MY LEGS WOBBLED and I found myself resting on one knee. It was him, the greatest king that had ever lived, King Albert.
My mind raced with questions, like why did they send him to fetch me? I didn’t know him, why couldn’t they send my father, or Lucian, someone I loved, who loved me.
I felt his hands touching my shoulder and arms gently. “Sweetpea, you don’t need to bow before me.”
I looked up and saw a soft, kind face staring down at me. Tears welled up in his eyes. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this moment.” His forehead rested gently on mine. My heart thumped as I kept staring at him.
He frowned slightly. “Do you know who I am?”
I nodded. “You’re King Albert.”
His smile disappeared immediately, the laugh lines next to his eyes vanished. I could tell he struggled to breathe. He got up awkwardly and turned away from me, walking like a drunk man a couple of paces in the opposite direction.
I found my strength again and rose onto both my feet. He fell to his knees and then sat on the floor. Then with one swift motion he yelled with his head up to the sky. I covered my ears as I didn’t understand any of this. I’d never heard a man yell like that before. It was a scream filled with sorrow, regret and something much worse that I couldn’t put a name to, but it brought me to tears as I could see he was in real pain.
Then it stopped and he was out of breath. A couple of seconds later his body shook slightly and I could hear faint sobbing sounds. I knew I should go to him, but I couldn’t.
I didn’t know him at all.
When he finally turned his gaze back he stared at me with sad, red eyes, and my heart wanted to break. The only look on his face now was regret and betrayal.
“I also know that you are my father.” It slipped out.
He looked at me again. “When did you find that out?” He got up and came back to me.
“Two days ago.”
He clenched hard on his jaw muscles. He was angry. “Two days ago!” he roared which made me flinch. “You were supposed to know who we were from the beginning. What happened?” he asked in a softer tone and to my surprise I found a tear sliding down my cheek. I wiped it away with the back of my hand.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. I know who I am now.” I tried to put him at ease. I couldn’t handle his outbursts. He always seemed so gentle and kind in the pictures I saw of him.
“Where was Tanya, Elena?”
“You know my name?”
He smiled awkwardly. “Of course I know your name. Your mother gave it to you when you were born.”
I nodded. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Where was she?”
“She left when I was two.” It came out in a sigh. I felt betrayal too.
His left upper lip rose, showing his teeth, and he resembled pure anger. “I told your mother that this would happen.” He looked past me and stared into the crowd. His gaze locked on something and I turned my head to see what it was. I found Sir Robert. “I should’ve told him about you. He would’ve stayed.”
“Dad…” It felt weird saying that. He looked at me with surprised but soft eyes. “Blake needed him more.”
“You would’ve known who you were, Elena, if he was the one.” He pointed at his dragon. “And you wouldn’t have only found out two days ago,” he said through clenched teeth.
“It doesn’t matter anymore, it’s over.”
He looked at me, squinting. “What do you mean it’s over?”
“All this, I haven’t ascended and I know why you came for me.”
He started to grin which soon burst into laughter. “Elena, I’m not here for you. You are ascending right now. This,” he said as he waved his arm around in a sweeping gesture. “All of this is happening right now.”
I looked around. “Wait, I’m not dead?”
“Far from it. Tell me about your life. If Tanya left who raised you?”
“Herbert Watkins,” I said and flinched again. “I mean Jako did.”
“He forgave Tanya for what she’d done.” It was more of a statement than a question but I still felt the need to answer him.
“I don’t think so, but he was never harsh to me one minute of his life. He protected me even though I didn’t know his reasons.”
“Then I owe him everything.”
I looked at him with huge eyes. “He’s not with you in the afterlife?”
King Albert looked at me with questioning eyes. “He died?”
“Before I came here, dragons attacked us and he saved my life. He’s got to be there with you Dad. He doesn’t deserve the other side.” I spoke so fast that I don’t think the king even heard me.
His hands touched both of my arms. “Calm down, Elena. I’m sure he is there.”
“You’re sure he is…you’re not certain?”
He looked down and to the opposite side. He was hiding something. And then it hit me. I gasped. “You’re still alive!”
“Elena, no. Don’t. Etan cannot be saved!” he said in a stern, fatherly tone. “Promise me you won’t ever try to accomplish that.”
“If you’re alive—”
“I said no!” he yelled. “Goran has summoned the Saadedine. You know what that is?”
I nodded.
“He will kill both you and Blake. The people that side must stay lost for the safety of Paegeia.”
I shook my head. “No! I can’t promise that. It’s not my choice to make.”
“He will do as he’s told.”
“No! I’m not going to be like that.” I couldn’t believe that we were having our very first and last fight.
“Elena.” He grabbed me in both of his arms and pulled me into his chest. “I can’t live in a world where I know you are not safe, or dead. I’m nothing that side anyway, it’s only a matter of time,” he said into my hair.
“No, Dad, the people will fight if they know you are alive.”
“You can’t tell them. My dragon will come if he knows I live and he won’t make it further than the Creepers. Don’t give Goran that satisfaction, Elena. He’s taken so much away from me, don’t let him take you away too.”
“But you’re all I have. I have nothing, Dad.”
“That’s not true. You have him,” he nudged his head towards Blake’s dragon figure. It wasn’t like that. In fact it was far from like that. “And in due time I promise you, you’ll have everything.”
“It’s not enough. Everything I know about you and mom is through history. I want that chance. Please.”
“Elena, I love you, and that is why you can’t free Etan. Paegeia will perish if Goran gets free. You don’t stand a chance against the Saadedine. He’s under Goran’s control and he will kill you before you get a chance to free me. Please promise me you won’t try to free the people of Etan. Promise!”
“Dad! Please,” I whispered.
“Promise.”
I nodded my head in defeat. I didn’t want to fight with him anymore. “Fine, I promise.”
“That’s my girl. Now let’s get your dragon.”
“Wait, you’re going to help me?”
“It’s my privilege. I’ll stay with you until the claim is made. You’ll hear my voice and you have to do exactly as I tell you. Do you feel what he feels yet?”
I nodded. The anger was gone, the hatred for him was gone. I wanted to claim him.
My father took a deep breath. “When reality turns back, you’ll feel it again. Don’t ignore my voice. This claim needs to be made before he turns evil, Elena. Otherwise he takes you with him. You can’t fight against it.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know, but I promise you everything will be okay.” He stroked my face gently with his thumb, gave me his super smile that he used to give the cameras, and pulled me in for another hug. It felt so good and so real. It reminded me of the man who’d raised me.
“You need to step back into that flame again, Sweet pea, and no matter what, know that I’m always with you.”
“Okay, if I say something evil, I don’t mean it.”
“I know. I grew up with darkness. I’m used to it. I love you, sweetpea.”
“I love you too, Dad.” I knew it sounded stupid, but a part of me did love him. It was as if I’d known all along who he was, I was just too scared to admit it to myself.
I climbed back into Blake’s fire and waited. “Dad?”
“I’m here, just listen to my voice.”
“Don’t go away, please.”
“I won’t. Can you do me a favor? Please tell my dragon I’m so sorry. I never doubted him.”
I smiled. “I promise.”
I closed my eyes and the first thing that came back was my hatred toward Blake. It consumed me.
“Those are not your feelings Elena, they’re his,” my father’s voice said. “When everything comes back you have to move fast as they will try to interfere.”
“He doesn’t deserve this.”
“Hold on to who you are.” His voice was gentle, kind. I didn’t like that.
“Why should I?”
“This isn’t you, Elena. But it is who you’ll become if you don’t claim him.”
At once all the noise and the burn and everything that went with it came back. A scream of pain left my mouth.
“Now,” my father yelled.
I got up from his flame and somehow blocked his fire with both my hands. With a slight push I threw it away like it was a ball. My eyes found his red evil ones.
“Now, speak to him.”
“He doesn’t understand me,” I answered my father and Blake’s red eyes just stared at me.
“No, you are a dragon. This doesn’t count,” Blake yelled in perfect English. His dragon form had never spoken English before.
“Speak to him Elena,” my father’s voice rang inside my head.
“I’m not a dragon. It turns out that it was just the package I left Paegeia in seventeen years ago.”
“When did you learn to speak Latin?”
No idiot that was Engl… “I speak Latin?”
“I don’t understand this,” Blake roared again.
“Tell him who you are, Elena. He needs to know that you know,” my father’s voice said in my head.
“Don’t play dumb, Blake. You knew exactly who I was the first time I set foot in Paegeia. I asked you that night if there was a way you could have a Dragonian and you told me that hope like that didn’t exist. Brian died! Which tells me you knew exactly who Paul was and that he lied about claiming to be my dragon. Lucian died!”
“Elena take it easy,” my father said.
I looked at my hand and I could see the pink flame consuming my entire arm. I closed my fist.
“I had to kill Cara for you.”
The entire crowd was silent. “She was the only one that truly knew me,” I yelled at him. “You don’t deserve to be claimed!”
I threw the fire from my hand and it landed in a ball on the ground. I turned around and walked away.
“Elena don’t do this, your mother died protecting you.”
“No, Dad, she gave me away to protect herself,” I grunted at the direction his voice came from. “You both did.”
“Coward!” Blake grunted and hit me with a lightning spark that pushed me onto the floor. I didn’t shake the way Becky had that day but the electricity did hurt for about a minute before it vanished to a soft hum. My head jolted back and I glared at him with a raised eyebrow. “You forgot, none of those abilities belong to you. They’re mine, they can’t hurt me.”
I turned around and walked to the gate I’d entered a couple of minutes ago. My hands were already flamed with fire again. “Don’t mess with me Cheng, open the gate,” I said and he did as I ordered.
A soft hum came from the crowd. I paused and turned around. It was the introduction to Lucian’s song. The song Arianna had used just a couple of hours ago, or was it minutes, it was all so confusing.
More people started to join and it became clear that they were singing or were trying to mimic the intro, they even stomped their feet on the word ‘Thunder’.
“Come on, Elena, don’t let Goran win because he will own you if you turn dark,” my father begged one more time.
“You still here?”
“Nothing you can say will make me leave until this is done. I know darkness, remember, you are not dark yet.”
I looked back at Blake. His muscles jumped as he just stood there.
“Show him whose power he is carrying, make him scared.”
“You and I, let’s give them a claiming they’ve never seen before.”
Blake started to laugh. “There will never be a ‘you and I’.” He blew pink fire my way and I dodged it. More followed, but my reflexes were so fast. I saw each and every single one of them pass me. It was a weird feeling, but I felt like a completely different person. Blake roared again and he used his telekinesis on me. I flew into the air like I weighed nothing.
“Use it, Elena. Own it!” my father’s voice roared inside my head.
Before I hit the wall, I backtracked. My feet touched the invisible wall and I flipped myself around and landed on my feet like a cat in perfect harmony.
The crowd was going crazy. It was funny how I could hear them now, and not before.
“It’s because you’ve ascended. You will hear a hell of a lot better than you ever used to.”
He hit me with another blast, lightning this time. It hit my body again, but where I should have been flat on the floor, it only danced across my skin. I smiled as I looked at the spark running down my arm as it accumulated inside my palm. It formed a huge electric orb.
“Hit him with it, make it count!” my dad said.
I did as he ordered and threw the ball straight into Blake’s leg. Every hit that found a part of his scales or limbs made a piece of my anger go away. He roared again as he stumbled and the earth shook.
“Now’s your chance, Elena. Give him everything you’ve got.”
Fire, lightning and ice orbs left my hands faster than I could think. Then Blake disappeared all of a sudden, the crowd turned into a swamp and I found myself in slick, thick mud that started to pull me in.
“It’s not real, Elena. It’s him…”
“You can see this?”
“My privilege, remember.”
“Okay.”
“All you do—”
“I know what to do Dad. I sort of became a dragon.”
“I heard.”
“What do you mean, you heard?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m never going to see you again.”
“Elena, now is not the time, you have to claim him. Now think of a place you feel comfortable and claim him!” he yelled.
“I know what to do!” I shouted back at my dad and started to focus back on the Coliseum. I knew how to do it, Blake had shown me. The only problem was my imagination just needed to be stronger than his.
I saw a rock with very sharp horns in front of me, and all of a sudden, the color of the rock turned back to a purple-red. It was him, trying to attack at close range.
I grabbed the horn on his head and lifted myself onto his back.
At once the Coliseum came back but only for a second. The swamp returned and then the Coliseum again.
“It’s no use Blake, this place will not get you anywhere.”
“That’s it, Elena. Show him whose abilities he is carrying.”
“You’ve got nothing I don’t know about. It sucks you don’t have any secrets from me, doesn’t it?” I whispered inside his huge, frilly ear.
He roared again and I was thrown off his back. I fell flat on my back and had to roll around in order to dodge the huge paws that tried to crush me. The earth shook every time he stomped those huge legs of his.
My father was yelling but I was concentrating too hard on not being squashed like a bug.
“Grab onto one of his legs and let him think he’s thrown you unconscious.” my father’s voice finally got through to me.
I did what he said, although it wasn’t easy and I slipped which actually counted in my favor, but he did manage to dislocate my shoulder.
He threw me to the side and I used my telekinesis to make the landing a little bit softer.
“Now lay still,” my father said. “It’s working. I’ll tell you when to strike. It was the same way I claimed his father. Just stay down.”
I did what my dad said and tried to will back my energy. It wasn’t easy and my head ached but I could feel my core being filled and my tired muscles and lungs felt as if I hadn’t even shed one drop of sweat. I just wished I could do something about my shoulder, and then, like magic it disappeared. My healing ability kicked in.
“He’ll go with the pink flame, I can see it inside his throat. Use your ice and freeze the son of a bitch. It will buy you some time to tie him down,” my father spoke inside my head. Like the game, I thought. “Now!”
I pushed myself up and it was exactly as my father predicted, his throat was filled with the Pink Kiss. I released an orb of ice and chucked it inside his mouth. A familiar feeling of déjà vu jolted through my core. Lucian’s voice was yelling in the back of my mind to attack him with everything I had.
Blake’s entire face was a solid brick of ice and it started to run down his front legs and toward the middle of his torso. His one wing was iced in the process as well.
I had nothing to tie him down with, so I imagined the one place where I’d seen this done before. It was back on the mountain where Goran had used that Dragonian to try and kill all of us. Huge trees and roots grabbed him the way they’d grabbed Sammy that day and Blake was forced slowly to the ground.
The ice on his head and legs melted fast and he let out a growl that blew my hair back. The force of his breath was making it hard for me to breathe. He broke free and I found the two of us back in the Coliseum. I didn’t have him.
“Again, imagination doesn’t work, Elena, but you had a really good idea. Now do it for real. Use your strength, grab the roots buried deep down in the ground.”
“I’ll wreck this place,” I yelled in my head.
“Just do it.”
I did what my father said and spread my hands downward as if I’d called for roots a million times before.
The earth shook and four different roots jumped from deep within the ground. I brought my hands over my head and saw the roots tightening over Blake’s body.
Blake growled again and started to release another deep breath. I tilted my head as far as I could away from the blast.
I ordered the roots to tighten on him more.
“Easy Elena, you don’t want to kill him,” my father warned.
“Yield!” I yelled.
“Never.”
He tried to squirm free, I could feel it in my hands. It was as if the roots were attached to my body. More roots sprouted out and grabbed him tighter.
“Yield!”
He roared again like a wild beast whose spirit couldn’t be tamed. I saw myself inside the red irises of his eyes.
For the love of blueberries, Blake, just yield. He shrieked and growled all at the same time and I saw how his eyes started to turn another color. The red started to fade and a purple light filled his eyes.
“Yield,” I whispered as the roots pinned him down more, and then his peacock blue eyes took the place of the red, evil irises.
“That’s my girl, now remember your promise. I love you.” My dad’s voice faded.
“No, wait!” I yelled as the roots retreated back into the ground. I tried to follow my father’s voice.
Blake roared for one last time and I froze on the spot.
My core started to boil and cool down at the same time. It grew with such a power that I knew my body couldn’t contain it. It went up my arms and into my head. I fell onto my knees as I grabbed my skull and let out a scream. Then I felt my body exploding into a million pieces.
