Buildings rose on either side of her, crumbling hulks wearing locks of ivy and streaming rain from broken windows. In her torch's failing light, they resembled crippled giants, sentinels that guarded Tineroth's ancient roads. The vistas branching off the main path captured darkness thicker than honey. If Cededa lurked in those black closes, she'd never find him. Cursing his name and begging him to show himself, Imogen splashed through puddles and yanked on her soaked skirts where they tangled around her legs.
Her torch gave a dying sizzle just as she reached a fork in the grand avenue. The last weak flame winked out, leaving her standing in a darkness so oppressive, she couldn't even see her hand in front of her face.
"Damnation!"
Her bellowed curse shot through the black, echoing back to her. As if on cue, her torch ignited in her hands, brilliant orange flames leaping high. Imogen shouted another epithet and almost dropped the torch.
"You've a surprisingly foul mouth, Imogen."
Cededa watched her from across the avenue, his shadowy form illuminated by dancing flames. Still as the statues of his kinsmen, he sat cross-legged atop a massive altar amidst the ruins of a temple. Rain dripped down his bare shoulders and chest, darkening his hair. The Tineroth key glowed silver across his collar bones and on his hand.
Imogen wiped tendrils of wet hair from her face and prepared herself to grovel.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cededa held back a pained sigh at the image before him. Unlikely as it might be, Imogen had blossomed during her time with him in Tineroth. Where before he'd seen only a pretty but forgettable girl, he now faced a woman as beautiful and elemental as the storm. She marched toward him, her hair a dark silk falling over her shoulders to her waist, features pinched and resolute.
He took the torch she handed him, releasing his hold so that it hung in midair near him. Imogen grasped the hand he offered her and hoisted herself onto the altar stone. She settled next to him and eyed the floating torch.
"Nice trick."
"I find it useful at times."
She adopted his pose, hiking up her skirts until they bunched above her knees so she could cross her legs. Cededa bid a mournful goodbye to the small measure of peace he'd found in the solitary rain and hoped he wouldn't combust on the spot at the sight and nearness of his greatest temptation.
"Why are you sitting in the rain?"
He rested his arms over his knees and laced his fingers together. "Because I haven't felt true rain in a long time." He raised his face to the drizzle, hoping its coolness might lower the rising heat in his veins. "Tineroth sits between worlds, unchanged by time or tide. You've seen the way the sun shines here?" Imogen nodded. "It's the same each day—as it was the day my mages betrayed me and consigned Tineroth to a vanishing exile." He blinked droplets from his lashes so he might see her more clearly. Rain dripped from the ends of her dark hair, cascading in silver rivulets down her neck and between the gentle swell of her breasts exposed above her bodice. "Until the solstice, Tineroth exists partially in your world. Thus, the storm and why I pay it my respects."
How pathetic he’d become. Once the greatest king in all the world, he now sat on a cracked altar stone of a long-forgotten god and sought solace in a mundane rainstorm.
"What do you want, Imogen?" His abrupt question shattered the quiet.
Her pale fingers clenched the folds of her dripping skirt, and she stared at her lap. “I’ve come to apologize," she said.
Had she told him there were pink dragons fluttering about the forest surrounding the city, he wouldn’t have been half so surprised. He stared at her, mulling over what she might have done that required an apology. He stiffened. Had she found the hidden spring from which the Waters bubbled? Horror twisted his gut into a dozen knots. Had she found it and drunk from it?
“Apologize for what?” he asked through clenched teeth. Sick with dread, he held his breath while he waited for her answer.
She glanced at him briefly before looking away. Tiny raindrops formed jewels on the tips of her eyelashes before falling to splash on her hands. “I forgot my place. Legend you might be, but you are still a king. I’m a hedgewitch’s fosterling.”
Cededa scraped a hand over his face, almost lightheaded with relief. He hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, but she said nothing of the Waters, and he was very good at detecting lies. Imogen didn’t lie.
“I don’t understand,” he said, pleased his voice wasn’t as shaky as his insides felt.
Torchlight revealed her reddening cheeks. “I wanted you to be my teacher, my lover. I overstepped my bounds.”
He’d never survive this conversation if she kept kicking him in the gut. He gaped at her. “Is that what you think?”
“You pushed me away and ordered me not to touch you again,” she said in a small, warbling voice. “You don’t have to be my lover, but please allow my touch. I can’t break the curse myself.”
Cededa offered up a silent plea for patience to whomever might be listening. He reached out to lightly stroke her wet locks. She shivered at the caress but still refused to look at him. “That isn’t quite what I said, Imogen. I told you not to touch me then, in that room, in that moment.”
Her brow knitted, and this time she met his gaze with a puzzled one of her own. “There’s a difference?”
He chuffed and offered her a faint smile. “Like a pond compared to the sea.” He sobered. “Your bane has been my blessing. Those desires once dead for me are alive again. I may be resistant to your curse, but I'm no longer resistant to your touch."
Sparks lit Imogen's eyes, and her back straightened. Meekness forsaken, she glared at him. "No offense, Sire, but that's a damn sorry reason to run. Who'd guess the Undying King of Tineroth to be such a coward?" She yelped when he suddenly lunged and dragged her into his arms.
