the energy in her body to stand up to that man. Because it obviously cost her so much, Dethan let himself be detained. He looked through the crosshatching of her veil down into her eyes, their vivid teal so full of her desperation. It was such a powerful thing. She made it a powerful thing. As though her entire life hinged on him staying. Him. A stranger of no fame and no fortune, only the words on his lips to recommend him, and yet she was willing to throw weight behind him. “He has spokenmore truth in these past minutes than has been spoken at this table in years,” she said fiercely. “Father, if you do not see the wisdom of his words, then … then … then you are not the grand I thought you were.”
    “Sit down!” Grannish spat out, leaping to his feet and leaning across the table as though he wanted to grab hold of the grandina and shove her into her seat. “You are making a spectacle of yourself!” For some reason this made the redhead on Selinda’s left snort out a laugh, as if to say, What do you expect from
her
.
    “Daughter, he is a stranger,” the grand said, but it was with a thoughtful gleam in his eyes. His daughter seized hold of the hope to be found in that fleeting expression.
    “Perhaps we need a stranger to look at this from the outside. Perhaps we have been sitting in the middle of it for so long that we no longer can think of a new way of dealing with the situation.”
    “Selinda. Please.” The grand gestured to her chair, and after a moment with her jaw set in resistance, she slowly regained her seat. A pointed look from the grand put Grannish back in his seat as well. “It will do none of us any good to become hot tempered about this business. If we tear one another to shreds, it will make it all the easier for the Redoe to pick over our remains. Sor, if you would be so kind as to confer with my general on the morrow, perhaps you can lend insight to—”
    “No. I cannot.”
    The grand’s last word hung suspended on his lips even as his eyes widened a little at the understanding that he had been both interrupted and denied.
    “You cannot?” the grand echoed.
    “I have pressing business and have no time to waste,” Dethan explained, though he did not know why he was making excuses. He had never done so before. He saw a thing, wanted a thing, and he took that thing. He did allof this with little regard for the collateral damage it would cause. And even now, he saw no reason to be concerned with any other details … save one.
    He did not know why, but the undercurrent to the way the grandina was being treated, to the way she was regarded