A COLD DROP OF liquid fell onto my cheek. The pain on my head was unbearable as I tried to open my eyes. I felt the flat hard surface against my back. A blurry image of the ceiling of the cave was right above me. I turned my head slowly and saw that I was laying on a big rock. I closed my eyes again as the images of what I saw were all blurred and mixed up.
Paul? I tried to say his name and ask for help but then the image of him standing right next to me, and swinging his hand before I felt that final blow, flashed into my head.
My eyes flew open as adrenaline rushed through my veins. I tried to get up but found shackles around my wrists and ankles.
“What are you doing? It barely came out, but I knew he’d heard me, wherever he was.
I pulled hard at the chains running from the shackles, but they were mounted into the cave’s floor. I looked around me and couldn’t see Paul, so I yelled out his name.
“Pipe down, I’m not deaf, Elena.” He came from the Elemental’s pin that we had made them a couple of days ago. He looked different. Darkness reflected in his eyes and an evil glare and sadistic smile were plastered on his face. He had a dagger in the hand that touched the top of his head.
He didn’t seem so sure about what he was doing, but then again that grin on his face made me think twice. He started to pace up and down in front of me.
“What the hell is going on?” I said through clenched teeth. The Elemental dragons were clicking like mad. I didn’t like it.
“Shut up! Before I skin you all alive,” he yelled in their direction.
“Paul! You wouldn’t.”
He chuckled, one I’d never heard before and an icy finger traced up my spine. Goose bumps flowed over my skin.
“Let me….what….uhm… I don’t understand,” I said as none of the things inside my head made any sense. He was my dragon, he wasn’t evil and I had no idea what had gotten into him.
He came closer to me and pulled the tip of the dagger against my cheek hard. I struggled to swallow as I kept staring at the dagger piercing hard against my skin, and my heart thumped like a bird trying to get out of a cage.
Just breathe.
“You were so easy to fool,” he said. “I have to admit, there was a time when I thought I wouldn’t be able to get close to you, because of Lucian. But once you told me how to make him trust me, it was just too easy. Thank you so much for that.” He smelled my hair and it was as if it put him on a trip.
Save Lucian’s life. I remembered saying that to him. That had been a joke!
I just stared at him as he got up and drew the dagger away from my face.
It was silent for a minute and everything that had happened over the past two and a half months came back to me. “You were behind the attack on Dragonia?”
He laughed, one that answered my question.
“No, you killed some of them, I saw you.”
“All wars have casualties, Elena,” he yelled like a mad-man. This wasn’t Paul. It just couldn’t be that sweet guy who had wanted me so badly. He made me upset as I thought about how many of people had died that night.
“That wasn’t a war. That was sadistic, it was murder. Some of them were only teenagers!”
His gaze shot back to me. “Don’t lecture me about murder.” His tone was hard. “When my brother died, it killed my father. My mother withered into nothing and my colony didn’t want to avenge him, take action. So I found a new family, one that wasn’t scared to do what it would take to get revenge,” he grunted.
His brother? “My Pappy was the chief of the tribe….Paul’s voice from a couple months earlier played silently in my mind. “His father was the chief of a colony, he was too sick so he sent his oldest son…” Lucian’s explanation of when his sister had gotten killed came next.
Paul started to laugh as he stared at me.
“Wyland was your brother?”
“Ta-da,” he yelled surprised and his arms flung open as he did a side step. “You finally get it. I thought that I had said too much that day when you wanted to know more about me, but it seemed you weren’t that clever after all.”
“So you aren’t my dragon?” I said, betrayed was not a strong enough word to describe how I felt being shackled up like some beast.
He smiled. “Nope, Wyverns don’t have riders, Elena. You should have listened to your friends.”
I heard Cheng’s warning and remembered the horse ride.
“How did you manage to get on that horse?”
He started to sharpen his dagger on a piece of rock. “It was easy,” he tapped his head with his finger, the hand that carried the rock.
“I am a telepath. Once you can hear people’s thoughts and put a couple of thoughts into them, it’s not hard to manipulate an animal to do what it doesn’t want to.”
My skin crawled and I remembered how Ginger’s muscles had flinched that day.
“I thought that horse ride would get rid of you, but I didn’t bargain on the stupid animal ridding back to the Academy. Once your little dragon friend suspected it was me, I knew she was going to be trouble. She’s got a strong admiration for the Elementals and as it was part of my mission to get them, I thought I would gain her trust that way.”
“She didn’t even know about them. They followed us, remember?”
He laughed again. “I can put thoughts into someone’s head, Elena. It’s not that hard to grasp. One thought was all it took for that Moon-Botl to see what you were up to.”
“She’s got a name,” I grunted as an angry tear rolled down my cheek. I was so stupid. I should’ve listened to King Helmut, to Cheng, and screw that stupid foretelling.
“Oh please, do share,” he said and I realized he’d just heard my thoughts.
“It’s got absolute nothing to do with you,” I mumbled and he grabbed my head as I forced a song’s lyrics to play over and over in my mind. He stroked my forehead as if it was a crystal ball.
“So many things you are hiding. Why?” he laughed. “Not that it matters. You are going to die soon; all of you are going to die soon.” He spoke softly. “If you knew what is coming your way, you would’ve thrown yourself off a cliff and done us a favor.” He stood up straight without taking his eyes of me and lifted up one hand. A bright smile flashed over his face as I looked at the golden chain hanging from his fingers. “You should thank Becky for this.”
“You broke into our room? You couldn’t, you were with Professor Dickson.”
He laughed but his lips were still shut. “Again, I’m a telepath. I only had to make him think I was with him. Easy peezy.”
“Her father gave it to her before he died, please.” I didn’t know why I begged. He was a psycho and wouldn’t return it to Becky.
“Ah-huh.” He shook his head. “You know how rare this is. When I saw it hanging from her neck, I knew immediately what it was. It makes my job a little bit easier.”
“It doesn’t belong to you.”
“Princess, I’m capable of murder. You think I care about a little thing like taking something that isn’t mine?” He took a seat on one of the boulders again and picked up the rock to carry on with sharpening his dagger.
I closed my eyes, said a small prayer and opened them again.
“Why me?”
“Easy, you’re Lucian’s girl.”
When he said Lucian’s name I knew immediately what he wanted to do. “You are doing this to get back at Lucian! Why? He didn’t kill your brother!”
“No, his father did. And from what I heard via the creepers,” He laughed as the sound of steel sharpening against rock was starting to drive me nuts, but it quickly disappeared into a sad smirk. “He took his time and made Wyland suffer. Now it’s my turn to make him suffer.”
“You are doing this to destroy King Helmut. Your brother killed his daughter.”
He leaped over to me again. “No he didn’t. He was there to sign a stupid peace treaty, that was it Elena. He never bargained on falling for the Princess. But he did, and how was he paid for it? They killed him.”
“Because he killed her!” I yelled again.
“He didn’t,” Paul yelled back. “She was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You really should get your facts straight, Paul. Wyland never wanted to have peace. He wanted to assassinate the king and his entire family. It didn’t go according to plan as Lucian walked in on your brother after he killed his sister. Your brother got what he deserved.”
He pinned the dagger harder this time against my throat. “Take that back!” He’s mouth pulled down with strain. “They lied to you. It was a trap.”
“I have no reason to doubt them. You told me yourself, you are evil. Evil isn’t capable of telling the truth,” I spit in his face and he closed his eyes. His jaw muscle clenched as he wiped my spit off with the back of his sleeve.
When he opened his eyes he slapped me hard across the face. I could feel my chin becoming instantly inflamed and my skull felt as if it wanted to split in two.
“It doesn’t matter what happened. I’ll still have my revenge for my brother’s life. Killing Lucian is the only thing that will kill the King.”
“Lucian is not going to come back soon.”
He laughed again. “Oh, Elena, Elena, Elena. Lucian knows you are in trouble. That was what he wanted to tell you, and you didn’t listen.”
Lucian knows.
“How do you know?”
“It could be only that. He must have found something after all on that stupid quest of his; too bad that it was all for nothing.”
“It’s not going to be for nothing,” I roared and yanked at the chains hard.
He laughed again. “They won’t break, and no one will claim Blake, Princess.”
“I’m not your Princess.”
He chuckled again as he pinched his nose.
“You made me sick too, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Now that wasn’t me. I thought it would kill you; I loved every moment of seeing you in pain. It was really hard for me to hide it.”
I remembered how the corners of his eyes had twitched when he asked me if I was in pain. How could I have been so stupid? The signs were always there.
“I love your thoughts. It sucks now that you know the truth, doesn’t it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“A part of me wished that you would die that night, but it would’ve ruined all my plans. See if it killed you, Lucian wouldn’t have blamed me, and he wouldn’t have tried to kill me. So, I don’t know what that was. I thought at first that you might have Ascended, but it wasn’t that either. It seems like you are just what you are; a little freak that doesn’t belong anywhere.”
I managed to laugh. Being different wasn’t new to me. “You think I’m a freak now, wait until I get these chains off me and then you’ll see what kind of a freak I am.”
He rushed back, excitement on his face as he lingered a few inches from me. “There is the Elena I wanted to meet.”
“You won’t get away with this.”
“Elena, I’m already getting away with this.” He said pulling his lips upwards and his tone sounded like he’d already won.
My entire body trembled as my stomach started to cramp up. I prayed for it not to happen and it slowly disappeared. My head still ached but not as badly as it had ten minutes ago. I concentrated hard on the shackles, but there was nothing. They didn’t even move. I closed my eyes for two seconds.
C’mon, Elena. You can do this. This is not the day to die.
I opened them again and concentrated on the shackle harder.
Paul’s laughter broke my gaze. “What are you trying to do, Elena?” He clicked his tongue. “It’s not going to work. You failed all the telekinesis lessons.”
“That is not true. I’ve made objects move.”
“That was me, Princess.”
“Stop calling me Princess,” I yelled; I was beyond mad.
He laughed again.
I felt like an idiot now thinking about what Paul had done. I couldn’t elevate a damn thing and I was trapped on this stupid piece of rock.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps in the distance and I started to scream. Paul placed his hand over my mouth and it muffled the sound.
The Elementals went berzerk and their sound drove me to near insanity.
“Shush,” Paul pressed harder on my mouth.
The footsteps came nearer and Paul said a Wyvic incantation. A tingling sensation washed over my lips and it started to lock my jaw. I squirmed as my hands couldn’t feel what was going on and when more pain cut through both my lips they went numb. I tried to make a sound but it was muffled. I couldn’t speak and the picture in my head looked horrible as I imagined a girl with no mouth. My mouth is gone. I will never speak again.
I tried to search for him and saw him standing against the wall by the opening of the cave. A figure was standing in the door way and it gasped when it saw me. I squinted to see who it was and saw Professor Georgiou rushing to my side.
“What is going on?” she asked me with horror in her eyes as she touched the place where my lips used to be.
I yelled at her to turn around; I was sure Paul was making his way over to us.
She shook her head. “What is it, Elena? Who is doing this to you?”
She wanted to know.
Turn around, I yelled at her but I was silent and she couldn’t read minds.
I cried as I saw Paul’s dagger going in front of her neck and Professor Georgiou’s body froze. “Step away from the victim,” he said in a very calm tone.
She turned her face to look at him.
Then she started to laugh. “I knew you would be able to do this.” She suddenly grabbed his face and kissed him vigorously.
Shock numbed my body and it felt as if all hope had washed away. She knew we would be here that’s why she’d come. She was part of the plan. Why didn’t I see that?
When they finally parted she turned her head back to me. “You should stop toying with her, Paul and just kill her. You know he’s on my case.”
Who is on her case?
“I eliminated it,” Paul cooed softly at her.
Blake! It was Professor Georgiou he didn’t trusted.
Paul looked at me with a smile and I glared daggers back at him.
“He’s not going to save you, Princess.”
You forget that he always finds a way.
“Not this time. He’s too busy shagging his girl.”
Professor Georgiou giggled too. “Poor, poor little girl. Did you really think my Pauly would like you? You’re barely a woman and there is absolutely nothing that you can offer him.” The Elementals caught her eye and her hand covered her mouth. She skipped over to them.
They were like two peas in a pod. Both psychos.
“I’m not a psycho,” Paul spat. “I’m a patriot and this is a war.”
There is no war going on, Psycho.
He rolled his eyes, and took a huge breath. “It’s going to be such a pleasure to kill you.”
I could hear one of the Elementals squeal as Professor Georgiou picked one of them up.
Leave them alone! I yelled.
“She can’t hear you,” Paul said in a sing-song tone as he licked his lower lip, taking pleasure in every little thing that was happening.
“You’re right, I live for this.”
You won’t for long. Lucian is going to fucking rip your head off.
“Lucian is not here!” He screamed. “Besides, how can he love you if he can’t even keep you safe from a Wyvern?”
He trusted you.
“True, but still, I wouldn’t leave my worst enemy with the same species that killed my sister.”
He does love me, more than you know. Kill me and you will find out just how much.
He laughed again. “You sure about it? I’m starting to doubt that this plan will even work at all.”
You are a monster.
“And to think, you almost kissed me.”
The sound of rocks falling came from the passage and both Professor Georgiou and Paul stared at one another. He showed her with a hand gesture to go and hide and she did. He moved swiftly and silently to his post as I tried to scream again.
Please don’t let it be Sammy or Dean coming early. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if any of them died.
A figure came through the entrance and my heart dropped into my stomach.
His hair was longer and he froze for two seconds when he saw me shackled.
It was my Prince in shining armor.
