The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(49)

For just a second, I feared he’d heard all Lachesis and I had exchanged, but with a nod, he shoved fingers through his already unruly hair, and my stomach twisted within me.

I would miss him terribly and probably forever. But Petra was right. Satyrs could never exchange souls. My only hope was that someday, he’d move on from his love of me, that when he thought of me, it wouldn’t be with bitterness but gratefulness.

What I was going to do would wound him deeply, and he’d never forgive me, but it had to be done.

I gave him a tight grin as he hopped to his feet.

“Tymanon, I feel—” he started.

“The next challenge has now begun.” It was Clotho, now standing to the left of us and wearing a robe of jeweled raven’s-wing feathers, who had spoken. Her head was shaved bald, but her lips were a red that rivaled that of freshly-drawn blood. She was stunning.

So were the other two who stood behind her. Atropos did not look at us, but Lachesis did. There was a tight frown on her face.

Petra turned to look at the Fates, but before he could move more than an inch, the landscape shifted again, and we were no longer in the garden of Gnósi, but in a landscape I’d only ever seen once before.

There were thousands upon thousands of staircases, some made of wood, others of metal, some of mud, others of stone. They led up, down, and sideways.

This was a world of stairs and of dazzling colors the shade of a tropical sunset. This was the world I’d been banished to after losing the gods’ game. My heart thundered, remembering the panic and fear of being trapped here forever.

The time loop Harpy had set on me had prevented this fate. So why was I back now?

Petra looked at me in obvious confusion, and I fought to tamp down the terror gnawing at me. I held out my hand to him, needing the reassurance of his touch. He grinned and took it, squeezing once. Immediately, I felt better. I wasn’t alone. Not this time.

“What is this place, and what is this challenge?” he asked.

I shivered as I glanced at him. I’d hoped never to return here. “This place is called the Stairs of Time, a place where life begins and ends, with stairways that lead to different worlds and nowhere at all. I... I believe this is a puzzle, Petra, and we must find our way out.”

“Like the labyrinth of yesterday?”

“Yes, but different.”

“How?”

“Time here isn’t what it is out there.” I gestured over my shoulder. “It isn’t finite. It’s infinite.”

“Time is infinite. It carries on forever,” he said.

“No.” I shook my head. “Not in the way you understand it. Not here. In here, time is literally suspended, moving neither forward, nor backward. It is paused, forever. But it also flows in its own way. This is the present in its most pure form.”

He shivered, looking around with worried moss-green eyes. “Who would create such an abominable place?”

I shrugged. “I am not sure. What I do know is that if you’re brought here, there’s a reason. Time only allows in those it has a use for.”

“It?” A frown marred his forehead. “Are you saying this place is sentient?”

“It can be either friend or foe, trapping you indefinitely, or leading you to greater knowledge.”

His fingers curled. “And what is it to us?”

My stomach curled with queasy knots. “I don’t know. Let us find out together.”

When I turned, a glowing thread of gold snaked around and through the maze of stairs, beckoning to us.

Leaning forward, I picked up the thread, holding it tight in my grasp. “Hold on to it too, Petra, and whatever you do, do not let go.”

Nodding, he grabbed hold as well.

Neither of us spoke as we took that first step.





Chapter 15


Petra

We walked for miles. Miles soon turned into days. Days began to feel like weeks. Weeks turned into months. And months began to feel like years. Neither Tymanon nor I aged. We were fixed at the same point in time as when we arrived.

We’d seen countless stairs, but not only stairs. There were landscapes beyond the funneling flights. There was an end to the places we walked, stars that fell into infinity, flower gardens that rolled like a living seascape of perfumed colors as far as the eye could see.

And then stairs. And stairs. And more stairs. Countless stairs.

We never tired in this strange place of stasis. We didn’t need to eat or drink. We followed the golden thread, and we talked about everything and anything.

We could never stop walking or holding onto the thread for fear of losing it and never finding it again. But Tymanon was the very best kind of company. She kept my mind engaged and entertained.

Every day found me falling even deeper in love with my centaur. It felt as though I’d been with her for an eternity of lifetimes now. I laughed and she smiled. She teased me almost relentlessly. And as much as I wanted to make love to her, or kiss her and hold her hand, I never could.

“Do you think there will ever be an end to this place? Or are we destined to roam these paths forever?” I asked her one day as we walked through the vast echoing chamber of an ivory palace in the sky.

The ballroom full of crystal chandeliers and the domed ceiling painted in gold leaf reflected the brightness of the perpetual sun. The checkered marble floor was veined through with long, jagged tears of vivid blue. We were surrounded by a bevy of stone statues of lesser gods, animals, half-breeds, men, women, and children, all of them posed in unusual stances, as if warding off evil or trying to turn and run. Some had eyes wide open and filled with stony terror.