The Immortal Prince by Jennifer Fallon

future and made it endless.
    Perhaps it was with him still. Only an optimist would think it possible for an immortal to find a way to die.
    Cayal dozed eventually, something he suspected he would be doing a lot in the coming days and months. There was little else to do in Recidivists’ Row. The Glaeban prison system was punitive, not remedial. They made no pretence about reforming criminals here. They were only interested in keeping them off the streets. If the criminals suffered in the process of their incarceration, so much the better.
    As he dozed, Cayal dreamed of places long gone and people he could no longer name. Thousands of years of memories vied for his attention when he slept, sometimes coming in broken snatches, other times unravelling with startling clarity, as if he was reliving the moment all over again. Sometimes he couldn’t bear to close his eyes. Other times, he sought refuge in sleep. Sometimes faces from his past spoke to him in his dreams. Often he couldn’t put a name to them, or even recall how he’d known them.
    And some faces had stayed with him through eternity, their memory too strong to fade, even with the passage of endless time.
    Today was one of those times. Gabriella came to visit him again. In the back of his mind, Cayal knew she wasn’t real. He had known her—loved her—long before he was made immortal. Gabriella had been his future once. Now she was so far in his past all that remained of her was this infrequently recurring dream.
    Nobody alive remembered Gabriella. Only Cayal could recall her long, rich brown hair, her devastating eyes, her flawless fair complexion, her throaty laughter, her stunning body. She was a nobleman’s daughter and if the fine weave of her clothing hadn’t given that much away, her bearing certainly did. She was proud, Gabriella was—proud and tall and beautiful. A fit consort for a prince.
    And she knew it, too.
    Gabriella spoke to him in words he couldn’t make out. Cayal wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what she had to say, anyway. They had not parted friends. Gabriella’s promise to stand by him through adversity and pain until the end of time had lasted right up until the first time Cayal found himself in serious trouble.
    But he missed her in his dreams. Or the idea of her, at least. Cayal remembered that much. He remembered what it was to be in love, to love and be loved. He lamented the loss of it, even if the memory left a bitter taste in his mouth that eight thousand years of distance had never been able to completely dispel.
    Maybe that’s the true torment of immortality? he wondered. To be tortured by the memory of true love while knowing it will forever elude you.
    Longing can be more painful than grief, if it never ends.
    Was that what Gabriella was saying to him? Her lips were moving, those luscious, soft lips he remembered so well, almost as well as he remembered how her lithe, naked body had felt in his arms, her soft breast, the taste of her skin, the moist warmth of her forbidden places…
    And then he was jerked rudely out of his dream by a loud metallic banging. Cayal’s eyes flew open and he turned his head, his vision colliding with reality as he looked at her…standing on the other side of the bars…Gabriella…the same hair, the unmistakable bearing…
    He met her eyes and stared, dumbstruck…
    And then the guard banged his truncheon against the bars again and Cayal realised he’d been dreaming. This wasn’t Gabriella. He was in a Glaeban prison for murdering Rindova’s butcher and his six stupid brothers. And when he looked at her more closely, stunning though she was, other than the same hair colour, this woman was nothing like his long-dead lover.
    This was the Duchess of Lebec.
    And simply by the way she was staring at him, Cayal realised she wasn’t here to help him. She was here to prove he was a madman.

Chapter 8
    The ride through Lebec