“IT’S FINE MASTER Longwei mentioned something like this. Go, retrieve your special jewel.”
“An orb. It’s not a jewel, huge difference,” he said sarcastically. “It’s fine, I have more or less an idea where it is and can come back for it another time.”
“Just go get it. Really, it’s not a problem.”
“It might turn into one, okay?” He sounded stern.
“What do you mean, it might?”
“The location is that way, there is another cave which leads to the mermaid world.”
I gasped. “Then what are we waiting for? I’ve always wanted to see them.”
“They are not always friendly,” he said, but I was already walking in the direction he’d pointed.
“There’s plenty of water, and you don’t have enough oxygen. I, on the other hand, can breathe underwater,” he said.
I knew that part, I’d discovered it when my head went underwater while Cara was still with me. “Then I’ll wait while you go get your precious orb.”
He grunted. “You really are one of the most stubborn girls I’ve ever met. I can’t promise your safety, and I’m sure this oath that was made two days ago revolves around that.”
“I’m on land. Mermaids, I’m sure, can only stay in the water. Seriously, they don’t even know me. Why on earth would they want to hurt me?”
“I can think of a couple of reasons,” he mumbled as he passed me. “But fine, let’s go.” He really was a jerk.
I had to walk fast again to keep up with his pace.
The trees grew bigger and the plants greener as we walked further, then a huge cave appeared in front of us.
“Stay here, I won’t be long.”
“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m going in.”
“Elena.” He sounded angry, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t as useless as he thought I was. I had access to my abilities now, and I could use them whenever I felt the need.
When I entered, the first thing I noticed was the cave’s water reflecting on the walls. It was bluish and reminded me of the cave at the Academy, the one in which I’d almost died.
Still, I set down my bag as Blake dropped his, and looked away as he took off his shirt.
“You seriously are one stubborn girl. Only thinking about yourself.”
“Oh will you just shut up? I can take care of myself.”
He shook his head, not saying anything, and pulled off his pants. He fiddled in his bag, looking for something and when he walked into my view, I saw swim shorts that reached his knees.
He was seriously built to last.
He stepped into the water and lowered his body until only his shoulders and head stuck out.
“Whatever you do, this is not a time to let your curiosity take over. I meant it when I said this is dangerous. Just stay in that spot and don’t move. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Fine, go.” I shooed him away and he ducked into the water. I watched the ripples until they disappeared, and the water became still.
The minute he left, that same creepy feeling of being watched returned. I seriously didn’t like it.
Then I thought about how fast he’d picked up on his orb. His tracking ability hadn’t failed him this time.
Why had he not been able find me? Was it because that part of him didn’t want to? He’d just proved how good his tracking ability was. I was sure the Rubicon had tried everything to just get more dragon time, but Blake hardly shifted into a dragon. It was as if he hated his dragon form. It was seriously starting to freak me out. The two of them were so different from one another.
I thought about something, an analogy Sammy had used to describe the Chromatics right before a claiming. She said the human form was like Dr. Jekyll and the dragon part, Mr. Hyde. Could it be that Blake had become Mr. Hyde and his dragon form Dr. Jekyll?
That guy seriously loved being dark, and now that the roles were turned around, he clung to the dark now that his dragon form was light.
A soft, singing pulled me out of my thoughts. I got up onto my feet as the voice engulfed the entire cave.
How long had Blake been gone? I didn’t know, but it sure felt like forever. A splash in a dark area of the cave made my head snap toward it. My heart immediately started to pound and soon it felt as if it was lodged in my throat. My mouth grew dry, and I couldn’t swallow properly. I could feel something coming my way but I had no clue what it was. Okay, I did, but it still sounded so far-fetched.
I jumped back and almost died of a heart attack when a body jumped out of the water and sat on the ledge.
“Sorry!” She sounded friendly, with wet hair clinging to her head. She had nothing covering her breasts and my eyes snapped toward a huge tail glistening in the reflection from the water.
“Didn’t mean to scare you.” Her voice was like honey, but it made my skin crawl. Could this be the danger Blake was talking about?
I just kept staring, and pinched myself. Ouch! This didn’t feel real.
“You like my tail?” she asked and smiled, admiring the light from inside the cave sparkling off her scales. “Of course you do, it is the most beautiful in the entire realm.”
“Okay,” I said. She sure was full of herself.
“What are you doing here? Not a lot of humans—” She sniffed. “Yip, humans, come here to this side of the realm.”
“I had no choice. I’m waiting for someone.”
“She does talk!” She laughed. It didn’t last long thought and was replaced with a gasp. “You are not one of those, that fall in love with our men, and is now waiting for him? My father will kill him, you know, if he finds out.”
“No, definitely not one of those.”
“Of course not, how stupid of me. You almost had a heart attack when you saw me, not to mention the look of awe when you saw my tail. It has magical abilities you know.”
“What, your tail?”
“Yes, it grants me the power to do whatever I wish it to do. Great for my friends, not so much for my enemies.”
I gulped at the way she said the word enemies. She narrowed her eyes. “Really, what are you doing here?”
“I told you, I’m waiting for a friend.”
“And this friend is not one of us?” she asked, still with narrowed eyes.
“No, he’s not.”
Her eyes rose as I said he. “Who are you waiting for?”
Don’t tell her, Elena. Why on earth not, she probably doesn’t even know Blake.
“My dragon,” I said, not knowing why I called him that. “He came to find one of his stupid orbs.”
“You are talking about Blake?”
My heart beat faster at the way she said his name.
“You know him?”
“Oh, I know him all right. He used to come here often to visit me, but not so much anymore. In fact, I haven’t seen him in a very long time.” She sounded angry.
“I can promise you, I have nothing to do with that.”
“Oh, but you do. I know exactly who you are, Elena!” She said my name as if I was vermin, and lifted her hands at once, yelling something.
I couldn’t move, and this time it wasn’t because of a stupid spell, this time it was fear.
Seaweed jumped out of the water and wrapped itself around my legs. I shrieked as it started pulling me toward the water, and took a huge breath just before it pulled me down.
Blake! I yelled inside my head, even though I knew the stupid idiot wasn’t linked to my mind anymore.
Gills didn’t appear this time either, and I tried to wield my ability. Nothing happened, and the seaweed just kept pulling me down further into the water. It was so bright and my eyes stung after a while. I tried all the incantations I knew, but nothing worked.
The mermaid started to laugh under the water and her voice was like a song, clear and beautiful.
“I told you my tail is magical, Elena. It is blocking all of your magic, it’s actually giving me more. Ohhhh, I feel great.” She said that last part as if she was busy getting an orgasm.
The seaweed started to wrap around me, covering me completely. My breath started to vanish and I couldn’t breathe.
My sight was disappearing too, and then everything just started to fade out.
“BREATHE, ELENA.” I heard his voice and felt his lips again. I coughed and water spilled out of my mouth.
I kept on coughing as I gulped in air.
Blake was kneeling next to me, still without his shirt on. His hair clung to his face, making him look like a Tommy Hilfiger model who had just walked out of the sea, begging you to buy his perfume.
I lay on the cold floor of the cave trying to catch my breath.
“I told you I would come back for this!” he yelled.
“Just tell me you got the stupid thing so we can leave,” I said, out of breath.
He shook his head and I stared into the water. The mermaid was gone. I didn’t know who the hell she was, but something was clear, she wanted to kill me to get Blake. Fucking idiot. She was a mermaid, for crying out loud. The only thing he could’ve done with her was feel her up, unless mermaids had human bodies too.
I got up, angry. My clothes clung to my body as I walked past Blake who held out a towel to me.
I slapped away his hands, picked up my bag and got myself out of the cave.
“You are angry, after I warned you?” He sounded furious.
I turned around and faced him. “You want to know why she did that? Because of you.” I pushed him as hard as I could. “Urgh.” I let out a groan. “I knew the minute this mission started that you were going to get me killed.”
“I told you I could come back. I know what she is like. She is a psychotic fish.”
He walked past me again.
A psycho fish that wanted him.
He stopped and threw down his bag. “You never listen.”
“I never listen?”
“She almost killed you. If I hadn’t already been on my way back, you would’ve been dead by now.”
I closed my eyes.
“From now on if I say I can come back later.”
“Fine, I’ll know that there is a psychotic creature out there that you somehow screwed that wants to kill me,” I said and walked back the way we’d come.
I could hear him grunting behind me again, and fiddling with something, but his steps were huge and he reached me in no time.
“For your information, I never slept with her. I know her father.” He walked past me again with a shirt on and his towel around his waist.
The sun was almost setting again and we found a place to set up camp.
I was too tired to argue with him, a near-death experience does that to a person. He set up my tent in no time, and when he was done, I went inside, put on some dry clothes and crawled into my sleeping bag.
It was silent outside, the only sounds I heard were the fire and the insects.
“You want something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.” I knew I was being so rude.
“Fine, suit yourself.”
It was the only thing he said, and I fell asleep thinking about his dragon form again. They had to be two entities, and no creature could be that fucked up, unless he had a personality disorder, which didn’t seem so far-fetched.
The next morning I woke up to fish roasting over the fire.
My legs were aching from where the seaweed had grabbed me. I lifted my pants and found these tiny blisters shaped like ankle bracelets around my feet. If only they were pretty like a bracelet should be and not aching.
I pulled my socks over them and had no idea how I was going to be able to walk a gazillion miles today.
Stupid orbs. I should’ve listened…no he should’ve kept his … he knew her father, yeah right, it’s Blake we are talking about here, not Saint Thomas.
I crawled out of the tent, and Blake stared at me. His eyes lingered for a few short seconds on my head.
“What?” I snapped.
He sighed and got up. “I might not have given that oath but I’m still bound to it.” He touched my head and only then did I feel it ache.
“This is going to hurt,” he said and pulled something out of my skull.
“Ouch!” I yelled and saw him chucking away a tiny piece of rock. His hand touched my wound softly and heat pulsated from it. I wanted to pull away but he didn’t let me.
“I’ve actually become good at this, hold still.”
I listened and didn’t want to look at him as he healed my wound. “You have any others?”
“Nope,” I lied, and touched my head. It was healed. No ache, nothing whatsoever. I should’ve said thank you but I didn’t want to. I hated him so much, and thinking he would do anything nice for me was difficult. He put me in that mess. No, you put yourself in that mess, he warned you, the old Elena snickered. Just shut up.
I crawled back into the tent. I was still tired, but I knew in less than an hour we were going to move again.
Too soon we started walking again.
After an hour I wished I hadn’t lied about this second injury. Both my legs were pulsating from the blisters and I’d never felt this tired.
I struggled to keep my eyes open, and every time I tried to really focus on Blake’s back, my head spun.
I couldn’t keep my eyes open and my feet felt heavy. The only thing I remember after my body hit the ground was his name leaving my mouth.
BLAKE
GREAT, JUST ANOTHER thing for her to hate me for. I hadn’t slept with Xaline. How does one even sleep with a fish?
Xaline was a psychopath with a dangerous tail. Her father, Sabian, on the other hand, now he I had shared many a drink with, trying to find out where the hell Elena was. He had a pearl, one that was like my tracking ability – or what my tracking ability should’ve been like. But he couldn’t see her either. That was still the part that I couldn’t quite grasp.
How the hell had she dodged all of those powerful tools for locating someone?
Still, I had never been so afraid in my life. The scene still played in my mind. I’d wanted to quietly turn around when I’d seen Xaline, but then I’d seen the seaweed and Elena’s hair. I knew she’d found her.
I’d almost killed Xaline, and would have if Sabian hadn’t also heard his daughter’s commotion.
I was just lucky that I’d gotten Elena back. To lose her like that would be unbearable. I’d just found her.
“Blake.” Her voice was hardly audible and when I turned around, she fell like a rag doll.
I moved fast and caught her just before she hit her head on the ground.
I picked her up and moved her to the first clearing I could find, out of the bushes and plants that surrounded us.
She was still breathing and I quickly tasted her lips. Poison?
My heart beat so loudly I could hear it, and found hers, weak.
How the hell had Xaline poisoned her?
I lifted her shirt, knowing she would hate me if she knew, but I had to find the mark of entry.
There was nothing on her torso but around her hip line, dark blue blisters were starting to form.
I lifted up her legs. The seaweed. Fuck.
I closed my eyes and touched the tiny blisters, fuming that she’d lied to me when I’d asked her if there were any more injuries.
She hated me so much that she would rather die before asking for my help.
Why her healing ability hadn’t kicked in was another mystery. It worked slower on her than with me.
My hands pulsated with heat, and the blisters underneath my palm started to disappear. I moved down on both her legs and saw the marks where the seaweed had tightened around her ankles.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, Blake. You know what Xaline can do and yet you didn’t even mention the blisters.
Once they were all gone, Elena was still out. She was still running a slight fever, the one thing I couldn’t heal as it was a side effect that had to work its way out of her system. I kept changing her into ice cold shirts that I froze with my ability to get her temperature down. At least I knew she would be okay.
I made camp and didn’t know how to handle her when she woke up. Yelling at her would just, then my dragon form rushed through my mind. I could speak to her through him. She sort of trusted my dragon form in some way. I surveyed the area.
Fuck, I’m going to wreck this place, but she almost died. She needs to know what that would do to me.
I shifted and made sure that the trees that fell, fell in the other direction away from the clearing.
Hours went by then in the late hours of the night, by the light of the stars, she woke.
Her tent finally zipped open and she flinched slightly when she saw my huge figure lying outside.
“What happened?”
“You tell me,” I said.
She touched her head. “I can’t remember. I just remember feeling drained. My body ached all over and then I fell.”
“You forget to mention something this morning?”
She looked at me and closed her eyes. “The blisters,” she said quietly. “The blisters caused all of this?”
“They were poisonous. Why didn’t you say something to Blake?”
“I don’t know. Why didn’t I heal on my own?” She was angry.
“I don’t know, but you scared the hell out of me. He means well. I know he is not the easiest being to get along, with but he does care in his own messed-up way.” I couldn’t believe I’d said it. I sounded like Brian.
“I’m sorry, okay. It’s just so hard with him.”
“Well, think about the consequences. What is going to happen to me if you die?”
She looked at me with confusion in her eyes.
“I just became good. I don’t want to be dark again.”
“That will happen when I die?”
I nodded. It wasn’t the truth – once claimed, always claimed – but I wanted her to tell me, both of my forms, if something was wrong.
“I didn’t know, sorry.”
“It’s okay. Next time, just remember that and ask for help every now and then until your healing gets better.”
She sighed. “It never used to be like this, you know. The healing part was so easy.”
“And now it’s not.”
She nodded. “Looks like we both got messed up during the process.”
“What process?” I asked.
“The denting process.”
Silence filled the clearing as I lay with my head on my paws.
“What happens when you dent?”
I shook my head. “I can’t tell you.”
“You don’t know, do you?” She sounded worried, and I knew it was because she thought it was a spell. I had told her that in the beginning, made her believe that. I was so stupid. I should’ve listened to George.
“Okay, let me rephrase, I won’t. The trees have ears. I know exactly what happened but I will never reveal it to anyone. You won’t find a dent that will ever reveal what happens to us during the process.”
“Then how can I trust it? I remember what you were like in the ring. You wanted to tear my head off.”
She really thinks I’m an entity like Cara. “And yet I yielded.”
She nodded.
“It’s not a spell, like the idiot thought, okay? He might not like it as much as I do, but it’s not a spell. It’s real, and I will do anything for you.” Why the fuck did I just say that? Leo was right, I keep messing it up, especially for my human form.
She flinched as I said that. “I told you before, I’m not like that.”
“I know you are not like that, and that makes me the luckiest dragon in Paegeia.”
Her lips curled slightly. “I’m sorry about today, I should’ve told the idiot about the blisters.”
I laughed again. I’d missed her calling me that. “So no more hiding injuries?”
“No more, promise.”
“Okay, now please enlighten me as to what caused those injuries.” I don’t know why I asked that but maybe she could tell my dragon form how she truly felt.
“It was his mermaid girlfriend going all psycho on me.”
“Ahhh, the beautiful Xaline. Not his girlfriend. She wants to be though.”
“She’s not? It didn’t sound that way to me.”
“He met up with her father on a regular basis. Sabian.”
“He mentioned that name.”
“He has a pearl that is a tool that can track people. I wanted him to see if he could locate where you were.”
She just stared at me. Yeah, I knew how I sounded. Still, I had to let her trust a part of me.
“Xaline met Blake through those meetings. She even tried to keep him one time. He went through the blister stage too, horrible feeling.”
“I didn’t know.”
“This comes as a surprise to you?” I had to know.
“Yes, it does. He wasn’t that fond of me either. Never had a good word for me, and I’m sure that he wanted me dead on numerous occasions.”
She looked away and I couldn’t see her expression.
“Sorry about that. I was still very dark and very dominating.” I rolled my eyes and wanted to laugh at all this. Was she seriously buying this?
She glanced up. There was no fear, but there was surprise. “You still experiencing any of those dark phases, just so I know?”
“Nope,” I said and laid my head back down. “All gone, just one big shiny light now. I guess it’s the reason why nobody fears the Rubicon anymore.”
She smiled. “I don’t believe that.”
“It’s the truth, you know. The idiot doesn’t like it much. He still has plenty of fight in him.”
“Tell me about it.”
I hated speaking about myself that way. It wasn’t who I was anymore, but it seemed to be working, making her believe and trust my dragon form. I huffed, and it came out as a big breath that was released. What was I going to do the day she found out I was lying, that I was the Rubicon and not some entity she believed I was?
We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
