by Grace Draven
Most of the time Imogen could predict a storm. Niamh had taught her the old sailor's trick of a morning’s red sky heralding a storm, but in Tineroth the sky only changed with the passing of hours, its filtered light dimming with oncoming night.
Imogen stared out the window from her chamber and saw only darkness. Somewhere in the city, or the forest surrounding it, Cededa hid from her. She hid from him as well, still hot with the humiliation of his rejection, the sudden revulsion he had for her touch. He was mercurial as well as cruel, and Imogen thanked the gods he left her alone before the tears poured unheeded down her cheeks.
Now, her face was awash with the fire of humiliation. He had accepted her forthright, albeit clumsy praise of his appearance with an amused equanimity, even complimenting her more than once on her lack of guile or pretense. But sincere flattery was one thing, demanding he play the role of lover and teacher something else entirely. He had turned on her in an instant, warned her off, and put as much distance between them as fast as he could. Imogen pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “You stupid, stupid woman,” she admonished herself.
Niamh might have taught her a world of knowledge, but Imogen’s bane and quiet life had worked against her, leaving her unskilled at reading another person’s subtle cues and body language, especially that of men. And this man in particular.
A new fear clenched a fist around her heart and squeezed. He had rebuffed her, bruising her wrist with the effort. What if he refused to let her touch him ever again? Even if it was strictly to help her break the curse? Panic roared through her at the thought.
Lightning struck close by, blasting the darkness away and illuminating the courtyards and temples nearby in white light. It was gone as quickly as it appeared, followed by a crack of thunder hard enough to make her teeth rattle. Still, it was enough time for Imogen to catch a glimpse of a pale-haired figure striding toward the center courtyard, oblivious to the storm's deluge or its dangerous lightning bolts.
She scrambled for her cloak. She would apologize for any insult cast, any liberty taken. Grovel on her knees if she had to and beg his forgiveness. He’d given her hope in his willingness to break her curse by taking it into himself, where his immortality shielded him from its lethal effects.
“Please, Cededa,” she muttered as she yanked on her boots and opened the door. “Please have mercy.”
An inner voice mocked her invocation. Why would a man so named The Butcher show mercy to anyone?
Imogen raced into the corridor and snatched one of the lit torches off its brackets. The wavering flame offered the only light to break the sepulchral black of the cloisters beyond her door. If she didn't have that, she might well break her neck falling down one of the ever-changing staircases. She growled when a sudden coldness wrapped around her ankles and tugged as if to coax her back to her room. The palace's spectral caretaker. She'd grown used to its presence, the uncanny way it knew her needs and wants without her ever voicing them. But she had no time for it now. Wading through a roiling chill thicker than porridge, she ignored its mute demand and headed for the nearest staircase.
The stairs faded in the next lightning flash. A hallway appeared in their place. Imogen blew out a frustrated sigh as the vapor swirled around her legs, climbing ever higher. It would shroud her completely if she waited much longer. Desperate and frightened, Imogen stamped her foot.
"Your king," she snapped, "is a coward, and I'm going to tell him so. Right now."
She didn't need Niamh's innate magery to sense the surprise rippling through the mist at her words. It rolled back on itself as if uncertain what to do next.
"Let me pass," she commanded.
A hesitation, then suddenly the hallway reconfigured itself into the former staircase. The mist withdrew, hugging the wall as she descended the stairs. Obviously, no one still in possession of their senses called Cededa a coward, but her outlandish statement had served its purpose by shocking her ethereal guardian into letting her go.
By the time she made it to the main doors, the rain outside had settled to a steady drizzle, the thunder a distant rumble paying court to dancing lightning bolts. Imogen's cloak became a sodden weight on her shoulders. She abandoned it at the foot of the palace steps and sped along the main avenue, hoping she might find Cededa before her guttering torch went dark.
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 sti
ffened. 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.
Fragile shoulders and slender arms, soft breasts he longed to cup and nuzzle. She pushed him toward a madness he’d held at bay for more years than the lives of empires. He might be the coward she accused him of being, but she was reckless beyond description. Cededa counted the rapid pulse beats in her neck, tracked the glistening rivulets of rain coursing down her cheeks like tears while she stared at him with wide gray eyes.
His voice sounded guttural to his ears. "What would you have of me, Imogen? A fuck on a filthy floor? In a room where I once swived my wives, my concubines, even my ministers' wives?" He tugged on her hair, drawing her closer, until her mouth nearly touched his. Her quick breath whispered across his lips. "Be glad I walked away. You're an innocent. Untried and ignorant of those pleasures painted on the walls.” He stared at her mouth, plump and glistening with rain. Ripe fruit waiting to be plucked. “I’ll wager you’ve never even been kissed.”
And oh gods did he want to. But if he did, he wouldn’t stop at a kiss. He wouldn’t stop at a hundred kisses unless it was to strip off her clothes and fuck her on a wet altar stone in the rain. Her lids had lowered, and her lips parted at his words. He shook her lightly before pushing her away. “You wouldn't survive me, Imogen. I’ve bedded more than a few hedgewitches in my past and found the pastime pleasurable, but I've no use for innocents. That includes you."
She cowered away from him as if his insults were hammer blows. He unfolded his legs and slipped off the altar stone, eager to flee a second time. She was right. He was a coward.
Her voice, ragged and breathless, stopped him on the temple steps. "Well, I usually have no use for an immortal warrior king who runs from an unarmed woman, yet here we are."
Cededa turned slowly to face her. Imogen had changed positions. Instead of sitting cross-legged, she’d drawn her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Whether for warmth or in defensive reaction to his harsh words, he couldn’t guess. While her eyes reflected her pain, her expression was serene. “You insist I know nothing of mating, of lovemaking, as if it’s a flaw in my character instead of a gap in my experience.” Her chin lifted at a haughty angle, and she stared down her nose at him. “I’m asking you to teach me, Cededa of Tineroth. I’m not asking you to love me.”
He stared into her eyes, seeing desire, wariness, and an emotion that made his shriveled heart skip a beat. Ask me, Imogen. Ask me to love you. I could. You would make it so easy. The words stayed trapped behind his teeth, a plea thought but left unspoken. He returned to the stone, never breaking his gaze with hers. “Yes,” he said simply and held out his hand.
They sped to the palace, Imogen running to keep up with his long strides. Her chamber door cracked against the wall when Cededa threw it open and just as quickly kicked it shut with his foot. He spun Imogen until her back was to him and sliced through her lacings with one quick swipe of the knife he carried at his belt. Bodice and tunic split apart, revealing her long back and the graceful indentation of her spine. Skirt and shift followed, falling to a wet heap at her feet until she stood before him, shivering and gloriously naked.
He resheathed the knife and turned her face him. “Afraid?” he asked, his voice not much more than a growl.
Imogen’s eyes, gray as the rain-washed sky, flashed, and her chin rose in tell-tale challenge. “No. Are you?”
Cededa had never turned away from a thrown gauntlet; he didn’t plan to start now. He shucked his own garb and shoes faster than he’d rid Imogen of hers and yanked her into his embrace, heedless of the fact they were both still wet from the rain. Her skin was cool against his, roughened in some places by goose flesh.
He closed his eyes, lost to the feel of her under his hands. How long ago had he held a woman in his arms? Savored the feel of supple limbs and soft breasts? What madness had seized him in those shadowy years so long ago that he’d willingly traded this touch of paradise for bleak immortality?
Imogen entwined her arms around his neck and tilted her head back. Her dark hair spilled over his hands where they rested just above her buttocks. Those heavy-lidded eyes challenged him, daring him to walk away a third time.
“I’ve no patience to be a teacher, Imogen,” he warned.
The corners of her mouth curved upward. “But I have patience to learn, and I learn best by doing.” Her arms tightened around his neck. “Now kiss me, Sire.”
He was powerless to resist. His mouth captured hers, opening her to his tongue. She tasted of rain and heat, her tongue twining with his until he wondered which of them would consume the other. For someone who’d never engaged in such intimacy, she threatened to turn him into a scorch mark on the floor. She groaned into his mouth and sucked his tongue. Shivers wracked his body, and she pulled him ever closer. He hoisted her up, hands sliding beneath her buttocks to brace her against him. Long legs wrapped around his waist and squeezed until he grunted a protest.
She was the first to break the kiss and gasp for air. Eyes glassy and mouth swollen, she buried her hands in his hair. “That isn’t kissing,” she said between gasps. “That’s magic.”
He carried her to the bed. Her legs slid down his sides as they fell onto the mattress. Cededa rolled, carrying her with him so that he bore her weight. It was she who initiated the second kiss, as all-consuming as the first. Blood and lust pounded through his veins, ignited by the lethal power of Imogen's frantic hands as they stroked his chest and ribs. Her hips rocked against his until his fingers gripped her bottom to hold her still. The motion pushed him to the edge. If she didn’t stop, he’d lose the last, fraying threads of his control and come on her thighs.
This time he ended the kiss with a soft tug on her bottom lip. Imogen stared at him, her lips red and full. Her nostrils flared with every short breath. “Why...”
Cededa reached up and placed a finger against her lips. His own har
sh breathing clipped his words. “Patience, Imogen.” He smiled. “It seems I’m not the only overeager one.”
He rolled her beneath him, wedging one leg between her sleek thighs. He braced himself on his elbows, Imogen’s head and shoulders framed by his forearms. Her hair spilled across the pillows, dark against skin made rosy by her passions. Slender hands wandered over his shoulders and down his back, leaving heat trails in their wake. Her bane crashed through his body, his muscles quivering under its onslaught. In Imogen’s touch, death was neither cold nor insidious but a candent force that set him alight and freed him from immortality’s shackles.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered. She tucked loose strands of his hair behind his ear.
That you are beautiful, and I am dying. He didn’t answer her. Instead, he lowered his weight onto her, pressing her into the mattress as his mouth mapped a path from her jaw to her neck to her collarbone and finally to her breast.
Imogen arched her back as Cededa's lips closed over her nipple and suckled. “Oh gods.” Her invocation became a litany as he teased one breast and then the other and nuzzled his face into her cleavage. She hooked an ankle behind his thigh and pulled. The motion drove him forward so that his hips rocked hard against the cradle of her pelvis, and she rubbed his cock in a wordless plea.
Her actions inflamed him. He left her breasts and rose to his knees. Imogen’s eyes widened when he grasped both her wrists in one hand and stretched her arms above her head. “Do you trust me?” he asked. She stared at him for several heart-stopping moments before nodding. Cededa relaxed his tense shoulders and smiled.
Were he not already on his knees, the sight of Imogen bare and vulnerable under him would have put him there. He'd known and loved many women of stunning beauty, but none compared to the supine grace of Death’s handmaiden. He held her wrists captive with one hand and used his free hand to play silent music over her soft flesh.
