Still reeling inwardly at his first taste of mortality in more than a hundred lifetimes, Cededa leaned against the door frame and watched his guest slumber. Darkness, thick as blood and headier than poison-laced mead had rushed through him in a black wave when he pressed his fingers to Imogen's smooth skin. The sensation had almost brought him to his knees.
He'd lost count of the times he prayed for death. But gods long vanished didn't hear his entreaties; the vengeful ghosts who kept company with him in the silent city did, and their spectral mockery held no mercy. Yet something heard—and answered. The proof sat slumped in a chair, snoring softly, unaware of his scrutiny.
Her curse offered him the hope of salvation, of a true and everlasting sleep, where Tineroth's constant voice would be forever silenced and the Living Waters finally ran dry in his veins. The prideful part of him wanted to assure her he could indeed rid her of her burden and the burden of his own immortality. He was, after all, the Undying King. A mage, a great warrior. Powerful. Eternal. Instead, he'd offered a sliver of hope—the "might" in his answer and a time frame of four months. If he couldn’t break the curse by then, he’d admit defeat and send her home before the city once again vanished between time and worlds, his debt to Niamh still outstanding.
Cededa's hard gaze swept the chamber. His second consort’s solar must seem grand beyond imagining to a village girl raised in solitude by her hedgewitch mother. He'd followed the path of her wide-eyed admiration, remembering the chamber as it once was when Helena held court here, her beauty the stuff of song and legend.
She’d been his favorite wife, and he had loved her as much as his shriveled, avaricious heart allowed. It hadn’t been enough. He turned away from the mural, refusing to think on a wife now no more than dust.
The sinuous mist greeting Imogen at the bridge curled around his ankles, caressing his calves and knees. It had followed him into the chamber, spreading across the floor until it flooded the space in a shallow sea.
“Make it livable for our guest,” he ordered, and the mist obeyed. Vaporous bindweeds slithered across the bed, sparking spectral lights of indigo and green as they curled over split wood. In their wake, the wood gleamed, as if newly made and polished. Where only broken slats once lay in disarray, a plump feather tick filled the middle space, complete with silk pillows and bedding woven of finely spun thread. Curtains hung from the canopy, and nearby a table bearing a pitcher and basin brimming with water appeared, followed by a stack of drying cloths and a goblet.
The mist gathered itself and slid along the walls as if to repair the faded murals. “Leave it.” Cededa’s sharp command halted its movements before it rolled back toward the door.
Imogen didn’t stir at his voice. Cededa trod on silent feet until he stood directly in front of her. Death’s handmaiden was a girl of banal looks—pretty but not extraordinarily so. She didn’t compare to Helena or even the vibrant Niamh. Still, he admired her smooth skin and long plait of dark hair with its hints of red. She’d removed her gloves, and he caught his breath.
She had stunning hands. Finely sculpted fingers and narrow palms, they rested limply in her lap, reminding him strangely of swans. Those delicate hands carried an atavistic, malignant power that quite possibly held the key to his freedom.
He murmured a quiet spell. She sank further into the chair, her breathing deepening. Drawn by the promise of her darkness surging through him once more, he circled her slender neck with his fingers and traced the pattern of scars that stretched across her collarbones. As if awakened by his touch, the raised pattern bled out from under her skin, curling around his fingers in ashen wisps that solidified into silver tendrils. They writhed across his hand, gathering in his palm until he once again held the pendant he’d given to Niamh almost thirty years earlier.
The silver glinted in the torchlight as he lifted the chain and slipped it over his head. He sighed as it sank into his chest, marking the skin in glowing etchings that spread from shoulder to shoulder and partway up his throat, twin to those tattooed on the back of his right hand. A jolt of lightning shot through him, and he stiffened. His nostrils flared at the renewal of senses he’d thought long dead—desire, smell, taste—all the things mortal men took for granted, and ones he thought never to feel again. His thoughts whirled, and he touched his chest where the pendant had disappeared. Imogen and her curse. The pendant was tainted with it, and once more Cededa tasted the intoxicating elixir of mortality.
He stared at his unexpected guest, slumbering so innocently in his dead wife’s solar. “We will consume each other, girl. I think it’s inevitable.”