Chapter 186 Lizard Boy?

Chapter 186 Lizard Boy?


Elara’s POV

I slowly lowered the phone from my ear after the call ended and simply stared into the empty space in front of me.
The curse had started. My babies were still three months away from their eighteenth birthday, yet somehow the curse had already awakened.
Nothing about that made sense. The pain. The marks. Everything Arabella had described. None of it should have been happening.
A sharp ache settled in my chest as I thought about my children sitting hundreds of miles away at Kingsveil Academy trying to deal with something they never should have been facing yet. The pain alone was bad enough, but knowing they were going through it without us there made it so much worse.
They were scared. Arabella hadn’t said those exact words, but I knew my daughter. I heard it in her voice. I heard it in every pause she took while trying to sound brave. My little girl was terrified. And honestly? So was I.
I pushed away from my desk and walked out into the palace gardens. The afternoon sun cast long shadows across the pathways as I made my way toward the building Atlas and Cassian had built for me years ago.
A smile found its way onto my face despite everything. My coven house. My sanctuary. My husband’s had built it as a birthday gift. The memory surfaced instantly. The quads had only been five years old at the time. We had been renovating one of the guest wings inside the palace for the coven when Atlas and Cassian walked in and found us working.
A week later an entirely separate building stood in the gardens. Just like that. One week. I still had no idea how they had managed it. Then again, those two rarely accepted the word impossible.
The moment I stepped through the front doors, familiar scents of parchment, herbs, and old books wrapped around me.
“Elara.” Amara’s voice immediately pulled me from my thoughts.
The witch stood near one of the worktables with her hands planted firmly on her hips. “I thought you were taking a few days off.” The finger she pointed at me made me feel about twelve years old.
I sighed. “I was.”
Her eyebrow lifted. The expression clearly said she didn’t believe me.
“But my children called.”
The amusement disappeared from her face. Instantly. 
“The curse.” The words left my mouth quietly. 
Amara’s expression darkened. “What about it?”
I walked straight toward the shelves lining the far wall and started scanning the rows of journals.
“We’ve been searching for a cure nonstop,” she sighed as her shoulders slumped forward slightly. 
She wasn’t wrong. For years we had searched. Every spell. Every ritual. Every prophecy. Every piece of information we could find. Nothing had worked. Nothing.
“There has to be something we’re missing.”
By then Celestia and Ravenna had joined us at the table. Neither woman asked questions. Neither needed to. The moment they saw me pulling journals from the shelves, they already knew what I was looking for. The curse. Again. Always the curse.
I carried a stack of books to the table and dropped them beside the others. The pile was ridiculous. Most of them had come from Ryder’s father’s old compound. The place had been abandoned for years, but about a month ago we’d reached another dead end in our research.
Every trail had gone cold. Every lead had vanished. Then Ryder remembered something. His father had collected journals. Hundreds of them. Many had belonged to witches connected to the Black Flame Coven. Most had remained locked away for decades.
Ryder, Atlas, and Cassian had taken a retrieval team to the compound and returned with more than fifty massive journals.
Since then we’d been reading nonstop. Page after page. Book after book. Searching. Praying. Hoping. Nothing useful had appeared. At least not yet.
Even Ryder and Brianna had been helping search through them. The thought made my stomach tighten. Brianna. Their daughter. Only a year and a half younger than my children. The curse would come for her too. Another innocent life caught in the same nightmare.
I opened another journal and flipped through several pages. Nothing. The next part of the book wasn’t any better. The same information. The same theories. The same dead ends.
I rolled my eyes and turned another page. “This is identical to the last journal.”
“Most of them are.” Celestia sounded just as annoyed as I felt.
Suddenly a chair scraped loudly against the floor. All of us looked up. Amara was standing. Her eyes were huge. “Here.” She pointed toward a page.
Nobody moved. Our eyes were fixed solely on her. 
Amara pointed again. “Here.” The excitement in her voice immediately got my attention.
I stood and moved around the table. “What did you find?”
Her finger remained pressed against a paragraph halfway down the page. “This sounds familiar.”
Ravenna leaned closer. “So does half the stuff in these books.”
“No.” Amara shook her head. “This one.” She tapped the page again. “Remember years ago when I told all of you I found something strange?”
I frowned. I do vaguely remember. At least I think I do. 
Amara looked entirely too pleased with herself. “Well?”
Celestia crossed her arms. “Get on with it.”
Amara straightened dramatically before reading aloud. “The entire curse can be cured and stopped completely through dragon’s blood.”
Silence filled the room. Complete silence. Then Celestia groaned. “Oh for goddess sake.” She dropped her head into her hands. “Amara, you fool. Where exactly do you suggest we find dragon’s blood?”
Ravenna rolled her eyes. I opened my mouth to agree. Then froze. A memory slammed into me. My eyes widened. “No.”
Three heads immediately snapped toward me. My heart started racing. Arabella. My daughter had been complaining. Constantly. Nonstop. For two straight days about one particular student.
“Elara?” Amara frowned.
I looked up slowly. “Arabella was complaining about a boy.”
Celestia blinked. “A boy?”
I nodded my head. “A very arrogant boy.” That much had been made abundantly clear.
“What does that have to do with dragon’s blood?” She huffed. 
My pulse quickened. Because suddenly I remembered the nickname. The ridiculous nickname Arabella kept using. The one she’d repeated at least twenty times.
“Lizard Boy.”
Celestia frowned. Ravenna blinked. Amara tilted her head. “Lizard Boy?”
I nodded my head once again. Excitement and disbelief crashed together inside me. “What if he isn’t a lizard?”
Three pairs of eyes locked onto mine.
I swallowed hard.  Then finally said the words out loud. “What if Mr. Lizard Boy is actually a dragon?”