“I can’t just turn on command,” I said.
“Yes, you can,” he instantly replied, his fingers tapping on the side of my head. “Tear those ugly walls of self-doubt down.”
“Words don’t make me turn. Neither do commands. I have to be angry or afraid,” I told him while turning away from him.
“Well, be afraid, son,” he said and walked toward me once more. “No apologies.”
I was confused by his vagueness. But his moves were too quick. Much quicker than my brain’s abilities to catch up with his intentions. Before I could unknot his confusing words, I found his hands grabbing my shoulder tightly and lifting me up from the ground. The next thing I knew, I was falling off the mountain head first. The clouds were piercing through my skin, and I was falling with velocity.
He was right, though. I began turning. The turning was faster, and I linked it to how my mind was trying to speed everything up, instinctually appealing to my survival needs. Still, turning wouldn’t have saved me. When the king threw me from high up, I luckily fell on the side of a high mountain, which saved me. This time, I was heading for the rocky ground.
The few moments I had before I reached the ground, I was thinking of the king’s wings, and my father’s wings, too. I wondered when they were going to grow out of my back. But the ground was too close. I closed my eyes and was waiting for the inevitable.
Suddenly, I felt claws digging into my shoulders, harmlessly. The ground grew farther away. My father picked me up before I hit the ground, and we flew high again.
“How’d you like the fall?” his deeper and darker voice began asking.
“Let me go,” I pleaded, thinking that whatever he was trying to do would lead to nothing.
“Whatever you wish,” he said.
He soared higher and higher before he dropped me again. This time, I was in my dragon form. I felt something tingle my back, but I thought it was just the fear of hitting the ground this time. I closed my eyes and tried to force the wings out of my back. Nothing was happening. It wasn’t changing.
Again, he picked me up before I hit the ground.
“It took me ten years of trying to grow wings. I won’t rest until you grow them in a day,” he told me.
“Is that your way of clearing your inactive conscience?” I replied.
He dropped me once more before he could reply to my provoking words. But this time it was different. This time my wings burst from the sides of my spine and hit his legs right above me. I felt an odd feeling in my back. It was a sort of numbness that takes over a leg when pressured for long. For a long time as I fell, I couldn’t move the wings, but, suddenly, I was falling and flapping in the same time. I flew, feeling the moonlight closer to my skin.
The man inside of me began laughing. The lover inside of me started wondering and dreaming. I wished I could take Elise flying under the starry skies and have the moonlight bathe the contours of our faces while the winds pierced them.
Chapter Fifteen
Theo
The wings were a change that had been unexpected. As the winds were crossing every bit of my estranged body, I felt a surge of power. I remembered how the king’s castle had walls that were too high. There was no way I could have made my way into his castle without my newly acquired wings and sense of flight.
I might have dreaded only one thing—the fact that my father was the one who inspired the wings out of my body. I didn’t hate the man, but I wasn’t able to connect with him. He was quite the mysterious character. He didn’t tell me what I wanted to know, but only because I didn’t want to ask. I was learning what I could learn.
In the end and after a long flight, we descended in some distant valley and he told me briefly that he had left us because he feared for our lives. He was afraid that his dragon form would attract the attention of the Hawks someday. He explained that when one has deep emotions for people like his own family, their own selfishness and awareness disappears. He said that he only thought of us when he left. He believed we were better off without him. He couldn’t protect us—he couldn’t even control his own form.
For a brief moment, I wanted to fight his words with harsher ones, only to hurt him like he had hurt me with his absence. But I found myself choosing not to. I found myself telling him that all was fine, that he was forgiven.
I couldn’t help but understand, and I related what he was telling me to what Elise wrote me in her last letter, the one I kept with me always. Why would I not forgive him after that?
“I hope you continue feeling this way, and like I told you in the beginning, patience is all you need for this journey of yours,” he told me with sincerity in his eyes and paused. “Son.”
I smiled a smile of comfort and consolation.
“You know something,” I told him, “you could have made my life a lot easier if you had stayed. Elise wouldn’t have left, and life would had been a different shade, a lighter one.”
“It would have been a completely different color, not a different shade. Be thankful for whatever happened. This doubt you have is your mind’s attempt to think that the grass is greener on the other side, and by that you are only trying to get out of your fate rather than embrace it,” he said with his hands tapping on my shoulders softly, “and patience, again, is all you need.”
“A wise man told me that anger and fear were the most important things, and now you are telling me that patience is. I don’t know who and what to trust now,” I said in confusion.
“The simultaneous truths will mystify you, son. You need your anger to hold your fears intact, and you need the patience to hold the anger down. How else will you not become a slave to any of those emotions?” he said.
And these were the last words that I heard that night. I followed his words and was led to that place in my mind where peace was an option.
We both sat on the mountains, father and son, and meditated for hours. He knew that I was restless, that every cell of my body wanted to fly toward Elise and save her. The worry was eating me alive, and yet I had to drag every bit of patience from the core of who I was and try hard to sit still.
Sitting still was the easy part. The hard part was making my mind still. I tried and I tried, yet the thoughts and fears kept creeping up on me. I don’t know how he felt it, but as soon as the thoughts were getting too much for me, I found my father’s hands gently tapping on mine.
Eventually, my father told me the way to the castle. However, he insisted on guiding me through the canyons and mountains and the many decaying villages until we could see the castle from a distance.
Before we walked, he helped me with all the cuts and bruises that I had endured from the fight with the king. My back was burned. We found herbs that made my skin regenerate and my broken bones heal in no time.
I enjoyed every moment with my father and all the dread and discomfort that I felt around him all went away. We were alike in many things. I noticed how he would always get lost in contemplation the same way I would when I would think of Elise.
“Are you thinking of Mother?” I asked him as he stared at the setting sun.
“Perhaps I am,” he replied softly, not wanting to distract himself from the thought of my mother.
“Her image is a blur in your head, isn’t it?” I asked, thinking he was feeling like I was with Elise.
“I never let myself think of her eyes, and that is where the blur is. Thinking of her eyes would make me loathe myself for the pain that I carved into them,” he said dreamily.
“Do you want to sharpen the blur?” I asked him.
“That is impossible. She would never even look at me if I went home,” he said dismissively. “It’s better if she had forgotten about me.”
“You are lying to yourself and to me,” I said and punched him in the shoulder. “You want to convince me that you wouldn’t be keeping her safe if you go home?”
“I wouldn’t. Like I told you, I will only attract the eyes of the wicked.”
“Stop it wi
th the lies,” I demanded. “You will die unforgiven if you never go to see her.”
I might have succeeded in getting to him with my words because as I started to walk faster than him and leave him behind, he was lost in thoughts of her again.
It’s ironic how a man can dwell in thought of something and yet never try to save themselves from the pain of it. Maybe it is better to romanticize a matter of the past than it is to fancy dragging the past to the present and creating a better future.
For a long time, we walked. I told him about all my past, about Bernard and Elise. He knew everything about my feelings, and I knew a lot about his past and what happened after he left us.
It had been nearly twenty-three years since he had left us, and he told me that every day the pain of the distance had increased. He met many people, and a few were guides in his journey.
We grew hungry and quiet, and the tall walls of King Harold’s castle loomed into sight.
Chapter Sixteen
Theo
My fears were pulsating through every vein inside my body, proof of my longing and my anger was a testimony to my need to get Elise back home.
I talked of anger and fear a lot, and perhaps I myself was quite confused about their relevance to my journey. They actually accounted for everything. There is no emotion as intense and satisfying as love, and nothing more inspiring than love. However, fear, as some may say, is the heart of love.
One has to fear loneliness in order to love togetherness. And maybe somewhere inside of me, I had begun fearing loneliness when Elise left. I was too young to understand her reasons, and perhaps the older I grew, the more it made sense.
I looked up at the castle walls, knowing that I was about to fly above them and venture to save Elise from the king. I held up the note that was crumbled in my back pocket, and for the first time in years, I had the guts to read Elise’s words all at once.
My dear Theo,
If you’re reading this, and if the purple rose is in your safekeeping, I’ve left. Every step I took leaving the house that you and Matilda have made my home breaks my heart. I’m going to be nothing but a burden on the both of you. I know if you had the chance to argue with what I’m saying, you would make me stay, and that is why I had to leave while you were asleep. I’m afraid. Every part of me is in fear. I fear that I might hurt you or Matilda. My body is changing, and my mother told me that this would happen someday.
I’m sorry that I laughed when I saw your six fingers, and I’m sorry I made you cry. Please don’t cry when I leave. They will hurt you if they see you cry. If you need to, go by the willow tree. It is safe there.
One day, we will be together again, and we will laugh under the moonlight while hiding from the king’s Hawks. Wherever I will go, I hope you come and find me. You know that I don’t like being alone.
Love,
Elise.
It was true. Her words affected me more as the years passed, and the truth was that they echoed even louder when I was at a close distance from her.
I needed nothing more but a tear running down my cheeks for me to put the note back and feel ready to get her. I looked at my father who was about to turn and leave, and he was focused on the distance.
“When you turn, your vision allows you to see through the walls if you focus well enough,” he told me.
“That never happened with me,” I replied.
“Because you never were patient enough, or focused for that matter.”
I took in his words and began to turn. I saw the castle walls underneath me. My wings carried me above the castle, high enough not to be seen.
I flew and tried to focus, as my father said. It was as if I had always had it in me to pierce through walls with my sight. I looked through the walls and began seeing what was inside.
On the ground level, a huge chandelier lit the vast entrance of the castle. It was empty except for the Hawks who stood by the spiral staircase. I flew around to the other side of the castle because there was no sign of either Elise or the king.
When I used the piercing vision again, I saw a long table where Harold and Elise sat with several others I did not recognize. There was a woman who sat on the right side from the king, and Elise sat on the left side.
I kept watching them while hovering in my position above the castle until Elise left the table. She climbed up the spiral stairway and down the long hallway until she reached a room I presumed she slept in.
She seemed to be at liberty in the castle, which was odd. There were no guards or Hawks following her. They merely stood by the end of the hallway on every floor and of course on the watchtowers outside. That made me wonder why she hadn’t tried to escape. It was quite an eerie feeling. But what had escaped my mind before and suddenly found its way into my thoughts was the thought of how she hadn’t fought the king in her dragon form yet. Why didn’t she turn when he came into her village? And why did she seem compliant with his imprisonment of her?
Many questions haunted my mind as I flew and observed her.
I found the nearest window to her room was within sight. All I had to do was descend slowly on top of the castle and return to my human form before any part of my body touched the castle wall. So, the best idea was to descend on the roof of the castle and make my way down by climbing down the frames of the windows without being seen by anyone.
I immediately started with the plan I had in mind, and my human feet were touching the roof’s brick floor. Again, the smell of animal skin hit me. The stench of rotting skin suffocated my mind. There were several Hawks around the roof scattered around. I tiptoed to the edge, making sure I was unseen and unheard. My feet and legs dangled first. My body followed as I hung onto the ledge with my hands, and finally I dropped my head down and rested my feet on the window.
It wasn’t the window of Elise’s room that I had set foot on but the one directly above it. There were sounds of chatter coming from inside of the room, so I had to remain still. Once I heard the sound of the door closing and silence following it, I jumped down. The window to Elise’s room was closed, so I waited until she noticed me.
She was wearing a crimson dress that draped behind her back. Her back was to me, shoulders bare. It felt like she was still wearing that veil of innocence on her skin. I should have knocked on the window for her to open, but I chose to hang by the window and observe her.
I eventually knocked softly on the glass windows. She turned around. Her eyes opened wide and filled with astonishment and excitement. She rushed toward me and opened the window as softly and gently as she could so as to not make a sound.
“Theo,” she whispered, surprise and tenderness in her voice.
“Elise,” I said in a sigh of relief. “Finally.”
Chapter Seventeen
Theo
You could say that this was where the story began. With everything that happened building up to that moment—nothing compared to it. It was like every dream I had of her before just crumbled and fell to its knees when I heard her voice and saw her face. I held her hands the moment I was inside the room, and I felt her trembling. She was nervous that we would be seen, so we stood in the corner of the room, as far away from the windows as we could be, and the rest was in whispers.
“I was in despair, complete and utter hopelessness. I thought he killed you back there,” she told me as tears began to form in her eyes.
“I wasn’t in my full strength or else you would have seen him burn,” I said, anger seeping through my voice.
“Sh,” she whispered and put her finger on my lips. “There are guards right outside. They’ll hear you.”
“I’m sorry. I just hate myself for failing to save you back there,” I toned my voice down to a whisper and held my head down.
She was smiling, but I could barely see her eyes. I felt her lips slowly fall on my forehead, and sweet shivers ran through my spine.
“Thank you,” she said.
I felt her hands slide to hold mine again and I held on. Even
our breaths were faint whispers, but I could feel my heart pounding inside my chest and through the throbbing of the veins on her wrists knew that her heart was also racing.
“All these years, life was tasteless. The only thing that got me to long for the next morning was that I knew I would find you someday,” I said, pulling her body to be closer to mine.
“And here we are,” she said, her cheeks reddening and a smile breaking them.
We stared into each other’s eyes. No speech could express what we both were feeling. It was like living a whole eternity of uncertainty and finally finding a truth—like not knowing if there was any water but being sure that there was a thirst and finally swimming within the pure waters of a river.
I slid my hands to the back of her neck and pulled her face closer to mine. I closed my eyes, my lips waiting for hers to meet them. Instead, they were met with her fingers. I opened my eyes, and she was caught in shock.
“Wait,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I thought—” I hesitated.
“No, wait, there are footsteps outside,” she whispered in fear.
She quickly led me to the side of the bed that was on the other side from the door. I prepared myself for something to erupt right in that room. All I needed to hear was just the slightest hint of agitation in her voice, and I would have torn the castle down.
The door opened with a slight creak. I could tell from the sound of the footsteps that the person standing by the door.
“Are you OK, Elise?” the deep voice was asking.
I immediately recognized the voice . King Harold.
“Yes, why would you think that I wasn’t?” she replied in a dismissive manner.
“You were supposed to come down to drink with us,” he said, walking toward the center of the room, awfully close to where I was hiding.
Mated by The Alpha Dragon: The Exalted Dragons (Book 3) Page 6
