The Undying King by Grace Draven

Author:Grace Draven [Draven, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grace Draven

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Torchlight flickered warm color across Imogen’s drab clothing, sparking memories for Cededa of Tineroth noblewomen in their court finery. A glittering procession of butterflies whose jewels caught the light of a thousand candles that illuminated his once majestic throne room. The colorful garb didn’t stay on their graceful bodies for long once they reached this chamber, though the jewelry sometimes did.

Imogen traveled the bedchamber’s perimeter. “This room alone is three times the size of the cottage I shared with Niamh.” Her gaze settled on him for a moment. “Was it yours?”

She shone pale and regal in the flickering light, her dark hair cascading down her back in red-tinted waves. Cededa considered telling her the truth. Before the Waters’ effects leached away both his needs and his desires, Cededa the Fair had a reputation known far and wide as a man of lusty appetites and the stamina to match them. His bedchamber had seen many women spend hours in its confines. By the time Tineroth’s mages discovered a way to trap and imprison him, it was nothing more than a place where Cededa brooded alone, enraged, impotent, and immortal.

He had lost the carnal appetites that once consumed him only to discover them reawakened by her lethal touch.

The curse flowing black and powerful beneath her skin was killing him and bringing him back to life at the same time. Each day, they engaged in an odd courtship of profound intimacy and innocence, one that left him clawing for control and wondering if his heart would pound out of his chest.

He needed no one to tell him she was untried. Cededa had never cared for virgins. They were too much trouble for his debauched tastes, like high strung horses unbroken to the saddle. Imogen displayed none of those nervous traits, even when she discovered the brothel scroll tucked away in the library. Niamh had done a fine job raising a young woman grounded in practicality. Cededa, however, had no doubt Imogen was innocent in body and unfamiliar with the subtle signals of desire.

Cededa had lost count of the women he’d seduced and who had seduced him before the Waters made a mockery of his humanity. Practiced in the art of sensuality, his wives and concubines had been raised to capture the eye and passions of an emperor. Imogen seduced him with nothing more than her graceful, lethal hands and a steady faith in his ability to break the hold of her curse.

“Sire?”

The single word pulled him out of his musings. He dipped his chin. “My apologies for the inattention. I’ve something to show you.”

He crooked a finger. She crossed the room to stand beside him, listening as he uttered another soft word in a forgotten tongue. The torches brightened, their flames leaping higher to better illuminate the frescoes painted on the whitewashed walls. Not as bright as the illustrations on the scroll, they still glowed, their details highlighted in rich colors painted by a far more skilled artist than the one who painted the scroll.

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