The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(45)

I knew sleep would elude me the rest of the night. Anytime I closed my eyes, I saw her as she’d been—on her knees, her ruined hand spurting precious blood as it slowly leeched the color and life out of her.

She moaned, rolling over in her sleep. Slipping off the seat of my log, I scooted toward her and gently pulled her head into my lap, rubbing a hand down her tangled and gnarled hair. Tymanon would hate how filthy she was. She bathed religiously, careful to keep her coat and body clean.

My heart ached in my chest at the continued whimpers spilling off her tongue. Even in sleep, she flinched as though running for her life.

“Ssh, ómorfo álogo. Ssh,” I murmured soothingly, pressing a delicate line of kisses along her stress-wrinkled forehead.

“Petra. Petra,” she mumbled, though I knew she was still gripped by sleep.

Anxiety and even a thread of satisfaction at hearing her call my name rolled through me. I continued to stroke her hair.

“I am here, my brilliant one. Do you hear me? We are safe now, Tymanon. Because of you, we are safe.”

I swallowed hard. For a time, I’d not thought we’d escape our fate. The challenge that’d been thrown at us today had been far deadlier than anything I’d faced in my trial.

Had she not brought that bloody, filthy finger... I shuddered. The brilliance of her mind still astonished me, even after all this time. How could she have known? How could she have suspected the games had already begun before we’d even arrived?

“Petra!” she cried out, startling herself so suddenly that her eyes popped open and she blinked several times, as though lost in the haze of her mind. Slowly, she awakened.

I didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, I simply stared at her, consumed by her, completely lost to this woman lying before me. Then her light-brown eyes met mine, and my heart flipped.

Shoving locks of hair out of her face, she sat up, and immediately I missed her, missed holding her body, missed her weight. I just bloody missed her.

This love thing was a terrible yet wonderful sensation of falling and dying and flying. I both loved and hated it. I was miserable, but I’d also never been more content.

The way she hopped to her knees, using both of her hands as support without flinching, meant the medicine had worked. Praise the gods.

“You’re here,” she said softly, and I nodded.

“Where else would I be, my álogo?”

Inhaling deeply as her lashes fluttered like tiny moth’s wings upon her pale cheeks, she shook her head. “I had terrible dreams. Dreams that I’d lost you.” Shimmering heat gathered in her large, beautiful eyes.

Unable to keep from touching her another second, I wrapped my palm behind her neck and tugged her gently to me. She came without hesitation, wrapping her entire body around mine like a warm, welcoming hug. I shifted so that I could easily hold her, and we clung to each other, breathing in and out in tandem. It was an act far more intimate than sex had ever been for me. I’d be mocked by my kind for saying so, but holding Tymanon like this, revealing to her just how much I treasured and admired her, was better than anything I’d ever known with any nymph before.

“I thought I’d died today,” I grunted, voice thick and full of pain as I relived the moment I thought I’d lost her.

When the Minotaur had charged at us, I stopped thinking completely. I was not a brave man, but I hadn’t given my actions a second thought. I simply knew I could never lose her.

I’d been changed forever today. I thought, when we’d made love last night, that I knew what love was. But today, faced with the very real possibility of losing her, I was forced to confront my beliefs.

She shook her head, planting several small kisses against my chest before nuzzling me, causing me to break out in a heated wash of prickles. I loved it when she touched me.

“I thought I had too. And I would have, Petra, if not for you.”

I shook my head. “You saved me—”

“No.” She covered my mouth with her small hand, stilling my words as she stared deep into my eyes. “No. Not today I didn’t. It was all you, my love.”

Taking her hand, I kissed her palm tenderly before tracing the lines upon it. “The finger. The Gorgon. I may have eventually known to sing to her, but I’d not have given her the gift you did. I might still be there, running away from her, or... just another statue in her garden now. The way your mind works, Tymanon, is astonishing to me. You had the foresight to take Wulfric’s finger. I never”—I shook my head—“ever would have thought to do so.”

Cocking her head, she stared at me for several long seconds. I’d complimented her, but she looked sad. I opened my mouth, wanting to take that look away from her, but she spoke first.

“You break my heart when you say these things.”

My brow dipped. “What? Tymanon, you are miraculous, I don’t understand—”

“As are you, my Petra. Do you not see yet?”

“See what?”

“You, the way I see you for who you really are. I don’t think you do. You seem to believe me above you in every way.”

“It’s because you are. I can never match up to you, Tymanon. I am nothing. I am a satyr. I am nothing.”

“You are everything, my darling. It was not I who faced down the Minotaur.”

I shook my head because what I’d done had been very little. I’d run through that maze, getting us hopelessly lost. It’d been Ty who’d known to mark the walls to help guide us out.