The Half-Blood Princess by Mihaela Bogdan (best books to read for self improvement TXT) 📖

  -Mother, I have brought you some water. I said to my mother whom was laying sick in her bed.
  -I am not thirsty, Valentina. Mother said with a whispered voice.
  Since last week, mother hasn’t got out off her bed. Her body was all sweaty and trembling from the fever. I tried my best to take care of her but I am only twelve years old.
  Me and mother have been living in a small wooden village in Transylvania since I can remember. We were the poorest family, therefore we didn’t have enough money to go to a doctor. Our home was a four wall wooden cabin with one bed, a table and two chairs, a fire place and an old wardrobe with our clothes (more rags than clothes). But we weren’t this poor when I came into this world.
  Mother told me many times about her life when she met father. They were happy together and lived in peace and harmony in a huge castle, surrounded by wealth. After I appeared in the picture things chanced. My mother had to take me away from that castle. Although I asked her many times about the reason of our departure from our luxurious home, she said to be patient, for I may found out the answer from my father, that is if I would ever get to meet him.
  Now, my only concern is to take care of mother. Before coming back with water from the river that was streaming in the back of our cabin, I asked our neighbors how to take care of my mother’s fever. They told me that they will announce the doctor because I couldn’t take care of mother all by myself.
  Our close neighbors were also my mother’s masters. They committed her as their maid and offered her this cabin to live in it with me. They were the only people in this village eager enough to give me and mother jobs and protection.
  The doctor finally came. He examined mother for long minutes quietly. After he finished, he took me outside the cabin and asked me quietly so mother couldn’t hear us talking.
  -Do you have any relatives, little girl? His eyes were looking at me full of pity.
  -I have a father, but I haven’t met him yet. I answered looking concerned into the doctor’s eyes. And I had a good reason to worry, for he told me a bad news after words.
  -How old are you?
  -Twelve. Why are you asking questions about me, doctor?! My mother is the sick one, not me. I was getting irritated from all his questions, as if I was his patient, not mother.
  -I have bad news regarding your mother’s illness. I am afraid she has only few days to live.
  After hearing this, I ran into the cabin and jump into bed near mother. With my head buried in her warm chest, I began to cry very loud. I didn’t had to tell mother about the doctor’s diagnosis. She knew that she was going to die since she got sick.
  -Valentina, promise me something. Mother tried to say with her last strength.
  -Yes mother, anything for you. I pricked my ears to hear her maybe last words.
  -We both know I may not live much longer, despite my age. I may be thirty two years old and you are still a child, but death doesn’t forgive anyone. So promise me that after I will be gone, you will leave this cabin and this village, and you will try to find your father.
  -Yes, mother. But I don’t know how he looks like.
  -He is not from this world. He looks like us, talks like us but he has a gift that is in the same time a curse!
  Since that moment, mother hasn’t spoke anymore. Three days later, her pain came to an end and she went, I hope, to a better place.
  Our neighbors buried her in the local cemetery. They paid for her funeral ceremony and also gave me some money for my journey. I told them about my last conversation with mother and they agreed to help me. I don’t know if they did this to help me or to gladly get rid of an unwanted orphan, but I accepted the money anyway.
  When the funeral ceremony was over, everybody left me alone near mother’s grave.
  -Mother, I will find father and try to live happily ever after. I promise you! I said with tears in my eyes, as I was reading mother’s grave stone: R.I.P. Maria, mother of a child.
  With no reason to stay in that village, I did as mother told me. I left right after the sun set, with the money from my neighbors and dressed in an old purple dress of mother’s. It was big for me, but it was warm enough.

*
  For years I have traveled and it seems that father is nowhere to be found. And mother’s description of him was also useless: ”He is not from this world. He looks like us, talks like us but he has a gift that is in the same time a curse!”.
  These words were the last that mother spoken before she went to God. I was twelve years old back then and for eight years I searched for my unknown father in whole Transylvania. I’m sure he’s still living in Transylvania because in my journey I also took mother’s diary. She wrote some pages about her first love when she was my age.
*
  ”FIRST PAGE OF DIARY: Today is my birthday. I am twenty years old now and it is time for me to get married, according to our family tradition. I wonder who my chosen one will be?! It will be the son of the priest or the backer’s?
  I have been asking myself these questions all morning, until I decide to catch a white rabbit for good luck. Unfortunately, after few hours of search I got lost in the forest. But God helped me found a little cave to spend the night in.
  SECOND PAGE OF DIARY: When I waked, I found myself in a large room with two small balconies in sides. In front of my sight was a black wooden door. Then I looked at the bed I slept in; it was a double black wooden bed with white sheets and a bloody red cover. After I got off the bed some footsteps were approaching the door. When the door opened, a tall handsome man entered the room.
  THIRD PAGE OF DIARY: Me and Vladimir spent all day talking about our lives. Despite his strange pale skin, sharp fangs and reddish eyes he made me fall in love with him so badly that I decide to spend the rest of my life with him in his castle. A year later I gave birth to a beautiful girl. We named her Valentina because it was Saint Valentine’s Day. Although she had dark hair and pale skin like her father, her eyes were hazel like mine. I hope the hair and skin are the only things inherited from her father.”

And mother’s diary ended there. The problem was that there were many men named Vladimir, with dark hair, but none had pale skin nor reddish eyes. It is said that there aren’t people with reddish eyes, at least not in Transylvania. But I’m not giving up; I’m a persistent young woman and nobody is going to stop me find my father.
  City after city, village after village. In these eight years I think I’ve searched every place inhabited by people and still no clue. The idea of searching beyond Transylvania’s borders crossed my mind countless times. In the end I had to drop this thought, because I might get even more lost.
  The reddish eyes were my key clue in finding him, but the only creatures with such eyes were the bats. Normal people have blue, green, black, grey or hazel eyes. My mind was starting to tell me that my father might be some sort of devilish creature. If this theory was true, then why mother became his wife when she was a very religious person.
  She was faithful towards God, Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit as any Christian; and so was I. Sundays we always go to church to listen the priest’s divine voice as he was singing about God’s empire and his lessons. Speaking of ...
  Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day, my birthday. It’s been twenty years since I was born in father’s castle. But since I can remember, me and mother lived in a log cabin outside of a small village. Why mother moved there with me? Didn’t she say she wanted to live her life in father’s castle? What happened between them? Why didn’t father come to visit us all these years? I had so many questions for father, reason why I began looking for him. If he didn’t want to find me, I truly wanted to find him. But Transylvania is huge and I am little, despite my age and power.
  As I was walking through a creepy forest, with mother’s old purple dress on me, tired and hungry in the same time, I saw a shadow flying above me. I couldn’t see what or who it was because it was night time already. I tried to ignore it, thinking that it was just in my imagination. Soon I had the feeling that I was being watched by unseen eyes.
  I ignored this feeling as well, thinking that my mind was starting to play tricks on me because of the tiredness and my empty stomach which was getting louder every minute.
  Suddenly rain drops began to fall and I had to find shelter. Like mother, I found a little cave. It was warm inside. Sitting near a wall of it, I gazed at the almost full moon in the starless night. Tomorrow, on my twentieth birthday, it will be a perfect full moon just like my other birthdays. Not long my eyes were tired and I lay down to get some rest. My long dark hair covered all my back, my purple dress was wet and it pasted on my pale skin. I shut my eyes, took a deep breath and went to sleep.
  I woke up in the same time with the sun rise and I found myself in the room mother described in her dairy. The only difference was that a forty years old man was watching me from the end of the bed. He was wearing black shoes and pants, a white long sleeved shirt with a bloody red vest. On his shoulders he had a long cape, black on the outside and Burgundy