Read Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons for Free Online Page A

beds, and before I knew it, I was on my knees, my eyes shut as I sank my hands into the sun-warmed earth.
    “I’ll leave you here. It will be four hours before Gabriel will reach your son,” she said, watching with amusement as I flexed my fingers in the soil, plucking out the weeds that choked a chrysanthemum.
    “I know. The garden is as good a place as any to wait,” I said, looking about to see how bad it was. There were only three beds. One appeared to have suffered some calamity, since the wild lilac bush in it was crumpled to the ground, and wild grass filled the rest of the bed. The second contained miniature rhododendrons run amok, tangled up with irises and what looked to be phlox. The bed I knelt before contained autumn plants, all of which were threatened by the rampant weeds and wild grass.
    Kaawa left, and I spent a pleasant hour clearing out the chrysanthemum, amaryllis, and saffron sprouts, worrying all the while about what had become of my life.

Chapter Three
    “W here is she?”
    The roar reached me, even hidden from view as I was in the farthest corner of the stable, behind the broken wagon that Dew, the smith, was supposed to have mended months ago.
    The doors to the stable slammed shut with a force that I felt in the timbers behind my back. The horses inside with me protested with startled snorts and whinnies. Hastily, I set down the two kittens I had been nuzzling for comfort, returning them to their anxious mother before dusting off my knees and picking my way through the gloom of the stable. The man’s voice was deep, and he spoke in French, not the English of the serfs, but there was an accent to his voice that I had never heard.
    “Where are you hiding her?”
    Anger was rich in that voice, anger and something else, something I couldn’t define. I patted Abelard, my mother’s gelding, and slipped beside him to peek out through a rotten bit of wood next to his manger, watching as the warrior-mage stomped across the bailey, my father and mother trailing behind him.
    “We are not hiding anyone, my lord,” Papa said, his tone apologetic.
    My mouth dropped open in surprise. Papa never apologized to anyone! He was a famous mage, one of so much renown that other mages travelled for months just to consult with him. And yet here he was, following the warrior around, bleating like a sheep that had lost its dam.
    “Kostya saw her,” the warrior snarled, spinning around to glare at Papa, the tall guards moving in a semicircle behind him. “Do you call us liars?”
    “No, my lord, never that!” Papa wrung his hands, my mother next him looking pale and frightened. “If you will just come back inside the hall, I will explain to you—”
    “Explain what? That you are holding a dragon prisoner, a female dragon of tender years?”
    “She is not a prisoner—” Papa started to say, but I stopped listening for a moment. A dragon? Here? I had heard tales of such beings, but had never seen one. Margaret told me they did not really exist, that it was just a bit of foolishness spoken by men who had too much wine, but once I had overheard my mother talking to her maid about a female dragon she had befriended in her youth. Perhaps Mama had hidden her here all these years. Who could it be? Leah, the nurse who tended both Margaret and me? One of my mother’s serving women? The flatulent Lady Susan?
    “I just wager you it’s her,” I told Abelard. “She is very dragonlike.”
    “Bring her forth!” the warrior demanded, and I pushed Abelard’s head aside in order to get a better view of the bailey, watching with bated breath to see the dragon.
    “My lord, there are circumstances that you are not aware of. Ysolde has no knowledge of her ancestry. We have sheltered her as best we could, indeed, raised her as our own daughter—”
    My skin crawled. My blood curdled. My brain exploded inside my head. I stared at Papa, my papa, the papa I had known for my entire life, unable to believe my