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.

It was unusual to say the least. We had to wind our way through the sculptures, and I found myself peering at the strangely lifelike faces. Whoever the artist had been, he or she was a master to have created carvings with such energy and flow of movement.

She smiled. “Who can say, my gída? Perhaps I missed something many years ago, a fork or a path not taken.”

I snorted. “We both know that’s not true. There is no one cleverer than you, my love.”

A swift blush colored her cheeks, but she accepted the compliment with a convivial nod. “Tell me about your sister again?”

She was always doing that, trying to make me remember, as though I could ever forget. But time had blunted the pain of Myra’s loss to the point that, when I thought of her now, it was with fondness and joy and not the sting of bitterness.

“She was impossibly fun and always wore a smile, was always dancing and playing that damnable flute of hers. She brought color to my world and to all those around her.”

Ty smiled. “I think I would like her, if she’s anything like you.”

I sighed. “It seems a dream now to ever believe we could leave this place. A part of me isn’t certain I’d want to. I’m not sure I’d understand that world anymore. In here, there is so much peace and quiet.”

“I never imagined I’d hear a satyr wishing for quiet,” she teased, and I grinned.

“Yes. Well, the impossible does happen now and again.”

“But you do know, Petra, that should we ever leave this place and return to Kingdom, no time will have passed there at all. It will be this would, not that one, that becomes the dream. This place is not real. Not really.”

I stopped walking, but clung fast to the golden thread. She noticed and paused as well, turning around to face me but still keeping hold of her section of thread.

She cocked her head, giving me that curious look that I’d grown so fond of through the years. There’d been periods of time when Tymanon and I hadn’t spoken to each other for days, sometimes weeks, not because we’d grown angry with one another or even bored.

I couldn’t begin to explain what it was I felt being with her. Tymanon was safety. She was comfort. She was that feeling of happiness I could only ever experience when I returned home after a long journey away. She was that familiar feeling of contentment that I didn’t truly know how much I’d miss until I no longer had it, but when I did, I understood it was the only thing that really mattered.

“I could close my eyes right now and picture you: the way your body moves, the way your brilliant mind works, the dusting of freckles upon your lovely face, how you pull your bottom lip between your teeth when deep in thought, how you always twirl a strand of nut-brown hair around your left finger when thinking of glad tidings, how you huff the hair from your eyes from the right side of your mouth only, or how your tail twitches gently back and forth when you are mesmerized by yet another world we discover. I don’t care about this world, Tymanon. There is only one thing that’s real to me here, and that’s you. It’s always been you. I don’t want to leave because in here, I have you all to myself, and I fear I’ve become rather greedy of you.”

Her eyes widened with each word I spoke. Nearing me, she said nothing as she placed her hand against my lightly-bearded cheek.

My body quivered, filled with longing of another kind, the type full of heat and fire that whipped like an arrow through my bones, turning them soft and weak and making my stomach quiver and my heart ache to touch her again.

Sexual desire was mostly blunted in here, though I often wished to kiss her, to hold her again with both hands, chest to chest, heart to heart, to rest my chin atop her head as I breathed her in.

I closed my eyes and leaned heavily against her light touch.

“I love you, gída.” She smiled.

I opened my mouth, ready to respond when...

“Hello? Is someone there?” The feminine voice was husky and brimming over with astonishment.

Both Ty and I looked toward the voice at the same time. Eyes wide and blinking in shock, we came face-to-face with Rayale, the Pied Piper.

She looked no different than she had in the love games. In fact, she even wore the same red-dyed leather outfit. Her long red braids had been gathered high onto her head. Her dark skin, which had been a rich shade of dark cacao, was now unusually pale and washed out. Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape. She was still exotically beautiful, but there was a touch of wariness to her features I’d not seen before. We stared at one another for the span of several heartbeats, quite in shock, before she shook and covered her mouth with her hands.

“By the gods!” she shrieked, before dropping to her knees and passing out.