Frostbite (The Dragonian, #3) - Adrienne Woods Page 0,85

her because she didn’t make any sense. Then it hit me, as if it was a hand that had slapped me across the face. She was referring to me. I started to laugh. “What? If you haven’t noticed, I’m a dragon. And one that resembles him.”

She looked up at me sternly. “I told you before, you’re not a dragon, Elena.”

“Then what am I! Cause I know you saw that dragon a couple of minutes ago too.”

“It’s not what it looks like. She was never supposed to wake up. You have to get rid of her.” She got up and leaned on the kitchen table with her back facing me.

She? “What do you know about her?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, what matters now is you, you have to get rid of her, Elena.”

“How do you suppose I do that, I can’t kill her! I’ll die too.”

She turned back around. “No, you won’t. But I promise you if you ascend and she is still inside of you, you will die.”

“Then so be it because I’m not getting rid of Cara. She’s the only being that truly understands me.”

Tanya gasped. “Cara.” Tears glistened in her eyes.

“You do know her?”

She didn’t nod but the expression on her face and the tears glistening in her eyes told me she knew who Cara was. I had a horrible feeling that the story behind her and me wasn’t a good one. “What did you do, Mom?”

She was silent for a few seconds.

“My sister was so happy the day Irene told Robert that his son’s Dragonian would be coming from their bloodline. It’s the only thing she ever wanted, Elena.”

“Your sister…” I thought hard. “You mean the queen.”

Tanya nodded.

“That never happened. She died before she could?”

“That’s not entirely true. She had a child. But nobody could know about the baby. We still didn’t know who was going to betray them and therefore everyone was a suspect, except me. I shared a dent with Katie, I would never have betrayed her like that,” she said and wiped away another tear as she spoke about the rider she’d left alone to die.

“Before her belly grew too big, we told the council that we were going on a quest in order to enhance Katie’s hearing ability. They had no clue it was a lie because dents don’t have to go on quests to enhance anything.” She sighed and bit hard on her lower lip. “We couldn’t tell Robert about it either because we didn’t know who was going to betray them. Jako found out when the baby was born and he promised to keep our secret. We were going to let another woman claim the child as hers and she would be sent for to come and live in the palace, that way the baby could always be close to them and when the danger was over, the truth would be revealed. That was the plan, but the circumstances we found ourselves in after the child’s birth made it impossible. Two weeks later we found out that the little one was sick. An infant that small will die if a Swallow Annex tries to heal it, so I had to watch my sister say her goodbyes to the one thing she wanted the most in the world.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t.” A tear rolled over her face and dropped from her chin. She didn’t even wipe it away. “Irene gave me a foretelling when Cara’s egg hatched, she said one wouldn’t make it, but two might. I never knew what that meant until that very moment. I knew what had to be done and I sacrificed Cara to keep my sister’s baby alive. I gave both children the Calupso potion. One that would draw the essence of the sick child into the strong one. Cara didn’t have her human body yet, and if it worked, she would turn into their child, meaning that their blood would flow through her veins and the stronger one would die.”

I remembered what she’d said earlier. That I could claim Blake. She’d sacrificed Cara to save the queen’s baby. The air was sucked out of my lungs. What the hell was she saying?

“What?” I whispered.

“You’re that baby, Elena. Your mother loved you so much.” She looked away and I took another deep breath.

“No,” I jumped up. “Dad would’ve told me.”

“He tried.” Her tone turned harder as she tried to reason with me. She got up too and just watched me as I paced up and