“She is my jailer and my mistress. I am bound to her, body and soul, charged with defending her from all invaders. The cost of the privilege that is immortality.”

Imogen turned to Cededa and slid her arms around his neck. He went willingly into her embrace. “I didn’t need to see your chambers or even Tineroth from this balcony to understand you or the price you pay. I saw the man within the king, Sire. Even if you had no way of lifting my bane, I’d remain grateful and happy to the end of my days that I met you, Cededa the Fair.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Did you speak much with my mother when she cared for you?”

They sat on the floor of another of the palace’s numerous rooms, a low table between them. Torchlight sent shadows cavorting across the walls.

Cededa’s fingers hovered over an ornate game piece as he pondered his next move and ignored her attempts at distracting him. He jumped the piece two spaces and removed three of hers from the game board. “No. One of the last things I regained in my healing was the ability to speak. But she spoke to me often enough. Read to me as well. Remember when I said it’s how I learned your language?” He moved another piece onto the board, putting her most powerful player at risk.

Imogen hissed and hunched closer to the table for a closer look—a fruitless effort. Nothing hid on the board. He was a master at the game, and while Imogen played well, she was no match.

She studied the pieces. “Niamh wrote in her journal that you were burned.”

Cededa waited until she moved her designated piece and sealed her fate in this round of Senet. “I was burned. Burned until I was nothing more than an ash heap and a pile of bones.”

Her eyes rounded, horror darkening her irises. “Dear gods. Were you aware the entire time?”

“Yes.” He made his next move and conquered one corner of her territory on the board. He didn’t elaborate. Such memories were not to be shared or detailed. The agony, the heat, the consuming flames. Jeering faces and laughter, the ribald jokes and toasts with ale cups as he bellowed his pain to the cold moon until he could no longer see or hear. They had scattered his ashes to the winds and tossed his bones into the forest, a desecration of the man who’d decimated their numbers before they overwhelmed him.

He’d lain for days in a pile of leaves somewhere far beyond Tineroth, an abomination half healed, half remade and still smelling of the fires that had burned him to nothing more than scorched bone.