Chapter 11

Petra

“Gnósi,” Tymanon said as we stood at the demarcation line between Kingdom and the gateway to the worlds.

The island was surrounded by a body of water on all sides, and the only way to reach it was by a land bridge comprised of nothing but twisted vines and blooming, multi-colored flowers.

The gray domed structure of the Fates’ temple stood like a beacon ahead of us. We’d reached the very end of Kingdom. The land beneath our hooves cut off, and below us was nothing but jagged spires and algae-tinted rocks. Waves crashed like a roar against them, drowning out the rapid beating of my pulse ringing in my ears.

Memories of my only other time here barreled through my head. I’d come to beg for my sister’s freedom, but I’d never even made it through the challenges. The bitter sting of loss filled my belly like hot lead, and I clenched my hands tight.

But then Tymanon’s hand was in mine, and she was staring down at me with her pure, warm eyes. I swayed toward her, pulled without thought closer to her side.

“We will prevail this time, Petra. You and me. Fear not, my gída.”

Despite my misgivings, I smiled back at her. Last night had been amazing and wonderful. This morning, when I’d woken after my pitifully short nap, I’d been terrified that she might have regrets, that she might have been awkward or strange or shy with me, but she hadn’t been at all.

Releasing my hand, she briefly brushed her knuckles down my now lightly-bearded cheek, causing me to break out in a heated wash of prickles and my body to grow hard and needful of her.

One tussle with a nymph was usually enough to break her spell over me. But with Tymanon, my desire for her was a daily-growing need.

“I can do anything with you by my side, álogo.”

She nodded before turning her gaze to the wooden sign that’d been pounded into the earth long ago. I didn’t need to look at it to remember what it said.

~Here There Be Monsters~

Patting the leather strap of her bow, Tymanon didn’t look back at me as she took the first step onto the land bridge. The earth beneath her feet rumbled, and with her next step, a glowing aura of white flashed around her.

She was now well and truly on Gnósi lands, and there was no turning back for her. The only way out was by going forward.

Swallowing my fears and the plethora of what-ifs, I followed a step behind. The glow of the Fates’ magic washed through me, stealing my breath for a moment as their collective power flashed like molten metal within me. A scream grew in my throat at the pressure, and just when I felt I would burst from it, an instant flooding of cool waters rained over me.

Sweat broke out on my back and forehead, and I shook, remembering how very unpleasant that experience had been the first time I’d come here.

But Tymanon had picked up speed, and I couldn’t be left behind. We’d crossed Gnósi’s threshold at nearly the same moment, so the magic recognized us as one rather than two separate challengers.

Keeping tight on her heels, I ignored the panic beating in my chest as the temple loomed closer and closer and the scent of jasmine grew thicker and thicker on the breeze. The light of Apollo blazed bright the nearer we drew to the thick slabs of gray stone.

Bells chimed like angelic song all around. The breeze stirred with waves of gold powder, dusting us in it, coating Ty’s hindquarters until she gleamed with it. My heart beat harder and faster at the beauty of her.

And then we were turning a corner, moving not toward the temple proper but the garden behind it.

A river of dappled blue water sparkled in the noonday sun. Multi-colored fish swam in hypnotic circles within its clear depths. Water lilies floated lazily upon its currents. The air was thick with the scent of exotic flowers.

Trees, filled to bursting with golden apples, teased me. My stomach rumbled. Hunger consumed me.

But those apples belonged to the gods themselves and were forbidden to anyone else. My fingers twitched, imagining their sweetness and their crunchy tartness. My mouth flooded with desire.

The apples were said to give one immortality, total and complete. In Kingdom, everyone could live forever, so long as they didn’t meet up with a monster or fall off a cliff’s edge or drink poison... or any of the other nasty ways of winding up dead.

But one bite of that apple, and never again would one know the sting of physical pain. Anyone who consumed an apple could dance in dragon’s flame and live or walk the ocean floor and never worry about breaths. But there was a terrible price to pay if one succumbed to the temptation. It was said one of the trees in Gnósi had once been a beautiful human woman who’d feared death so much she’d eaten of the tree, gaining her eternal immortality, just not in the form she’d hoped for.

“Eat not of the apples,” Tymanon tossed over her shoulders as if she’d read my thoughts.

I wanted to assure her that I would not be so careless as that, but it was all I could do to keep to her grueling pace.

Her hooves beat the familiar and winding path that led straight to the large water fountain in the back. The fountain was a depiction of a Zeus’s seduction of Leda, a marble sculpture of a woman fleeing away as she transformed from a woman into a swan.

The Fates had a twisted sense of humor to tease the king of their pantheon in that manner, but not even Zeus himself would dare to punish them for it. All the pantheon feared the power of the three.

The moment I spied Leda’s marble wingtip, I knew we were close and put on a small burst of speed, catching up to Tymanon to arrive at the fountain’s edge together.

We were both breathing hard as we looked around. The last time I’d come here, the Fates had already been waiting for me. But this time, there was nothing but giant busts on pillars, busts of their faces, or at least, some of their preferred forms. No one really knew the Fates’ true forms since they seldom wore the same look. But I’d seen the faces staring back at me now the last time I’d come.

They’d all been in crone form—one dark as night, another golden like the dawn, and the last white as snow. Their skin had been weathered and heavily wrinkled, full of liver spots, and the hairs on their heads were nothing but patches of fuzz and frizz. Their eyes had all been a radiant, lambent glow. Clotho read the past, Lachesis the present, and Atropos read the future.

Tymanon walked toward the busts and was staring at them with focused intensity, moving her head side to side as though she saw something I did not. I frowned.

I looked at the busts again, trying to see them as she did. But no matter how hard I studied them, all I saw were the faces of hideous hags.

“Ty?” I asked, hoping for some clue, hoping to understand the world in the way she did. But I knew she’d tell me nothing.

She’d been noticeably silent when it came to the Fates. In the games, Tymanon had told me in great detail all that she would do each time she was forced to face an opponent. She’d studied each challenger in the seeing disk, learning their weaknesses, pointing them out to me. Tymanon was a wonderful teacher and thrived on learning, even when it wasn’t her own.

That she withheld so much now told me one of two things. Either she knew something she could not share with me, or she was as lost and confused as I was.

I instantly discarded the latter.

She glanced over her shoulder at me. Gold powder had settled into the braid of her hair, making her look like a bronze statue of an ancient warrior goddess. Ty had put leather braces on her wrists and even her legs. She had bound most of her body in rawhide armor, making her look strong and powerful and beautifully masculine.

My heart raced because I now knew her taste, knew her sighs. She’d been mine last night, completely and in every way, sharing of herself and holding nothing back. She had been so different from the powerful woman that stood before me now. But I did not dislike it. I found myself enjoying every facet of this strange and wonderful female.

“I... I think I know—”

Instantly, she stopped talking, twirling on her hooves as she moved, blocking my body with hers as though to shield me. It was only then that I noticed the three women standing on the opposite side of the fountain.

They looked nothing like the females I’d seen before. One was dark as night, one golden like the dawn, and one white as the snow. Their eyes were all the same shade of milk. There was where the similarities ended.

Last time they’d been repulsive. Now they were beautiful, wearing diaphanous skirts that fully exposed their pert breasts. The black one had hair of raven feathers that tumbled down her spine. The golden one wore a crown of stars. And the white one’s body pulsed with millions of jeweled, nearly-transparent butterfly wings.

“Are you sure you can pay the price?” the three women asked at once with voices as deep as the deepest trenches of the Seren seas.

Tymanon squared her shoulders as she reached into her pouch and pulled something out. She held out her fist to them. “Galeta has given me three seeds of wisdom.”

“Yes,” the dark one said, stepping forward as she lifted her hand. “I saw that.”

Which meant she must be Clotho.

Ty gasped as she turned her hand over. It was empty. Clotho now held the three brilliant seeds, cooing down at them with adoration.

“I know what it is you want to know,” the golden one stepped forward, and her stars blazed. That, then, was Lachesis.

Atropos cocked her head, causing the butterflies to temporarily scatter, surrounding her in a cloud of pearlescent brilliance, as she looked first at me, then at Tymanon.

“I see what comes for you,” she said in that same deep voice as her sisters. “You have made your choice then?”

I frowned. What choice?

Tymanon’s jaw clenched. “I have. I want it.”

A smirk stole across Atropos’ full lips. “If you could see what I see, perhaps you would not be so quick to say so, centauress, queen of nothing.”

Tymanon held her head up with pride blazing in her eyes. “I was chosen for a reason.”

“Indeed you were.” Lachesis’s smile was softer than Atropos’s smug one.

What in heavens name where they talking about? I knew this conversation was veiled. I’d asked Tymanon to keep no secrets between us, and I trusted her implicitly. Whatever she was hiding, she believed she had to. I had no other option but to believe that about her. I did not like it, but I would trust my álogo.

Lachesis’s milky eyes gleamed. I did not like that look, and my skin broke out in a wash of cold sweat.

Clotho chuckled, and the sound caused the land beneath our feet to groan.

“Do not mock her, Atropos,” Clotho said, “for if you had seen what I have, you too might question the lengths one would go to have it again and again.”

Then she looked at me and winked, and I knew she’d seen what we’d done last night. Biting onto a corner of her ruby-red lip as she continued to pet the seeds, she purred, “Perhaps I too have misjudged satyrs.”

I wrinkled my nose at the hint of avarice in her words, which only made her laugh harder, causing her dark, perky breasts to bounce becomingly.

I glanced away quickly as I felt heat course through me. I was not attracted to the Fates. Only a fool would be. But I was a man reborn into the wonders of sex and, well... it was hard not to notice beauty, even when it came as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“Hm,” Atropos murmured, studying Tymanon as though seeing her through new eyes.

“The seeds are acceptable,” Lachesis said, gesturing with her chin toward her sister. “You may both face the three. Should you succeed, we will answer your question. Ask wisely, centauress, queen of nothing.”

“I already know my question.”

“Yes,” Atropos said, “you do. But that is not the one you wish to ask us? Not truly.”

Tymanon clenched her jaw, and I was more confused than ever. I shook my head, wanting to know, and yet not sure that I did. What was my centaur up to?

Clotho shook her head. “No, she settled on her true question last night.”

I frowned. When?

Tymanon skittered back on her heels, and I was shocked to note how nervous she was. The fact that she refused to meet my gaze told me much.

But then when Clotho looked back at me and winked, I knew. Whatever Tymanon was about, it concerned me.

“The cost will be steep,” Lachesis said. “Are you sure you’re willing to pay it?”

Ty said nothing, but Atropos beamed and her butterflies quivered. “Aye, sisters, she’ll pay.”

“Then we accept.” Clotho dipped her head. “But know this, centauress. We do you a great honor by answering two questions, and so we will demand much from you. For you, the cost of failure is death.”

“No!” The word burst out of me. “Tymanon, no!” I barked, looking at her.

But Ty still would not look at me. Clenching her jaw until the muscle in her cheek twitched, she said, “Aye.”

Power rolled between the five of us, tightening my skin like I’d stepped through flame. I grunted and dropped to my knees at the strength and ferocity of their magic.

Ty kept to her feet, but her head drooped and she was keening in agony.

And then, like someone had burst a bubble, the air was clean and fresh and smelling of perfume, and the Fates were smiling serenely. “Be thee well, challengers,” the Fates said.

Between one blink and the next, we were no longer in a beautiful, calm garden, but a dank-smelling cave. It reeked of death and the wet fragrance of powdered rubble.

Clutching at my forcefully beating chest, I made my way slowly to my feet. My entire body ached, my muscles throbbed, but it was my heart that felt the worst.

Tymanon was sprawled out before me, moaning as she held herself up on her arms, elbows twitching unsteadily.

I stared down at her head, wanting to rail at her, wanting to demand she tell me right now what it was she’d agreed to and why.

But I finally understood why she’d not told me much concerning the Fates. I’d not paid heed to it before, how they’d read my life and determined my challenges based on it.

I’d noticed it now.

They were going to use me against Tymanon, divide us and cause us to fail. The first step had been in purposefully being just coy enough with their words to make me doubt her, to fill my bones with fury and rage, to make me angry and panicked at what she’d done, what she’d agreed to.

I could not give into that emotion. I had to trust Tymanon as I always had before.

So I clenched my jaw and held my hand out to her. She looked at me, mouth open and shaking her head as though she hadn’t expected my reaction.

“You... you see it now, don’t you, Petra?”

My nostrils flared, hating how weak in the knees I felt whenever she used my name, when she caressed the vowels of it with tenderness and warmth.

Her hand slipped gently into mine, and I pulled her up. Her knees were shaky, but she stood on her own, staring down at me with hope and fear mingling in her light brown eyes.

“I am angry with you,” I admitted softly, and she flinched. My heart beat heavy in my chest. “I desperately want to know what you’ve done and why you would agree to your own death if you lose. Ty, don’t you understand what you mean to me now? Last night was—”

Stepping into me, she forced me to wrap my arms around her waist as she flattened her palms on my shoulders and stared deeply into my eyes. “Last night was everything, my beloved Petra. Please trust me. This place will make you doubt me, but don’t. All that I am, all that I do, I do it for you. I can say no more than that.”

“I don’t want you doing anything for me that would take you away from me.”

She swallowed hard. “Oh, my heart, your words make me sing. But we do not have the time to speak of this now. I fear I know who challenges us today, and she hates your kind.”

My brows twitched. I didn’t care about this damn challenge or even Kingdom’s fate at the moment, a truth that might make me hated by Galeta and all the realms.

Tymanon had agreed to something that was going to wound me forever. I knew it. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I knew it. Last night when I’d entered her body, I’d entered her soul too. She’d burrowed under my skin, and I under hers. She was terrified right now, worried, scared. It was because of me, and that thought broke me.

“Satyrs?” I asked, voice cracking.

“No, worse. Men.”