Imogen shivered and hugged herself. “Were you truly so hated?”

Cededa closed his eyes. “I remember those days. Chaos and screaming mobs. Buildings set alight. Temples desecrated. People shouting for the ministers to bring forth the head of the Butcher.” He opened his eyes to gaze upon the effigy. “I think ‘hated’ is too mild a word.” He pointed to the inscription carved on the side of the catafalque. “This is written in Scetaq, the language of curses. It says ‘Here lies Cededa, alive yet dead. May he remember. May we forget.’”

Imogen gaped at him, unease worming its way through the glow of her fascination for her new lover. “What did you do to turn your people against you?”

“Enough to live four thousand years and still regret it. Still grieve it.”

They stood in silence for a moment before he motioned for her to follow him again. This time she didn’t take his hand, nor did he offer it. He led her to one of the tall spires still intact and shrouded in a green veil of ivy. Cededa wrenched the warped door open, snapping brittle hinges with his efforts.

He took her hand, and they climbed a stone staircase that spiraled endlessly upward. When they finally stopped, Imogen leaned against the wall and tried not to breathe in great gulps of dusty air.

“What are we doing?” she wheezed on a thin note. She scowled to see Cededa hadn’t even broken a sweat from the arduous climb.

He opened another door. Light poured into the stairwell’s gloom, along with fresh air. Imogen followed him out onto a balcony and gasped at the sight before her.

Tineroth lay in the afternoon sun, a relic of broken splendor awash in the pale, filtered light of a cloudy sky. From her rooftop view, she saw the green crown of the surrounding forest with its strange trees and hidden occupants. Beyond the woods, the deep crevasse with its ribbon of river.

As if he heard her unspoken question, Cededa spoke. “Once I took back the key, the bridge disappeared. When you return home, I’ll summon it again so you can cross.”

Despair rose inside her at his words. Imogen tried to brush it away and failed. She should be glad to leave. She’d be free of her bane and could return to a world populated by others, where there was noise and market days and festivals, rainstorms and changes of seasons and the renewed hope of a normal life.

None of that seemed to matter as much at the moment. The king who’d become her savior and her lover wouldn’t accompany her into that new life.

“Why did you bring me to your chambers yesterday, Sire?”

He stayed quiet so long, she didn’t think he’d answer. “So that one living person might know I was once a man. Flawed and incomplete, but still a man like any other. I bled; I loved; I warred; I married and sired children. I am more than just the Undying King of Tineroth. I am also less.