by Grace Draven
While her curiosity about the scroll raged, Cededa’s interest had waned almost instantly. Beyond his initial surprise at finding the document here, he’d exhibited no more reaction to it than to any of the dull ones he first translated for her.
Granted, a man with as many wives and concubines as Cededa once possessed, was probably familiar with the how, why, when and where of every scene in the scroll. And more that weren’t painted there. Still, his lack of reaction was something beyond boredom of a thing done many times and reminded her of those moments when he coaxed her to run her hands over his bare torso, trace the silvery outlines of the Tineroth key collaring his throat and shoulders. Then too, he showed no reaction to her touch. Only that first time, when he experienced the power of her malediction, did he show any emotion and that time had nothing of desire about it.
Imogen frowned. She had no misguided notions regarding her looks. She was neither plain nor beautiful. Only unremarkable. Niamh had always praised her, but what loving parent didn’t see the beauty in their child? Still, she wondered at Cededa’s reserve, the absence of either attraction or revulsion to her touch. His was an almost ascetic demeanor, one that confused her, and if she were honest, put a dent in her vanity.
She rose and tucked the scroll under her arm. Her vanity would have to remain dented. The king of Tineroth had generously offered a means for her to live a normal life. She’d not be ungrateful by being discourteous. There were other questions about him she dare not ask, ones far less trivial than why he didn’t react as other men might to the graphic sensuality captured in vibrant paint or the enthralled caresses of a woman cursed with death in her fingers.
“What do you want to know, Imogen?”
So lost in her thoughts, she jumped at his voice, uttered near her ear. Cededa leaned in close, pale features sharp with interest now.
“You startled me,” she admonished and offered him a weak smile. It’s of no consequence, Sire. Just idle thoughts.”
He straightened and crossed his arms. “Unlike many women I’ve known, Imogen, you dissemble poorly and probably wouldn’t recognize coyness if it bit you on the hand.” He returned to his seat on the column top. “I’ve almost nothing left to me except time, and far too much of that. We can sit here all night if you wish until you choose to tell me why you’re frowning and burning holes through me with your stare.
She blushed, scrambling for some response that might appease him. “Would you believe me if I said I was admiring your looks?” She groaned under her breath. That was less than inspiring.
Cededa laughed, the expression temporarily ridding his fair features of the malice carved around his mouth. Imogen really did gawk at him with admiration then. He was truly breathtaking to behold.
The laughter died, but a smile remained. “Make no mistake. I’m flattered, but you’ve complimented me many times on my handsomeness without impaling me with a look.”
He’d given her the perfect opening for which to satisfy her curiosity; still, Imogen floundered. How did one ask so intrusive a question without sounding shallow, or even worse, insulting? She grasped another, less controversial topic.
“How is it you speak my language?” She brightened. That was good. And true. Too overwhelmed by Tineroth and its solitary ruler, she hadn’t even considered the oddity of his ability to speak her tongue so easily.
His eyes narrowed, his gaze measuring as if he judged her honesty and found it lacking. “Your mother,” he said. “She read to me as I healed from wounds. I listened, and I learned.”
It was Imogen’s turn to give him a doubtful look. That wasn’t quite how Niamh described it. Ash and bone coming together to remake an entire man was a lot stranger and more complex than healing wounds.
“I’ve never seen you eat or drink,” she said. “Not in all the time I’ve been in Tineroth. Do you not hunger or thirst?”
Cededa scowled. “I suspect that isn’t the question hovering on your tongue. But I’ll answer it.” He stood a second time and grasped her hand. “Come with me. I’ve something to show you.”
He led her back to the palace, through hallways and past rooms she’d become familiar with, down stairs she was certain hadn’t been there earlier in the day.
They entered a suite of rooms on the second floor through a pair of enormous doors equal to those that served as the palace entrance. Inside, an impenetrable blackness reigned until Cededa conquered it with a whispered word. Torches blazed to life on their own, spilling golden light across a space as grand and as neglected as the receiving hall.
Cededa led her to its center and released her hand. “These were once my chambers.”
Imogen pivoted in place, silent and stunned by the grandeur before her. The ceiling curved high above her, beyond the illumination of the torches. The floor lay concealed in a layer of dust ankle deep, but in places where the drafts stirred it clear, she spotted complex mosaics made of brilliantly colored tile. Rotted tapestries hung in tatters from bent hooks, some shredded by age and moths, others by the more ordered cut of a sword blade.
Light flickered on the walls, revealing a series of frescoes that stretched from floor to as high as the rooftop of her mother’s cottage. Those above an arm’s stretch were faded but otherwise untouched. Those below, however, bore the same ruin and destruction she’d seen on the statues and the murals in her chamber.
A pile of wood lay heaped in one corner, remains of what must have once been an enormous bed. More rubble littered the room, as if someone had come in and smashed every stick of furniture to splinters.
“Gods,” she whispered. “Who destroyed so many beautiful things?”
“I did.”
Her mouth fell open. Cededa had defaced his own palace? She blinked. “Why?”
His silent footfalls sent clouds of dust swirling upward as he paced the chamber’s perimeter. “I didn’t do this myself. Men of great anger and great purpose wielded their hammers and their chisels against these chambers, and others, but I was the reason for their actions.”
A melancholy settled on her spirit as she viewed the damage wrought. “Is yours the face destroyed on each statue? Each mural?”
“It was my face then.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I was not as you see me now, Imogen. The Waters changed me in more ways than just longevity.” He reached out and ran a fingertip over one of the murals, tracing the faded outlines. “To answer your question, I don’t thirst or hunger. My body doesn’t need food or drink, or even sleep if I wish it. Some might say it’s a gift of the Waters to their guardian, a means of survival and protection.”
She frowned. “I don’t know that I’d call such a thing a gift. You’d never starve, but there is a pleasure in good food, good wine, and a soft bed if you’re lucky enough to have them.”
His dry chuckle echoed in the expanse. “Yes, there is. And you’re wise in your observations. Unfortunately, the Waters’ gifts are not truly gifts. Each comes with a price. I have no need of food or water, no need of sleep. My sight and hearing are greater than any mortal man’s, and I walk with the tread of a ghost.” One hand curled into a fist, though his voice remained even. “But I cannot even eat or drink for pleasure. All is dust in my mouth. I’ve almost forgotten the sweetness of honey.” He paused. “Or the taste of a woman on my tongue.”
Imogen stiffened. She’d asked him one question. He’d answered several, including the one she most wanted to ask but didn’t know how to approach. “You’ve lost your desire?”
His short chuff of laughter echoed bitter in the torch-lit chamber. “I lost my manhood long ago. I hardly remembered the belly-burn of desire.” That otherworldly gaze rested on her, heavy and no longer cold. “Then you crossed the bridge into Tineroth and brought sweet death with you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Torchlight flickered warm color across Imogen’s drab clothing, sparking memories for Cededa of Tineroth noblewomen in their court finery. A glittering pr
ocession of butterflies whose jewels caught the light of a thousand candles that illuminated his once majestic throne room. The colorful garb didn’t stay on their graceful bodies for long once they reached this chamber, though the jewelry sometimes did.
Imogen traveled the bedchamber’s perimeter. “This room alone is twice the size of the cottage I shared with Niamh.” Her gaze settled on him for a moment. “Was it yours?”
She shone pale and regal in the flickering light, her dark hair cascading down her back in red-tinted waves. Cededa considered telling her the truth. Before the Waters effects leached away both his needs and his desires, Cededa the Fair had a reputation known far and wide as a man of lusty appetites and the stamina to match them. His bedchamber had seen many women spend hours in its confines. By the time Tineroth’s mages discovered a way to trap and imprison him, it was nothing more than a place where Cededa brooded alone, enraged, impotent, and immortal.
He had lost the carnal appetites that once consumed him only to discover them reawakened by her lethal touch.
The curse flowing black and powerful beneath her skin was killing him and bringing him back to life at the same time. Each day, they engaged in an odd courtship of profound intimacy and innocence, one that left him clawing for control and wondering if his heart would pound out of his chest.
He needed no one to tell him she was untried. Cededa had never cared for virgins. They were too much trouble for his debauched tastes, like high strung horses unbroken to the saddle. Imogen displayed none of those nervous traits, even when she discovered the brothel scroll tucked away in the library. Niamh had done a fine job raising a young woman grounded in practicality. Cededa, however, had no doubt Imogen was innocent in body and unfamiliar with the subtle signals of desire.
Cededa had lost count of the women he’d seduced and who had seduced him before the Waters made a mockery of his humanity. Practiced in the art of sensuality, his wives and concubines had been raised to capture the eye and passions of an emperor. Imogen seduced him with her nothing more than her graceful, lethal hands and a steady faith in his ability to break the hold of her curse.
“Sire?”
The single word pulled him out of his musings. He dipped his chin. “My apologies for the inattention. I’ve something to show you.”
He crooked a finger. She crossed the room to stand beside him, listening as he uttered another soft word in a forgotten tongue. The torches brightened, their flames leaping higher to better illuminate the frescoes painted on the whitewashed walls. Not as bright as the illustrations on the scroll, they still glowed, their details highlighted in rich colors painted by a far more skilled artist than the one who painted the scroll.
These were neither landscapes nor portraits, unless one considered scenes of mating configurations of the land. A wide-eyed Imogen abandoned Cededa for the corner of the wall and a closer look at the first painting in the series that bordered the entire room.
Meant to arouse and excite the king and his chosen companion, the frescoes were as graphic in their depiction of sexual acts as the scroll had been.
The first painting showed a man covering a woman, his hips resting within the cradle of her thighs, the curve of his naked flank partially covered by her hand. He lay in profile to the viewer, and bent to suckle the woman’s breast. The woman’s painted eyes were heavy-lidded with pleasure. Cededa watched, fascinated, as a rosy blush crawled up Imogen’s neck and into her cheeks. A reciprocal heat that had nothing to do with Tineroth’s warm temperatures, pooled in his stomach before spilling downward. He stood still and enjoyed the once forgotten sensation of an erection.
Imogen moved on to the next painting. Here, the same man knelt behind a different woman, his cock half buried between her buttocks. In the next, the same woman knelt before him, sucking his cock into her mouth. A fourth had them switching places and partners. A different man and woman stretched out along the wall, his face hidden by her bent leg, her expression one of ecstasy as she arched her back and buried her fingers in his hair.
Imogen stepped back for another perspective of the painting, then turned to Cededa. High color washed her cheekbones. Innocent she was but far from immune to the frescoes’ effects.
“What is he doing to her?”
He did smile then. “Have you ever pleasured yourself, Imogen?”
She didn’t shrink away from the question or avoid his gaze. “Yes,” she said simply.
Cededa silently applauded Niamh for not teaching her daughter shame of her own body. Imogen answered him with no more chagrin than if he asked her if she wanted a drink of water.
He closed the distance between them and studied the painting with her. “He is using his tongue in the same way you use your fingers.”
Her eyebrows drew together in puzzlement, and she tilted her head as if considering a greater question. “And this is pleasurable for her?”
He gestured at the fresco. “Look at her face. What do you think?”
She bent for a closer look, then turned to gaze at him over her shoulder. “Have you done this?”
This girl didn’t possess a speck of coyness. He found it refreshing. “I have.”
“Did you enjoy it as well?”
“Very much so.”
This was likely the strangest, most fascinating discussion he’d ever had with a woman, or any person for that matter. Imogen delighted him, enchanted him and if he dwelt on it too long, terrified him. Part of him wished he’d met her before his world crumbled around him. The greater part was thankful he hadn’t.
She straightened and moved past him, her eyes traveling over the remaining frescoes. All depicted scenes progressively more lurid than the ones before it. “Why did you have these painted in your chambers?”
Cededa had no intention of detailing the debauched atmosphere of his court during his long reign. “They seemed appropriate at the time.”
She didn’t press him for more but moved on to another question that made him grin. “Have you tried all of these?”
“I have. Several times.”
She looked away from him then. Her arms crossed protectively in front of her, and she stood silent for a few moments, pondering, before meeting his eyes. The blush had faded, and her gaze was both resolute and steady. “Once you rid me of this curse, I want to try all of these as well, and I want you to teach me.”
She wouldn’t have caught him any more off guard than if she’d suddenly stripped naked and ran around the room in circles. No fear, no maidenly embarrassment, only an honest desire to experience the pleasures of the flesh denied to her. Cededa wanted to reply, but she’d knocked the breath out of his lungs, not to mention strengthened the erection that already made his trews uncomfortable.
“What?” she asked when he continued to stare at her in silence. “Do you think it wrong to desire such things?”
The words hung in his throat for a moment, bitter and sharp. “I think you will one day make a fortunate man very happy, Imogen.” A brief, agonized jealousy spiked him in the chest, along with the urge to break the lucky bastard in half. He ruthlessly crushed the emotion and tried not to dwell too long on the idea of Imogen as the woman in one of the paintings and himself between her pale thighs. He’d lose the ability to think at all if he did and act on instinct.
She inhaled an audible breath and drew closer to Cededa. A new tension made the air around them almost thrum. Her fingertips grazed the edges of key markings tattooed across his throat and partially revealed by the open edges of his tunic. Her eyes had turned dark, the pupils so large they nearly encompassed her irises. The tip of her tongue glided across her lower lip as she stared at the path her fingers traced. “You are a pleasure to touch,” she said in a voice deepened by desire. “A gift beyond price.”
The slow poison of her affections inflamed him, and he stood for a moment, docile under her caress as her bane surged through his body, igniting his insides so that the numbness instilled by the Waters burned away entirely. Imogen of Leids was th
e pinnacle of contradictions – sensual innocence and a death touch that made him feel so alive, he feared he might combust from the euphoric effect.
They strove together toward disparate goals—she to live a normal life, he to die a normal death. They had agreed on a process to attain both. She touched him as often as she pleased, and he bled the curse out of her by taking it into himself. He’d been the one to present the idea, and she readily agreed.
A fine plan except Cededa didn’t count on his body awakening so fiercely under an onslaught of sensations long forgotten. Imogen’s demand that he teach her the fine art of coupling combined with her forthright honesty in her pleasure at touching him raised his lust to fever pitch. If she didn’t leave him be for now, he’d either burst into flame or take her on the filthy floor.
He grasped her wrist and forced her hand to her side before stepping out of reach. Desire, lust, anguish, fear—they surged through him on a relentless wave. This woman had no place with him. He had nothing to offer beyond the lifting of her bane.
“Don’t touch me, Imogen,” he ordered. “Not here. Not now. Not in this place.”
She flinched away and turned her back to him, but not before he caught the shame and hurt stamped on her elegant features.
The tether holding his control in place threatened to snap. He fled, leaving her in his dusty chambers with their lurid frescoes and the ruins of his humanity.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
For the first time since her arrival at Tineroth, it rained. Unlike the low fog that encased the city each morning and left moisture dripping off the buildings and ivy, this was a true thunderstorm. Lightning flashed to the southwest, and rain fell in sheets, pounding on the palace roof and against the windows.
