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 procession 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 three times 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.