Cededa as he’d once been—human, blue-eyed with sun-bronzed skin. Haughty, merciless, scornful. Each trait was stamped on his sublime features. The scene changed. Tineroth, still whole but falling, her streets teeming with angry mobs and fires in the distance. Another city, razed to rubble. Blood ran in rivers down streets littered with broken bodies. A crowd of women and children huddled in a room with a vaulted ceiling. One, a stunning woman with the bearing of a queen, stood defiant before a murderous army.
The images flickered, changing twice more. Tineroth as she was now; Cededa, pale and altered by the Waters, reclined on a broken throne. The last scene had Imogen moaning behind her hand. A great bonfire with Cededa at its center, lashed to a cut timber. Silhouettes danced around the pyre, swaying drunkenly as the Undying King burned and shrieked his agony to a deaf heaven.
New tears coursed down Imogen’s cheeks as the images faded. The ethereal woman raised a hand as if in farewell. The figures behind her bowed. They all shifted, losing form until they were once more a single vaporous shroud.
Imogen trailed after the mist as it led her back to the palace. Cededa waited on the lowest step, haloed in moonlight. His still features revealed nothing of his thoughts. Imogen wished she could be so unflappable.
“Who are the people in the mist?”
He gazed past her to the mist drifting away from them. “I see Gruah has revealed herself to you.”
Imogen started. The last wife. The one he called his judge and punisher. “I saw soldiers, women, and children. A woman of distinction stood foremost among them. Was that Gruah?”
His mouth tightened. “Aye, it was. It is. She was a princess of Mir whose first allegiance remained with Mir. It was she who raised the rebellion against me and consorted with the Tineroth mages. Her sorcery and theirs made Tineroth as you see it now and imprisoned me here. The others were the women of her court and their children.”
“And the soldiers?”
“Those who cut them down. They followed me into Mir and did my bidding. They remain in Tineroth, restless spirits who still do my bidding.”
Tineroth, broken and but not entirely abandoned, only haunted. “Why do they linger here?” She scowled. “Did you raise some spell to trap their spirits?”
He matched her scowl with one of his own. “No. Before she died, Gruah cursed us all. The men loyal to me will find no rest until I do.” He sighed. “But a curse demands a sacrifice of its wielder. Gruah remains with me as well, as do the women and their children who died beside her. A bargain made to insure I’d never forget what I once did.”
The revulsion and horror that had consumed her earlier lessened. Cededa’s light eyes almost glowed in the night’s gloom. Dispassionate before, his expression was now one of abiding sorrow and regret, acknowledgement of an act that left a permanent stain on his soul. Sudden insight made her heartbeat stutter.