She summoned a smile with effort. “I have one of the best views in the city. Seems a shame to waste it.”
He acknowledged her compliment by preening. “True, but can’t you find a moment to join me in the main hall? We’ve a talented bard to entertain us at supper and a harpist from Minos. The best harpists come out of Minos, you know.”
Imogen honestly didn’t care if the harpist came from the royal stables and brought fiddlers from the catacombs with them. They’d had this conversation in various incarnations several times. Hayden had tried to coax her out of her room and join him with his court in the great hall.
She indulged him once, and that had been enough to know she was feared by the courtiers and unwelcomed in their midst. Her curse, weakened by Cededa’s touch, had returned full strength once she left Tineroth. Even had she been made free of Niamh’s bane, none would trust her enough to test it. While she found the courtiers’ reactions to her a perfect excuse to avoid meals in the royal hall, she was more isolated and alone in Castagher’s court than she’d ever been in her life.
“Please extend my apologies. You know I’m uncomfortable around so many people in one place. Nor are they comfortable around me.”
Hayden’s mouth thinned. “They’ll hold their tongues if they know what’s good for them.” He sighed and leaned against the balcony’s ledge. “You’re a lot like your mother, you know. She had this sweetness about her. A sweetness that hid a stubbornness worthy of a mule.”
Imogen offered him a tight smile. She’d known early on that she was Niamh’s fosterling, and while she’d been curious about her parents, her foster mother’s distress at the questions she asked had made her reluctant to push for more. Niamh had been a strong and giving parent despite the dark beginning they shared between them. Only now, learning of her through Hayden’s recollections, did Imogen regret not knowing Selene.
Unlike the rest of his court, Hayden showed no fear of her touch. He grasped her gloved hand and bent to kiss her knuckles. A cold shiver made her fingers twitch. “If you change your mind, tell your maid. Someone will escort you to the hall.”
“Thank you, cousin.”Now go away.
He paused at the balcony doors. “Solstice will be here in a few days. Castagher celebrates with a festival by the water. I want to take you there.” He frowned. “You can’t stay in your rooms forever, Imogen. Consider my invitation.” A threat and a command wrapped in silky words.
Imogen nodded. “I will.” She waited until he closed the door behind him to wipe her hand on her skirts.
Solstice. She had great plans for that day. Despite the trappings of luxury and privilege, she was a prisoner of Castagher and Hayden her jailer. He had sent soldiers to abduct her and bring her to him. She had been the proof he required to claim rights of trade from Berberi, the bride promised to him when he was merely a child and she a babe hardly a week old.
She had listened, numb, when he explained why a small army had scoured two kingdoms to find her and deliver to his care. Even his knowledge of her curse didn’t deter him from planning their union. She wasn’t a beloved bride, merely a means to an end, as many aristocratic women were in matters of marriage.
She despised Hayden for his single-minded ambition and casual disregard of her feelings, but she reserved her greatest loathing for Dradus, his sorcerer. Sly, deceptive and calculating, he made Imogen’s skin crawl with revulsion. He’d earned her enmity when he used her to break Cededa, intensifying it to hatred when he revealed how he found her on their return trip to Castagher.
“I raised Niamh’s body from the grave for a little chat.” He smirked at her horrified inhalation. “You can learn a lot of from the dead if you ask the right questions. The witch told me where to find you.”
“You’re fouler than the bottom of a privy pit,” Imogen spat. “I hope she curses you from her grave.”
His smirked deepened. “Like she cursed you?” Imogen froze, and the smirk turned to a full-blown shark’s grin. “She didn’t tell you, did she? Took her secret to the grave.” Dradus folded his hands under his chin. “Niamh of Leids became the castoff mistress of King Varn when he married your mother. A woman scorned is a dangerous creature; a sorceress scorned, a lethal one. She laid a death geas on your parents, but something went wrong, and you inherited the curse. You killed two wet nurses, a maid and your parents before someone figured out you were the assassin.”
Imogen wondered when all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. She couldn’t breathe. Dradus watched her with a reptilian gaze and the smirk she so badly wanted to strike off his face with one killing blow. “You’re lying,” she said. “Niamh would never cast such a geas, if only because she loved me and liked children. She’d never put me at such risk.”
She did believe; however, in her foster mother’s need for revenge. Niamh’s journal revealed how much she loved Varn. Broken-hearted, enraged, she might well have sought vengeance against him and the woman he took to wife.
The mage shook his head. “Niamh didn’t know Selene was pregnant. When she discovered what happened and that Varn’s sister planned to have you drowned, she stole you away and disappeared.”
Niamh, who had devoted her life to raising and protecting Imogen, had been the reason for her curse. Tears clouded her vision, and Imogen forced them back. Never would she cry before this piece of filth.
Her foster mother had begged her for forgiveness on her deathbed. Deep inside, where Dradus couldn’t see, Imogen wept. For herself and a life so profoundly altered by another woman’s revenge, for Niamh who willingly sentenced herself to raising a child who wielded death in her touch, and for the parents she never knew who welcomed their firstborn into the world and died because of it.
Imogen had fled Dradus’s presence and avoided him now as much as possible. Hayden favored him; she wished him dead and remained wary whenever they crossed paths. His questions regarding Tineroth and Cededa held all manner of traps designed to catch a slip of the tongue or glean a secret. Imogen silently thanked Cededa for never telling her where the Living Waters pooled in Tineroth. Dradus would get nothing from her.
He often told Hayden his studies called him to other cities and towns, and he disappeared for several days, returning with a frustrated scowl and more probing questions for Imogen. She suspected he returned to the gorge in the futile hope of resurrecting the Yinde Bridge and a second crossing into Tineroth. He believed Cededa dead, killed by his own magic and the river that accepted his plummeting body. Imogen didn’t naysay him, though she fervently hoped he was wrong.
All her plans, her desires, her reason for not falling into despair rested in the belief that Cededa had survived and returned to Tineroth.
She abandoned the balcony for her room. Long shadows stretched across the floor, and her maid Lila circled the room, lighting lamps to chase away the darkness. She eyed her mistress as one might a barely tamed beast—cautious and ready to take flight at the first hint of attack.
Imogen quelled the urge to roll her eyes. Lila was no different from any of the others. Her fear of Imogen’s curse hadn’t lessened with time or Imogen’s friendly overtures. She curtsied nervously, nearly setting her skirts on fire with the lit candle she carried.
“’Good evening, Your Highness. Will you be wanting your supper in your room tonight?”
The question was virtually rhetorical at this point. Since she’d first arrived at Castagher, Imogen had only eaten in the feasting hall three times, each occasion an interminable evening characterized by rude stares, whispers and insincere smiles.
“Yes, Lila. Thank you.”
