ELENA
BECKY AND SAMMY were both in the room when I got in.
Emanuel put my luggage on my bed and gave me a wary look.
“Elena, if you need anything, don’t hesitate, please. I meant what I said.”
I nodded and smiled faintly.
“Speak to you soon, and take care.” He left. He must have said goodbye with a gesture to the girls because I hadn’t watched his retreating figure. I started to unpack my bag.
It was silent for a long time.
“Elena.” Sammy’s voice was soft and really close to me. “Please don’t shove us away.”
“Sammy!” I couldn’t finish my sentence as tears glistened in my eyes. She grabbed me tight and just held me.
It felt weird. She was a girl, but ever since that night, I really didn’t want to be touched. It made my stomach turn and my heart race. I felt claustrophobic.
To make it worse, Becky hugged me too and they both made me feel like a piece ham in between two slices of bread.
I pushed Sammy away and ran to the bathroom, where I hunched over the toilet and broke down.
“How long is this going to go on? I don’t know if I can do this.” Becky spoke softly.
“As long as it takes, we don’t have a choice.” Sammy’s voice broke. “I can’t even imagine what it was she went through.”
“Shhh, don’t cry. She’s one of the toughest chicks I know and—” Her Cammy buzzed and I could hear her sigh, but then everything went silent.
She wielded a shield to shove me out of that conversation. Ironic. I didn’t really care. I had too many problems to deal with at the moment.
I thought about everything that had happened the past four months. How much it ached to see Billy every time, because he looked like Blake. Anger filled me again as I realized that pain was all for nothing. Blake was alive.
I didn’t know if I would ever be able to look at him again.
I was glad I’d made that promise to my father to not free the people of Paegeia, as it meant I didn’t need to go on this stupid expedition with Blake.
I could decline. I finally had a reason now and didn’t even have to tell anybody the truth about why I didn’t want to.
I’d felt like an idiot that day I’d thought that I was dead when I saw him. Asking for my mom like that.
When I eventually got out of the bathroom, Becky and Sammy were gone.
I was happy they’d left. I really couldn’t deal with their pity and their stares, not to mention what all the tabloids had printed about me the past few days.
I didn’t even care anymore.
I opened my bed and just crawled in.
It felt like the time after Lucian’s death. All I wanted was to sleep. If I could find a way to sleep for eternity, that would be just fine with me.
BLAKE
“I’M WORRIED ABOUT Elena.”
I chuckled. “You say that as if I’m not, Constance. The girls have been taking her food, but she hardly eats any, and she’s been sleeping now for what, five days?” I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about it anymore, but whenever I closed my eyes all I could see was seven bastards and‒
“It’s not your fault.”
“I could’ve saved her, and I didn’t.”
“You tried. You couldn’t find her.”
“Exactly my point!”
She jumped slightly.
“I thought if she was back, it would be easier but it’s not. It’s ten times fucking harder.”
“I know you are frustrated.”
“It’s more than just frustration. I can’t help her. I couldn’t then and I can’t still. I feel so fucking useless.”
“Just calm down. I’ll make sure that she is okay. I’ll go check up on her tonight, see if I can’t speak to her about this. Make sure she gets something in her system. She needs to get out of that room otherwise…”
“Yeah, if it’s not already too late.”
“You can’t give up.”
“I’ll never give up, ever. I just want her to be okay.”
“She will be, in time. It’s all we can give her.”
“She needs to speak to someone about all of this.”
“I’ll try, but I think that is still too soon. There are phases with this sort of thing. Elena still needs to take that first step into the first phase. It’s your time to be patient now.”
ELENA
“JUST LEAVE ME alone!” I yelled and the plate of food that Constance held fell to the floor.
“Elena, this has to stop!” Becky yelled.
“Becky, step out,” Constance ordered.
“No! She’s just giving up. Just like last time. You are not going to give up.” She pushed hard with her hands on my bed, “You will get out of this bed. So help me I will throw you out that window.”
“You think it’s so easy just to dust everything off and be all happy again. It’s not! You have no idea what it is I went through.”
“Then tell me, do something to make us understand! At least you would be doing something. This is pathetic, pathetic. Deal with it like you always do, and move the hell on with your life.”
George barged in. “Becky, enough!”
“Get the hell out of my room. She needs to hear this.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“I mean it.”
He grunted. “Please, Becky.”
I covered my ears. This was the part where Becky liked to order George around, and he had no choice but to do as she said.
“No, and to be honest, I’ll deal with the consequences, she needs to know the truth.”
What truth?
She looked back at me. “Elena, please—” she started but the door opened again.
“Just leave me alone please,” I begged her, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was looking at the door.
“Get the hell out of my room,” she said but no reply came. I wielded my shield, closed my eyes and didn’t want to be here at all.
Everything disappeared. When I eventually opened my eyes again Constance was still next to my bed. She waited patiently.
I let down my shield.
My heart beat so fast, and I couldn’t hold my tears anymore.
I buried my face in my pillow and screamed. I was so angry.
I felt Constance’s hand stroking me softly. “I’m worried about you, and I’m not the only one.”
I didn’t even care.
“I don’t know what else to do anymore. This has been going on for what, three weeks now? I’ve tried everything; checked up on you on a daily basis for the past two weeks. I’ve done and said all I can. Please, you are stronger than this.” She sniffed hard and her lips brushed my temple softly. “I love you, sweetheart, like you are my own daughter, but I can’t help you if you don’t want it. So, it’s up to you now kiddo. Get out of this bed, eat something and get fresh air in your lungs. Please.”
She kissed me again, got up, and I could hear the door closing behind her.
BLAKE
“PLEASE, CONSTANCE. I’M begging you, don’t give up.”
“Blake, I’ve tried. I can’t see her like that anymore.”
“You don’t know what you have. It was so hard to just grab Becky and get her the hell out of there. I would give anything just to be that close to her, please!”
“And what is it you want me to do? Drag her out of bed? Then you are going to climb down my throat too. Poor Becky got it the other day when she couldn’t handle it anymore either. You had no right to say those things to her.”
“She was out of line.”
“And sometimes people just have to hear the things they don’t want to. You are not the only one that cares about her.”
“Then don’t give up on her.”
“I’m not, but sometimes we just have to step aside. Like a momma dragon that teaches their babes how to fly. I’ll be there when the time comes.”
I nodded and closed my eyes.
“There is something I need to ask you, I know it’s going to sound insane, but I don’t know what it is?”
She squinted.
“I’m experiencing real crazy shit and I don’t know if it’s my imagination or not.” I shook my head. “I just don’t know. Forget that I said anything.”
I turned around to walk away. “No, come sit. I can help.”
She led me to a chair at the nearest bed and she took the edge of the bed.
“So tell me everything, start from the beginning. What are you experiencing?”
“I don’t know. It could be my demons catching up with me.”
“Blake, talk to me.”
“It’s like I’m dreaming, but I’m wide awake. There are thoughts about things I don’t know and memories I do, but they are wrong, like it wasn’t the way they happened.” I sighed as she stared at me with knitted eyebrows. “I know it sounds insane.”
“Just carry on.” She gave me a softer look.
“The things I don’t know are the things I probably make up. You know, what happened to her. It’s driving me insane.”
“What things?”
I kept quiet, trying to put my words together. On paper it’s so easy, but to voice them, was so hard.
“I see her, in a forest with faces I’ve never seen before, except one, mine. But what I do.” I shook my head. “I would never ever do to her.”
“What is it that you do?”
“Unbuckling my pants.”
Constance flinched.
“It’s crazy, right?”
“Are all of them like that?”
I shook my head. “One is inside the cave where Lucian died. This time Paul and I are great buddies. There is someone else there too. I’ve never seen him in my life.” Probably an innocent guy I killed when I was still so dark. I took a deep breath and let it out. “We all teamed up and came up with plans of how to kill her.” I stroked my face.
“Another one I see: When this other guy harasses her inside a hotel. I don’t do anything, I just stand there, around a corner enjoying every moment, but I’m not.” I huffed. “These are my demons coming to haunt me for all the shit I’ve ever done. Isn’t it?”
“Calm down.” She stared at me then something hit her. “Elena is in all three of them?”
I nodded.
“When do you experience these?”
“In class, at lunch, at night. It doesn’t matter. They are just there no matter how hard I try to stop thinking about them.” I shook my head. “It’s like a delayed command. Like I will be forced to think about it and then, bam, they just stop.”
She was staring past me with slightly furrowed eyebrows.
“Crazy, right?”
“No!” She looked at me and had a soft curve at her lips.
“What!”
“Blake the connection is starting to come back.”
“No! I would’ve been able to hear her thoughts. I would know what she went through if that was the truth.”
“Her dreams. Whatever is blocking you when she is awake is weak when she is asleep. You are seeing her dreams.”
I should be happy about it but I wasn’t.
“Her dreams?”
“Hey, it’s a good sign.”
“Good sign, me becoming one of the assholes that did that to her?” I chuckled sarcastically. “She must really hate my fucking guts.”
I turned around and walked away.
“Blake!”
I didn’t want to speak to her anymore. If it was Elena’s dreams, I couldn’t deal with this, but how was I ever going to get her to trust me again if I became one of them?
ELENA
FAINT LIGHT WAS the only thing I saw, and then the image blossomed like a flower in spring. Four legs, and faint voices egging Seymour on were in the background.
My heart rate started to increase again, more and more and the scream hardly filled my head as I jolted up straight in bed.
My breathing was heavy and my body shook softly from fear, fear from that night.
I was never going to escape it.
I sucked up my tears, got up and went to the bathroom. A part of me wanted to give up. It was so easy, but another part begged me to fight.
It was always her, the old Elena, the one who never knew about dragons, the one who wanted a normal life.
She used to be so weak but now, she was stronger than me.
Constance was right. I should try to get better, try to heal and to face what had happened and get over it.
It was going to be hard, that part I knew, but I wasn’t going to get better if I didn’t try, and I had to start somewhere.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I remembered Constance’s pleading. I’d been so selfish, only thought about myself and what it was I had gone through. What if my friends, King Helmut and Queen Catherine had searched for me? What had they gone through when they couldn’t find me? Emanuel. I thought about that day when he had taken me back to the Academy. They knew because he had smelled them on me. I was so embarrassed.
I had no idea how to face this, but Constance would help. She would always help.
I washed my face and looked in the mirror. I was back to the ghost figure I had been after Lucian’s death.
Both my roommates were still sleeping, and I put on my track suit and stepped into my sneakers.
My heart started to beat franticly when I walked down the stairs to the lobby. It felt as if someone was watching me.
I walked a bit faster, past the golden dragon and down the hallway. I didn’t care what time it was. I had to speak to Constance.
The wooden door was heavy, and the feeling of someone lurking in the shadows didn’t disappear.
I slipped through a small space, as I didn’t have the strength to open it like I normally did and squeezed through.
A faint light burned on the infirmary’s porch and I ran down the cobblestones, past the steel gate and up the three steps, knocking frantically on the infirmary’s door.
I could hear her getting up and rushing to the door, probably thinking there was an emergency.
When she opened the door, I flung myself into her arms and started to cry.
She stroked my back and held me tightly.
“Shhh,” she said against my head. “It’s going to be okay.”
I didn’t know how long we stood like that or how many times Constance just told me that it was going to be okay, but I cried. I hadn’t cried like that in a long time, and when I was finally done, everything felt a bit lighter.
It was still a long road to go, but this was the start. It had to be.
She looked at me with concerned, soft eyes.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I said as tears lay thick in my eyes and she hugged me again.
“Take one step in front of the other, baby, and time will do the rest,” she said close to my ear. “There are so many people here that want to help, Elena, let them.”
“I’m so angry at them.”
“Sweetheart.” She pulled me inches from her to look at me. “Why, because you think they didn’t try to find you?” She sighed. “Believe me, they did. You just vanished into thin air. The rain of that night killed your scent, and George could only track you to the Border of Areeth. How you even got there was a mystery.”
I thought about what she said. I had been so out of it that night. Did I take an elevator?
“George tried.”
“Becky, Sammy and Dean tried too, not to mention all of Paegeia. You are their princess, the last bloodline of the true royals. These people would do anything for you.”
“Why couldn’t they find me?”
“I don’t know; it’s something we are trying to find out, but you are not helping much.”
“I can’t.”
“Okay.” She smiled. “When you are ready then? You will get there. I promise. Just don’t give up.”
I nodded.
“Are you hungry?”
I nodded again.
“Stay here, I’ll phone Chef—”
“Don’t, everyone is still asleep. I don’t want—”
“Stop it. He would do this in a heartbeat.”
She took out her Cammy as I sat down on a chair, and a tired looking hologram of Chef’s face filled the screen.
“Hi, Pete, do you mind making Elena something to eat?”
“What?” he asked in a shocked tone.
“She’s here with me, ready to take on the world again, I hope, but she is a bit hungry.”
“Not a problem. Anything she would like?”
I shook my head.
“Surprise her,” Constance said and the hologram disappeared. “See, as easy as that. You just need to ask, sweetheart.”
I nodded.
“So which are we going to face first?”
She was referring to the gazillion problems I had to deal with.
“I don’t know which one to start with.”
“The smallest ones are usually the best.”
“Which is?” I was clueless.
“Making peace with someone that really wants to help you.”
I knew who she was talking about. Everyone always wanted me to make peace with Irene. I couldn’t. She was the last person with whom I would ever make peace.
“I can’t. She treated me like crap the first time I set foot in that tower.”
Constance smiled. “I wasn’t talking about Irene.”
I squinted. “Then who?”
“You know who.”
Blake? I shook my head, almost frantic just thinking about the idea. I’d forgotten about him totally. He didn’t want to be my dragon, why would she even say that.
“Elena, he…” She stopped, and took a deep breath. “Sorry about that, indigestion.”
“He what? Tried to find me? He is the Rubicon. If he really tried he would’ve found me. Don’t ask me—”
“Okay, calm down. Then, at least your two best friends. They are beside themselves, worrying about you.”
I nodded. “They really tried to find me.”
“Oh, you have no idea.”
“I thought that George was like one of the best trackers in Paegeia.”
“He is. It should show you how well you were hidden. Jako taught you well in that department.”
“He didn’t have a choice.”
“I know, he just tried to keep you safe and succeeded with flying colors.”
Tears wanted to well up again. “I always just fought with him, every time we moved. He tried to tell me once, the truth, but I didn’t react so well to it.” I sniffed. “Tanya came and erased that part, but she erased a lot more. He used to tell me stories about Paegeia, stories that were lost and thanks to Cheng – and Tanya, I guess, she gave them to him before we left and he gave them back to me.”
Constance listened.
“I never even told him thank you, not once.” I cried softly again. “I mean, his daughter died because of me and he raised me like his own.”
Constance got up and crouched in front of the chair. “Some things don’t need to be said. Dads know, even if their little girls act like spoiled brats; he knows that you were sorry.”
“Yeah, I just wish I could know for sure, that he is okay.”
“I’m sure he is. Your father didn’t mention him when you ascended?”
I shook my head, lied. “He was more concerned about the fact that I’d just discovered who I was. The plan was that Tanya was supposed to stay with me, tell me everything from a young age, but she couldn’t stay in her dragon form, so she left us. My father, I mean Jako, really tried to raise me the best he could, but I guess a part of him was scared and that instinct was right.”
“I never liked Tanya or your mother for that matter.”
“What?”
Constance laughed. “It’s not like that. You see your father and I, well we were sort of an item, even though he was going to marry Grizelda Longbottom – he didn’t like her very much.”
“You and my father?”
“Isabel and I used to meet them every month, wherever they were during the last war, the one where they fought for all dragons. We would heal injured humans; sometimes we even stayed with them for a long time. It’s how Robert and Issy met. And I fell madly in love with your father, but he was always so distant. His heart belonged to someone else, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you who. So when your mother was captured after she fought with your grandfather.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t the one, and that is how I met Lee. He was one of your father’s bravest dragon fighters, became the general when Albert became king and the rest was history.”
“You and my father, wow.”
“We did stay friends, and after a while, I could see why Katie stole his heart.”
It was the third time someone had referred to my mom as Katie. Queen Margerite also used her nickname, and Tanya.
“I really wish that you could’ve met her.”
A soft knock on the door made me jump slightly in my chair.
“It’s just Chef.” She got up and opened the door. “You are fast.”
“If the princess is hungry, I’m the guy.”
Constance smiled. “Thank you, Pete, want to come in?”
“Sure, why not?”
His huge figure entered the infirmary, in his pajamas and a big robe, carrying a silver tray and a plate of food with a glass of milk in his hands.
“Thank you, Chef. You really didn’t have –”
“Nonsense. I haven’t seen you in a long time, and I have to admit the untouched plates that came back numerous times made me worry that my food didn’t taste good anymore.”
I gave him a poor excuse for a smile. “Far from it. Your food is the best.”
He winked and put the tray down on a small table. “Enjoy. If there is anything else, just yell.”
“Thanks again, Pete, and she will.” Constance smiled.
He left and Constance closed the door while I checked to see what he had made. It was a little of everything. A small bowl of rice and coq au vin, next to it was a small pizza and on another plate were fresh fruit and a bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce. How did he know that all of this was my favorite?
“He really does know what everyone likes, doesn’t he?”
Constance smiled. “Let me guess, all your favorites.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, he really does.”
