The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(2)

Petra and I needed to understand why we’d been thrown out. Had we failed again? True, we hadn’t fallen in love. I admired and even rather enjoyed the satyr’s company greatly, but admiration was a far cry from the rules of the games that demanded we either declare our love and leave, or lose and spend an eternity in purgatory for our hubris in defying the gods.

I looked up, studying the needles of the spindly conifers above. The western region was said to be a thriving, bustling countryside filled to bursting with big game animals to hunt, plenty of wild-sown crops to eat, and some of the rarest types of flowers in all of Kingdom. Pursing my lips, I turned in another small circle before trotting back to the country lane.

Standing in the center of a red-clay dirt trail that diverged in several directions, I paused, waiting to see some sign of life, be it animal or otherwise.

After many long minutes, nothing appeared.

Kneeling, I touched my palm to the ground and cocked my head as I waited several heartbeats in near silence. I couldn’t even feel the vibrations of another soul roaming these lands. From all I’d read, this realm was far less civilized than other parts of Kingdom, but the evidence of life should have been here. Where was the wild game? Where were the trees bursting with fruit and nuts, and thick stalks of wheat shooting up from the ground?

I felt Petra’s approach, but he said nothing, just looked at me as I continued to assess our situation. I had always appreciated my companion’s ability to recognize when I needed silence.

I glanced worriedly at the sky, realizing for the first time that it wasn’t merely blue, but many different colors. Salmon, tangerine, and violet were not unusual to see in the sky. It was the other colors that actually caught my eye. There were patches of phosphorescent blue, green, and black wavering like a desert mirage as they floated away. I knew what they were because I’d seen them before. Those were the remnants of powerful magic running its course.

Rubbing the fine hairs on my forearms that were standing electrifyingly on edge, I shivered. What in the bloody blazes had happened here? This was Kingdom, but a Kingdom I didn’t quite recognize. That thought shot like a cold thrill of adrenaline through my veins, making me feel both hot and cold. I was a creature of knowledge, of facts, and of truths. I’d spent the better part of my life learning all I could of my world and of the lands, people, flora, and fauna that filled it.

My heart beat a terrible treble inside me. Petra and I had failed at the games most miserably, but not because I wasn’t a brilliant bowman—we’d single-handedly beaten all our opponents, save for the conniving Baba Yaga—but because we’d failed to fall in love, which was the only prerequisite to getting out of the cursed realm relatively unscathed. But something strange had happened in that world created by the gods. Something I could hardly even fathom, in truth. I thought myself mad, feared for my sanity even, because Petra and I, we lost. We were cursed, flung into a time dimension outside of reality, doomed to be separated for all eternity.

I screamed his name, feeling empty and so alone, terrified of what came next. I blinked and then—this was the strange part—I’d gone back in time, to him, to our pasture, to a time before we’d reached the end of the challenges and were punished by the gods for our disobedience.

That part had been bad enough, but when I mentioned what’d happened, Petra looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. He said I hadn’t left him, that he and I were talking, and I suddenly went wide-eyed, slack-jawed and silent.

I didn’t believe him until the next day when we squared off with Galeta the Blue, a challenger I’d already faced several gauntlets back. I realized that I hadn’t merely gone back in time, but that time had altered completely, presenting me with a different present and future the previous timeline had afforded me.

Confusion weighed me down, made me anxious and nervous because I could remember with startling clarity every emotion I had felt when the goddess Calypso told us our fate. I could close my eyes and relive the terror of it all, could paint a picture in great detail of all that happened.

I’d felt the panic of being separated from him. One moment I was battling Baba Yaga for not only my life, but that of Petra’s, when one of Fiera’s little fire imps sabotaged Baba, flinging a deadly curse at her. I saw the witch crumple, saw her fall, and saw Petra taken away by deadly, terrifying beings.

I hadn’t known what to think or feel, other than I knew it happened, and I sensed I shouldn’t tell Petra about it. I didn’t want to panic him. Either I’d somehow been granted the gift of seeing the future, or some form of powerful magic had temporarily twisted our reality so that only I could remember what it had once been.

Or worse yet, I was going crazy.

Days passed after that, and I’d convinced myself that I had indeed gone temporarily insane, when it happened again.

The second time it happened, I had challenged Petra to kiss me, and he did. My lips tingled with the press of his warm skin to mine. My heart rattled the cage of my chest. I wasn’t certain I could say I liked it, and yet I wasn’t certain I could say I didn’t, either. I felt as though my bones melted, my blood boiled, and it was quite hard to breathe.

Fear gripped me too, fear of what others might think of us, fear of dating outside of my species. It was forbidden for hybrids to do so. Though there were cases of it throughout the ages, those couples were rare and often the butt of ridicule and derision. I opened my mouth, ready to tell him I didn’t like it and that we shouldn’t experiment like that anymore when my present looped again.