Starlight

by Adrienne Woods

  The last guy to go back to Etan was a farmhand.

  Emanual and everyone waited for us as we exited.

  The farmhand had tears in his eyes as he looked at everything around him.

  “I’m free,” he said with his arms open wide.

  It always closed up my throat thinking about the fear they lived in the past seventeen odd years.

  “It’s over,” Emanual whispered next to me.

  “One more night, then Blake comes back.”

  Emanual smiled and looked at the ground. “I told you he will realize what an idiot he was, Elena. I’m glad you gave him another chance.”

  “Didn’t think that I would.”

  “I’m sorry that I lied to you.”

  “About?” I asked.

  “That time in the SUV, when I told you that it was me that sensed them.”

  “It’s okay. He told me that he made all of you promise to not tell me a thing.”

  “Yeah, told him it was silly, but he said you had to trust him on your own terms. Guess he has a little bit of wisdom.”

  I laughed at the way he said it. He opened the door of the SUV for me and we went back to the lodge.

  SOMEONE KNOCKED ON my door and I opened. I found Emanual with a cup of coffee.

  I stepped out of the doorway and he entered.

  “So whom do I owe for the pleasure of your company tonight?”

  He chuckled. “Nobody, get dressed.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the other side. I know you want to be there when Blake comes back.”

  “You serious?” My stomach flipped just thinking about seeing Blake again, safe in Areeth and not on some crazy mission.

  Emanual laughed and nodded.

  I jumped up and down and into Emanual’s arms and gave him a hug. “Thanks Emanual.”

  “He’d probably have my head, but I promised that I’d protect you with my life. So hurry, before I change my mind.” He let go of me and walked out the door.

  I put on my jeans and a warm top and we entered around nine.

  The sun was already up and we had to be extra careful exiting the Creepers.

  When Emanual felt it was safe, he ran out of the Creepers with me, hit his device and changed back into Charles.

  “Isn’t there another Charles already?”

  “Yes, but whoever is going to find us, wouldn’t know that. Here, put this over your clothes.” He gave me an old cloak.

  I did as he said and we walked into the Benson’s house half an hour later.

  Emanual pushed the button on his device and turned back into him once safely inside.

  I couldn’t wait for later when Blake was finally going to come back.

  Tomorrow it was that time again. The Council was going to come. Blake just had to be back by then.

  At two o’clock I started to get antsy. They weren’t back yet.

  Then around four we saw the outline of a group of people. They were all wearing cloaks over their heads.

  My heart fluttered and I blew out air, as I knew Blake was one of them.

  I ran into the house. “They are here!”

  Emanual came out.

  I start to frown when I only saw five figures, and two of them were Nicky and Max. Something must have happened to Leana, or one of the girls. My throat closed up again. Two of them weren’t alive. Tom? What kind of state wasn’t he going to be in?

  They came closer and I could tell two of them were sort of supporting one.

  Emanual and Remi, dressed as Charles, ran toward them and assisted.

  “Something happened,” the woman or guy that took Gertrude’s place said.

  No kidding. “It’s this place,” I said. “It’s dark and evil.”

  They finally reached us and Emanual put the one dressed as a lord on the couch. When he hit the device, I found Tom’s figure. He looked like a ghost. Didn’t say a word. His eyes were dull, and he was crying.

  Leana. She didn’t make it.

  August appeared next and went to sit next to Tom, wrapping his arms around him. Tom started to cry.

  Nicky and Max took off their cloaks.

  “Elena,” Emanual had that tone in his voice.

  A cold shiver ran up my spine. As the last one took off its hoody and hit the device, Raymond appeared.

  “No, no, no!” I looked at Raymond. Where the hell was Blake?

  I ran down the steps and looked on the horizon. There wasn’t another person coming.

  I walked up to Raymond and pushed him.

  “I told you not to lose him. Where the hell is my dragon?” I sounded deranged. I couldn’t go through this again. I couldn’t lose him again.

  “Elena, we don’t know.” Raymond spoke with his hands slightly on my shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me. What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “What happened?” Emanual had a gentle tone in his voice.

  “There were complications.” Raymond looked at him.

  “Raymond just tell us what happened. Does Goran have him?” Emanual asked.

  “It was simple, Raymond. Find the women and make sure Blake got back. I can’t do this without him.” I didn’t even want to think if Goran had him.

  “I know, but he saw Billy, Elena.”

  “What?” I spoke softly with closed eyes as my hands disappeared in my hair. I knew he was going to go mental if he saw one of them. I started to pace up and down just thinking about the consequences.

  “He didn’t go after him. But Billy saw him and then chaos broke out.”

  “Does Goran have him?” Emanual sounded more demanding.

  “No,” August answered Emanual and it felt as if I could breathe just a little bit. “He just vanished.”

  “What?”

  Raymond nodded. “He’s gone, Elena.”

  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.