Frostbite (The Dragonian, #3) - Adrienne Woods Page 0,112
don’t have to explain yourself to me, or prove who you are. I saw it the first time I laid eyes on you inside that museum. You are their child, anyone that can’t see that, is a fool.”
“King Caleb can’t.”
“You’re wrong. It’s why he’s fighting against it. I’ve got a funny feeling that he is afraid. Scared that he would lose everything. He’s changed for the worst, Elena. Wars sometimes leave scars, and the last one left a huge one that never healed. He is going to find a way to strip you of your birthright, but I promise you, Margerite and I will stay by your side, no matter what they say.”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “Thank you. I know that must be really hard for you to say after what I’ve done.”
“What?” he frowned.
“If Lucian didn’t love me, he would’ve never come back for me that day and he would still be alive.”
“Elena,” he sighed. “Lucian died the way he wanted to. He died saving the woman he loved, and protecting the princess of Paegeia. The thing that hurts the most is that he never realized that he’d fulfilled both of his dreams before it was too late.”
I shook my head and bit the lower part of my lip. “He knew. Tanya told me that he guessed it on his first try. He just blurted out my name and she was free to tell him. It was why he came back.”
Silence lingered around us as we just stared at one another.
“Thank you for sharing that with me.” He smiled softly but the sadness in his eyes didn’t make it a genuine smile. “He died for what he believed in. I will always miss him, both of them. But they gave me so much joy and made me so proud of them in their short lives. It will keep me human for the rest of mine.” He got up and kissed me softly on my head, just like my dad, I mean Herbert, used to do when I was smaller. “Sleep tight, princess. You’re going to need it.”
I closed my eyes and I heard his footsteps exiting the infirmary.
OR THE NEXT few days the academy was a mad house. A bunch of people came to visit me in the infirmary, people I’d never even met before. They all knew my father, the king, very well, blah, blah, blah, and for some reason they thought that I could carry on with his legacy.
The papers were overloaded with pictures of me claiming Blake and stating that I was the descendent of Queen Catherine and King Albert, but there were also those who didn’t believe it, who protested like mad, especially over the radio.
“Where does she come from? The king and queen would’ve told us if there was a princess. If you ask me, Leonard, she is just …”
Constance switched off the radio. “Stupid woman, what does she know?” Constance muttered in the office. It was weird how my super hearing had left the minute Cara died and how it had come back, ten times more enhanced when I’d woken up.
She never played the radio in the infirmary, but I could hear it every morning when the hosts talked about the claiming and about me, and who I was.
A knock on the door brought me back from the nightmare of thoughts I was facing.
Becky and Sammy’s figures leaned against the doorway.
“Where is Constance?” Becky asked.
“You may enter,” she said from her office and the girls smiled.
“Hi Doc,” George entered right behind them.
She didn’t reply as I heard her answering her Cammy.
Becky plopped another heap of various newspapers and two magazines on the end of my bed. My lip scrunched up.
“Do we have to?”
“You need to prepare yourself for it, Elena,” Becky said as she sat down with one of the newspapers in her hand.
“Oh, this is actually a good one. This paper goes in the like pile. They actually believe it and they were so kind as to explain your foretelling, that you had to claim Blake so that all could know who you were.”
“Still, there are those who say I only managed it because I’m a Rubicon dragon myself.”
“Like this one.” Becky chucked the magazine against the infirmary’s wall, which made Sammy and I laugh.
So here I was, not knowing how on earth I was going to make these people see that I was who I said I was.
There was no DNA available from the king and queen this side