The fairies had given the all clear. No more wild magick roamed the hills. It was now safe for all us refugees to leave. But though Ty and I hadn’t stayed here long, memories of her were tied to this place.
Leaving here would be like leaving her. And so I stayed, even as person after person packed up and left. No one would force us out, but I knew the servants were beginning to wonder what held two satyrs here.
It wasn’t fair to Myra.
This was not her land. These were not her people. She’d been exiled after choosing Tronos, but they would take her back so long as she returned alone, not that I thought that fate any better for her. Neither Myra nor I belonged to that place anymore, but neither did we belong here. Tomorrow morning, we must decide where to go.
“I left because I loved him. It was as simple as that,” she said softly, shrugging with a helpless look, before laughing under her breath. “The worst of it is, there are still equal parts hate and love for him inside me, even after what he did to me, even after his betrayal. Tronos was my first love, and a part of me thinks I’ll never forget him, no matter how much I might want to.”
I nodded. “The loving, the hurt, it never goes away, not completely. Does it?”
She patted my knee, looking back at Fable’s shrine. “I wish I could say yes. Though in my case—” she inhaled deeply “—Tronos was not worthy of my heart. I know that now. I threw my love at someone who never understood how to treasure me. I have no one to blame for this heartache but me and my own impetuous nature. But you were never like me, Pétrapos. You were always the proper satyr, exactly as you should be...”
“Except now,” I finished for her at her slight hesitation.
“Except now,” she agreed.
“I cannot explain what losing you did to me, Myra.”
Her face set in a full frown. “But you lost me well before my sojourn with the Fates.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Because though you were banned and staying with Tronos, I knew where you were, knew you were safe. But when I lost that tether to you, I went insane with guilt. I could have stopped you. I should have stopped you, and yet I’d done nothing to help you. Then I couldn’t find you. And I tried, but failed to reach you in Gnósi. Soon after that, I was tasked by Aphrodite to join in a game of sorts. They called them the love games, but they were more like the war games, pitting a team of two against another team of two. That’s where I met Tymanon, where I began to fall in love with her brilliance and quick wit, though I didn’t recognize it then.
“It’s also where I finally began to draw close to you, Myra. For so long, I blamed not just myself, but even you too, for not being satyr enough, for wanting more than you should have. I was so angry at you. Until her. Until I saw her and she me, and she changed my entire outlook on everything. Tymanon is my world. She is my heart and my soul, and I understand now, sister, why you threw it all away.”
She shivered, never even blinking as she said, “Because Tronos was mine too at the time. But I fear for you, my brother. The vows of Veritas make it so that two hearts can truly know they are one. Without that assurance, you can only hope, you can only guess that your chosen one is truly yours. I thought Tronos was mine. But he wasn’t, Pétrapos. He wasn’t.”
I swallowed, staring at Myra with all the love in my heart. “But Tymanon is mine. Tronos never did a kindness for you, Myra. Not in the way he stole you in the dead of night, not in the way he refused to come to our people and speak plainly and boldly of his love for you. He took you away, forcing the elders to make the decision they had.”
“Do you really think any of them would have understood or even bothered to truly listen?” She snorted, rubbing her arms with jerky movements.
“Maybe not. But maybe you could have turned a few hearts. You would have at least turned mine, if Tronos had claimed you as he ought to have. I would have respected him more at the very least. Tymanon isn’t Tronos, Myra. She sacrificed herself for you when she didn’t need to. She didn’t know you.”
“And now you are the wrong one, brother. For it was not me she sacrificed her freedom for, but you. You are going to leave me, aren’t you?”
I could not have them both. Tymanon was forever trapped in Gnósi. There was a choice to be made.
“I’ve just gotten you back. How could I leave you?” I said, tears heating my eyes.
She sniffed. “If I were you, and she was Tronos, even now, I am ashamed to say, I would leave you too. Love is a powerful affliction. I cannot say I understand, and yet I completely do. I will never give my heart again, but, brother, if you have found the true kind of happily ever after, you would be a fool to let it go. Tomorrow we will leave. I will head for home, and you will go back to her.”
I shook my head. Powerful as the need was to return to Tymanon, I was torn by my sense of duty to my sister.
“You cannot roam unhindered through this new world. It is too dangerous.”
She grinned. “Have more faith in me, brother. I am a big girl and can take good care of myself.”
“Out of the question,” I all but growled. “We will travel together.”
“If you come with me, you will never leave. I know you. You will find one reason or another to see me safe. You will lose your light.”
My heart ached as I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “That will never happen. I will return for Tymanon. I will.”
But deep down, I feared my sister might be right. I couldn’t abandon my sister again. I simply couldn’t. Tymanon would never think kindly of me if I did. Bleeding inwardly, I tossed Myra a crooked smile, one she didn’t return.
Standing, I tried to shake off the sadness as best I could and add some levity to my voice. “Go to bed, Myra. We leave at dawn.”
She got slowly to her feet, looking at me for several long seconds before leaning in and kissing my cheek. “I love you, Pétrapos. I hope you always know that.”
Fighting tears, I nodded at her. “I always have and always will.”
I watched her walk away, back into the castle. I stood out in the cold night, looking up at the sky, wishing with all my heart that my Ty stood with me now, that wherever she was, she was staring up at the very same sky and thinking of me as I would always think of her.
~*~
When I awoke the next morning, I found a note on the empty side of my bed.
You are too honorable, and so I’ve made the decision for you. Do not look for me. I left almost the moment I returned from the garden, and am now long gone. I will not return to the land of our home. Where I go, you will never find me. But I beg you to find your happiness, Pétrapos, as I never could. Find that joy for us both.
All my love,
~M
Heart beating a painful rhythm, I turned on my heel and stared at the blank wall behind me. I knew what I would do. And though I hated the sudden flash of relief coursing through me, I was grateful and humbled by my sister’s show of love for me. If Myra did not wish to be found, she wouldn’t be. Satyrs had learned long ago how to hide our tracks from the inquisitive eyes of our prey. Myra had made her choice, and now I needed to make mine.
I had many days of travel ahead.
Fear, pain, hurt, but also hope built up inside me, making me feel wild and desperate. I ached for the loss of my sister, but understood why she’d done as she’d done.
Myra was no longer the same girl she had been. She was strong, brave, and true. Wherever her journey took her, she would be okay. I felt the surety of that deep in my bones. My sister had given me a gift, and I would not let it be in vain.
Packing up my meager belongings, I said goodbye to no one as I made the journey to find my beloved.
No matter how far or what it took, I would find my Tymanon again, and this time, I would never leave her side.
Chapter 20
Tymanon
I walked with Kynto along the burbling brook, a bunch of plucked wildflowers gripped loosely in my hands. I sighed and stared at the sun slowly cresting
the horizon. Above us, falcons circled lazily in the cloudless azure sky.
I’d been here now many days and had thought to get lost in my books to help ease the constant torment of memories. Each day that passed without Petra beside me was harder than the day before. I thought I’d known what leaving him would feel like, but I hadn’t known a damned thing. The emptiness within me was a void so vast that I felt myself being consumed by it.
Soon, there’d be nothing of me left at all, just a shell of a woman who’d once been. Without Petra, I’d lost the colors, lost my smile. I was a woman with her nose in a book now, learning but not living, not really knowing anything anymore.
I just hoped that wherever he was, he was happy now.
Suddenly Kynto vanished. He could do that. Though I could command his return, I wouldn’t. It wasn’t like we talked much anyway.
Inhaling, I shook my head and turned for home. For so long, all I’d ever wanted was my privacy, but I was quickly discovering an eternity of isolation was far too much to bear.
I’d not even been here a month. I could hardly fathom that Myra had done this over a year.
“Ómorfo álogo, why do you cry?”
I blinked, shocked to see him there. My Petra. My beloved. Looking at me with a soft smile on his rugged face and hope burning in his jeweled green eyes. I trembled, covering my mouth with my cold hands and feeling the tears raining down my cheeks.
“You are not real, my gída, for I am terribly alone in this world. But oh, how I wish you were.”
I’d been reading about these woods, about how the ghosts of those you loved would haunt you in them, maybe to help stave off the madness of near isolation, maybe to remind you of all you’d lost. I’d seen Petra roam these plains so often that I’d grown accustomed to his presence. But he’d never before spoken to me, never before called me his beautiful horse. Trembling violently as my vision of him was blinded by the heat of my tears, I wrapped my arms around myself.
He took a step toward me, and I could smell his familiar scent of clover and musk. My heart fractured further within me.
“And if I were real, what would you tell me?”
My lashes fluttered, and I wanted to walk away, wanted to scream at him to leave me be and never haunt my steps again. But I was sick with grief and the unbearable loss of him, and so I poured my heart out to him.
“I would tell you how ardently I love you, how deeply I miss you, and how very selfishly I wish I’d never made this deal.”
When I looked up at the ghost, I expected him to have vanished, but instead I found him even closer, so close to me, in fact, that I felt the heat of him brush against me.
I sucked in a sharp breath.
“Then that makes two of us, my álogo, for I wish to be wherever you are. Forever. For always.”
His hand slid warmly over my cheek, and I shook at the callused feel of his palm.
“You can’t be real,” I whispered.
He shook his head, green eyes blazing like the sun as he stared at me with such fierce longing that my knees grew weak.
“But I am. I fought to come back to you.”
I sobbed, gripped his vest, and hung on so tight my knuckles turned white. “You can’t be here. You can’t be here. This place is forever. You can never see her again. You can never—”
He shushed me by laying a finger against my lips, and my heart blazed like the sun within me. Petra had found me. Petra had come back for me.
“Myra and I said our goodbyes. I love my sister with all my soul. You gave me a gift I will never forget.” He leaned in, kissing away my tears as he brushed back my hair with his strong hands, making me melt, making me weak and dizzy.
It’d been so long, so very long. But I’d not forgotten the strength of him, the steel of his arms as they wrapped tightly around me, holding me fast, letting me know without words how very dear I was to him.
“What?” I whispered.
“Goodbye.” He kissed me on the mouth so softly it was almost a whisper. “You gave me the gift of goodbye. My sister has grown into a woman of whom I am infinitely proud, but she has her own life to live now, as I have mine.”
Calling the shift to me, I stood in the crook of his arms as a human woman. My magic curled like flame between us. Instantly the world shifted. Where I’d been the taller of the two, now I was shorter, and I was able to move completely into his long, lean form. I laid my head against the rapid beating of his heart, lulled into peace by the lovely sound of it.
“I fear you will regret this, Petra.”
Moving me back by my shoulders just a little, he peered deeply into my eyes as he said, “The only regret I have was ever leaving you, my beloved. You are my sun, my moon, my stars, my all. I cannot breathe without you. I do not care where we go or even if we ever see another soul. You are my happily ever after, Tymanon. Only you.”
I kissed him, with all the soul and passion that now blazed in my chest.
I’d only ever been walking in a daze before I’d met Petra, only living a half-life, never realizing that fact until I’d met him and understood just how little I’d really known.
Our kiss was slow and thorough, our tongues dueling and sweeping sensuously against each other’s, saying without words what we meant to one another. I’d abandoned everything to see him happy, but it was to me he’d returned. The bird had been set free, released from its cage. But to its cage it returned, for that was where it felt the most loved.
“I love you,” I whispered, holding him tight to me. I was never going to let him go. Not ever. “With all my heart, my Petra, I love you.”
“And I you, Tymanon. Where you go, I go. Your passions are my passions. Your desires are my own. Your heart is mine and mine is yours. Forever. For always.”
I smiled, beaming through tears that were now for joy. “For always,” I whispered back, and our words were carried on the winds like a ballad, like a promise of eternity.
I hugged him to me again, and when next I glanced up, Lachesis was there, hidden in the trees, watching us both. She blew me an air kiss, and I nodded, knowing I had her to thank for this gift.
When she left, I took Petra’s hand and headed for home.
“I have so much to show you, my love,” I said with a smile.
“Books, books, and more books.” He laughed, and the sound of it stirred my soul.
“Yes, that and more. But first, I thought maybe you’d like to see our bedchamber.”
He paused, a smile freezing on his face as his eyes suddenly turned hot. “Show me, Tymanon. Show me where I will claim you and make you mine for all time.”
And so I did. And Petra kept his promise too.
~*~
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Other Books written as Jovee Winters
The Dark Queens
The Sea Queen, Book 1
The Passionate Queen, Book 2
The Ice Queen, Book 3
The Magic Queen, Book 4
The Dark Queen, Book 5
The Fairy Queen, Book 6
The Dark Kings
The Mad King, Book 1 (chronologically comes after The Fairy Queen)
If you love Fairy Tale Romances, then make sure to check out my other fairy tale themed stories written as Marie Hall
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The Centaur Queen Page 20
