The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(24)

I wanted us to part as friends when it was all said and done. Ignoring the pang of disappointment, I squared my shoulders and looked up at him. But he surprised me by speaking first.

“Thank you for earlier.”

I frowned.

“When we ran. You did not need to do it.”

Fluttering a wrist, I shrugged and shook my head. “It was nothing. Not like what you did tonight. I would rather die before admitting this to anyone else, but that hike almost killed me.”

He laughed softly. “I’ll never tell, álogo.”

A warm glow flowed through me. I did not know what to say, so I said nothing at all. He nodded, as though he understood, and I thought perhaps he did.





Chapter 7


Petra

Ty and I didn’t speak about what we’d said during the night, but something had changed between us. I felt it. Currents of tension now flowed where none had before.

We had run for several hours straight, stopping only when forced to, both of us focused on getting to our destination. At each stop, Ty would pull out a leather-bound journal, documenting the changes to the landscape we encountered along the way.

But the farther we moved from Kingdom proper toward the gateway between the worlds, the more constant things seemed. The biggest changes had occurred at the stone dwarf mountains. Beyond that, the terrain seemed to be returning to normal. The sky was even more blue.

We now ran through verdant and grassy plains bursting with wildflowers and full of forested ranges off in the distance. Tymanon had returned to centaur form and was several steps ahead of me, keeping a grueling pace, not resting as she had the day prior. Though keeping to a run, I was able to maintain, if only just.

I sensed her thoughts were in turmoil and chaos, and I wanted to give her the distance she so obviously craved. But I missed her too, her easy smiles, the lighthearted way in which she teased me.

She was dreadful at it, the teasing, but that was part of her charm too. There was nothing coy or flirtatious about Tymanon. She was blunt and far too observant, and yet when she tried clumsily to step outside of her comfort zone for me, rather than being strange, I found it to be endearingly quirky.

When she was with me, I forgot about the heartache, even if only for a while. But when my thoughts were my own, I remembered Myra, remembered my rebellious, beautiful sister who’d refused to heed my warnings when it came to matters of the heart.

I’d told her not to fall in love, ever. Told her to only chase after nymphs. There were male nymphs who’d have pleasured her until she screamed from it and would have been glad to do it.

But she’d been flawed right from birth, and a part of me had been ashamed of her for it. Satyrs were never to feel the sting of love. Lust, yes, but never love. It was a weakness, and my kind was intelligent enough to stay far away from it.

So when she’d fallen in love with an ogre half-breed, of all the bloody things, I’d known our village would not stand for it. She’d been shunned, and I’d watched her go in silence. I was heartbroken because I did love her, but I was also relieved.

That was the part that haunted me most—the absolute and total relief that no longer would I need to see the scorn and ridicule in the eyes of the others. No longer would I be forced to defend her honor, spouting nonsense I did not believe—that it was merely a passing fancy, that eventually she’d learn, that she was young and headstrong and silly, but that someday she’d fall in line like the rest of us.

Three years Myra had been gone, living with her chosen mate, sending me notes on the winds every so often to let me know she still lived.

Then came the day that changed everything for me. Acute misery, the kind that felt like a blade being plunged through my heart, stole my breath, covering me in a wash of cold sweat.

If only I’d said something to her. If only I’d told her how I really felt. If only I’d shown her just how much I truly did love her, she might never have gone to the Fates.

But I’d said nothing, like the coward I was.

“Petra.” Tymanon’s voice cut through my dark musings, bringing me up short and startling me when I realized she was no longer running, but grasping onto my elbow and staring down at me with a frown on her full, lovely lips.

I glanced around. “Why are we stopping? We’re close now.”

“Aye, that we are, gída, but the sun soon sets. We cannot meet the Fates today. We need to rest.”

I frowned, because she’d seemed so determined to finish this already.

“Rest?”

She licked her front teeth and pushed sweaty strands of hair out of her eyes. There were dark circles beneath them. She’d not slept well last night, and I did not like it.

Pursing her lips, she shrugged. “I’ve read of a village not too far from the gateway to the worlds. A... a centaur tribe.”

“Ah,” I said. But suddenly, I felt ill at ease.

A tribe, meaning many. I would be an outcast among them. It was one thing to spend my days with Tymanon. I rather enjoyed her company. I did not, however, enjoy centaurs as a whole.

On the heel of that thought came another, one more powerful than the last, one that actually got my hackles up and my pulse pounding. There would be males there. Why was Tymanon wanting to rest there? Why could we not sleep beneath the stars, just us two as we’d always done?

Gazing long into the distance as she spoke, she said, “The centaurs of these hills are most familiar with what we can expect to see when we arrive.”