The Dark Queens, Tome 7: The Centaur Queen

Chapter 1

Tymanon

Petra and I were tossed violently from the games, as though a large and powerful hand had suddenly yanked us away. Dizzy and disoriented, I frowned as I gazed at the red clay beneath my palms. How had I gotten here? One moment I’d been inside the games, and the next I was here, wherever here was.

Nothing about the games had been normal. Petra and I were trapped inside a world-within-a-world created by the gods for their own warped amusement. A part of me wondered if maybe we’d been thrust into a new challenge without either of us knowing. And yet... I blinked and frowned. And yet there was a niggling thought within me that something had gone terribly awry.

Inhaling deeply, I washed my lungs with the scent of dirt and pine. Getting shakily to my feet, I dusted off my hindquarters and turned to look for my traveling companion. Petra was a few yards behind me, and he too was dusting himself off, wearing the same quizzical frown that I no doubt still wore. I wasn’t often at a loss to describe what was happening around me, but I was without answers right now. Shoving thick strands of hair out of my eyes, I studied our surroundings.

Just a few minutes ago, Petra and I had been discussing the next challenger we were set to face—Fiera, elemental goddess of the eternal fires. We weren’t supposed to duel until tomorrow, though. Perhaps the gods had fooled us yet again, and we were supposed to duel right now. Readying my bow, heart racing, I studied the landscape, expecting to see Fiera standing off to the side, fireball in hand.

But the goddess was nowhere to be seen. Instead there were trees, hundreds of them. We were in a grove of towering behemoths whose branches kissed the sky. I turned in a circle, doubting what I was seeing.

This was Kingdom.

We were back in Kingdom.

“How the blue blazes...” I mumbled. I walked to the first tree and laid my hand against its corrugated bark, scratching at its woodsy thickness with my nail. There was nothing unusual about it. It wasn’t sentient and it didn’t sing or talk, which meant we weren’t in Wonderland. However, the trunks were a shade of deepest brown with large swaths of colorful streaks running down them. Riffling through the catalogue in my brain, I quickly came to the conclusion that these trees—more specifically the eritque arcus lingo—were exclusively native to the western region of Kingdom.

“Bloody hell,” I murmured. We really were out of the games.