Imogen frowned. “There’s nothing noble in carrying on a legacy of conquest.” She eased her hand out of his grip, and he let her go.

Cededa arched an eyebrow. “You know nothing of empires, Imogen.” She blushed and looked away. “A monarch who chooses ideals over power isn’t a monarch for long.” Experience had taught him that.

She must have caught the regret tainting his declaration. “Was it worth it? Drinking the Waters?”

“No.” She made to ask another question, then closed her mouth abruptly. “Say or ask it, Imogen. No use in hiding your desire to do so.”

She hesitated before forging ahead. “When did you become Cededa the Butcher?”

His insides froze at the question. He expected it, had always expected it from the moment she crossed the bridge and begged his help. Who wouldn’t want to know how someone came by such a grotesque title?

He dropped his gaze to the Senet board, moved his king through her defense wall and crushed her army in the game. When he looked up once more, he caught her eyeing him warily.

“After I led soldiers into Mir and destroyed yet another rebellion. I made a lesson of the city.” His voice was soft, toneless. “We left none alive.”

Imogen fisted her hands in her skirts. He heard the gasp trapped in her throat. She swallowed hard. “The women?” she whispered. “Children?”

He shook his head. “None left alive,” he repeated. “It took us three days. The canals and the fountains, even the river ran red with blood.” Only Tineroth’s screaming for his return had ever drowned out the screams of the dying that still rang in his mind.

Imogen lunged away from him, knocking the table with her knee hard enough to make the Senet board jump and spill the game pieces onto the floor. He watched, unmoving, as she scooted back on her haunches, desperate to put space between them.

The Butcher. He’d given her the truth, if not the answer she probably wanted. Not a hyperbolic title risen from the dramatic retellings of a popular fable, but a name earned and deserved. A part of him withered away at the sight of her scuttling back from him, revulsion twisting her features. He knew what she saw—the monster of legend, the reason why each of his images, except the catafalque, had been destroyed, why his people had finally revolted and why his greatest sorcerers had wrenched Tineroth from her anchor to the world and cast her into oblivion, and him along with her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Feeling as if she’d suffocate, Imogen lurched to her feet and bolted from the room. The palace walls and cloisters warped in her blurred vision, and she careened against a set of pilasters, nearly tumbling down the stairs in her headlong rush to escape.

As if it heard her distress, the sentient mist appeared, spilling onto the stairs, sliding under her feet and rising to encompass her in a cool cloud of faint light.