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

ears.
    “—she has been protected from those who would ill use her, as sworn by my lady wife to the dragon who bore her here.”
    “Me?” I said, touching my throat when my voice came out no more than a feeble squeak. “I’m a dragon?”
    “That is none of my concern,” the warrior said now, his voice thick with menace. “She is a dragon, and evidently of age. She belongs with her own kind, not with humans.”
    My own kind? Scaly, long-tailed, fire-breathing monsters? A sob of denial caught in my throat, the noise almost inaudible, and yet as I stood there reeling from the verbal blows my father—the man I thought of as my father—dealt me, the warrior spun around, the gaze of his black eyes so piercing, I could swear he could see straight through the wood of the stable.
    Run , my mind told me as the man started forward toward the stable doors, and I knew at that moment that he was one of them. He was a monster the like of which I’d never seen. My brain didn’t wait for me to absorb that knowledge. Flee , it urged. Flee!
    I didn’t stop to question the wisdom of that command. I spun on my heels, racing down the narrow aisle of the stable to the far corner, where a small window had been cut in order to pass hay through from the fields. I wasn’t fast enough, however, not if the roar of fury that followed me was anything to go by.
    “Stop!” the warrior bellowed as I leaped through the window, not even pausing as I hit the ground hard before I was off again, racing around the pens holding the animals to be slaughtered, dashing between the small huts housing craftsmen and their families, dodging chickens, dogs, and occasionally serfs as I raced for the postern gate along the west curtain.
    “Lady Ysolde,” John, the man on guard at the gate, called in surprise as I rounded a cart loaded with wool destined for the market, not even slowing down as I flung myself past him and through the postern gate. “Are you off to the village—hey, now! Who are you, and what right do you have to be chasing Lady Ysol—oof!”
    I didn’t stop to see how John fared, although I sent up a small prayer that he hadn’t been hurt by the warrior. I ran along the rocky outcropping that led down into the village, the moat not coming around to this face of the castle since it would be impossible for anyone to scale the cliffs that hugged the west and south sides. Behind me I heard the noise of pursuit, but I had always been fast on my feet, and I dug deep for speed as I leaped down the last of the rocks and headed for the trees beyond the village. They marked the edge of the thick forest where I had spent many an hour, wandering pathways known to only a few. If I could just make it there, then I could hide from the warrior . . . and then what?
    I didn’t stop to answer that question. I just knew that I needed to be by myself, to absorb the strangeness that had suddenly gripped me. And I couldn’t do that with the intense, black-haired dragon storming around me.
    He was still behind me as I skirted a newly plowed field, ignoring the calls of greeting from the serfs as I raced by, intent on my goal, greeting the dappled shade of the outer fringes of the forest with relief. I’d made it, no doubt due to the extra weight the warrior wore in the form of his armor. I risked a quick look behind me as I sped around an ancient birch tree. The warrior was about thirty feet behind me, but just beyond him, his guards approached on horseback, leading his horse.
    “By the rood!” I swore to myself as I leaped over a downed tree trunk, heading for the densest part of the forest.
    The sounds of pursuit were muted in the calm of the forest. Birdsong rose high above me as the swallows dipped and spun in the sunlight, making elegant arcs in the air. Patches of sunlight shone here, and I slowed down, trying to control my breathing, picking through the muffled noises of the animals of the forest as they went about their business. Somewhere near, a