Starlight (The Dragonian Series Book 5) (51 page)

“There is something we need to talk about, Elena,” he said as we walked deeper into the core of the Creepers.

I had no idea where we were—if we were close to Tith or to Areeth.

“What is it?” I asked as we attached the next bomb in the tree-like substrate of the root. They would shake at the pinch, as if it was irritating their skin, but that was about it.

I felt sorry for them, I really did.

Blake plucked a small pink flower. He had been doing it every day as the scientists wanted to experiment on them to see what they could be used for.

Maybe they were the missing ingredient?

“If I am not going to make it…”

My head turned to his. “You can’t think like that, Blake.” I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about it.

“Elena, death is the most natural…”

“No, you are too young and you are not going to die, you hear me?” I walked with huge strides past him. We recently discovered that once inside, the Creepers couldn’t do anything to you. It was only the ends that went raving mad at whatever passed them and would snap and claw your skin off if it got the chance.

I couldn’t live, or even imagine carrying on with life, knowing that he’d sacrificed himself in my place.

“Fine, you are not ready to hear this. Maybe another time.”

He passed me and plucked another string of purple flowers and moved on.

“I’ll never be ready to hear it, because you are not going to die!” I yelled after him.

He stopped. “Think, realistically Elena. We don’t know what the missing ingredient is yet.”

“So I have been right?!” I yelled. “You don’t believe that it is Louie, not at all.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not. I know that venom is powerful, but every single thing I’ve read on conjuring things…” He took a huge breath. “When someone conjures something, they use precautions, Elena. Goran would use everything he knew that could kill the Saadedine and make him immune to it.”

“What do you mean, make him immune to it?”

“It’s just another spell. Poison, if he used that one word, it won’t harm him. It’s like baking a cake with ingredients. Each ingredient does something. He just added the list of ingredients that would not be able to kill him. Louie’s berries, I can promise you were the first on his list. My father said that he was an alchemist. He used to make all of King Albert’s potions, whatever they needed, he was the one putting it together and Louie’s berries were almost always in all of them.”

“Killing potions?” I asked. “You’re trying to tell me that my father brewed killing potions, Blake?”

“No, they’re not just for killing, Elena. If you mix the berries with something else, it can actually become something not poisonous, something that can heal things, feed things, it can become something beautiful.”

I let that sink in. It was no use. We were never going to find the missing ingredient. One of us was going to die.

Tears welled up in my eyes as that piece of information sank in.

Blake walked over to me and wrapped his arms around me. I felt his lips brushing my head.

“I know it’s not easy to imagine that life can be good again after I’m gone.”

“You are not…”

“Elena, you have to listen to what I am going to tell you. You need to try and listen, please.”

I shook my head. “Listening to what you have to say, it’s like saying goodbye, Blake. And I’m not going to give you that chance. You are not going to die!”

“Okay,” he hugged me tighter. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t want him to either. He was already giving up and we hadn’t even faced the Saadedine yet.

We planted the last of the bombs and walked the long walk home.

When we finally got out, Blake went to the scientists and I went back to my room at the Dragon League.

In less than four days we were going into Etan. One of us was going to die.

I closed my door because I couldn’t deal with all of this anymore. I couldn’t imagine my life without Blake. Even if he’d only changed for me over the last few months. He was my everything now, the only constant thing in a world spinning out of control.

I was addicted to him. He made me feel whole. My father was right when I’d told him I had nobody the day of my ascension and he’d told me it wasn’t true. I’d had him, Blake. But now that might be taken away from me too. My father knew that something great was going to tear us apart, that it would hurt me so much and that was why he’d asked me not to come and free him. That and the fact that he didn’t want me to get hurt, didn’t want me to end up being the one dying. It wasn’t for his people, it was because of me that he made me swear, made me promise not to free the people of Etan because I would lose everything. Everything I loved.

A heavy feeling pressed hard on my chest. It felt as if I couldn’t breathe and the tears started to roll down my cheek. I couldn’t live without Blake.

I fell asleep after my breakdown and had the weirdest dream. I dreamt that I was walking inside the Castle’s walls, a castle I’d only seen once, inside another dream that I’d had with Lucian after I claimed Blake. He’d taken me through these walls but this time I was alone.

Suddenly I was pulled fast by an invisible force. I could hardly make out what was what. I passed so many steps, and flashed through the lobby with its many intersections of staircases and up another staircase hidden behind a wall.

It felt as if I was a ghost, but the turmoil in my head and gut were the only real feelings that told me I wasn’t one.

I came to a sudden stop and took a few breaths so that I don’t barf.

It was behind a pillar. Cold wind streamed in from somewhere and it helped with the nauseated feeling.

Men started speaking and I stood up straight, keeping myself hidden behind the pillar.

They were further down another path. I could tell by the moon and birds flying by that we were high up in a tower, and it was my enhanced hearing that helped me hear every word they spoke.

“It’s what she said?” a man spoke. It sounded like my father.

“You sure she said Goran?” Another spoke. King Helmut.

“She told me that they could see into our future. That they saw it.”

“Goran?” King Helmut said again.

My father must have nodded as he didn’t reply.

What was this? Someone warned my father? Why didn’t he listen.

“He would never…” Helmut said.

“I know he would never. I don’t doubt it for a minute, Helmut.”

“Do you really believe them?”

Who were they referring to?

“I don’t know, we can’t ignore what Cooper is. And Marica, she seems really certain of herself and about this.”

Who the hell were Cooper and Marica?

“We need to make a decision,” Sir Robert said and none of this made any sense. He’d always told me that he felt as if my father thought it would be him.

“There is no decision to be made. He would never do that,” Helmut said again.
Oh they were so wrong.

Someone touch me softly and I turned around. Everything went blank and the shaking didn’t stop.

I opened my eyes and found Blake.

“What time is it?” I ask as the wacky dream disappeared.

“It’s almost six a.m.”

“You woke me up at six in the morning?” I asked.

He smiled.

“Why didn’t you wake me up last night?”

“You look so peaceful and I didn’t want to wake you. You need your rest, Elena.”

“I had the weirdest dream about my father, yours and King Helmut.”

“Yeah, what happened in this dream?”

I told him the story, or what I could remember which was almost everything. That was the weird part. Dreams didn’t feel that real, and you hardly remembered anything afterwards. It was like that time I’d dreamt about my mother trying to tell me who I was.

He just looked at me. “My father would’ve said something if someone like Marica and Cooper had warned them. But I’ll investigate once all of this is over and see if they are somewhere in the records, Elena.”

“Investigate?” I smiled.

“Yeah, it’s what people do to find something.”

I grabbed him around his neck and just held him tight. “I don’t care about the investigation. You said,
after all this is over
. You are not planning on dying then?”

“No,” he chuckled. “I will fight, Elena. I’m not planning on dying.”

I let go of him and stared at him. “I really thought that when you wanted to talk about if you were going to die, that you’d already given up.”

He touched my chin and redirected my face to look at him. “I’m the Rubicon, Elena. What sort of a dragon would I be if I went in thinking something like that?”

I smiled and kissed him softly on the lips. “A good question,” I said as our kiss broke. “So why did you wake me up so early?”

“The van is packed, and the road is long.”

I squinted. What the hell was he talking about?

“Our getaway.”

I closed my eyes. I’d forgotten about the getaway. Our break before everything changed forever.

I nodded and got up. He waited for me outside as I quickly took a shower and put on fresh pair of clothes.

When I walked through the main doors I found Lucian’s black SUV and another Jeep that was filled with Isaac, Ty and all the other guys.

The roar of a bike filled the early morning and found Blake on his Ducati, waiting with a helmet in his hands just for me.

THE DRIVE TO wherever Blake had booked us for the next two days was a few hours outside of Tith. It was somewhere on the border of Elm and Tith.

My heart felt as if it was beating a thousand beats per minute as adrenaline flowed through my veins. Adrenaline that was caused by the speed he was going.

Still, I got the feeling that this was what he lived for. Bike rides, sky diving, snowboarding. It was who he was and I had no choice but to try it at least once with him.

The helmet he’d gotten was a bit on the smaller size, making it feel as if my head was going to explode, but he said it fit perfect and the jacket was snug around my body. It kept the cold out, and it helped a lot that I was snuggling the hottest dragon in this world tightly on a bike.

At the two hour mark, Blake finally slowed down and took the turnoff that said,
Lake Tenikwa
.

A couple of miles down I finally started to see part of a huge lake on the horizon, glistening in the sun.

The houses on the lake were each trying to be more beautiful than the last, and he parked right beside a picnic area with benches and tables.

He switched off the bike and I got off.

I took off my helmet and watched him take off his.

“Why are we stopping?”

“It’s a rocky path leading up toward the cabin, that’s why Dean drove with the trailer.”

“How long are we going to wait?” Was my next question, as he had been speeding like a bat out of hell to get here.

“An hour at the most, but I heard that they have a mean diner just up the road. Care to join me?”

“Let me guess, you are starving?”

“My stomach growling that much?”

I laughed as he took my helmet from me and put it with his on top of the bike’s handles.

He reached out his hand toward mine and I took it. His hand was big and mine disappeared in it. I felt so safe with him.

We walked past a few docks that had yachts and jet skis lined up. It was definitely only the rich that could afford something like this.

Something told me that this getaway was going to be one of the best days of my life.

I put my hoody over my head. I was so used to it now, and didn’t want to be bothered by the public, especially on this getaway.

I just want to spend it with Blake and my friends. That was it.

He did the same after he kissed the back of my hand, as we walked toward the diner that had a deck overlooking the lake.

A few steps led up to the opening of the diner and a friendly hostess greeted us.

Blake didn’t look like Blake behind his sun glasses and hoody pulled over his head. It was the best disguise, well best non-magical disguise, we had.

“Table for two?” she asked with a beautiful smile.

“We are expecting eight more. They will be here in an hour. We are a bit early.”

“Sure,” she sounded even friendlier, knowing that it was going to be a good day if their first table was for ten.

“Somewhere on the deck if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

We followed her toward the deck and sat on the corner of a table as the waiters pushed two more tables against the one we occupied to make it bigger.

When they were done, we ordered two coffees.

We both just watched the lake, staring at the water sparkling in the sun.

It sure was beautiful and peaceful here.

As we sat, I struggled to get Etan out of my head, to get the mission out of my head.

For all I know this could be the first and only getaway we would ever take.

“Ralph spoke to you about the serum he made from Louie’s berries?”

“This is not that type of getaway, Elena. No war talk.”

“I need to know.”

He picked up both my hands in his and kissed the knuckles of my fingers. “Yes, he did and everything they thought will help will be waiting for us as soon as we get back to the League. Promise.”

I smiled.

It fell silent again.

“What is King Helmut hiding from me? Do you know?”

He looked away as he nodded and I huffed softly. I knew it! There were something but I had a feeling that Blake wasn’t going to share it with me either.

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“Elena, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you. I think his reasons for keeping some things from you are valid. Just know this: he is protecting you, Elena, and me for that matter. He doesn’t want us to worry about what the others have to do. The Saadedine is our main priority and that is what he wanted us to focus on, nothing else.”

I sighed. “You trust it?”

“King Helmut keeping things from the two of us?” he asked. “Yes, I do, Elena as I know how your mind works. You will worry too much about the others and that leads to slip-ups. I don’t want any slip-ups on this mission. So please, just trust his reasons,” he begged.

“What do you mean by, ‘you know how my mind works’?” I smiled.

“I saw how you reacted to what King Caleb told everyone about the explosion. You were quiet. It made me worry seeing all that doubt in your eyes Elena. I know you worry about whether your father is still alive or not, but I agree with Emanual’s reasons. Like I said, it reminded me of the time I asked you to kill me if I turned evil. I was holding on then, but could understand that once I turned, I would kill my own father, even Sammy, and it wouldn’t bother me. So I do believe that your father is still alive.”

“You really do?”

“I do, and not just for my father’s sake, Elena. I really want you to meet him, for real this time.”

I smiled. “I do too.”

Silence filled the air around us again. I could live here. It was so serene and peaceful. The lake stretched for days and days and it looked like there was no end to it. In the distance way on the other side, I could make out a shoreline and what looked like a couple of houses.

I took in a deep breath and smelled the air. I was trying to form a memory that would last me a lifetime. No matter what happened, I wanted to remember this exact moment.

The smell of nature disappeared when I couldn’t breathe in more, and I let it out. “Well if you trust him, I will trust that.”

He gave me a soft squeeze and winked at me as the waiter brought us our two coffees and put the menus in front of us.

“So can I ask you a couple of things?” I said as I really wanted to know him a bit better.

“Oh, crap.” He sounded serious, but there was a hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “I was wondering when you were going to want to know about a couple of things.”

I laughed the way he put the emphasis on
a couple of things
. “I just wanted to know a few things. Apparently you already know everything about me.”

He laughed and shook his head as he drew in a huge breath. “Okay, shoot.”

“What does F.C. mean? I saw it plenty of times in your journal and it looks like something you really needed.”

He bit his lip and I could see how his posture grew slightly inflated. “You really want to know?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t Blake.”

“Okay,” he sighed. “It was a drug I needed to keep the Rubicon suppressed.”

“So it was a hang-on technique.”

“You could say that.”

“Was it a bad drug, like were you addicted to it?”

“Yes, I was, but I’m not anymore.” He smiled.

I brought the cup to my lips and took a small sip. “What did it do? Did you see things?” I put the cup back down on the table.

He laughed. “You mean did it put me on a trip? Um, no, it made me carefree. Like there was no dark omen hanging over me, but it also made me extremely aggressive and we all know who suffered for it.”

I know he was talking about Tabitha.

“What does the F.C. stand for?” I looked from the surface of the table to his eyes hidden behind his glasses.

“Fire Cain.”

I squinted. “So it’s like cocaine?”

“I don’t know what cocaine is.”

“Something bad on the other side of the wall.”

“Then yes, it’s probably like cocaine.”

“And you used to take your aggression out on Tabitha?”

He sighed and nodded. “One of the things I know I will never be able to make up to her. Well I can, but I don’t want to do that.” He said in a mysterious tone and we all knew what she wanted.

“Did you love her?” I had to know.

“I told you before it wasn’t love, it was more of a lust …thing.” He struggled to find the right words. “I was used to her, it’s the easiest category to put it in.”

“Used to her?”

He laughed, scratched his hoody and lingered with his hand on his head for a while.

“What happened that night she was in your room, I mean why was she there?”

“You really need to know this?”

“Yes, I would like to know this.”

He lowered his arm and rested both of them on the table. “Well you know about Phil, how I searched for him with her. She forgot to tell me that he was in on the other side on actual business. Something she knew. I never knew she was that good at acting, and her excuse of why she’d lied to me like that, laying it on thick was that she was trying to break the spell you had over me.”

“She what?”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “She believed it was a spell more than you did, and thought if I spent more time with her that it would vanish or something.”

“And now?”

“I realized that we can’t be friends after that, it’s just too complicated with her. She will always want more, and I will never be able to give her that, so I told her I never wanted to see her again.”

“Is that what you truly wanted?”

“I won’t lie to you, I really thought that we could all be friends, but…” he scrunched up his nose. “Not going to be possible.”

I played with one of the sugar packets. “One last question?”

“Just one more.”

I laughed the way he said it. “Irene? You really had a relationship with her?”

The smile tugging on his lips disappeared instantly. He didn’t look at me and the vibe got so thick that I almost told him to drop it. “This conversation is really starting to become awkward.”

“No, it’s not. I’m open-minded and I knew all of this already, I just want to know a bit more.”

He sighed. “It’s difficult. Yes, I think a part of me did love her. But it didn’t start out like that. She was a no-zone and I don’t listen to those. Her seeing me regularly didn’t help with my demeanor either. She was just something I had to put on my list. I was very shallow back then.” He smiled softly. “But I realized after a while that her feelings for me were real and I did feel something for her too. But again it wasn’t love. I thought it was, but it wasn’t.”

“How do you know it wasn’t love?”

He smiled. “Because I know what love actually feels like now, Elena.”

I blushed scarlet as he said it. “So you love me?”

“More than I can tell you.”

“Just like that?”

“It’s not hard to love you. Quite easy.” He took my hand in his and I stared at our fingers intertwined with each other.

“You love me?” He asked.

“I loved Lucian, or I think I did. This feeling is ten times worse.”

He squinted. “Worse?”

“Yes, worse, as I want to give in to it, but I don’t want to either. Every time I feel like this, the person ends up dying.” Tears lingered in my eyes behind my glasses, thank heavens for that, and I plastered a smile on my face to make it sound like a joke, which was far from how I felt.

“I see, so it’s not a bad feeling. You are just scared.”

“I’m terrified.”

He bent over the table and brought his mouth close to my ear. “I’m terrified too, Elena.” He moved back and smiled.