Starlight by Adrienne Woods
That dream had felt so real, as if I could reach her mind again. As if I’d finally got through to her about what the Dent was, but I knew it wasn’t her. It was me, wanting it to be her. I’d gotten better and better at it every time I’d showed her that. She would become more real, the way I remembered her.
She didn’t know anything, because if she did know what she meant to me she would’ve opened her eyes like I’d told her to that day. It’s all she has to do!
Those questions she’d asked. She’d never asked them before but it was something that had been in the back of my mind for a long time. Did I jump back into the past? That kiss… it was how I’d always wanted to kiss her, but I was afraid that it would unlock memories again and then she would end up ignoring me. She would never be afraid anymore if she would just wake up. I knew how hard it was. I didn’t want to wake up either.
“Soon, I’ll see you soon. I promise.”
I sniffed, kissed her on her head one last time and got up. I didn’t pay any attention to my mom and aunt, and walked out the door.
It had been a month since Etan had been freed, and she was one of the many that had been lost to us.
I needed to find my orbs.
ELENA
“I CAN’T LET you do that,” a male voice said.
No reply came.
“But there are no limits when it comes to your breed. You should’ve never let them become this.”
Still he didn’t receive a reply.
“If you find what you’re looking for, you need to understand one thing. Someone needs to take her spot. Someone that’s alive now.” Silence filled the air for a few seconds. “Are you ready to play God?”
Still no reply.
“And it’s the only way. Death can’t be cheated. Do you understand the consequences?”
It was quiet for a long time.
“I understand,” the other person said and I gasped. It was Blake.
More voices filled my head. “Please,” Sir Robert begged. “Wait for Blake.”
I could hear someone sobbing. It was a man.
“Just wait for him.”
I opened my eyes and closed them immediately. My heart stammered as if I was in a confined space, but the light, the bright light that came with it, didn’t make any sense.
I opened them again. It was so close and I wanted to close my eyes again, but they zoomed out immediately, leaving me with a slight headache.
I wasn’t in a confined space, I was staring at the sky, clouds, and small cherubs with arrows. It didn’t make any sense.
I realized then that it was not moving and it was not actually the sky, it was paint. It was a ceiling, a painted ceiling.
Noise filled my ears. Loud noises, people speaking all at once, a jack hammer, commands being shouted, as a stronger pain jolted through my mind. A horrible smell burned my nostrils. What was this?
I grunted. It sounded like a scream but I knew I hadn’t yelled, I’d hardly made any effort to make that noise.
“Elena!” Becky’s voice overpowered all the others. It was so loud.
“Go get Constance, now!” she yelled again.
“Can you please stop yelling?”
She didn’t say anything, but I could hear her sobbing. It was loud too. Why on earth was Becky sobbing, she wasn’t the kind of person who cried?
Becky reached me. Tears streamed down her cheeks but a huge smile appeared on her face. She was happy. “Sorry, I wish I could. It’s the Essence, Elena. You need to get used to it,” she whispered but it sounded so loud. It didn’t make any sense.
“Wait,” I yelled and I grunted again. I hadn’t meant to yell. “The Essence,” I whispered too, but whispers weren’t whispers anymore. When I was a dragon, I’d never heard things this intensely before.
What Essence? I remembered Blake in the forest showing me what the Dent was and all at once images of what happened before jolted through my head.
My father, I killed my father. He was the Saadedine. Was Blake okay?
I jolted up.
“Shhhh,” Becky said.
The door opened and Constance rushed in. She grabbed her stethoscope and placed it over my chest. It was so cold.
Sammy sobbed too and I turned my head to look at her. She climbed on my bed and gave me an awkward hug as Constance checked my vital signs.
Sammy’s smelled like lilies and roasted almonds. It overpowered my sense of smell this time. I breathed in softer, not that it helped.
Another shriek came and I clutched my head again.
“Softer, please,” Becky whispered. She was so loud and I just stared at Constance. She started to shake with tears as she just listened through her stethoscope and then flung her arms around me, pulling me into her chest.
“I thought you were gone.”
My eyes flew opened. “What?”
I plugged my nose as I couldn’t handle the smell of violets anymore. “What is happening to me?”
“It’s the Essence,” she smiled and touched my chest with her palm. I flinched as it still hurt. I lifted up my shirt and saw a bandage right between my breasts.
“You can tune it out, Elena. Just think about what you want to do, and turn it down like you do with a radio.” Becky crouched in front of me.
“How do you know this?”
She lifted up her shirt and showed me her bandage too.
Blake. That feeling. “Where is Blake?” I asked as tears lingered in my eyes. Why did he show me that if… he can’t be dead. He just can’t be.
“Shhhh, Blake went to look for his orbs. He’s been gone for almost a month now. We don’t know what it does but he said that it would help bring you back.” She smiled. “I think he just succeeded.”
The conversation before I’d woken up. It was an unknown male voice, speaking about death, how it all worked. If someone that is dead wants to be alive again, then a sacrifice of someone alive has to be made. Blake had answered, “I understand.”
“No!” I yelled, sounding deranged.
“Calm down. It’s not a bad thing, Elena.”
“Death doesn’t work like that, Constance.”
“I know, we told him numerous times, Elena, but…” She shook her head. “He went to look for his orbs, he will be back.”
“He’s not going…” I couldn’t say it as he’d given his life to save mine.
“Shhhh, don’t think like that. We need to hope, Elena.”
I didn’t have to hope. I knew he wasn’t going to make it back. He was gone. It was why I’d heard those voices and the forest had been our last goodbye. He loved me so much that… I couldn’t think anymore. I just cried.
The bond jumped into my mind. I’d heard him when he said it wasn’t Helmut, it was Goran. I could hear Blake, the bond was working again.
I closed my eyes trying to feel for him, but I couldn’t. It was so easy before, I’d just heard him, and now he wasn’t there, he just wasn’t.
Please just come back, I begged. Why was I hoping?
“Elena, he will come back, we have to believe that,” Constance said as she cupped my face with both her hands.
The door opened again. I didn’t look.
“Elena,” a familiar voice said and I opened my eyes, looking at Constance. She smiled.
I turned my head slowly to the door and saw the man I’d only seen once before. He looked different, skinnier, he had a slight burn against his cheek that walked all the way down to his neck. He was older too. But his eyes, his eyes were mine and tears streamed down his face.
He rushed over with a cane and fell on my bed, flinging his arms around me.
“I told you not to come and save Etan. I made that very clear. You promised.”
“Dad!” I took deep breaths. “I didn’t kill you.”
He pushed me away to look at me and then kissed my face so many times. Just like Constance had when she’d been reunited with Annie. We both started to cry, and he just held me tight.
“Elena,” Si
“I’ll try to get word to Blake,” he spoke and my father nodded.
When he let go of me, all the others were gone.
“Look at you. You look so much like your mother.”
I wanted to laugh but my lip vibrated again.
“Shhh, he will return.”
I sniffed hard and tried to hold on to that he had found whatever he was looking for, which could only be me. I had to hold on to that. I nodded. “And I don’t. I look like you. Or so everyone kept telling me.”
He started to laugh.
I looked around. I didn’t know this room. It wasn’t the infirmary and it wasn’t the manor. It had the most beautiful cherubs floating on the ceiling and the room was huge. There was a large fireplace, plenty of closets, and a big table with chairs. The light was dimmed but bright lights still dangled at the edges of everything, like the outside was filled with bright light and it was desperately trying to get in. To blind me. “Where are we?”
My father looked at me with soft green eyes. “It’s your room, or it would’ve been.”
“We’re in Etan?”
“We can move if you don’t want to be here, sweet pea. I’ll understand. I just didn’t want to move you. But now, anywhere you want, we can move to the palace in Tith if that’s what you like, or the one in Areeth.”
I shook my head when he said Tith and he sighed.
“Robert told me that you and Lucian… he was a good boy, Elena.”
I smiled. “It’s fine Dad. We can stay here. If this is my home, it’s my home. We don’t need to move.” A soft smile spread over my face. “Besides, I don’t think King Helmut and Queen Marguerite would appreciate it if we crashed at their place.”
My father didn’t laugh, his face fell. “Helmut didn’t make it. He killed Goran, and died in the process. They were found with a steel beam pressed through both their bodies.”
“What!” I cried. My father held me tight as I just succumbed. Queen Marguerite jumped through my mind at once. She’d lost every single member of her family. “Where is the queen, Dad?”
More tears filled his eyes.
“Please don’t say it. Please.”
“She couldn’t cope with it, Elena. I wanted her to live here, but she said she wanted to be left alone. Emanual stayed with her, and Constance checked up on her every day, and one morning, they found her body on the shore. She’d jumped.”
I sobbed again as my father cupped my head with both his hands. “If I knew she would do that, I would’ve taken more precautions. I’m so sorry.”
He hugged me again.
“Why did you break your promise?” he asked. “I told you that I couldn’t live in a world where you didn’t exist.” He looked at me again. “I thought I’d lost you too.”
“I didn’t break your promise. I found myself in Etan by mistake. I lived here for four months and I didn’t even know it.”
“I know, Blake told me.” His face became hard and he sniffed. “I also know what happened to you here, Elena. If you want to move…”
“Dad, I told you, I don’t, okay. This is my home and none of those boys are going to drive me away from my birthplace.”
He sniffed. “They won’t ever touch you like that again, Elena. Blake made sure of it.”
“What?” A cold finger traced up my spine. He’d found them.
“I wanted to set them free, give them a second chance, until Blake laid a claim on their life, told me what they’d done to you. I wanted to kill them myself but Robert said that it was Blake’s job, he needed to deal with it. So, I gave them over to him.”
“He killed them?”
“They deserved it, Elena. I’ve always done what was right for Paegeia, we don’t need more followers of Goran hanging around. This world needs to heal, these people need to heal.” He was angry. “I had to do what I had to do to let that begin. I wasn’t going to let my daughter live in fear of evil… I told you not to free Etan.” He was still angry at me, and if I’d lost Blake, I would regret saving him the rest of my life.
But still. “I know. It wasn’t my promise alone. I’m not that type of Dragonian, Dad.”
He smiled, took a deep breath and shook his head. “You are just like your mother. Stubborn as hell. I wish you could’ve known her, Elena. She wanted you so badly. I wanted you so badly.”
“I know, I read her journals, Dad.”
“You did?” He smiled and wiped one of my tears away with his thumb. “She would’ve been an amazing mother, Elena.”
“I know.”
THREE MONTHS had passed. They went so slowly as my heart was still bleeding. It waited for the other part to reunite, but every night I sat on my sill, looking at the moon, waiting to see the outline of him in the night light. Nothing of that sort happened.
Images of what my father as the Saadedine had done before my axes struck him flashed through my mind.
I was wild at that moment, as he was busy tearing off Blake’s wing. I didn’t think and then a spear struck me. It was Goran. He’d wanted me to die so badly, ever since the day he’d seen me through the Dragonian’s eyes. The last thing I saw was the Saadedine turning into my father and then I’d woken up in that forest with Blake, unable to remember anything. Had he been saying goodbye? Finally able to show me what the Dent was, that he would love me forever and ever, but we would never get that forever?
Sure, they’d told me that he was looking for his last two orbs, but I couldn’t help but think that he was dead and they were just waiting for the right time, for when I was better, stronger, to tell me the truth.
I heaved a deep sigh and touched my scar. It would take months to heal and Constance changed my bandages twice a day for the first month after I’d awoken. The bandage was finally gone but the scar, the scar was still there. She couldn’t heal me with her touch anymore. I had to heal myself from now on with my healing ability, but it was slow, as if the Keeper of my abilities was gone. That was the other reason why I kept wondering if he was dead: I couldn’t wield my abilities anymore.
Still what he had done for me, giving me a piece of his Essence was the only part that told me that he hadn’t died in that cave. He’d been alive before I passed out and slipped into my two month coma. I had to believe that it was a coma and that I hadn’t been dead. It meant he hadn’t found me and hadn’t sacrificed himself to save me.
I’d finally found a way to tune out my new enhanced senses. The first couple of days were hard. The horrible smell, it wasn’t a horrible smell at all, it was all the smells of the world mixed together. I could smell them now, I just needed to control them, force each smell I wanted to enter first, followed by the second. It was quite an amazing ability to be honest.
It felt as if I was a dragon myself again.
The hearing was the same. For weeks everyone had to whisper; even though it sounded so loud, it was only a whisper. The best way I can explain it is that it sounded like someone whispering through a microphone.
My eyes were the best. I could zoom in and out like a photographer’s lens, but better. There were limits with photographers, there weren’t with my enhanced sight. It became my favorite sense too as I could see the night sky from my sill as if I was playing through the clouds myself.
A lot had happened since I’d woken up. I had a lot to deal with too.
Tabitha and Peter had both died. She’d lived her entire life as a coward, but had stepped up when she was needed. Not all the explosives went off as planned and the others on the other side couldn’t get through, so Tabitha and Peter had this brilliant plan that would end their lives but it had worked. They flew into the Creepers fast with a bomb attached to Tabitha. The minute it went off, the Creepers that already had my blood in them from the first explosion started to crumble and fall.
Plenty saw that it was working and eight other brave dragons lost their lives that way too.
They sacrificed themselves so the
I guessed Tabitha couldn’t live without Blake in her life either. Peter wasn’t enough. But he’d stuck with her. Died with her.
Julia was another dragon who had died. A Wyvern killed her.
The entire McKenzie line was gone. In a hundred years nobody would even know who they were.
The only family that was left was Nichole but they carried a different last names.
Many of the special ops guys died too. Fred, the guy that was with us and Raymond also.
I’d liked Raymond.
But the most painful loss was Dean.
Sammy had almost lost her life too. She’d gotten hit with a huge harpoon and scorched plenty of guys, but a Wyvern killed Dean in the process. They found her barely alive.
I’d cried with Sammy so many times. If Blake wasn’t going to return, she hadn’t just lost her rider, the man she’d loved and who had adored her, but her brother as well.
Maybe we would team up after all, maybe not. I contemplated it as I struggled to see that future.
Fin-Tails, Copper-Horns, Night Villains, even Sun-Blasts. They all fought and a lot of them perished, but we’d won.
War was never a beautiful affair.
But good had happened too.
I now had a chance to know that man who they referred to as the Greatest King Who Had Ever Lived, personally. He was my father. It didn’t matter how busy he was, or in what meeting he was in trying to figure out the process of healing this world and his people, between two to five every day, he spent time with me.
We spoke about so many things, he even started teaching me the things the Council had tried, but coming from him, with all his personal experiences with these people, it made it so much easier to remember the things that I should’ve learned months ago. We spoke a lot about Mom too. He admitted that in the time before her death, she was desperate to find whoever was going to betray us, and that she blamed him for not trying as hard as she had. It wasn’t the truth though, just the way she had seen it.