Imogen gave a humorless chuckle at the sight of the omnipresent mist drifting toward her. Tineroth’s spectral custodian, and Imogen’s watchful guard. It blanketed the steps, pausing at her feet. A sudden pressure rested against her ankle. Imogen looked down to see a full water skin next to her. She lifted it, took a healthy swallow of water and rinsed her mouth several times.

“My thanks.”

She didn’t expect an answer and jumped when the mist suddenly rose higher, separating itself into distinct forms that shifted and swayed with the steady breeze.

Imogen scrambled to her feet. Before her stood a virtual crowd of wraiths, their pellucid features obscured by the play of shadow and moonlight. Still, she made out what looked to be an army. Men armored for battle, helmeted and carrying both shield and sword. They hovered behind a small group of women with children at their side. A stately figure, pride evident in the set of her insubstantial shoulders, drifted closer to Imogen.

She raised a spectral hand and pointed to the side. Imogen followed her direction. The air rippled and shadows realigned themselves, lightening to become floating images of things that once existed in Tineroth.

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?”