The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(62)

The Fate’s smile was sad. “But you must. Do not let her sacrifice be in vain. Kingdom’s fate rests in your hands.”

I looked at Myra, and she at me. Her smile was welcoming, but hesitant, as though she were unsure of me. We’d not seen one another in years.

I frowned. The two years trapped in Time with Tymanon were already becoming a fading memory, a dream grown fuzzy around the edges. Would that happen to Ty too? Would she become a fuzzy memory to me someday?

I swallowed hard.

Myra gripped my hand, giving it a short squeeze. I bit my lip.

“What was our answer, Fate?”

“Two. Eight. Three. Twelve,” she said.

Feeling as though I couldn’t catch a proper breath, I rubbed at my aching and hollow chest. She’d sacrificed everything to restore Kingdom again and to restore my sister to me. But the cost had been too steep, too high.

“Return to your fairies. Make your world right again,” the Fate’s voice was low and gentle.

Closing my eyes as a single tear slid out my right eye, betraying me, I said, “Galeta, take us home.”

*

Many weeks later

I sat in the back gardens of Fable’s estate, gazing at her statue, which had been lovingly enshrined in black-and-gold-veined marble and wreathed by a multitude of strange and unusual flowers. Deep crimson blooms the size of my head wept rivulets of gold and red fluid from its stamens every time the winds rolled.

The statue wasn’t actually a chunk of stone, but the woman herself. After the curse had struck Kingdom, Fable had been doomed to experience an eternal death by drowning, courtesy of her grandmother, Calypso, goddess of the ancient seas.

The curse had hit us all differently, vanquishing some or erasing entire bloodlines. But for most, it’d caused a type of memory loss, and the degree of loss varied. Calypso and Hades had been hit hardest with a near total loss of memory.

I remembered Calypso. She’d been one of the three gods running the games in which Tymanon and I had first met. I’d thought her strangely quirky, but oddly enchanting. Her love for her husband, Hades, had been evident, as had her love for Fable. The goddess would never have done that to her granddaughter if she’d been in her right mind. But the curse had changed almost all of us.

Galeta and Danika both had seemed stumped by the Fate’s answer, looking at me, then at each other before turning back to me with a pleading look in their eyes, hoping I would be able to elucidate further.

But I’d only shaken my head and walked away, feeling like a failure. Tymanon would have had the answers. She would have known exactly how to fix this, how to make it all right again. She would have known what to say to them.

Instead, Kingdom had been left with me and my massive shortcomings as its savior. Our world was still in chaos. Though, I’d heard rumor that at least one of the many couples the fairies had placed together had managed to resecure their happy ending.

I sighed.

It had been three weeks since my return to Kingdom, three long, impossibly terrible weeks of being separated from the one I loved most.

I watched as a pale girl with raven-colored hair knelt at the base of Fable’s shrine, deadheading the blooms. She wept as she worked.

Her name was Snow. I didn’t know much about her other than her name, but whoever Snow was, Fable had clearly meant the world to her.

The scent of lemon tickled my nose a second before Myra’s warmth slid onto the bench beside me.

“This seat taken?” she asked softly.

I looked at her, but she stared straight ahead. The nights were starting to grow cooler. I’d lost track of time almost entirely.

For me, this had been a many-years-long battle. For others, it had been mere months. All I knew was there was an emptiness inside of me that stretched and grew bigger daily. It was all I could do to keep myself afloat and not drown in the river of pain.

Myra looked beautiful tonight, wrapped in a red velvet cloak, tiny white flowers threaded through her elegantly-shaped horns.

Her lips thinned. “I have been thinking, brother.”

“About?”

She shrugged. “Lots of things. But you, mostly.”

My brow lowered, and she finally turned to look at me. Her green eyes, so similar to mine, stroked my face, and I inhaled.

For so long, I’d fought to free her of the Fate’s curse. My heart was glad to have her here, to know she was safe now. But I was even more miserable than I’d been when she was lost to me. It was most unfair to Myra. She deserved so much better than this, than me.

“I’m not enough to keep you happy. Not anymore,” she said as though she’d read my shameful thoughts. My cheeks burned with heat.

Grunting, I turned to look back at the girl, but she was already gone. Instead, I studied Fable’s agonized face. Locked in a perpetual state of torment, such sadness and emptiness radiated through her stony eyes that it brought a lump to my throat.

Here I was, free, joined with my sister, my memory relatively intact. There were a few patchy spots, but otherwise I remembered almost everything of the previous world.

Fable, on the other hand, would be forever cursed unless her grandmother willingly freed her of it, a grandmother who remembered none of us, especially not her own family.

I could have it so much worse. I should be grateful, thankful for the life I had, instead of moping and desolate.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Myra’s warm hand slipped into mine.