Her glance flicked between Kynto and me. Squaring her shoulders, she said angrily, “A female nymph was found murdered, alone in a temple with no chairs, no windows, no tables. Only a snapped and frayed rope dangled from the rafters ten feet up. She lay in a puddle of water. The Fates have determined she hung herself. How did she do it?”
Casting my eyes toward the ground I worked through the riddle. No chairs. No windows. No tables. She didn’t climb up. A dangling snapped rope ten feet up.
I blinked and then smirked. This was far too easy.
Caught up in the game, I shook my head. “Is this truly the challenge?”
“It’s the riddle Atropos gave me years ago in exchange for my freedom.”
I glanced at Kynto. He’d now withdrawn all the arrows and was breathing heavily, leaning against the tree, eyes closed and rubbing at his wounds. He would heal.
“Is Kynto your guardian?”
“Yes,” she said softly, staring at him with affection, all traces of her displeasure with me gone. “Yes, he is.”
Realizing she spoke of him, he looked up at her and he sighed wearily. His one eye looked pained, and not merely because of what he’d endured with me.
“She was an ice nymph.” I said it softly. “She created blocks of ice to reach the ceiling, walked up the blocks, wrapped the rope around her neck, and died. By the time she was discovered, the ice had melted.”
A lovely song whispered through the eaves, melodic and bell-like. Tendrils of golden power shivered like dew through the sky. Powerful magic poured down the crown of my head and pulsed through my body like a wave. I gasped as my back bowed.
Myra cried out.
When next I blinked, the entire world was bathed in opal brilliance, casting rainbow prisms over everything. The pulsing magic ceased, but I knew power had been transferred.
Myra’s eyes were the same jeweled mossy-green as her brother’s, and my heart twisted painfully.
She touched her cheek. “Why? Why would you do this? No one would ever be fool enough to switch freedom with me? Why did you do this?”
“For him.”
“Then you are a fool,” she spat, but the words had far less heat this time than they had before. Arms wrapped tightly around herself, she shook her head.
“I wish you well, Myra. Please tell your brother just how much I loved him, how much I will always love him.”
She tucked her chin against her chest, causing her hair to cover her eyes like a shield, but I could almost believe there’d been tears glimmering in their depths.
From one second to the next, she was gone, caught up in the funnel of starlight and darkness. I turned, looking at Kynto as he looked back at me. Understanding lit his eye. He was now my man and shield, my guardian of the woods. He inclined his head, the move far more graceful than I’d have thought a Cyclops could be.
“I guess it’s just us now, guardian.”
He grunted, but stood shakily to his feet before slowly clomping away.
I knew I had the power to call him back, but I did not wish to.
I stared at the world that would forever remain my home, and cried for all I’d lost and left behind.
Chapter 19
Petra
I stood, realizing almost instantly that Tymanon was gone.
A terrible, horrible suspicion gripped me.
“Ty!” I yelled, startling a group of white heron into flight. “Ty!” I cried again, turning in circles as I looked wildly around, knowing she could not hear me.
“The centauress is gone.”
A voice I’d never expected to hear again gripped my spine, and I stiffened, almost afraid to turn, and almost afraid not to.
When I did, my mind went blank, and I stumbled backwards, tripping over a stony path and landing on my arse as I gazed wide-eyed and shocked at my twin.
“M-M-Myra?” I stuttered, blinking several times.
She looked as I’d remembered. Mother had often teased that, where I had gotten the brains, Myra had stolen all the looks in the family.
Smiling warmly down at me, she held out her hand. “Brother. It’s me.”
I shook my head. “You... you... but you were trapped.”
“Not anymore. Another took my place. I am free.”
When I tried to speak, my voice shook. “W-w-who took your place?”
Her look was placid, but there was a sadness lingering in her gaze. “She said she came because of you.”
I hung my head as a rush of dizziness clutched at my skull, making me feel weak and cold.
“Tymanon wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She—”
“Did.” Another voice interrupted us. I didn’t need to look up to see who it was.
The golden-skinned fate with a crown of stars upon her head stood before us dressed in a gown of black rolling clouds that pulsed and breathed with movement. Her feet were bare. I kept my eyes glued to them, knowing that if I looked up at her now, I’d lose what little composure remained me.
Wetting my lips, it took me several minutes to gather my thoughts into any kind of coherence. The only thing I could seem to focus on was that Tymanon had left me.
She’d left me.
She’d left me...
I swallowed an ache in my throat so large my neck stretched tight from it. Myra walked to me, and without speaking a word, grabbed my hand and helped me to stand.
The dizziness had passed, but the hollowness continued to spread. My ears buzzed and my brain refused to accept what had happened. Tymanon would never leave me behind. We’d become partners in every conceivable way. She’d often told me how much she loved me. Last night she’d made sure to say it over and over and over again.
A chill swept down my spine. She’d said it because she’d known, even then, that she would leave. She’d probably known even longer than that.
Heat gathered in my eyes, and I went absolutely still, my shattered heart rattling the cage of my chest.
All the times she’d asked me for stories of Myra, all the times I’d seen the sadness and believed it was because of my twin’s separation, I’d never realized what she had planned.
Why would she do this?
“For you, satyr. Isn’t it obvious?”
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken my thoughts aloud until the Fate answered. She cocked her head, causing a tumble of brown hair to spill over her slim shoulder. Myra gripped my hand, and a tear leaked out of the corner of my left eye.
I had my sister back. She was safe again in the real world, not trapped in the labyrinth of Gnósi’s vastness. She smelled as I always remembered, of lavender and spring.
I looked at her and she smiled at me, the sight so familiar and winsome that it tugged at my soul strings. Another tear spilled off my lashes, rolling down my cheek unchecked. Myra’s full lips tipped downward.
I hated myself for the thoughts burning through me. I had my sister back, and yet I was more miserable than ever. The cost had been too high. I shook my head.
“Release her,” I begged of the Fate.
Her look was tinged with sadness. “Would that I could, male, but she is the queen of all knowledge now. The only way to free her is for someone to take her place as willingly as she took Myra’s.”
“Then I will take it.” I stepped forward.
“Pétrapos!” Myra cried out, latching onto my elbow to hold me close to her. “No!”
I gazed at my sister, feeling broken, destroyed, and ashamed of what it was I now felt. For so long, I’d been fixated on finding her, on bringing her back home safely, on saving her.
But I’d grown close to Tymanon, and over time, I’d fallen in love. It had been that love that had healed the pain of my sister’s loss, that had dulled me to the reality that, no matter what I did or how hard we fought, Tymanon and I would have been separated regardless. I’d hoped, after she’d told me that she had a plan, she’d truly figured out a way. With all her cleverness and wit, if anyone could have worked it out, it would have been Ty. But deep down,
I’d not been convinced that our end would go smoothly.
The requirement for Myra’s release had been firm.
I’d been such a damned fool to give into the hope of a future with Ty. So bloody stupid.
“Tymanon asked me to see you both safely home, a charge I will fulfill for her and only her. The centaur has become a friend to me,” Lachesis said.
Myra’s lips twisted, and a flash of regret crossed her eyes before she quickly shielded her thoughts from me.
“I need her, Fate. I need my mate.”
At this, Myra turned on me completely, staring at me with eyes so wide that they were almost entirely white. Her pasture-green irises were little more than dots.
“You were tasked by the fairies to save Kingdom,” Lachesis reminded me gently. “And so you have done. Tymanon has paid the price for our favor. You still have a job to do. So do it well and make her proud.”
My lashes flickered and I shook my head because she was right. Damn it all to the pits of the Underworld, she was right. But I feared that if I left here, I would never again find my way back, never again get to make things right with my centauress, my female, my love.
“I cannot leave her,” I pleaded.
The Fate’s smile was sad. “But you must. Do not let her sacrifice be in vain. Kingdom’s fate rests in your hands.”
I looked at Myra, and she at me. Her smile was welcoming, but hesitant, as though she were unsure of me. We’d not seen one another in years.
I frowned. The two years trapped in Time with Tymanon were already becoming a fading memory, a dream grown fuzzy around the edges. Would that happen to Ty too? Would she become a fuzzy memory to me someday?
I swallowed hard.
Myra gripped my hand, giving it a short squeeze. I bit my lip.
“What was our answer, Fate?”
“Two. Eight. Three. Twelve,” she said.
Feeling as though I couldn’t catch a proper breath, I rubbed at my aching and hollow chest. She’d sacrificed everything to restore Kingdom again and to restore my sister to me. But the cost had been too steep, too high.
“Return to your fairies. Make your world right again,” the Fate’s voice was low and gentle.
Closing my eyes as a single tear slid out my right eye, betraying me, I said, “Galeta, take us home.”
~*~
Many weeks later
I sat in the back gardens of Fable’s estate, gazing at her statue, which had been lovingly enshrined in black-and-gold-veined marble and wreathed by a multitude of strange and unusual flowers. Deep crimson blooms the size of my head wept rivulets of gold and red fluid from its stamens every time the winds rolled.
The statue wasn’t actually a chunk of stone, but the woman herself. After the curse had struck Kingdom, Fable had been doomed to experience an eternal death by drowning, courtesy of her grandmother, Calypso, goddess of the ancient seas.
The curse had hit us all differently, vanquishing some or erasing entire bloodlines. But for most, it’d caused a type of memory loss, and the degree of loss varied. Calypso and Hades had been hit hardest with a near total loss of memory.
I remembered Calypso. She’d been one of the three gods running the games in which Tymanon and I had first met. I’d thought her strangely quirky, but oddly enchanting. Her love for her husband, Hades, had been evident, as had her love for Fable. The goddess would never have done that to her granddaughter if she’d been in her right mind. But the curse had changed almost all of us.
Galeta and Danika both had seemed stumped by the Fate’s answer, looking at me, then at each other before turning back to me with a pleading look in their eyes, hoping I would be able to elucidate further.
But I’d only shaken my head and walked away, feeling like a failure. Tymanon would have had the answers. She would have known exactly how to fix this, how to make it all right again. She would have known what to say to them.
Instead, Kingdom had been left with me and my massive shortcomings as its savior. Our world was still in chaos. Though, I’d heard rumor that at least one of the many couples the fairies had placed together had managed to resecure their happy ending.
I sighed.
It had been three weeks since my return to Kingdom, three long, impossibly terrible weeks of being separated from the one I loved most.
I watched as a pale girl with raven-colored hair knelt at the base of Fable’s shrine, deadheading the blooms. She wept as she worked.
Her name was Snow. I didn’t know much about her other than her name, but whoever Snow was, Fable had clearly meant the world to her.
The scent of lemon tickled my nose a second before Myra’s warmth slid onto the bench beside me.
“This seat taken?” she asked softly.
I looked at her, but she stared straight ahead. The nights were starting to grow cooler. I’d lost track of time almost entirely.
For me, this had been a many-years-long battle. For others, it had been mere months. All I knew was there was an emptiness inside of me that stretched and grew bigger daily. It was all I could do to keep myself afloat and not drown in the river of pain.
Myra looked beautiful tonight, wrapped in a red velvet cloak, tiny white flowers threaded through her elegantly-shaped horns.
Her lips thinned. “I have been thinking, brother.”
“About?”
She shrugged. “Lots of things. But you, mostly.”
My brow lowered, and she finally turned to look at me. Her green eyes, so similar to mine, stroked my face, and I inhaled.
For so long, I’d fought to free her of the Fate’s curse. My heart was glad to have her here, to know she was safe now. But I was even more miserable than I’d been when she was lost to me. It was most unfair to Myra. She deserved so much better than this, than me.
“I’m not enough to keep you happy. Not anymore,” she said as though she’d read my shameful thoughts. My cheeks burned with heat.
Grunting, I turned to look back at the girl, but she was already gone. Instead, I studied Fable’s agonized face. Locked in a perpetual state of torment, such sadness and emptiness radiated through her stony eyes that it brought a lump to my throat.
Here I was, free, joined with my sister, my memory relatively intact. There were a few patchy spots, but otherwise I remembered almost everything of the previous world.
Fable, on the other hand, would be forever cursed unless her grandmother willingly freed her of it, a grandmother who remembered none of us, especially not her own family.
I could have it so much worse. I should be grateful, thankful for the life I had, instead of moping and desolate.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Myra’s warm hand slipped into mine.
“I’m sorry, sister,” I whispered, voice cracking as I said it. “I’m so sorry. I’m just—”
Leaning her shoulder into to mine, she said, “I’ve been trying to understand how this could have happened to you. Why you would even do it after what Tronos did to me, after he betrayed me that way. I was so angry at you for being as foolish as I.”
I trembled. “You are wrong, Myra. Tymanon is nothing like Tronos. She is my other half.”
“But we weren’t built to have them. I know that now, and you should not have forgotten,” she chided gently.
I twirled on my seat, startling her. “Maybe that’s a lie, just like so many other things have been lies. We may not be able to bind souls as most others in Kingdom, but I would pit my love for Tymanon against any of theirs.” I gestured with a thumb over my shoulder toward the rest of Kingdom. “Love doesn’t need a magical element to exist, Myra, or to keep us honest to one another. I love Tymanon despite it all, and I know she loves me.”
She swallowed hard, framing my face with her hands, lightly tracing the beard I’d given free reign to grow in the past few weeks. Myra had grown so much in the time we’d been apart. Gone was the carefree youth I once knew. In her place was a mature woman who’d seen heartache and was intimately familiar with its pain. She
rarely smiled now, and it cut me to see the sparkle missing from her.
“I’m beginning to see that.”
I scooted around until I was able to lay my head on her shoulder. She patted me, running her fingers lazily over my small horns. I’d sliced them off when I’d lost her, sure I would never again know pleasure in my life, sure that I would never again want it. It was a way for me to do penance for my part in Myra’s pain. I’d cut off the one part of me that made me truly me, a sacrifice I hadn’t regretted then, or even now.
I never again wanted to be the man I’d once been—callous, selfish, and vain. That life, which had once been all things to me, was now nothing but vapors, a bubble easily popped, a mirage that held no substance or even meaning. I’d had no purpose. I’d been directionless, pursuing only that which had given me temporary pleasure, but quickly boring and moving on.
“What made you choose Tronos, Myr?” I looked up at her.
She thinned her shell-pink lips to a razor-thin line.
“What made you break away from our traditions? What made you brave enough to say ‘This is not the life for me?’ You could have had any one of the herd as your mate. You’ve always been much admired. So why? Why an ogre hybrid? What was it about Tronos that made you brave enough to throw it all away?”
The hand that had been running through my hair stilled before dropping to her lap as she clenched and unclenched her fingers.
“You bring up memories that wound me deeply, Pétrapos.”
I shook my head. “Forgive me—”
She placed three fingers against my mouth, shushing me. “Nothing to forgive, brother.”
The air smelled thick and sweet with the scent of flowers and her perfume. Being with Myra was more wonderful than I could have hoped.
My sister and I had grown, not just close again, but closer than we’d ever been. I’d asked her about her life in Gnósi and she’d asked me about my time without her. She’d been astonished by the changes in Kingdom.
She and I were still many realms away from our homelands, but I had no doubt that, just like the rest of Kingdom, everything had changed there too. This castle was a temporary haven, but one we’d need to leave soon.
The Centaur Queen Page 19
