look on his face and his mouth was shouting orders I couldn’t hear because of the protection.
Arianna’s dad was next to him, having a fit of his own which was clearly being ignored this time. Sir Robert was just sitting in one spot, staring at me with a knowing look written all over his face. So he’d had his concerns about me. Tanya said I looked like my father and now that I thought back, he’d been staring at me from the first moment I saw him inside their kitchen. I had just been stupid and misinterpreted it. He’d known all along, just like his son.
Screw it, screw all of them.
A pink flame passed me and brought me back to reality. A second missed me by inches.
I’m not going to ascend. Herbert Watkins was my father and I’m the offspring of a dragon. I’m no child of a king and I’ll never be a princess.
Come what may, the people of Etan will stay in Etan.
The funny part was that I was actually enjoying Blake’s little game. My heart wasn’t even pounding and all the fear that I’d tried to mimic was just that, fake.
I waited for the sucker’s flame to stop and the second it did, I rolled from behind my rock and into another one of Blake’s flames.
It was over. I was dead. I didn’t even feel it touching my body, that was how hot and fast it was. I knew then that what Tanya had told me was a lie. She was a Green Vapor and they were known for their lies. I wasn’t the princess of Paegeia. I didn’t carry any special blood and Blake wasn’t my dragon.
When his flame finally stopped, they would find nothing, not even my ashes and then Cheng would really be sorry that he’d ever tried to push me into this.
Everything was silent and I opened my eyes to see where I was.
I didn’t understand.
The pink, orange and red flames belonging to the Rubicon were still around me. They engulfed me, but for some reason didn’t burn as much as I thought they would.
The skin on my arms and legs showed a different picture.
A horrible one with a mush of burned muscle and the white of my bones that were starting to turn black. My clothes were burned into my skin and still I didn’t feel the pain.
My anger vanished like it’d never happened and my heart pounded like ten birds trapped in a cage made for one. I didn’t want to die, not like this.
I watched my flesh pulling in all sorts of directions. The coils reduced until they were no more and the red and mush vanished as my skin pulled back over my body. My hoody even returned, but just enough to cover my boobs, and my jeans were reduced to really short pants.
My boots, for some reason were the only things that weren’t scorched at all. It was as if someone pressed a rewind button and everything just went back in time, except for Blake’s flame.
I only realized then that something else was horribly wrong. His flame didn’t move. It wasn’t alive, but frozen in time.
I pushed myself up from the floor and came face to face with his ugly mutt. His eyes were red, scarlet as if he was some sort of a demon and his entire body resembled his flame, frozen in one spot. I walked out of Blake’s flame and found myself in a still picture. The people in the crowd all had fear and shock frozen on their faces. Constance and Julia were standing by the gate with Cheng and Arianna. All of the men that were supposed to get me out of this crazy plan devised by a Crown-Tail, were frozen.
The look on Constance’s face jolted another emotion through my body. She was scared, petrified as she knew what the Pink Kiss meant and that I wouldn’t recover from it this time.
Master Longwei and King Caleb’s faces both faced the flame where I had been a minute ago. Not one single person moved. My head cocked slightly to the side as I stared at King Caleb’s face. He wore a funny expression. A part of it showed anger, frustration about something, and another part was shocked. A giggle escaped my lips. I’d only then caught a glimpse of Lucian’s mom and dad.
King Helmut resembled a bit of his old self, not the shell with no soul working day and night trying to find