Frostbite (The Dragonian Series Book 3)

ON SUNDAY, THE girls left with George and Dean around eleven. I didn’t want to go with as I would be just a fifth wheel and the fact that they’d asked me to come agitated me more than it should have. I even struggled to go on with my search.

For some reason I kept thinking about Blake. A longing to be near him made me even more frustrated because it was a feeling that didn’t make any sense.

I knew for a fact that I couldn’t have fallen for him. I promised him, and yet I couldn’t stop counting of the hours until I would see him again.

What about Lucian, what does this mean? Didn’t I care as much for him as I’d thought?

No, I didn’t believe that. I loved Lucian, but with Blake the feeling was similar to what I felt with Paul. It was messed up and confusing.

I shredded a couple of papers, and hatred filled my heart again as I thought about what Paul had done. How on earth could I have had feelings for him? We’d almost kissed. My mind went back to that day inside the cave. I’d spat in his face when he mentioned it and…I gasped.

We’d almost kissed, and Lucian had heard about it right before he died.

A darker feeling emerged and took complete hold of me. Images of a bed post breaking and carpet tearing came in flashes; clothes were next. My heart pounded inside my chest but at the same time what I felt was good. I felt satisfied and when I found the wall against my back, I slid down and sat on the ground. I buried my head inside my knees. Anger rose again.

How could I have been so stupid to think that I would have been able to hide my feelings for Paul from Lucian? How betrayed must he have felt? He’d died knowing that I didn’t feel the same about him. If I had, I wouldn’t have fallen for Paul, even if it was only a bit; I wouldn’t if I really loved Lucian the way I’d said I did. I felt horrible and I would never be able to tell Lucian how sorry I was.

Becky and Sammy entered the room around five.

“Elena!” both shrieked.

“What the hell happened here?” Dean’s voice came right after theirs.

Sammy crouched in front of me. “Are you okay? Who did this?”

I lifted my head and glared at her.

She gasped. “Elena what is going on with you? Your eyes…”

“Why do you care?” It didn’t sound like me.

Becky slapped me hard across my face and I growled. “Snap out of it. What the hell happened to our room?”

I looked past her and found feathers strewn all over the floor. My bedpost was completely ruined and the carpet was shredded in some places. Sammy’s dresser was broken and Becky’s clothes lay all over the floor.

The memory of what had happened in this room wasn’t what I’d expected. I kept looking at it and found George lifting up one of Becky’s tops. It was her favorite, or let’s say it used to be her favorite. It was in pieces.

I looked at Becky, her jaw line was hard and she didn’t look happy. Then I looked at Sammy. Worried eyes and thin eyebrows furrowed together changed the look on her face to pity. It made me angry all over again.

Stop it, Elena, Stop it. I hit my head hard.

“Don’t do that!” Sammy grabbed my hand.

“What is going on with me? I feel so angry.” I bit down hard as she held me close to her chest.

“You think you’re angry! You shredded up all my clothes!”

“Becky, don’t. This is much bigger than that.” Sammy looked at me. “Do you remember doing any of this?”

“I don’t know what I remember. It’s hard to explain. It was so dark, you’re right,” I looked at Sammy. “I’m just like your brother.”

She grabbed me around my neck and pulled me closer to her. “You’re not. It’s going to be okay, Elena. It will be okay.”

“You don’t know that. I’m evil, look at what I’ve done!”

“It took years for Blake to be where he is and he’s still fighting it every day Elena.”

“He’s got years, I don’t. What else is this, Sammy?”

“You can’t say that, Elena,” Becky yelled.

“Then why am I like this?”

“I don’t know,” Becky said.

“Have you eaten anything?” Sammy interrupted.

I let out a disbelieving chuckle. “I ruined the room, and you’re worried about whether or not I’ve eaten?” I shook my head and looked at Becky again. She didn’t look angry anymore but worry lines dented her forehead and wrinkled her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Becky,” I said.

“I can get new clothes, Elena. Sammy is right, this is something different,” she said and grabbed me too. “I’m sorry.”

I just held her for a couple of minutes. “I promise we’ll get to the bottom of this. Even if…”

“Don’t say it, please,” I whispered right into her ear.

We all left to go to the cafeteria and I heard Becky talking to George and Dean by the main entrance, asking them to tell Master Longwei what had happened.

She ran back to our side and hooked her arm into mine just before we entered the cafeteria. Eyes were on us the minute we walked in.

“Don’t let them get to you, sit.” Becky led me to the nearest open table and pushed me down onto the pillow. “I’ll get us something to eat.

Sammy sat right in front of me. I didn’t even want to look at her. How could I have done that to my friends’ belongings?

The hate inside of me started to disappear. At first it just became bearable, but I could still feel it inside my core. It made me want to throw up as I remembered what the room looked like after I’d trashed it.

The feeling dissipated after a while and I looked at Sammy who still had huge furrows between her sleek eyebrows.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t,” she said with deep concern. She looked past me and back to me. “Your eyes, they are different than before.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were almost red before, Elena, they’re back to green. How do you feel?”

“Like crap.”

“The dark, I mean?”

“It’s gone.” I shook my head. “What’s going on with me?”

“It disappeared?” She ignored my plea.

I nodded. “It doesn’t make sense, Sammy.”

“No, it makes perfect sense.” She looked past me again.

I shook my head softly and turned my gaze to see what she was looking at. I found her brother flirting with Tabitha.

“You were right,” Sammy said.

I looked back at her. “About what?”

“You’re just like him, evil and dark, but for some reason you share some sort of a connection.”

“What?”

“It must be a Rubicon thing,” she said without taking her eyes off her brother and gave a small chuckle.

I turned around again and found his entire table laughing.

“What’s a Rubicon thing?” Becky asked as she and George put four trays of food on the table. I turned my head as Blake’s gaze fell on our table.

“Tell you later,” Sammy whispered. “Too many ears.”

I DIDN’T WANT TO go back to our room. I was scared of confronting the horrible deed that I’d done an hour ago. Blake and Tabitha found my gaze and I watched them walking out hand in hand, bumping one another playfully as they exited the cafeteria. A part of me wished for the first time that it was me. I’d never felt this way about Blake before. I hated the jealousy of wanting to be Tabitha. She was shallow and only cared about herself and Blake.

“Let’s go,” Sammy said.

“Can we stay a bit, please?”

“You’ll be fine Elena. Tomorrow is Monday again and you’ll be training with him in the afternoon,” Sammy said and both Becky and I just stared at each other as none of it made any sense to us.

Sammy giggled as she saw our expressions. “I’ll explain inside the room, now let’s go.” We said goodbye to the boys at the stairs and started to climb. My heart pounded as Becky unlocked the door and I gasped again as I walked into the room.

Everything was fixed. My bedpost looked as if it’d never gotten attacked by a crazy person, and the torn piece of carpet was back to its normal thick, lush brown self. Sammy’s dresser was back in one piece and I didn’t see Becky’s clothes on the floor anymore. The feathers were gone, and all the pillows were fixed.

“See, everything can be fixed, Elena.”

“I still did it Becky,” I felt angry with myself again.

“It’s going to be okay.” She gave me a gentle smile and looked at Sammy again. “So what is this big Rubicon thing you couldn’t tell us in the cafeteria?”

“Yeah, what did you mean that we share a connection?” I wanted to know.

“For some reason you and my brother are each other’s salvation, you both are like light to one another. Your hatred disappeared because Blake was near.”

“I don’t understand, are you saying that we turn darker the more we are apart from each other?” It didn’t make sense but it did explain the black out and me going psycho on our room. It was also followed by a new fear: “What if he refuses to carry on with the training?”

Sammy’s eyes rose. “Don’t tell him. You can’t let that happen. He needs you just as much as you need him. He can’t turn evil with you close to his side. It explains why he is so friendly.”

“This is so messed up,” Becky said and looked at Sammy.

“Welcome to my world,” I said and both just looked at me.

Becky touched my shoulder. “I agree with Sammy, Blake can’t know about this. He would cancel the training if anything like this happened. He would feel tied down and you know Blake.”

I nodded and looked around the room again. “Who fixed the room?”

“Master Longwei took care of it.” Sammy smiled. “It’s normal, Elena. He understands.”

I sighed. “I’m so sorry you guys. I’ll somehow find a way to repay you for your clothes,” I said to Becky

“Seriously, you didn’t know what you were doing, Elena. I so blame the psycho inside of you.” She laughed, and I smiled. I wished that I could feel the same way she did over my split personality. “Hey, it’s okay. I can buy new clothes. We just have to find a way for you to get your daily Blake doses.”

Laughter filled the room.

“You make it sound as if I’m addicted to him.”

“Well you have no choice, so it could be called an addiction.”

“I don’t want this.”

“Neither do junkies.”

“They have a choice, there is a cure for them and they can stop whenever they want. There is a difference.”

She smiled. “Whatever makes you sleep better at night, darling.”

I threw a pillow at her and the two girls broke out in laughter.

My lips vibrated like a horse’s with the heavy breath I let out. “This really is messed up.”

“Just remember, you do the exact same thing for him. He becomes darker the more he is apart from you too, Elena.”

“History has this so wrong,” Becky said.

“That’s exactly what he told me. I asked him if he had the urge to kill me, since there are two of us living at the same time, and he said no.” I smiled as I remembered his stupid comment before he said it was a joke.

“See, my brother is smart and I’ve got a funny feeling he’s known this for a very long time, Elena. It could explain why he always wanted to be around you when he was drunk.”

“So it wasn’t my virginity that drove his Sun-Blast crazy?”

“No, far from it.”

ON MONDAY AFTERNOON I struggled to handle our training session with the knowledge of Sammy’s little discovery.

“You’re really quiet today. Was Tabitha that mean to you?” Blake joked.

“No, she just left me with a shit load of paperwork to go through. It is going to take me forever to find him.”

“She will find him, Elena. That is a promise.”

“Yeah, I hope so.”

“I forgot to ask you something.”

“Sure, what is it?”

“The day that Paul died. Did you see his body turning into ash?”

I thought about that. I didn’t know what I saw. “Master Longwei put you up to this?”

“Elena, we need to know.”

“I don’t know what I saw that day, Blake.”

He stopped and I came to a halt a couple of paces in front of him. “I can help, if you want.”

“How? By reading my mind?” I joked.

He didn’t smile. “I can’t read minds,” he said in a harsh tone.

“It was a joke.”

“My persuasion can calm your mind and you might be able to remember more.”

“I don’t want to remember more. Believe me I’m struggling already with what it is I’m stuck with.”

He sighed. “I know it’s hard, Elena. We all lost an amazing person that day.”

“Blake…”

“He was my best friend. If Paul is still out there…”

“If he’s still out there? How could he still be out there?”

“What did you see?”

“You are not answering my question! Lucian drove an iron blade through his heart. Iron kills Wyverns.”

“Elena, please, just tell me what you remember.”

I looked to the ground and could feel furrows denting my forehead. What did I see that day? For a long time, I thought it could be paranoia, but Blake sounded adamant and if Paul was still alive…

Anger boiled up in my throat again, but it disappeared immediately because of Blake. I looked at him and his peacock-blue eyes searched mine. He was still waiting for my answer. “I don’t know what I saw that day, but I heard her forcing him to drink something.”

Blake froze and cupped his mouth as he turned around and paced for a while.

“What is it?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. “Blake,” I pulled him by his arm and he faced me. “What is it? Is Paul still alive?”

He looked to the ground with knitted eyebrows. “He might be.”

“Might be, how?”

He walked to the nearest boulder and sat, ordering me to do the same.

I took a seat next to him and couldn’t stop staring at him. He didn’t look at me.

“There is a potion, it’s two different kinds that make a whole.”

“Stop speaking to me in riddles. What do you mean two different ones?”

“Two potions, but together they can do something unforgivable.”

“Like what?”

“It’s called the Calupso. One potion is drunk by the person that will become the host, the second is drunk by the one who needs the host. His body would disappear and his essence would be soaked up into the host.”

“That doesn’t make sense!”

“If you heard her say he needed to drink, it could only be that. Did you see her drink something too?”

“I was busy turning into a dragon, I don’t know what I saw,” I grunted. “How does that work?”

“She’s a hippogriff, or I assume, a shape shifter. Hippogriffs don’t have human forms.” The worry lines dented deep into his forehead and around his eyes. “If she was a Wyvern she could sacrifice herself and he would take her place inside her body, but because they weren’t the same, she would’ve needed another host, a Wyvern, in order to save his life.”

“So you’re telling me that Paul is still alive?”

He nodded. “But we wouldn’t know who he is, as his human form wouldn’t be Paul’s. It would be the host whose life he took.”

“She loved him, you know. How was that even remotely going to work? A hippogriff and a Wyvern?”

“The same way it works between a dragon and a human.” He looked at me with soft eyes.

I closed mine as Becky and Sammy’s stupid conversation jumped into my head again. Why was he helping me? If he didn’t want me to fall in love with him…why was he being so nice, so perfect? I pushed my hand through my hair.

“I’m so sorry. I know how you felt about Lucian.”

I looked at him. For someone who says they don’t read minds he clearly knew exactly what I was thinking.

“What?”

“Paul still being out there must be hard for you to take in.”

Oh. “Yeah, I didn’t bargain on that.”

“I’ll find him, Elena, even if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Don’t say that. Lucian said that same thing, and then it happened. If you want to kill him, do it on your own terms, Blake. Not because of me,” I added. I couldn’t lose Blake now that I finally knew he was keeping me from the darkness.

“Okay, my own terms. But I will find him, and he will die. That is a promise.”