“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 the 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 had 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.”