The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(21)

Tymanon was munching on a bit of smoked meat.

My stomach growled. I was hungry enough that I even entertained the idea of meat tonight. As if she’d read my mind, she tipped her piece toward me in a silent offer.

I shook my head. “I’m well.”

She needed the food more than I.

Shrugging as if to say “Suit yourself,” she stuffed the rest of the meat into her mouth, chewed slowly, swallowed, and then said, “So tell me when you visited Gnósi last.”





Chapter 6


Tymanon

Petra looked startled for all of a second before his shoulders flagged and he ruffled his shaggy hair with his fingers. “I should have known you’d figure it out.” His sigh was deep and tinged with a hint of sadness.

I didn’t want to overstep, especially after what’d happened tonight. I’d angered him, and it bothered me more than I cared to admit, if I was being honest with myself. It really shouldn’t trouble me what he, or anyone else, thought.

But it’d been all I could do to ignore his look of disdain after I’d asked him for the finger.

I had my reasons, ones I could not speak out loud. To do so could very likely be catastrophic to our end game. I’d had a thought today, somewhere between the tenth and twelfth mile. I wanted badly to let Petra in on what I suspected was happening, but I couldn’t. Not without altering the delicate threads of fate.

And so I had to weather his censure, whether I liked it or not.

“Did you fail, Petra?”

His nostrils flared, and right then, I knew he had.

“And yet you would go back to Gnósi. Why?” I pressed.

He blinked. “I should think that’s obvious, Ty. For Kingdom, of course.”

Aye, for Kingdom. True enough. But there was more to it. He’d been spry this morning, hopeful. There was so much more to this.

“Will you betray me? Leave me to follow your own quest once we arrive?” I asked, eyeing him steadily.

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and I knew he’d considered it. I’d suspected as much about the same moment I realized he’d visited the Fates before.

“I could lie to you, but I know you’ll see right through me,” he said, voice wooden and dejected. “I do seek something there, something of great value to me.”

I nodded, glad he’d not tried to deceive me. Petra and I, our relationship was built upon a solid foundation of truth. It wasn’t the most romantic of notions, but I wasn’t a romantic soul. I was real, honest, and I demanded the same from those I surrounded myself with.

To some, a quest might seem romantic, a time for knights and valor and victory. For me, this was merely another way for me to explore and better learn my world. Above all else, I was a scholar first. There was always something to learn, if you kept your eyes peeled and your mind open.

“What is it you seek?”

“Myra. My... my—”

My heart squeezed like a fist within me at the note of longing and desperation in his voice.

“—twin.” The last came out in a heated tremble.

A flare of relief zipped down my spine, making my insides topsy-turvy, and I couldn’t quite understand the sudden and heady feeling of it.

“You have a twin?” I asked, voice sounding breathless and rushed. “Why did you never tell me?”

His eyes closed, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing hard enough that his knuckles whitened. I couldn’t begin to explain the feelings coursing through me in that moment, like I wanted to take that pain away from him, wanted to hold him to me and whisper that he would be all right again.

I bit my bottom lip and refused to move an inch from the spot where I sat. I did not know if I liked these feelings. In fact, I was rather sure I did not like them at all. And yet, I was becoming more and more obsessed with them with each passing day.

Had I begun to come down with something? Centaurs were hardy, but we could sicken.

He looked at me with those hypnotic moss-green eyes and again, I experienced the sensation of falling. It was dizzying and breathless, and I had to look down at my toes to make it stop.

“I did not tell you because I feel shame for it.”

I shook my head. “Shame that you have a twin? Or shame for the reason she is trapped within the Fates’ realm?”

“You say so little, yet you see so much.” He said the words with an air of exhaustion but also a hint of something more.

Frowning, I forced myself to meet his gaze, hoping that strange sensation had passed, but it hadn’t. Again, I fell into a darkness that seemed perpetual.

I sucked in a shaky breath at the obvious threads of pain now reflected back in every wrinkle of his face. I found myself moving without thought. I was on my knees and crawling toward him, my tender human skin abraded by the rocks beneath me. But I did not stop until I reached his side and hugged him.

I’d hugged all of one person in my life, and that’d been my mother, and even then, only once. Centaurs, as she’d said, had no need to practice human affection. We were above that type of feebleness of character. My kind did not require touch to thrive. At least, my herd didn’t. I’d heard of other herds who practiced touch, but they’d been mocked and scorned among my people. I’d grown up believing the same as them.

Yet the moment Petra wrapped his arms tight around me, I leaned into them, marveling at the strength of them, the breadth of them, their steely hardness against my feminine softness. Petra wasn’t as furry as most of his kind. His chest was smooth and nothing but hard lines of muscle.