The dogs’ baying grew louder with renewed excitement. Imogen threw another rock. “Cededa!” This time her bellow carried far across the divide. Still nothing from the other side. A terrible fear nearly consumed her. What if the immortal king had not survived the fall into the river? What if Tineroth no longer held her last living son captive?

More shouts behind her, this time close enough she expected to see horses and dogs burst from the forest understory at any moment.

“Cededa!” She shrieked his name a third time. There’d be no fourth time. Dradus’s hunters were almost on top of her.

Tears blurred her vision, an impotent fury born of frustration and despair threatening to consume her. Suddenly the air in front of her wavered, rolling and shimmering. The Yinde bridge took shape, vague but solid enough. At the other end a pale figure waited, and Imogen cried out, exultant.

Her euphoria died a quick death when a shaggy-haired hound broke from the trees and loped toward her. Dradus’s command of “Catch her!” urged it to a faster pace.

“Run, Imogen.”

Cededa’s cool voice carried on the wind, and Imogen’s feet grew wings. She dashed across the bridge, feeling it dissolve almost immediately under her feet. If she stumbled, she’d plummet to her death. Behind her, a cacophony of howls and curses rent the air. Imogen took a running leap, landing hard enough in Cededa’s arms that he grunted and staggered backwards, almost losing his balance.

Imogen wrapped her arms and legs around his body, uncaring that she nearly knocked him to the ground. He lived. Still bound, still trapped but here, waiting for her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Cededa ignored the hue and cry of Imogen’s pursuers and carried her into the shelter of Tineroth’s forest. She clutched him as if she were drowning, her legs around his waist, her face buried in his shoulder.

The shock of seeing her, throwing rocks and shrieking his name, hadn’t left him. When he collapsed the bridge and fell into the chasm, he thought his last memory of her would be the horror in her expression at watching him fall. Half drowned and beaten, with Tineroth’s voice screaming in his head, he’d returned to the city. The familiar hush enveloped him at the gates, along with the ghostly mist that helped him into the palace to Imogen’s chambers. He collapsed in her bed, where he healed and tried to forget her.

Now, the improbable had happened. She was in Tineroth once more, in his arms where she belonged. Neither spoke as he carried her into the palace and to the chambers he now thought of as hers. Clothing was tossed aside to fall in scattered piles near the bed. He was inside her before they even fell back to the mattress.