Dragon Master Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’d stopped breathing. I forced myself to breathe out, and then breathe in. I inhaled the intoxicating scent of vanilla blossoms. Kamelia dragged two cushions over to me and set them side by side, then lowered herself into one of them. Her eyes were large and round as she looked up at me, expectantly.
    “I—” I started, my voice sounding broken and so squeaky. I coughed and tried again, “I think I will be okay to stand here.” I had such a way with words.
    She laughed, a genuine, carefree laugh, and I started to laugh too, nervously at first, and then for real. She stopped, and I forced myself to stop laughing as well.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Caedan, miss. Caedan Jade.”
    “Now that’s a name for Stone Soul,” she said. I still couldn’t get over the fact that she was talking. To me.
    “Do you have brothers or sisters?”
    “No, miss,” I said. I was really getting into this talking thing. Words were just spilling out now.
    “So you’re the only hope for your family, then? The Stone Soul boy hoping to become a Dragon Master man.”
    Ouch. I winced, even though there was no malice in her voice. Or maybe because there was nothing like malice there. That was how she saw me then? In a few months I’d be on a dragon quest, sent to the front lines to confront the dragon menace. I was expected to lay down my life in defense of the Realm. And yet she still saw me as just a boy? Well why did she keep coming over to watch us train if we were just a bunch of boys to her?
    I guess she noticed that I was growing angry.
    “You’re the Stone Soul who won his battle with the Tournament combatant.”
    She didn’t ask, she knew. She had been watching after all! Yet she still called me a boy.
    “Some of my chamber maids saw the whole thing, talked about it for an hour,” she explained, studying my face.
    I looked back at my boots. “It was nothing.” Yeah, right. “I got lucky, I guess.”
    “Well,” she said, “you get lucky when you face your first dragon, okay?”
    She raised a long thin arm and held out her hand for me to help her to her feet. I hesitated for a moment, then took her hand and and pulled her to her feet, maybe a little too roughly. Her skin was soft and warm. I tried to look away from her, but caught her giving me one more smile as she walked away toward her bed.
    I melted, my anger forgotten.
    ***
    I slept like a stone the night of the Watch. My shift hadn’t ended until midnight, and the last two hours of the shift had simply involved watching Kamelia sleep. I caught myself almost drifting off to sleep twice, but memories of Commander Hawk’s “most dire” warning snapped me awake each time. I’d rushed back to my bunk after the Watch ended and found Boe already fast asleep.
    And then Boe was rousing me awake. I’d expected that thoughts of Kamelia would have kept up all night, but I hadn’t even dreamt of Kamelia, at least not that I remembered. I couldn’t remember having any dreams at all.
    “It’s the Stoneflame!” Boe was saying, “C’mon get ready already!” Sure, and how many hours ago did Boe get to sleep? Still, I noticed from the angle of the light streaming through the only window in the bunk that it was already late in the morning. That explained Boe’s panic: the Stoneflame couldn’t be more than an hour away.
    The Watch would be stationed outside Kamelia’s doors for the rest of the day, rather than inside. I tried not to think about Master Walker who would be the one inside with Kamelia.
    We met Boe’s family at the training grounds, and they quickly waved us over to our seats. There was a new girl sitting with Daija on the end of the bench, and she was talking in a hushed whisper. She kept glancing up at Boe and me as we took our seats, but she suddenly got very still and quiet when the bench started to magically rise. I was used to it by this point, but I watched as the girl made an obvious effort not to get sick. Boe reached over and put a hand over