Dragon Flight Read Online Free PDF Page A

horse.
    “Now tell me how the man was mean?” Zorin asked her.
    Isabelle bristled. “He was too forceful. I didn’t like him.”
    “He called me stupid,” Caden popped up helpfully as he brushed the dirt from the horse’s flank with a soft brush.
    Zorin’s eyes darkened. Beside him the horse seemed to notice his shift in mood and danced lightly. A soothing word from Caden though had the large animal calm again. “Did he now? Well, we will have to see about that. I assume that you threatened him sufficiently?” Zorin asked her.
    “I told him he wouldn’t be welcome back in the palace with that attitude,” she told him with a nod.
    Zorin smiled at her. “You’re too soft. I’d have threatened him with his spine shoved down his throat.”
    Isabelle gasped at him. “Caden’s a child! You can’t talk like that around a child,” she chided him.
    Zorin rolled his eyes at her and turned back to the horse.
    “Where are your wings?” Isabelle asked him, curious.
    “He hides them,” Caden told her. “Queen Amalthea says that he’s ashamed of them.”
    Zorin growled. “My mother talks too much.”
    Isabelle approached him quietly until she was able to brush her fingertips against his lower back. She felt him freeze under her, but she persisted anyway, sliding her fingers over the fine cloth of his tunic up his back to the hard planes of his shoulders. Her fingers brushed against the soft down of his feathers, but she still couldn’t see them.
    “You really do hide them,” she whispered.
    He nodded. “But not because I’m ashamed.” His voice was just as soft, just as cautious.
    She pressed her body against his, wrapping an arm loosely around his waist just above his hips. “Then why?”
    “I don’t stay in Feeorin all the time. I like to be out in the world. But out there my wings mark me as different. I still stand out of course, the tales of my deeds have reached even the poorest towns and they have always been very graphic and quite specific about what I look like, but I’m not stared at. About two centuries ago I got tired of the women openly weeping and the men bowing before me. Good men and women. They thought they were worshiping an angel, something to be revered and cherished. I didn’t deserve any of it. I’m a murderer with far too much power for my own good and I should never be cherished like that.”
    Isabelle blinked back the tears that touched her eyes and placed her lips between his shoulders in a gentle kiss. “You’re wrong,” she murmured to him.
    “Or perhaps you’ve been deceived by yet another man,” he told her, covering her small hand with his own, warming it.
    “Not this time,” she told him before remembering that Caden was still in the small barn and probably watching them. She stepped away from him, letting her hand drop from his waist.
    “Get the gelding saddled,” he told Caden, stepping away from her.
    She was effectively dismissed.
    Caden eyed them both curiously, but quickly did as he was told, grabbing a fine leather halter and slipping it over the gelding’s head before leading him from the stall and tying him up near Zorin’s stallion. The gelding was old and gentle, the perfect horse for someone with Caden’s limited experience and while Zorin continued having to reassure his prancing horse, the gelding merely stood relaxed with his head drooping to his knees as he munched on the pile of hay at his feet.
    Isabelle sat down in a nearby bench to watch them, Zorin’s fluid movements being mimicked by Caden’s gentle but inexperienced fumblings. The gelding didn’t seem to mind, he was as patient with her brother as Zorin was and the quiet encouragement the man gave him brought a soft smile to her lips as Isabelle relaxed into the hard wood of the bench below her.
    “Feeling better, Izzy?” Caden asked her as he finished tightening the soft leather saddle on his horse. He gave the horse a gentle pat on his neck and picked up the matching