Cededa had not expected this—a lone woman wrapped as if she was prepared for burial, striding confidently across the Yinde Bridge to enter Tineroth’s boundaries. The mercenaries and thieves who periodically invaded the ancient city to steal her treasures tended to travel in packs as large as sixty but never less than ten and never alone.
He held the blade of his glaive against her graceful throat, noting the familiar markings of a Tineroth key scarred into her neck. Well, well, this was telling.
She didn’t answer his question, her gaze locked on his blade, her body bent and still as the effigy she faced. Only the shallow rise and fall of her chest betrayed her terror. Cededa admired her composure in the face of her fear. He eased the blade’s sharp edge a fraction away from her skin.
“I’m no longer in the habit of cutting a throat until I’ve had an answer, so you’re safe to speak. Who are you?” he repeated.
Her throat worked in a convulsive swallow. “Imogen,” she said in a shaking voice. “I seek the help of the Undying King, Cededa the Fair.”
A vague anguish pierced his faded soul at that last title, one he hadn’t heard in four thousand years. His hands clenched tighter on the polearm. “Then you seek two different people. Cededa the Fair died even before Tineroth did.”
“Cededa the Butcher then.”
What power did this woman’s words have that they had awakened emotions made dim by the interminable years of immortality? Again, grief sounded a dull cord inside him, followed by the bitterness that had remained a constant companion.
“Ah, well, that’s a different matter entirely. Why would you seek the help of someone so named?” She intrigued him, as did her responses.
“Believe me, I’ve asked myself the same thing since I started this journey.” Her voice no longer trembled, and she glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “May I please straighten? This isn’t exactly the most comfortable position to ask for help or plead for my life.”
Her remark startled a grin from him. Usually his only conversations with visitors to Tineroth were limited to screams of pain and a snarled epitaph of “May your soul rot,” from him. This was new, and if he was honest, delightful.
His admiration for her composure grew. He lowered the glaive to his side, confident that whatever trick she might pull to attack or escape him would fail. She straightened and turned to face him. Cededa didn’t flinch when her eyes widened before she looked away. He knew what she saw—the living image of the effigy on the bier in all his corrupted glory. Immortality had left its mark, as had the sins of his distant past.
“Why would the name Imogen mean anything to Cededa?” He waited for some outlandish story to spill from her lips.
Her gaze flashed back to him and this time stayed. She’s pretty he observed silently. Once one got past the layers of swaddling pretending to be clothes. She didn’t possess the great beauty of his long dead wives and concubines, but he would have noticed her had she walked the corridors of his palace—if not for her face then surely for that stately demeanor she wore as naturally as he wore his armor.
Her chin tilted in faint challenge. “My name means nothing, but Niamh of Leids should mean a great deal to the man who owes her a life debt.”
Memories cascaded in his mind’s eye. Wrenching agony, Tineroth’s endless screaming in his head as it called its last living son home, a woman’s beautiful face as she bent over him and spoke soothingly while he lay in a soft bed that smelled of sunlight.
“My fair savior with the red hair and witch’s eyes. If ever a woman should have been made queen, it was Niamh.”
Cededa didn’t flatter but spoke truthfully. Niamh had saved him once, not from dying, but from complete, gibbering madness.
“I repay my debts,” he said flatly. “But you are not Niamh of Leids.”
Again, that lifted chin and a spark of challenge in his visitor’s gray eyes. “No, I’m her daughter.”
CHAPTER SIX
Imogen couldn’t help but gawk. Her attacker was the effigy's living twin, only far more painful to behold. The terrible beauty, trapped in marble, was no artist trick but a true reflection of the man standing before her, his malevolence increased tenfold by a piercing gaze that pinned her in place.
Flaxen hair fell past wide shoulders and framed a stern, pallid face. Clad in an indigo tunic and trousers overlaid by a tarnished chainmail hauberk, pauldrons and vambraces, he was heavily armed and armored. A short sword and hand axe were strapped at his narrow waist, and he casually cradled the hook-back glaive whose blade had lightly kissed her neck. Judging by the manner of his dress, he’d not come to talk but to do battle.
Imogen wanted to bow beneath the weight of his scrutiny. He may not beherking, but he was still a king if his resemblance to the effigy was anything to judge by. And not only the king but one possessing the title of The Butcher.
Her back teeth clacked together in a rising chatter as he shifted his stance, and those peculiar eyes narrowed even more. So a light a blue they almost faded into the surrounding whites, his eyes reminded her of the blind Blessed—those whose milky gaze saw into the past and the future but never what was before them. Unlike them, Cededa took in the here and now with a predatory gaze. He was as strange and beautifully eerie as the city he guarded. And just as extraordinary. If he’d been human once, he wasn’t now.
Had she not watched him as closely as he watched her, she might have missed the brief softening in his features at her mention of Niamh. That softness vanished almost as soon as it appeared, and his mouth stretched into a sneer masquerading as a smile.
One eyebrow rose, and those eyes skimmed her, doubt lurking in the blue ice irises. Imogen knew she fell short in comparison to her mother. Neither tall nor curved in the ways that tempted a man, she didn’t possess Niamh’s natural vibrancy or sorcerous abilities. Any who met her mother and then her daughter would conclude that the younger was but a weak shadow of the elder.
“Where is your mother now?” he asked.
The grief resting heavy in her heart since Niamh’s passing swelled. Imogen blinked away threatening tears. “She died.”
The sneer faded, and his stern features gentled. “I’ve lived a long time and amassed countless regrets. I truly regret your loss. Your mother was an exceptional woman. The world is poorer without her.”
