The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(29)

I cocked my head. So Kezia too remembered the past. That was interesting. It didn’t seem to me like all centaurs did. Certainly not all hybrids did. Petra knew of the dark curse, but he didn’t seem as in tune to the changes as I. So why could Kezia and I remember?

She was the wise woman of her tribe. I was a scholar.

Hm.

“You’ve been sent on this mission by the fairies, have you not?” she asked, interrupting my slowly building epiphany.

I blinked. “How did you—?”

She shrugged and pointed up. “The winds. They speak to me, tell me a great many things, like the fact that you still don’t know what question to ask the Fates.”

“No,” I admitted, “but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

“I’m sure you will.” She nodded.

But I sensed a reticence on her part, like she was withholding something from me. I pursed my lips.

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s just a crazy thought, really.” She grinned. “But I got to thinking. You are a centaur who never knew love. What if it’s all connected? What if whoever cast this curse knew and planned for this? You are a scholar who never knew love before. But you are learning it now? What if this dark curse wasn’t cast out of spite or fury, but love?”

Love? The thought had never occurred to me, not with the type of damage that’d been done to our world.

“Love?” I asked her, shaking my head. “How could that be?”

Giving me a soft smile as she shrugged, she said, “Just a thought. Now you must decide the rest.”

I frowned, eyes darting back and forth at the ground, seeing nothing as I suddenly recalled the time loops in the games. I’d thought them both random, but what if they weren’t? What if there was a connection?

I wet my lips, thinking about Kezia’s words, about the possibility of it being tied to love and wondering if she was right. Both times there’d been a time loop, I’d been with Petra. And not merely in his presence, but deeply entrenched in either saving him or kissing him.

The first time I’d lost him, I’d cried bitter tears of devastation. I thought it’d been losing the game that had cut me so deeply. But I could see now, in a way I hadn’t seen then, that it hadn’t been losing the game but losing Petra that’d cut me to my soul. I’d wanted desperately to fix things, and then I blinked, and I’d returned back to him. Time had altered, changed, forcing a different outcome, though I’d not known it then.

The second time the time loop happened, it’d been right after kissing him and right before telling him we could never, ever do that again.

My heart banged wildly in my chest. If I’d said those words out loud, I knew I would have destroyed any and all chance of getting to the place where Petra and I were today. He and I both had fought this attraction, and we were both just stubborn enough to deny it to the bitter end.

Was it possible that something, or someone, had looped me back in time to force me to study my own heart? Was it possible that Petra and I were truly fated to be?

If so, who had done it? And why should they care?

I wet my lips again as I thought about Harpy, her secret smiles, and the way she talked with me about Petra. I’d thought her silly, imagining a time when the satyr and I might declare our love for each other. It was impossible. We were simply too different and neither of us attracted to each other.

Had she done that to me? Was she capable of adjusting time that way? The more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense. She could walk between worlds. She’d wanted to know all there was to know about love, about what it did to a person’s soul. She’d wanted to save me from myself.

I gasped, feeling unbelievably dull and stupid that I’d not realized this sooner. The time jumps had been Harpy’s doing. But Harpy had known her fate, known the curse she would be forced to take on in Galeta’s stead. There had to be more to this than just wanting Petra and I to fall in love.

Like maybe the fact that it was only the combination of Petra and I that could succeed in turning Kingdom around.

Click.

Every piece of the puzzle suddenly slid into place for me and I shook as I finally turned my astonished gaze toward Kezia’s warmly smiling one. The old woman was far wiser than I could have imagined.

A secret smile played about her lips.

“I am tired, Tymanon, but I thank you for your company this eve,” she said, tipping her head toward me in farewell.

Realizing I’d been dismissed, I tipped my head back. I needed to think on this more. I needed to find Petra. “The stew was wonderful.”

“Take a bowl for your man.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to correct her as I had Nigel, but instead, I nodded my appreciation and ladled broth and vegetables into the bowl I still held.

“Wash the bowl and leave it by the brook. I’ll find it in the morning. May your journey be well. I believe we shall never meet again, Tymanon, but I wish you all the best.”

She knew. Kezia knew something more, knew what came for us. But just like me, she knew to give it voice would alter it all. So I thanked her, and I left to find my Petra.

I’d made my decision.

But the truth was there’d never really been one to make. I’d merely needed to find my courage.