The maid bobbed another curtsey before fleeing the chamber. Imogen waited until the door closed before pulling a travel sack from under her bed. In it she’d stuffed a water flask, a few days’ worth of pilfered oat cakes and a dress discarded by the palace’s head laundress. To these, she added a heavy cloak and a small purse containing four skells of silver, enough to buy a horse and ride to the Castagheri border. The sack went back under the bed. Thank the gods her maids were lazy and didn’t bother to dust under there. All she could do now was wait.
The days before Solstice crawled on feeble legs. The entire city prepared to celebrate, and for once Hayden didn’t insist Imogen join him in the upcoming celebrations. Death’s handmaiden among a drunken crowd of celebrants presented too much of a risk. Imogen occupied herself with studying the map she had tucked away in a book of poems. She had memorized every detail but studied it a final time before tossing it in the fireplace’s grate where the flames greedily devoured the parchment.
She thought of Niamh once more. She might have discounted Dradus’s revelations as lies, but Hayden verified most of them.
Stricken by her lover’s change of affections from his mistress to his new wife, Niamh had gone mad. The need for vengeance had overridden any sense of reason or compassion, and she’d leveled a dark power against King Varn’s wife, never knowing until too late that her bane had stricken the unborn child Selene carried.
Death ran like blood through Imogen’s tiny hands, striking down any she touched, including Selene, Varn, the midwife and three nursemaids. By the time Niamh discovered the devastation her curse had wrought, Varn’s sister had stepped in and instructed the newborn be taken out of the castle and drowned in the nearest well. The maid assigned to the hideous task never saw the blow that struck her down or the fleet shadow that gently lifted the sleeping infant from her cradle and vanished with her into the night.
Imogen refused to cry in front of Dradus, but she sobbed alone in her room until the tears ran dry. That night she dreamed of Cededa and his wraith wife Gruah. Gruah held out a nebulous hand, wispy fingers curling around Imogen’s. In the dream, she spoke and her voice chimed like tiny bells in a summer garden. “Yours is a great heart, Imogen. Can you forgive?”
The next morning she woke, a lightness and renewed sense of purpose filling her. Now, she sat on her bed, dressed in castoffs with her journey sack near her feet. She’d forgone gloves as being too distinctive. Instead, she buried her hands in her pockets and prayed none would put her in a position that she’d accidently touch them. A linen kerchief covered her hair, and she practiced slouching so as to appear shorter than she was. With any luck, those still awake in the castle were either too drunk on wine or too sleepy to recognize her.
The night sky was slowly paling as she sneaked out of her room and tiptoed down the hall toward the back staircase used by the servants. Only the head cook and a scullery maid were awake, and they remained in the kitchen.
Imogen’s luck held as she navigated a path through Castagher to her fortified walls and finally past the gates to the post stables where the horses for hire were kept. The stable master leered at her but didn’t question where a laundress had gotten the funds to rent a horse. Within the hour, she was galloping toward the borders shared by Castagher and Berberi. If her luck stayed with her, she would reach the gorge in three days’ time.
The miles flew by as the horse galloped steadily toward Tineroth. Imogen measured the distance and counted the hours. Solstice was almost here. Desperation grew within her. Reaching the gorge was the easy part. Reaching Tineroth before it vanished from the world, another thing altogether.
She left the horse at a stable in a village bordering the forest. The wood welcomed her, a shelter of dappled shade and relief from the hot sun. Imogen traveled south on foot through thick underbrush and reach the gorge at twilight. Across the gorge’s empty space concealing mist parted briefly to reveal the flickering, shadowy outlines of buildings. Home.
Unfortunately, she no longer had a key to unlock the door or summon the bridge that would carry her across the divide.
A far off sound drifted to her ears. The voices of men calling, the unmistakable resonant baying of dogs tracking their quarry.
“No,” she breathed. Surely, Hayden hadn’t noticed her gone or tracked her so soon! Dradus’s vulpine features rose in her mind, and she growled. “You rat bastard. You set a spy on me.”
Imogen paced along the cliff’s edge. She had nowhere to run. Besides, she had only one place in mind she wanted to be, and at the moment it was out of reach. She picked up a rock and threw it over the cliff’s edge in frustration. “Cededa!” She shouted, uncaring if the hunting pack heard her.
The dogs’ baying grew louder with renewed excitement. Imogen threw another rock. “Cededa!” This time her bellow carried far across the divide. Still nothing from the other side. A terrible fear nearly consumed her. What if the immortal king had not survived the fall into the river? What if Tineroth no longer held her last living son captive?
More shouts behind her, this time close enough she expected to see horses and dogs burst from the forest understory at any moment.
“Cededa!” She shrieked his name a third time. There’d be no fourth time. Dradus’s hunters were almost on top of her.
Tears blurred her vision, an impotent fury born of frustration and despair threatening to consume her. Suddenly the air in front of her wavered, rolling and shimmering. The Yinde bridge took shape, vague but solid enough. At the other end a pale figure waited, and Imogen cried out, exultant.
Her euphoria died a quick death when a shaggy-haired hound broke from the trees and loped toward her. Dradus’s command of “Catch her!” urged it to a faster pace.
“Run, Imogen.”
Cededa’s cool voice carried on the wind, and Imogen’s feet grew wings. She dashed across the bridge, feeling it dissolve almost immediately under her feet. If she stumbled, she’d plummet to her death. Behind her, a cacophony of howls and curses rent the air. Imogen took a running leap, landing hard enough in Cededa’s arms that he grunted and staggered backwards, almost losing his balance.
Imogen wrapped her arms and legs around his body, uncaring that she nearly knocked him to the ground. He lived. Still bound, still trapped but here, waiting for her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Cededa ignored the hue and cry of Imogen’s pursuers and carried her into the shelter of Tineroth’s forest. She clutched him as if she were drowning, her legs around his waist, her face buried in his shoulder.
The shock of seeing her, throwing rocks and shrieking his name, hadn’t left him. When he collapsed the bridge and fell into the chasm, he thought his last memory of her would be the horror in her expression at watching him fall. Half drowned and beaten, with Tineroth’s voice screaming in his head, he’d returned to the city. The familiar hush enveloped him at the gates, along with the ghostly mist that helped him into the palace to Imogen’s chambers. He collapsed in her bed, where he healed and tried to forget her.
Now, the improbable had happened. She was in Tineroth once more, in his arms where she belonged. Neither spoke as he carried her into her palace and to the chambers he now thought of as hers. Clothing was tossed aside to fall in scattered piles near the bed. He was inside her before they even fell back to the mattress.
She was slick and hot and tight, gripping his cock with inner muscles that flexed and drew him deeper inside her. Imogen groaned into his mouth, opening hers wider to receive his tongue and suck his in return.
She slid her hands into his hair, holding him close, as if terrified he might fade in her arms. Theirs was a quick, primal mating of desperate caresses and hard thrusts. Cededa groaned her name, shuddering as his climax surged a shockwave of pleasure through his limbs. His fingers continued to tease and coax Imogen until she followed, arching against him with a thin cry.
Cededa barely gave her time to catch her breath before he rolled onto his back, carrying her with him. He rested inside her, still partially erect. She stroked strands of his pale hair away from his forehead and cheek, her gaze touching on each hollow and line of his features.
