Starlight (The Dragonian Series Book 5) (18 page)

The morning light shone through my curtains and I got up to take a shower. The chaos from last night had died out, but the worry was still hovering over all of us.

I couldn’t deal with Sammy today. I couldn’t deal with any of this today. I just wanted to go back to the other side and find Blake.

And that was when my body started to act normal again, like it should.

A plan of me escaping to the Creepers flashed through my mind. I’d been a good girl these past few days. I hadn’t tried to escape, and everyone was worried about what George had seen. It was going to work. I just knew it.

I packed my backpack after I put on my jeans and a sweatshirt. Going out the front door would alert Emanual, so the only way out was through my balcony.

I looked over the railing after I put the backpack over my shoulders and took a huge breath as the drop was a few stories high. There was a pipe, and I closed my eyes just thinking about it.
Blake would’ve done it for me.
He’d almost flown through the Creepers for me.

I threw one leg over the railing then the other and shook the pipe to see if it was firmly attached to the wall, still holding on to the safety of the balcony. It seemed strong and solid.

I placed one leg on one side of the pipe and then my other and clung to it with all my strength.

It’d seemed so easy inside my head, it’d looked so easy on the big screen, but now actually doing it, it felt as if my heart was going to explode.

I took a huge breath and let it out slowly.

You can do this.

I let my grip go slowly and started to slide down the pipe.

When I finally reached the bottom, I smiled because I couldn’t believe I’d just done it.

I peeked around the corner. It was clear and I started to make a run for the hill.

Once I was over the hill, I didn’t think. I just ran toward the Creepers.

They were getting nearer and nearer and I just knew that my plan had worked. I was going to find…

I yelped as talons grabbed me and my feet suddenly left the ground.

“Let me go!” I tried to get free from the talons but I couldn’t. The more I squirmed the tighter the grip became. I looked up and saw red scales.

“Dammit, Emanual! Let me go! He needs my help!”

“Elena, it is too dangerous,” he said using a deep scruffy voice. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“He would’ve done the same for me, you know it! You were there, why can’t I…”

“Because we need you, Paegeia and Etan need you to get through this war.”

He descended close to a group of people and then he let me go.

“Elena,” Isabel was the first to reach me.

“Leave me alone!” I yelled, pissed off that I’d failed at sneaking out and trying to go back to Blake. I stormed into the lodge and up the stairs.

“Elena, we need to speak about this.” Emanual’s voice was right behind me.

“I said leave me alone. If you don’t want to help me find him, then I don’t need anything from you,” I said and shut my bedroom door in his face.

Failure and loneliness overwhelmed me as I slid down to the floor and just cried like I’d never cried before.

I was never going to find Blake, and the worst part was that I had nobody to help me.

The day moved by slowly. Connie entered a few times with plates of food, drinks and snacks. But I couldn’t eat. I needed to find Blake. Becky and Sammy tried to cheer me up too. Even Annie and Constance tried. They all came and went. Around five a soft knock came on the door.

They didn’t let themselves in like the others and I got up.

When I opened it, Sir Robert and Isabel stared down at me. When I saw Emanual’s face I wanted to slam the door in all three of their faces.

“Elena, wait. We have a plan.” Sir Robert put his foot in front of my door just as I went to shut it.

“A plan to go and find him?”

He nodded and I stepped back from the threshold. The door closed behind Emanual as I went to sit at the edge of my bed.

Sir Robert took one seat and Emanual just stood in front of my door.

“Elena, just to get one thing clear. Blake vanished, which means he could be anywhere.”

“What if you are wrong? What if he is in Etan right now and he can’t get back?”

Isabel came to sit next to me, rubbing my shoulder.

“Think about it.” Emanual sounded frustrated and crouched down in front of me. “If George had a connection with Blake, he is far from Etan, nobody can reach him, not even you. Only he can find his way back.”

I was close to tears again. I felt so helpless.

“So what you are saying is I just have to wait? Is that it?”

Emanual sighed. “I don’t know. All I know is that the last time you ran, Elena, you were gone for four months. I do not want to tell him that you went looking for him if he comes back. I won’t relive that time again, so please, I’m begging you, just wait.”

I looked at him for a short while, closed my eyes and shook my head. When I opened them I stared at Sir Robert.

“He will come back, Elena. I know he will.”

“What if it’s in Etan? What if he’s already there? He wouldn’t be able to come back.”

Sir Robert stared at me. “We will go in once a day, just to make sure. If Goran has him, there will be rumors of it.” He shook his head. “It will be too late then, but we will do something to get him out of there. If not, we come straight back, Elena.”

“We’re going in tonight?”

Emanual closed his eyes. “Tomorrow, Elena. It’s day time that side. I’m not going to risk it.”

I nodded.

“I don’t like this, not one bit, but if it’s the only way to stop you from sneaking off where nobody can reach you, then okay, but we do this my way or you can forget going back.”

“I promise.” I would say anything if it would allow me to go and find Blake.

They all left after that and I struggled to fall asleep again. I was really anxious and excited about tomorrow. Blake just had to be there.

When I finally dozed off, I dreamed about the Saadedine again. Blake was still the size of a crow. His black armor, wherever the hell he’d gotten it from, didn’t seem to protect him from the Saadedine’s wrath.

I saw him crashing into a cave-like wall, and woke up to the sound of a thud.

A cold finger traced a path up my spine as I realized it wasn’t the dream’s thud that had woken me; it was a real thud. I could smell a strong scent of sulfur and feel the presence of something dark in my room. Someone dark, someone that didn’t belong in this world was staring at me.

I TURNED ON the light next to my bed.

There on the floor in front of me was a figure lying flat on its stomach.

The body was soaked in black ooze and then I saw the steam rolling off his body. I immediately put together the images of George from the other night in his room, and what I was seeing right in front of me.

Life sparked through me, and I found my way to the figure’s side as fast as I could, realizing it was Blake lying limply on my carpet.

My hand touched a pile of ooze that had coagulated on the carpet. It was cold, the burning kind of cold, and sticky.

I started to cough as the strong smell burned my nose and lungs.

I covered my nose with my sleeve, trying to catch my breath.

Steam was rolling off his body in waves. It was ten times worse than the night George had experienced it.

“Help!” my voice eventually yelled. I sounded deranged, like a crazy lunatic and coughed again at the strong smell of sulfur coming from him.

“Help!” I yelled again and touched Blake’s back. He was ice cold.

Blake gasped hard as if he’d only just now found his breath after a long time under water, and lifted up his torso from the ground, resting on his arms. He coughed like mad as he pulled in his legs and ducked his head down toward the carpet. He sounded so sick, like someone that had pneumonia, and then he threw up. Pools of black goo spattered onto the carpet as more came from his mouth.

“Blake, where the hell…?” I couldn’t finish my sentence as my voice broke.

Then he just grabbed me tightly and squeezed. I struggled to breathe but I held him just as tight. The goo was all over me. I started to shake with him, shivering from the cold emanating off his body.

He still coughed, short coughs that sounded really bad as I held him.

My door finally opened.

“Son,” Sir Robert spoke as Blake trembled, his teeth chattering.

“The blanket,” I ordered and Sir Robert yanked it off my bed with one pull and wrapped it over Blake.

“Son, where the hell were you?”

“Blake,” Isabel’s voice filled the room.

I couldn’t stop thinking about George’s experience.
How on earth had he seen where Blake was?

I could feel him shaking his head in the nape of my neck. The sulfur smelled so strongly that it made everyone start to cough.

Where the hell had he been?

He started to sob and let go of me. Then he got up and ran out of my room.

“Blake!” I yelled after him.

“Stay with Elena. I’ll go,” Sir Robert spoke quickly.

Isabel nodded.

Her face looked like she’d just witnessed a horrible play.

My body felt drained, cold, and the sticky black goo, which I knew was sulfur, clung onto my hands and face. Isabel wrapped her arms around me. “Shhh,” she said through a shaky voice. “He’s back. He will be okay, Elena.”

BLAKE WAS DOWN for another five days. I stayed with him almost all of the time. Isabel also kept a vigil by his bedside. Sir Robert and the rest came regularly too, checking up on his status and bringing things to eat. He would speak in his sleep, gibberish that didn’t make any sense, just like George had that night, but he never woke up. The only thing I knew was that he was in a dark, dark place. It must have been darker than what he was used to.

A knock on the door woke me from a slumber. My body felt stiff from sitting in the chair with only a blanket around me.

Emanual came in and looked at me and then at Blake’s sleeping body.

“Are you okay?” he asked and I nodded.
Blake was here, safe.

He pulled a chair closer to mine and sat down.

“How is he doing?”

“I don’t know, Emanual. He keeps talking about the darkness, cold and lightning, the same stuff that George did that night.” I wiped away a tear. “It doesn’t make any sense. Where was he?”

“Elena, he is one of the strongest dragons I know. He will be fine, he’s the…”

“Don’t say it. I don’t care if he is the Rubicon. You were not there that night he came back, Emanual. I’ve never seen him that scared before and he is one of the few dragons that almost never shows his fear.” I spoke softly but with a stern tone.

“I heard. Sir Robert told me that he was dripping with sulfur.”

“He wasn’t just dripping with it; it was in his entire body. He threw it up. Connie even replaced that spot on the carpet. Nothing could get it out. The smell. It’s still there.”

Emanual just stared at Blake’s figure on the bed. He was out completely, hadn’t said one word in almost a day, even in his sleep.

“He must have experienced some hell wherever he was.” Emanual finally opened his mouth.

“I don’t think he experienced hell, I think he was in hell.”

“You can’t say that.”

“It’s the only thing that explains the sulfur, Emanual.”

He shook his head. Of course he wouldn’t want that for Blake. I wouldn’t want that either. But there was no other way to explain how he’d ended up where he did when he disappeared.

“You should get some rest Elena. I’ll stay with him.”

“I struggle to sleep,” I whispered again.

“Try. That is an order.” I looked at him and he smiled softly. “I’ll wake you if he wakes up, promise.”

I nodded, got up, went over to Blake and kissed him on his cheek.
Please, just wake up.

I know he couldn’t hear my thoughts anymore, but it was a private moment and one I wasn’t going to share with Emanual in the room.

“Good night,” I spoke softly.

“Sleep tight, Princess.”

I opened his door and the hall light streamed in. It blinded my sight for a few seconds and then I found my own room. I welcomed sleep but it wasn’t the release I needed. Nightmares seeped through and I know it was because of my dragon not keeping tabs on my dreams anymore.

I felt so lost without him. It just made it so real again, what it would be like if he wasn’t in this world anymore.

I would be changed forever, scarred for life. I wasn’t that strong, well, not anymore, and his words on the mountain entered my mind again.

“You don’t have to be strong, I’m strong.”

I cried. Cried because I had no idea what state Blake was going to wake up in. If he was going to fear everything, how the hell was I going to pull him out of this, like he’d pulled me out of my darkness? He was the strongest dragon that I knew.

If he was broken…
don’t think like that Elena. Emanual is right
. He was the Rubicon and he would find a way to get through this. I would help him where I could, like he’d helped me. Even if it meant giving him his space, like he’d given me mine. I’d give anything for him to get through this.

Blake

RUMBLE.

It vibrated through my entire body. Then another rumble came, followed by a dull cracking sound.

My eyes focused in and I could see the blur of a long line of lightning breaking into a thousand directions. Then it disappeared again. It was so dark.

My sight, disorientated at first, started to focus in.

Nothing, just darkness again, and then the flashes of the lightning lit everything up once more. The deafening sound of a rumble of thunder came a few seconds later. It was so bright.

It finally woke me from my slumber.

Elena.

I flew straight for the lightning. I knew it made no sense but I just wanted to get out of the suffocating darkness.

I closed my eyes and ground hard on my teeth, as I knew this was going to fucking hurt, and flew straight into the lightning.

It was so bright I had to close my eyes and when the brightness faded, I found myself in a different type of darkness. One where I could hear thoughts again, but they weren’t Elena’s. This time it was everyone else’s, and from what it sounded like, it was everyone that owned a tainted soul.

Their murderous, cunning, and evil thoughts about hurting, plotting, and executing the worst acts anyone could think of assaulted me. It was all seeping through me like a tidal wave.

Murder, rape, and abuse of the worst kind. Animals getting slaughtered slowly, kids crying as they were beaten, woman screaming for help and the agonizing cries of men being tortured. My mind felt as if it wanted to explode. War, many war thoughts. Personal wars waging inside of them. I knew that type of war as I’d lived with it for so long.

A scream left my mouth and a strong force pulled me out of this misery, back to the darkness I knew.

Another strike of lightning hit and I flew as fast as I could into another swath of light.

“Please wake up.” I heard a voice, an angelic voice and then it was quiet. Like I didn’t exist anymore. I didn’t breathe. I struggled and it was as if I was suffocating again, like my lungs had just stopped working. Strong lungs that refused to take another breath. Then everything was gone.

Fire sprang up in front of me, engulfing me from within. It was green, burning my flesh, and turning my insides to messy black goo; it tasted like sulfur.

I jolted up in bed, coughed again. The smell was gone, but nausea stuck in my gut. I was never going to get rid of this feeling.

I felt a strong hand on my shoulder before I heard his voice as he pushed a bucket in my hands.

I threw up. Black shit, gooey black shit.

“You are going to be fine,” Emanual spoke. “Dammit Blake. Where the hell were you?”

I coughed a couple more times. It sounded better than it had that night.

I realized I was safe. I reached for Elena; her warmth had woken me up.

“Where is Elena?” I croaked.

“She is safe.” He sighed. “We were so worried about you. What happened?”

I lay back into my pillow and closed my eyes. I took a few deep breaths trying to get the images of that lightning out of my head. I’d flown so many times into it, it hurt like hell every single time, and yet I didn’t even know if it was real or not.

The flame was the worst. It was green, it belonged to the Saadedine.

“I don’t know where the hell I was.” I opened my eyes and looked at Emanual. His entire body stiffened. I knew that look. Something was wrong. My eyes, they stung like hell.

“How bad is it?”

“It doesn’t matter, you are safe.”

I sighed and closed them as I rested against the bed’s headboard. “All I can tell you is: never ever break an oath.”

Elena.

A KNOCK CAME from my door. I woke up immediately from the sound. Not that I’d been actually sleeping.

I found Isabel in front of my door. She smiled. “He’s awake.”

“He woke up!” I knew it! The minute I left, he would wake up and then it would seem like I didn’t care at all, which was so the opposite.

I grabbed my robe and pulled my arms through, stepping into my slippers. It was still early, like six, maybe seven o’clock.