The third trainer announced the third month. Time was moving faster. It was a guy again and his name was Armand. He was one of Emanual’s friends and part of King Helmut’s fleet, meaning that the chances of him hiding a beasty inside was huge. I didn’t ask, though.
He broke my body by becoming stronger, faster and fighting with swords.
The trainers were becoming worse, and worse as the months grew. Better at what they do, but worse for me.
I literally only had strength for the four things that were in my daily routine.
I slept like a log each night. I didn’t have time to even sulk about Blake or be angry at Lucian anymore.
I didn’t have strength to be honest.
The second week in the third month, Armand introduced me to the simulator. I went in with Dad for the first time.
It felt so real as I stood close to my father inside a ring. There were a zillion members in the audience, all screaming and yelled, cheering us on.
“This is the colosseum, Bear. The one I think at Dragonia.”
“You mean this place is real?”
“Yep, you will see it soon. Helmut is speaking about holding yours here in Tith. It’s a huge affair and because you are going to claim the Rubicon, it will be the event of the century.”
Crap.
“Is it bigger than this one?”
“Much.”
I swallowed hard.
“You guys ready?” Armand spoke.
“Yeah, let us meet the beasty.”
I laughed at the way Dad said it.
The gate opened on the far end and a mother of a purple dragon with tendrils around his head walked out.
He snorted as he walked toward us. His eyes were blood red and every scale on his body shook.
My heart thumbed so fast that I couldn’t even count the rhythm.
I think I even forget to breathe as Dad kept speaking to me softly. His voice droned out, and it was just the pounding of my heart, and my sight fixed on him. It was like I couldn’t walk away.
He growled in our faces, and my hair blew back. Something warm trickled down my leg and a whimper escaped my lips.
I shut my eyes closed as my heart felt it was ready to explode.
“Bear!” Dad’s voice came.
“I can’t do this!” I yelled and ran out of the simulator. My entire body trembled and when I reached my room, I fell on the floor and cried.
The smell of urine hit my nostrils, and I discovered I wet my pants. I literally pissed myself. For the love of blueberries, how was I going to process the beast?
I couldn’t. My mind refused to process him.
I took a shower and wanted to burn my pants. I was so ashamed that I peed myself.
When I got out, Ben and the queen waited for me.
“Don’t, please.” I closed my eyes and sobbed my heart out. It was only a simulator. What the hell was it going to be like in two months?
Warm, motherly arms wrapped around me. “Shh, it’s normal, Elena.”
“It’s not. I struggle to process the fact that they are real.”
“Your experiences with them weren’t positive. None of it was, so I’m thinking that we are looking at all of this the wrong way.”
“Meaning?” I stuttered and dried my tears with the top of my hand.
She touched my face gently. “Meaning, you do not know how amazing they can be. You need to see that part too. I want you to get dressed. Your father is waiting for you outside.”
I nodded.
I did not know what she meant by the negative experiences, but she was a wise woman. Being two hundred years plus minus made her wise.
I got dressed in a pair of jeans and a shirt. I grabbed my hoody and put my feet into sneakers.
I walked to the entrance and found the queen waiting. She had two pairs of goggles dangling from her fingers.
“Remember, he loves you and he will do anything in his power to protect you.”
I squinted and nodded as she led me through the door.
A mother of a dragon that Dad fought inside the simulator stood gigantic in front of king Helmut in the courtyard. I froze as my muscles slightly trembled.
“Elena, breathe. He is your father. I’ll fly with you to translate, but you need to experience the other side of them.”
My feet took a small step, followed by another as Queen Maggie walked with me toward the copper beasty. It’s your dad, it’s your loving dad. He loves you.
He spoke in Latin.
“He said, now that wasn’t so hard, bear,” the queen said.
It was really him. I wanted to touch him, but I was afraid.
He brought his face down to me, and I could see my reflection inside his vertical slits.
He spoke again.
“Breathe, Elena,” the queen said.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Images of a ten-year-old girl screaming her head off standing in front of him flashed behind closed eyelids.
I opened my eyes as I gasped.
“What is it?” the queen asked.
“I think I just remembered the time my dad tried to tell me.”
“It happens. Tanya’s persuasion is strong, but sometimes it wavers for a little to seep through.”
I looked at my dad and my hand hovered close to him. I wanted to touch him. My dad closed the gap. His thorny scales were like hard, leathery thorns against my palm. He was toasty warm.
He spoke again.
“Are you ready?” the queen asked.
I nodded.
He spread out his wing and laid it flat on the ground. The queen climbed on first. “I haven’t done this in a long time too, so it’s like my first time as well.” She let out her hand for me and I took it.
I stepped on dad’s wing, on the boney parts and grasped the queen’s hand tighter as the wing moved toward his back.
“A little trick,” the queen said. “When he brings his wing in, you just step on his back.”
I nodded, and then she commanded something in Latin.
The wing folded in gently and it was so easy to step onto his back.
“How do you know this?” I asked as my eyes landed on a double saddle that was on Dad’s back. It was enormous and blended with his scales.
“I learned it from your mother. I wasn’t born with the mark.”
I looked back at her. “But you have the essence?”
“Emanual. He saw Helmut wouldn’t fare so well without me, and one winter I got very sick, Emanual saved my life by giving me his essence.”
Wow. She wasn’t even his rider, and he gave her his essence.
“Let’s go,” she whispered with her warm smile and walked gracefully on Dad’s back, holding her arms slightly up in order to keep her balance.
She went on her haunches as she reached the saddle and took the seat at the end. Her hands worked fast as she put the goggles on her head and flopped them over her eyes.
I didn’t have to keep my arms stretched out, my balance really became stronger. His breathing made it, however, a bit more difficult to calculate my steps. I reached her in no time and took the saddle in the front.
I put my feet in the holsters. This was nothing like the first time. The queen handed me my pair, and I put them over my head, and placed them on top of my face, protecting my eyes.
Helmut still spoke to Dad, and he replied.
Queen Maggie laughed. “You ready, Elena?”
I grabbed the laces that were in front of me. They did not attach it to beasty dad at all. It was like riding a horse, even though I did not know what that even felt like. Dad’s wings spread out and flapped. We ascended, and the palace grew smaller. My head spun as I looked down.
“Don’t look down. I’m afraid of heights and learned that you should never look down, focus on the horizon.”
I did what she said.
Dad spoke something, and the queen gasped, answering him.
He replied, and I was dying for her to translate.
“Your father said that when you were little, like three or four years old, you used to fly with him every night, Elena.”
“What?” I turned my gaze to my shoulder to look at her.
She bent over and nodded with a smile, forming crow’s feet next to her eyes. “He said that you loved it then.”
I loved it? “Why did he stop?”
“Fear, I guess. It’s a lot of pressure to keep a secret when you are little. He said you started speaking about it around strangers and the looks they gave your father terrified him. So he stopped.”
Dad spoke again, and the queen listened.
“He said that it was one of the hardest things that you had to give up, Elena. You begged him to fly, but he couldn’t.”
I nodded. This wasn’t new to me. I loved it as a kid. I just couldn’t remember it.
We flew through the clouds. It was billows of smoke and when Dad finally broke free, a bed of cotton spread underneath us. The sun was glistening on the horizon and sparkled on the snow that laid on top of the dome mountains with the sharp peaks. Wild geese barked next to us.
My heart pounded, but it wasn’t from fear this time. I didn’t know if it was because it was Dad, or whether a part of my soul remembered how beautiful it was up here.
Tears blurred my eyes behind the goggles and pressed my eyes tight to dispel them. I didn’t want to miss any of the beauty.
The queen spoke to my father, and we descended through the clouds again. An enormous mountain came up ahead. Spiky tree lines showcased a beautiful aisle on the mountain top, and Dad landed. Trees whisked past us as Dad ran. The wind brushed against my cheeks, and Dad came to a slow stop.
The queen got up from her saddle and slid off Dad’s wing. I touched my father’s neck, and closed my eyes, thanking him for everything, before pushing myself from the saddle and slid off his wing as a yelp left my lips.
The queen laughed and helped me up at the bottom. “You’ll get the hang of it. I promise.”
Dad walked into the forest as my eyes followed him. “Where is he going?”
“To join us mere humans.”
I giggled and trees rumbling found my ears. Birds scattered through the branches and Dad walked out, wearing a black and copper robe.
I ran to him, and he hugged me. “See, that wasn’t so terrifying now, was it?”
“Thank you. It was twenty thousand times better than the last time.”
“Yeah, the idiots forgot to bring saddles,” he whispered, and I laughed.
I looked up at my dad. He touched my face softly and kissed me on the top of my head. “I think every day a flight will take away the fright.”
My lips curved. “I’m open to that.”
We walked on top of the flat surface of the mountain. In front of us, a snowy peak towered behind the trees. An icy wind kissed my cheeks and made me shiver, but I felt alive. The breeze elevated my spirit. Queen Maggie told me stories about my mother loving to fly with Tanya and she was a natural. The sky was her home. My real dad used to tease her she should’ve been a dragon.
Dad had a few stories about her, too. Especially about their wedding that my grandfather didn’t approve of because she was a commoner.
“Wait, my mother wasn’t royalty?”
“Nope, but it didn’t stop your father or Helmut from falling head over heels for us.” Queen Maggie hooked her arm in with mine. “Your mother might have had a dent with her dragon, Elena, but she was my best friend in the entire world.” Tears glistened. She patted them away. “Believe me, I still wanted to scold her for not telling me about you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s not your fault. Your mother was a hard-headed woman and once she made her mind up, there was no changing it. I doubt it was her that sent you away. That’s why we lost her.”
“Lost her?” Tanya spoke about that at the hearing.
“After Tanya left, your mother went into a deep depression. I visited her regularly, but she just disappeared, leaving a shell of a human I once loved in her place. Rumors had it she sent her dragon away as your mother found her and your dad together.”
“What?” Dad asked.
The queen laughed. “She didn’t tell a soul the truth, Jako. What did you think was going to happen?”
“My dad let them think that?”
“Yeah, he did. She was so angry with him and it was easy to believe that. We didn’t understand her anger at all, but now I do. She wanted him to illuminate the threat so that you could come home. I wished they told someone about you, other than your father and Tanya.”
“They didn’t tell me?” Dad said.
“What?” the queen asked.
“I followed when she and Cara didn’t get back. She just told me she had to leave on royal business.”
“Where is Cara?” the queen asked.
“Who is Cara?” I asked, and the queen looked at me.
“You don’t remember Cara?”
“She is safe, don’t worry. Nothing can hurt her,” Dad replied and walked faster into the woods.
“Who is Cara?” I asked the queen.
“Their daughter. She was a Thunderlight. A breed that died eons ago. She was the first of her kind again.”
“A Thunderlight?” I learned nothing about them.
“They are purple, as kind as dragons could get, so she was part of the Metallic breed. They had a purple lightning that stung like you never can imagine, and they were walking lie detectors. I always found it contradictory that her mother could lie without batting a lash and that she hatched an egg that was the complete opposite.” She walked faster toward Dad and started speaking to him. “If she is on the other side, we can go fetch her, Jako.”
Dad spoke to her in Latin. I hated this language more. The queen’s face slacked of all emotions, turned a shade paler and her mouth formed a soft circle. I really wanted to know what he was saying to her.
Dad tapped a tear away.
I crouched in front of him as he sat on the boulder and touched his arm. “English, please?”
He touched my cheek and lowered his head on top of mine.
“She died a long time ago, Bear. She is safe, no one can hurt her now.”
My lower lip wobbled. I felt his pain.
“You became Cara to me. I lost a daughter, but I gained one back. So as sad as it is, I’m grateful that you were there.”
I nodded.
He planted his lips on my head. “I love you so much, never forget that.”
“I won’t. Love you too.” I hugged him tightly. He was my father through and through. He would always be my father.
