keep telling you that it was his gift. Tricking people was his specialty.” I smiled. Who would have thought, Blake turning out to be so curious….about me. “I do know that he had a thing for poems. He kept reciting one over and over. His dragon voice used to scare me at first, but then it sort of calmed me down with the type of poems he recited. Professor Pheizer really thought that it was my dark mark and that whoever my dragon was, our bond would’ve been strong. She was so wrong.”
“A dragon that loves poems, it’s a bit pansy, isn’t it?”
I laughed. “It’s not. I thought it was beautiful. It’s how he tricked me into trusting him too. Someone that recites old Latin love poems like that.” I shook my head. “There is no way he could’ve been evil.”
“Evil comes in all forms, Elena. Even portrays itself as light.”
“Yes, it would’ve been nice if someone had taught me that before the whole Wyvern thing.”
It was quiet for a moment as I saw Blake staring at the ground, playing with a twig. “What did Lucian say about all of this?”
“He thought it was funny at first, but when he saw that it freaked me out, he got worried. He suggested I speak to Professor Pheizer about it. She, on the other hand, told me to embrace it.” I sighed.
“Did you ever tell him about the poem thing?” he asked, sounding a bit skeptical.
“Yeah,” I replied.
I could feel his eyes on me and I looked at him.
“And?” he wanted to know.
“And what? He didn’t know who it belonged to, but he got really quiet and worried for a long time.”
His face muscles pulled down.
“Are you sure this is just curiosity? Are you hearing a voice, Blake?”
He laughed. “No, I’m not as crazy as you.”
I looked the other way and shook my head lightly.
“It was a joke, Elena.”
“Funny sense of humor.”
He chuckled again and looked at his watch.
“Tabitha’s waiting for you?” I asked with a slight tease in my tone.
He smiled again. “No. She hates every moment of me being here with you.”
My stomach turned slightly as he said the words “here with you”. I knew it wasn’t what he meant, but I’d grown quite fond of our training sessions. “Tell her she’s got nothing to worry about.”
He laughed. “I do, every day, but for some reason she doesn’t believe me.”
“Not my problem, Blake.”
“Ouch! You always this harsh?”
I laughed. “Change of topic. I thought two Rubicons couldn’t co-exist with one another.”
“I said I was going to try, Elena.”
My eyes rose and I gulped. “You want to kill me?”
His body started to shake as he buried his face in his hands. When sound came from him I realized it was laughter. He lifted up his head from his hands. “I’m joking.”
“Haha,” I said and threw a piece of rock at him which he dodged.
“No,” he shook his head. “I don’t want to kill you. I guess the old farts came to a conclusion about what two Rubicons in this world would do, before knowing two were born at the same time. Why do you ask? Do you want to kill me?”
“Urges come and go, but they’ve got nothing to do with being a Rubicon.”
A grin formed on his face. I never recalled Blake ever smiling this much before.
“Lucian really told you about the date?”
He nodded and sighed. “I should’ve gone with him.”
Both of us fell quiet and I thought about what the outcome would have been if Blake had gone too. Lucian might still be alive, or even have come back earlier. Those villagers wouldn’t have been able to keep Blake hostage, or ask him to do all sorts of crazy things for them.
“Did he appear to you too?”
He thought about it for a while. “Appear, how?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Elena, what we say here, stays here. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Lucian found a way to be in two places at once. It was like the Cammy, but he didn’t need the Cammy, if that makes any sense.”
“It’s connected to the Cammy?”
“No!” I sounded as irritated as I felt. “I saw him, and touched him but he was pale and cold. It wasn’t really him. He told me that it was a trick he’d mastered and that it’d grown stronger while he was on his mission.”
Blake just kept staring at me.
“I’m not making it up, I’m serious.”
“Then why didn’t he warn us about Paul?”
“He tried, but the connection wasn’t very strong. I thought he was