Chapter 20

Tymanon

I walked with Kynto along the burbling brook, a bunch of plucked wildflowers gripped loosely in my hands. I sighed and stared at the sun slowly cresting the horizon. Above us, falcons circled lazily in the cloudless azure sky.

I’d been here now many days and had thought to get lost in my books to help ease the constant torment of memories. Each day that passed without Petra beside me was harder than the day before. I thought I’d known what leaving him would feel like, but I hadn’t known a damned thing. The emptiness within me was a void so vast that I felt myself being consumed by it.

Soon, there’d be nothing of me left at all, just a shell of a woman who’d once been. Without Petra, I’d lost the colors, lost my smile. I was a woman with her nose in a book now, learning but not living, not really knowing anything anymore.

I just hoped that wherever he was, he was happy now.

Suddenly Kynto vanished. He could do that. Though I could command his return, I wouldn’t. It wasn’t like we talked much anyway.

Inhaling, I shook my head and turned for home. For so long, all I’d ever wanted was my privacy, but I was quickly discovering an eternity of isolation was far too much to bear.

I’d not even been here a month. I could hardly fathom that Myra had done this over a year.

“Ómorfo álogo, why do you cry?”

I blinked, shocked to see him there. My Petra. My beloved. Looking at me with a soft smile on his rugged face and hope burning in his jeweled green eyes. I trembled, covering my mouth with my cold hands and feeling the tears raining down my cheeks.

“You are not real, my gída, for I am terribly alone in this world. But oh, how I wish you were.”

I’d been reading about these woods, about how the ghosts of those you loved would haunt you in them, maybe to help stave off the madness of near isolation, maybe to remind you of all you’d lost. I’d seen Petra roam these plains so often that I’d grown accustomed to his presence. But he’d never before spoken to me, never before called me his beautiful horse. Trembling violently as my vision of him was blinded by the heat of my tears, I wrapped my arms around myself.

He took a step toward me, and I could smell his familiar scent of clover and musk. My heart fractured further within me.

“And if I were real, what would you tell me?”

My lashes fluttered, and I wanted to walk away, wanted to scream at him to leave me be and never haunt my steps again. But I was sick with grief and the unbearable loss of him, and so I poured my heart out to him.

“I would tell you how ardently I love you, how deeply I miss you, and how very selfishly I wish I’d never made this deal.”

When I looked up at the ghost, I expected him to have vanished, but instead I found him even closer, so close to me, in fact, that I felt the heat of him brush against me.

I sucked in a sharp breath.

“Then that makes two of us, my álogo, for I wish to be wherever you are. Forever. For always.”

His hand slid warmly over my cheek, and I shook at the callused feel of his palm.

“You can’t be real,” I whispered.

He shook his head, green eyes blazing like the sun as he stared at me with such fierce longing that my knees grew weak.

“But I am. I fought to come back to you.”

I sobbed, gripped his vest, and hung on so tight my knuckles turned white. “You can’t be here. You can’t be here. This place is forever. You can never see her again. You can never—”

He shushed me by laying a finger against my lips, and my heart blazed like the sun within me. Petra had found me. Petra had come back for me.

“Myra and I said our goodbyes. I love my sister with all my soul. You gave me a gift I will never forget.” He leaned in, kissing away my tears as he brushed back my hair with his strong hands, making me melt, making me weak and dizzy.

It’d been so long, so very long. But I’d not forgotten the strength of him, the steel of his arms as they wrapped tightly around me, holding me fast, letting me know without words how very dear I was to him.

“What?” I whispered.

“Goodbye.” He kissed me on the mouth so softly it was almost a whisper. “You gave me the gift of goodbye. My sister has grown into a woman of whom I am infinitely proud, but she has her own life to live now, as I have mine.”

Calling the shift to me, I stood in the crook of his arms as a human woman. My magic curled like flame between us. Instantly the world shifted. Where I’d been the taller of the two, now I was shorter, and I was able to move completely into his long, lean form. I laid my head against the rapid beating of his heart, lulled into peace by the lovely sound of it.

“I fear you will regret this, Petra.”

Moving me back by my shoulders just a little, he peered deeply into my eyes as he said, “The only regret I have was ever leaving you, my beloved. You are my sun, my moon, my stars, my all. I cannot breathe without you. I do not care where we go or even if we ever see another soul. You are my happily ever after, Tymanon. Only you.”

I kissed him, with all the soul and passion that now blazed in my chest.

I’d only ever been walking in a daze before I’d met Petra, only living a half-life, never realizing that fact until I’d met him and understood just how little I’d really known.

Our kiss was slow and thorough, our tongues dueling and sweeping sensuously against each other’s, saying without words what we meant to one another. I’d abandoned everything to see him happy, but it was to me he’d returned. The bird had been set free, released from its cage. But to its cage it returned, for that was where it felt the most loved.

“I love you,” I whispered, holding him tight to me. I was never going to let him go. Not ever. “With all my heart, my Petra, I love you.”

“And I you, Tymanon. Where you go, I go. Your passions are my passions. Your desires are my own. Your heart is mine and mine is yours. Forever. For always.”

I smiled, beaming through tears that were now for joy. “For always,” I whispered back, and our words were carried on the winds like a ballad, like a promise of eternity.

I hugged him to me again, and when next I glanced up, Lachesis was there, hidden in the trees, watching us both. She blew me an air kiss, and I nodded, knowing I had her to thank for this gift.

When she left, I took Petra’s hand and headed for home.

“I have so much to show you, my love,” I said with a smile.

“Books, books, and more books.” He laughed, and the sound of it stirred my soul.

“Yes, that and more. But first, I thought maybe you’d like to see our bedchamber.”

He paused, a smile freezing on his face as his eyes suddenly turned hot. “Show me, Tymanon. Show me where I will claim you and make you mine for all time.”

And so I did. And Petra kept his promise too.

~*~

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