The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(10)

I’d hoped that somehow, after the wild magic had set upon Kingdom, Myra might have been set free of the curse. So much of Kingdom had been affected. But my hopes had been dashed the moment Ty had handed me the spelled seeing disk.

Myra gazed down into the ever pool with an empty hollowness in her sky-blue eyes, forever out of my reach, forever lost.

And yet Tymanon and I now went to find the Fates.

Again.

Again for me, but not for Ty. I’d tried going to the Fates once, what seemed like a lifetime ago, but it’d been only a year since I’d tried to free Myra. I’d not been successful. I’d gotten close, but had ultimately failed.

My heart thumped wildly in my chest. I knew I was not capable enough to challenge the Fates for an answer alone. None could enter the Isle of Gnósi without first passing the three, and the three changed at the whim of the Fates themselves. The three could be anything—questions, trials, tests, puzzles, a test of brawn or skill. Anything. I could not help hoping that maybe this time, the outcome would change.

I traced the lovely face of the trapped satyr. In the love games, I’d been able to forget about my duty to Myra. Faced with constant challenges, I’d been too busy and exhausted to do other than pass out at night’s end. But with our return to Kingdom returned the driving need to reclaim her. My obsession of the past year was back and burning like a flame inside my breast.

I traced her beautiful face, wishing with all my heart she’d look up at me, just one more time. But I was naught but a ghost to her now.

“I promise, Myra, with all my heart. I promise.”

Closing my eyes, I pocketed the disk and hung my head. Exhaustion laced my very bones, not just from the thought of Myra, but from the run. Trying to keep up with a centauress in her prime was not a task for the faint of heart.

But I would give Ty no cause for concern. I had just as much reason to go to Gnósi as she did. I did not believe it was coincidence that the one place I needed to go just so happened to be the place Galeta the Pink had tasked us to go. I’d been around Tymanon enough now to recognize a pattern when I saw one. I only wished I understood it. I was nowhere near as clever as my friend.

A shrill cry pierced the night sky.

Tymanon!

Jerking to my feet, I didn’t think. I just turned on my heel and ran, pulse pounding so furiously I tasted it on the back of my tongue. It was easy enough to follow her trail, and in minutes, I cut through a bush. The stream was navy-blue and dancing with threads of moonlight, looking like fireflies and fairies. There was a ripple of water at the very center and a dark shape floating beneath. It had to be Tymanon.

But she did not appear to be in distress, and slowly, my heart rate settled back down to normal. I should go, give her peace, stop looking.

I was rooted to the spot, unable to move, mind frozen as I watched her shadow twirl beneath the water, wondering just how deep the stream had to run for her to be so fully immersed. The heart that had just returned to a normal rhythm was again beating furiously.

She was an incredible archer, able to strike objects at what seemed an impossible distance. I’d not seen Tymanon miss yet. She’d even put Baba Yaga on her toes. I was not a shabby fighter, but I’d not been created to be one, either. Much of what I now knew, Tymanon had taught me. She was a brilliant fighter. My true strengths lay elsewhere, in places I doubted a centaur would ever learn to appreciate.

Cupping my hands around my mouth, I was ready to call out to her just to assure myself that she was well. I was beginning to feel foolish for having run here as I had. If anyone could handle herself, it was Ty.

But I still couldn’t make myself leave. So I inhaled deeply and cupped my mouth. Just as I was about to yell her name, the water parted and out rose a nymph. The words left me completely.

She was a water nymph with long, dark hair streaming like a waterfall down her perfect neck and covering the globes of her perfect breasts, giving a tantalizing hint of dusky rose-colored nipples as she inhaled. Instantly, my mouth watered for a taste of them, and sexual desire coursed through my body like a bolt of lightning, making all the fine hairs on my body stand on end. My cock grew heavy and hard. I hadn’t felt this rush of need in so long that I rocked back on my heels, almost losing my footing.

What was a water nymph doing in these waters? Why had she traveled so far from home? I wet my lips, body feeling electrified by the beautiful female’s presence.

Then eyes the color of melted amber blinked up at me, and I trembled. I knew this nymph. I’d spent many nights with her beneath the stars, talking endlessly about everything and nothing of importance. This nymph was my companion, Tymanon.

My nostrils flared. I should go, turn around, beg her forgiveness for staring upon her nudity. Nymphs enjoyed being admired, especially by my kind. Satyrs had been created for the chase, and nymphs created as our perfect heart’s desire.

My heart beat like a bloody drum in my chest as I tracked a path of water that slowly and languidly ran from the curve of her collarbone, down between the vee of her perky breasts, along the center of her flat stomach, before finally coming to rest at the patch of dark hair between her thighs.

I took in a trembling breath, clenching my hands, as the night suddenly seemed to fill with cricket song and the scent of pine needles crushed beneath my hooves.

As a satyr, it wasn’t as though I hadn’t stumbled across a nymph or thousand in my day. The outcome was always the same. She pretended to run away, going just fast enough to give me the chase my kind so craved, but keeping close enough that eventually I’d catch her, trap her, and make her mine in every sense of the word.