Starlight (The Dragonian Series Book 5) (17 page)

EVERYONE STARED AT me with huge eyes as my entire body froze. I couldn’t breath as I listened to Raymond tell all of us what happened.

“What do you mean he just vanished?” Emanual asked the question I couldn’t get out.

“One minute he was there, people started to surround him. He told us to get the hell out of there, he could take care of himself.”

Raymond stroked his face.

“I didn’t want to leave, but I don’t know, Emanual. He is stronger than he let on. He somehow forced me away from him, with the others.”

Emanual shook his head. “He is powerful, Raymond.”

“He is only twenty-one, how powerful can he be to force a dragon my age away from him?”

“The last few months, we all forget who Blake is. He is the Rubicon, Raymond. The alpha of all the dragons. Never forget that.”

Raymond nodded.

“So what happened after he forced you away?”

“When I reached the others, I looked back. He wasn’t there.”

“Because they took him.” I kept on yelling at Raymond.

“No, Elena. Everyone was still gathering around them. I could hear their confusion. He was gone.”

He wouldn’t have flown. The Creepers that were hiding behind the illusion of daylight would’ve grabbed him. “He blended in,” I told Emanual.

“No,” August shook his head with guilt over his face. “There was no shimmer, Elle. Blake showed us what the shimmer looks like. We all searched for it. He wasn’t there, he vanished.”

I didn’t care anymore. I found my legs again and just ran down the porch’s steps. I would find him myself if I had to.

“Elena,” Emanual called after me. I had to find him, wherever he was. What if they’d captured him, what if he was dead? What did they mean he just vanished?

I was beyond myself. Nobody just vanished. I mean, where the hell did he go to? I knew this was a mistake to begin with. This was so stupid. I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen, and now. I had no idea where he was.

“ELENA, STOP!” Emanual yelled but I didn’t listen.

Then he grabbed me.

“Stay here, we’ll be back when she is calm.”

“Let me go!”

“Elena, don’t make me use a spell on you. Now keep your mouth shut,” he said as he flung me over his shoulder.

“I need to find him, Emanual. Put me down.”

“You are going to get yourself killed. He is the Rubicon. Not one of us knows where he is, Elena.”

“No, I can find him. I know I can.”

“You are delusional. You cannot find him.” He was already in the corn fields.

“Please I’m begging you don’t take me to the other side, please.” I started to cry.

He didn’t answer and just took me through.

Safe on the other side, he put me down.

I pushed him hard away from me, trying to run past him and back into the Creepers, but he was too fast. He blocked my way.

“Let me go,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, but he didn’t.

He took me back to the lodge as I fought with Emanual like I never fought with anyone before.

“You are my main responsibility, Elena. Keeping you safe. It’s an oath, I’m not going to break it and neither is he. He will die wherever he is if anything happens to you. Don’t forget that. He is safe.”

“I don’t care what you say. He is alone somewhere in Etan. He can’t come back when he appears again, Emanual. The Council is going to the farm tomorrow. If they find him, Goran will kill him.”

“He won’t kill him. He wants him.”

“That is not alleviating anything, Emanual. Let me go. Please.”

“I can’t.”

I was a deranged lunatic. I tried every spell I could think of, but I wasn’t the Rubicon, and Emanual was a three hundred and something-year-old Sun-Blast who was faster than I ever dreamed of.

He blocked all my spells, and even used one on me that numbed everything.

I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t move. I was like a sack of potatoes hanging over his shoulder.

Everyone gasped as Emanual walked in the doors with me.

Deranged noises came from my lips.

“Emanual,” Constance yelled first. “What happened?”

“I had no choice,” he said. “I’m sorry Elena. I can’t let you go.”

Everyone stared at him. Constance looked at me as he put me on a chair. My eyes were wild looking at him. Noises came from me.

“What the hell did you do?” Constance yelled.

“Blake didn’t come back,” he said.

“What do you mean Blake didn’t come back?”

He started telling them the story while I still sat on the chair with no motion. It was as if I was strapped up with invisible cords and the more I fought it the more it hurt.

“She is deranged. She wants to go after him. I had no choice,” Emanual ended his explanation.

Constance just stared at me with soft eyes.

“He just vanished?” King Helmut had a confused look on his face.

Constance said a couple of words, real fast, and the spell Emanual put me under vanished.

She hugged me tight. “He will come back, but I’m with Emanual, Elena. You can’t go looking for him.”

I wanted to yell at Emanual again. But I was too tired.

Constance’s arms hugged me tight as I started to break down.

“We need to get word to his family and to Chong. Elena needs support.”

“I’m on it.” Connie ran behind the receptionist desk and I could hear her dialing the number.

Constance and Annie took me up to my room.

I didn’t want to think anymore. Blake was gone, he was missing. Wherever he was, I couldn’t reach him. Nobody could reach him.

And I had to wait for him to come back. What if he was never going to come back?

I couldn’t think about anything but that and somehow fell asleep when my body was drenched from all the crying.

I would sleep until he got back.

SOMEHOW I DIDN’T stick to my side of the plan. I didn’t sleep as I thought I would. Instead I sort of became numb. A mechanism that Constance said happens to some people.

My body always seemed to act differently than what I wanted it to. When I thought I’d killed Blake, my body just ran. Now that I wanted to run, my body didn’t move.

Through my daze, I’d managed to bring August and all the others back before the Wyvern Council showed up the next day.

I didn’t even stay to watch how Olive hugged Nicky, and Luke embraced Maxine. I heard their ‘
Thank you’s
’ and expressions of gratitude, but didn’t want to be there. I wanted to find Blake.
Why weren’t any of them letting me?

“Elle,” August called and I turned around. He looked so guilty. He had the right to be. “I’m sorry about Blake.”

Gertrude put her arm around her son and I turned around and walked up the stairs.

I’d lost my dragon, again. The worst part was that I didn’t even know where he was. He was stuck in Etan and nobody wanted me to go search for him. Not even Emanual.

Becky, George and Sammy came to the lodge the next day with Isabel and Sir Robert.

I heard Sammy’s cries, Isabel’s concern and Sir Robert’s temper, before it all went quiet. A knock came from my door.

I didn’t say anything but it opened and I felt my bed shift.

A warm hand touched my hair and by the smell of her vanilla fragrance, I knew it was Blake’s mom. Our eyes finally met, they reflected each other as both our eyes were red rimmed from all the crying.

Isabel had a worried look on her face but she gave me a soft smile. “He is the Rubicon, Elena, he will come back.”

I was so sick and tired of hearing that phrase. He was a dragon too. My dragon.

Sammy sniffed and wiped her tears as she pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

I opened my arms and she came over, hugging me tightly.

“I shouldn’t cry, he is the Rubicon,” she sniffed into my neck.

Becky gave me a plate with a piece of pie in the center. “It’s from Connie, she said you haven’t eaten anything today.”

I smiled at her.

They stayed with me as the days flew by. We all waited for Blake to return from wherever he was.

He’d just vanished.
What is this? How can someone just vanish?
There was no trace of him, none.

Sir Robert’s temper died out after a few days when he’d finally realized that everyone was trying to find the same answers. Something told me that this was another Rubicon thing.

It’d been five days since Maxine and Nicky came back. I heard via Isabel that Leana hadn’t made it. I’d known she hadn’t from Tom’s behavior at the farm house.

Tom told her that Blake had tracked her down easily because she was in a grave. Tom struggled with it, but at least he knew now what his wife’s fate was.

Getting Max and Nicky out was an entirely different story but this was where Raymond and the device came in handy. They just needed the DNA of their new master.

That was the hardest part.

Blake’s tracking ability was really good. I didn’t want to listen to the stories, but I needed to know where it had all gone wrong.

When they’d finally retrieved them they needed to get out of Eikenborough fast, and that was when everything turned into chaos.

Blake had sensed Billy.

He’d wanted to go after him but he’d decided not to as it would blow the entire mission if he was caught. Raymond wanted to stay too so Blake had to force him to leave, and Billy saw everything.

August told Sir Robert he’d watched how Blake fell to the ground as Billy and a group of troops almost reached him, writhing in pain, and then he disappeared. There was no shimmer, like that day he’d showed us his power in the woods when he’d blended in with the trees. The crowd confirmed that as they moved in on the empty space. He wasn’t there and there was no way for him to move past the crowd without being detected.

Where the hell was he?

Not even Sir Robert could answer that.

I started to wonder if this really was a Rubicon thing at all. Blake had made an oath that if he found them he would…I couldn’t even think about it.

Blake told me he could blend in, that was it, not vanish for days.

“Robert is still interrogating those poor men as we speak.” Isabel had a sad tone lingering in her voice. “It’s as if he doesn’t believe a single word they are saying.”

“He should, they all promised me that he would be safe.” I sounded so harsh.

“Elena, it’s not their fault.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s mine.” I wiped off a tear. “I should’ve never let him make that oath.”

Isabel stared at me.

“What oath?”

“The one where he said that if he found them, he would kill them.”

As the words left my lips she gasped and kissed me on the temple. “You genius!”

“Wait, what?”

“I think it’s connected to the oath he made,” she said as she ran out of my room.

I looked at Becky and Sammy and as one we jumped up and ran to the door.

We followed Isabel as she reached the library where Sir Robert was speaking to August, Raymond and Tom. Emanual, King Helmut, Charles and Marcus were there too, trying to make sense of Blake’s situation and where he might be. In the corner a huge white board with at least five maps of Etan stood majestically, facing all of us. A rescue mission jumped immediately into my mind.

“He broke his oath, that is why he vanished,” Isabel interrupted them all, slightly out of breath.

Sir Robert stared at her with knitted eyebrows as he contemplated everything. Even Charles and Marcus end up staring at nothing, just the space in front of them.

None of them said a thing. It was utter silence.

Sir Robert’s gaze looked up, at me. “What oath, Elena?”

I told them about the oath I’d never wanted him to make. From the look on their faces as I told them how he would have ripped Billy and Seymour to pieces if he found them, made more and more sense now. They were all starting to believe that whatever had happened was linked to breaking an oath. It was evident on their faces.

“It still doesn’t tell us where he is, not one bit,” I said after a while, and shook my head. I had a headache in between my eyes that didn’t want to go away. It was because of the past few days. I was stressing.

I turned around and walked back to my room.

Annie, Isabel, Sammy and Becky entered my room and found me once again lying on my bed. It was quiet and then Becky broke the silence.

“I don’t understand this, Elena.” Becky sighed. “Someone can’t just vanish like that from breaking an oath.”

“I can’t reach him. I never could to be honest. It was as if his level of thinking was on a different level than mine. I understand now how all this is making him feel. It’s driving me insane.” I sounded tired and so defeated.

“He went through worse during the four months you were missing.”

“This is different.”

“How?” she asked. “You vanished just like him, without a trace. None of us could find you. We didn’t know if you were okay, let alone alive. It was ten times worse than this.”

“I can’t handle this.” My voice went a few octaves higher. The last thing I wanted to do was to fight with Becky. I didn’t want to think about that time. It was in the past, this was the present.

They left it there, and I spent the entire night wondering what it must have been like for Blake after he woke up and found me missing. I saw the clips of him trying to find me. That alone was a wake-up call. Even if he’d told me what it was like, now that I was experiencing the same thing, I could relate.

The minutes ticked by, then came the hours. It all lay heavy on my chest because nobody seemed to rest without knowing where Blake was.

I skipped dinner and stayed in my room for the rest of the night.

That night a scream came from a room down the hall. It sounded like Becky.

I ran out of my room as others emerged from theirs and found her staring with horror at George hulking on the floor.

George was crouched in a crawling position on the carpet. Constance and Isabel hunched over him as Sir Robert and Emanual ran in after me.

Becky was frozen in one place, staring at him, visibly shocked by something she’d just experienced.

Isabel got up and I saw steam evaporate from George’s body, as he seemed to be recovering. We all stared at the steam rolling off his body like he was a hot rock that had just been cooled down with ice cold water.

I grabbed Becky and held her tight as I couldn’t stop staring at George’s body trembling as soft whimpering sounds left his mouth.

Constance crouched next to him on the floor and she rested her hand slightly on his body as if he was a hot potato.

“He’s ice cold.” Constance got up and pulled a blanket off the bed and wrapped it over him. She looked up at Becky. “What happened?”

She still seemed to be in shock.

“Becky?” I shook her slightly and her gaze broke from George and looked at me.

“What happened?” I asked.

She shook her head back and forth fast.

“We need to know what happened. Was it something he saw?” I asked but it didn’t explain the steam emanating off his body.

“Darkness,” George spoke and we all looked at him.

“Darkness?” Isabel asked and then he started to cry. I’d never seen George cry. He shook his head and looked up at Becky. Then he moved quickly onto his knees and came to Becky, hugging her around her waist.

Constance put the blanket around him again.

“It felt as if I was dark again. It was suffocating me. But the lightning, the lightning was all around me and I knew if I went to it I would find you again.”

He wasn’t making any sense.

“Babe, you didn’t leave, you were here the whole time.” Becky hunched awkwardly over him and rubbed his body to get the warmth back into him.

“No, I was there. I know I was, Becks.” He looked up at her sounding deranged. “It was so cold.” He broke down again. “So alone.”

She held him tight and he shook in her arms. Her own tears flowed over her cheeks. Isabel and Constance stared at them. I did too.

What had George seen?

“George, are you okay?” Constance asked him and he lifted his head from Becky’s embrace. He looked at her and then he shook his head. He sure didn’t look okay.

“Babe.” Becky stroked the side of his face and she fell on her knees too. “What was that?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’ve got this strange feeling…”

We all stared at him,
what feeling?

“I was so powerful, Becks. And I couldn’t do anything. I think it’s connected to Blake.”

I COULDN’T SLEEP that night, not after what George told us. If Blake was in a dark, cold place, then how was I ever going to sleep?
How were we going to reach him?

I threw up as nausea crept into my stomach, created by fear and worry. I had listened to Isabel’s crying the entire night, Sir Robert freaking out and Constance pleading, because not knowing anything was driving her semi-insane too. She was worried, we were all worried…to death.
Where the hell are you, Blake?