Series: Charmaine Pauls
Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Turning away from the curious and openly petrified stares, Elsie walks to the exit as stiffly as a wooden plank. The spiked dragons follow in a long queue behind her. Now that her power has been unleashed, it appears impossible to rein in.
Whispers break out among the servants. There’s no point in admonishing them. The rumors will spread. They can’t be contained.
Kian stares after Elsie as she crosses the threshold. We exchange a look before I go after her.
Spiked dragons pour from every crevice of the palace, the little scavengers forming a dark river down the hallway as they’re drawn to my mate. Pixie dragons burst through the archways and dive through the air. There are so many of them that their flapping wings stir a breeze inside the walls. One nearly gets tangled in my hair.
“Elsie.” I grip her shoulders and make her face me. “Let it go. That’s enough.”
She blinks once, twice, and sags beneath my palms. The animals linger, but their hordes don’t descend on us any longer.
The royals have peeled out of rooms and courtyards to gawk at the spectacle with a mixture of shocked awe and fright. Their urgent whispers are full of concern and more than a hint of terror.
When I take Elsie’s hand and quickly lead her to my quarters, away from the fearful scrutiny, the winged and four-legged pets follow.
I leave the creatures outside and seal us in my room.
For a moment, we simply stand there facing each other. Words are redundant. She needs time to come to terms with her discovery.
Dragons, so do I.
“Elsie.” I will her to look at me, to let me soothe the unease that has crawled into the hollowness that has settled in her chest. “You’ll learn to control it, my sweet.”
It’s a futile attempt at easing her disappointment.
She slides a look of contempt my way. She knows what I feel. My elation and pride at the strength of my mate’s power must be like a blade of betrayal through her stomach.
Her words are bitter. “Everything you told me is true. I’m not Elsie Barnikoff, am I?”
I soften my tone to make up for the blow I’m about to deal. “You are Elsie. But you were Laliss first.”
Just saying it brings back the old, incurable pain of losing her. I learned to live with it. It became a part of my very essence. But now my joy is my mate’s pain. She’ll grow used to it, like I did. In time, she’ll embrace it, and then it will be our shared joy in the way it’s meant to be for mates.
She lifts a wary, absent gaze to me. “I can feel it—the power.”
I nod my understanding, helplessness engulfing me for my inability to take away her suffering. “It’ll get better.”
Her eyes turn hard, the blue-green glittering like brilliant river stones. “Who did this to me, Aruan? Who destroyed my life?”
“It’s not destroyed,” I say, taking her hand, although I understand why she’d feel that way.
“Who?” she asks, watching me with that steadfast, unforgiving gaze.
“My mother,” I admit with no small amount of anger. “And it’s time to find out why.”
Chapter 16
Elsie
“Everything is a lie.”
My voice sounds strange to my own ears, as if it belongs to a different person, which it does. Because I’m not Elsie. I’ve never been. I’m someone else, and I have no idea who that woman is, except that she’s a stranger. An alien from a different world.
And that scares the living daylights out of me.
Already, I feel her, this stranger, creeping into my mind with her weird notion of power and slowly taking over my body. Even that’s not my own anymore. The scars and weakness that have defined me for so long have made space for this being, this female with a strong, healthy body. She’s molding it to her needs, growing stronger inside me by the minute.
I slam my hands over my ears, not to block out sound but to keep the madness at bay.
I’m going fucking crazy.
Aruan reaches for me. “Elsie.”
I step away from him.
A big, fat lie.
My existence is nothing but a farce.
Do I know what’s real? It sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.
Actually, it does. Even now, the power is vibrating beneath the surface of my skin like a parasite that’s invaded the body of a host.
“Elsie,” he says again, this time sterner.
Shaking my head, I bite out, “I’m not Elsie.” And I’m so fucking angry about that.
“Do you prefer that I call you Laliss?” he asks in a gentler tone.
No, I definitely don’t want him to call me that.
He doesn’t lower his arm. He holds out his hand, offering it to me like an olive branch. “It’ll get better.”
That same empty promise again.
It won’t.
I can never get back the life that was stolen from me here or the life I had on Earth. I’ll never know my biological parents. Neither will I see my adoptive parents again, not if it depends on Aruan. My life here was finished before it began, and it looks as if my life as Elsie Barnikoff is dead for good.