The Dragon’s Treasure (14 page)

Isabelle nodded to him in thanks and took another step toward the opening, but the dragon continued to keep his tail near her, elevated at her waist. She eyed him warily and took a step away from his tail, but he just moved it closer to her. Another strong gust of wind blew up around them and she braced herself for it, realizing a second later that she didn’t feel a thing. She opened her eyes and stared in wonder as the dragon’s wings spread further, creating a massive canopy over her, shielding her from the wind. She could see his dark blue veins clearly through the transparent skin of his wings. Isabelle looked back at the dragon and again nodded her thanks to him. This time though he nodded back. She quirked an eyebrow at him, thinking he was very odd indeed for not even speaking to her when even Lysander had, but she felt his tail bump against her again, drawing her attention back to it.

The dragon took a step toward her, his wings creating a massive shadow over the warm stone. She took a step away from him, but he took another toward her, pushing her back. Again she stepped away from him and again he moved toward her. Feeling cornered and a bit ridiculous at being pushed around by an animal, Isabelle put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Now see here,” she began, but the dragon only looked at her and took another step toward her, forcing her back.

She was about to argue with him, but he took another step toward her and before she could react, he took another, pushing her backwards with each one. Isabelle opened her mouth, but quickly closed it as she felt the smooth stone wall against her back. She pressed her hand against the wall behind her and felt the familiar wall of the inside of her bedchamber. She turned back to the dragon, wanting to thank him for helping her get back now that she realized what he had been doing, but he was already gone.

“Isabelle?” Faolan called into the darkness. There was a grumbled response from somewhere under the piles of bed covers. “Are you not feeling well again?” The covers moved a little, but she did not come out. He reached over and patted the lump that he assumed to be her shoulder. “Alright,” he said as he began getting dressed. “I’ll send for Kylin. This has been going on for long enough.” There was more grumbling as he rose, but there were no further protests.

A few minutes later a guard had returned with a barely awake Kylin dressed only in a nightgown trailing along behind him. He was about to scold Faolan for waking him so early when he spotted Isabelle, pale as a crisp white sheet, sitting at the edge of the bed.

“Leave us, boy,” Kylin told him offhandedly, not even bothering to look over his shoulder at the prince.

“But I—”

Kylin rounded on him quickly. “You will wait in the hallway. When I am done I will send for you. Now get out.”

Faolan’s eyes narrowed, but a quick look at his sickly wife told him not to argue with the healer. If he was still sore about it when they were done speaking, he could always go tell his father of Kylin’s rudeness.

* * * *

As soon as Faolan was out the door, Kylin turned sympathetic eyes on Isabelle. “My dear, what’s wrong?”

Isabelle kept her eyes on the floor as she whispered a hoarse, “I think we both know what’s wrong, Kylin.”

“Ah yes. How far along do you think you are?”

She shook her head quickly. “Not long, a few weeks maybe. I don’t even think I should be having signs yet. But it hurts so much. My mother, weak as she was, did not seem to be in this much pain when she was with Caden.”

“Your mother was not carrying a half Draconian child,” Kylin gently reminded her.

“Will I…Will I be alright? Mother…She…” Isabelle’s voice trailed off as her eyes brimmed with fresh tears.

She would not voice her fear of dying in childbirth as her mother had. Isabelle barely remembered that day, but she did recall her mother’s ashen face and the sound of her breathy voice as she asked if her son had survived. Caden had let out a shrill cry as a midwife had cleaned him. Isabelle had glanced away to look at her newborn brother. When she had turned back, her mother had been dead.

* * * *

Kylin took a seat in the chair next to her and placed his hand on her trembling shoulder. He had heard briefly of her mother’s passing years ago. Although he had never met the woman, he felt obligated to give the girl some hope. “You are so much stronger, so much braver, than your mother ever was, Isabelle. She could not have done what you have, not by far. You will have to be careful at first of course, but I believe that you will be fine.”

“But this pain—”

“Will subside, in time, as all pains of this nature do.”

She nodded. “Isn’t there something that you can give me to make this easier though?”

“Unfortunately this early in your pregnancy it’s too dangerous to give you anything as it might hurt the baby. But perhaps in a month or two that can change. Shall I let Faolan back in? I’m sure he’ll be curious to know what’s wrong by now.”

If possible Isabelle went even paler. “Faolan…”

“Keep your chin up. This will all turn out alright. Trust him. He’s a good man,” Kylin said as he moved toward the floor. She nodded and he left the room. There were muffled voices in the hallway before Faolan returned.

“Faolan, I…”

“Kylin told me.”

Isabelle looked up at him sharply. She hadn’t known what to expect from him, but it certainly wasn’t his clipped tone or the dark shadows in his eyes.

“I—”

“Father will need to know,” he said quickly, cutting her off. “I will send some guards to move your things to the vacant rooms next to your brother’s.”

“Oh. I suppose that would be best now.”

“Yes,” he replied in a clipped tone.

Isabelle frowned deeply and said, “Faolan?”

He paused mid-step, but continued to avoid her gaze. “Yes?”

Her voice wavered uncertainty. “You are happy about this, aren’t you?”

Foalan nodded quickly.

“Will you be happy to have your rooms to yourself again?” Isabelle pressed.

His shoulders stiffened slightly and his chin tilted slightly towards her. “It will be…different. Now I really must go.”

“Of course, I’m sorry that I delayed you, Faolan,” she said weakly.

He nodded and turned on his heel. In seconds he was out the door and down the hall, leaving a bewildered Isabelle in his wake.

Later that night Isabelle lay uncomfortably on her side. All around her lay unfamiliar things and the worst of it was that nothing smelled like him. She hadn’t realized how accustomed she had become to his scent, his familiarity. Although this was still his mountain, his place, he was absent from the small stone room she had been told to use. It was less that he wasn’t there. Nothing that seemed like him was anywhere in the room. He was soft sheets, large furnishings and simple lines. He may have been a lot of things, but he was definitely not these cold gray stone slabs of what some may have mistakenly called furniture. Even what she was now resting on was little more than a pile of furs strewn upon a heavy slab, the furs barely thick enough to keep out the chill of the night air swimming around her. She realized quickly that she wouldn’t be able to sleep that night or possibly any other that she spent in this uncomfortable room. But what else was a girl to do? Faolan had exiled her from the only place she had just barely begun to feel at home here in the mountains. And she doubted very much that Kylin would welcome her to sleep next to her brother. She heaved a great sigh and pulled a heavy fur over her shoulders, hoping to block out the hurt she hadn’t realized she had been feeling.

Without any warning, slow tears began to streak down her cheeks, falling lightly amongst the tan fur of some unfortunate creature below her. This hurt, as new and confusing as it was, was the one thing that comforted her on the first of what she feared would be very long nights. She shivered slightly as his face came unbidden to the forefront of her thoughts. How would he be sleeping tonight, now that she was no longer in his bed, she wondered. Perhaps he would be as sad and uncertain as she was. But she somehow doubted it. No, she thought with an audible sigh, Faolan would be just fine without her. Now he could get on with his merry little life and have his privacy again. And she could stay well out of his way, probably only visit her brother and leave her chamber just to take meals. No, meals could be taken in her room after all. So that left only her brother. Faolan would have no reason to come visit her, these rooms were so far out of his way after all. She wondered idly if she would see him before this baby, his baby she reminded herself cruelly, was born or if Kylin would simply hand it to him and then Thadius would send her on her merry way. She wanted to half scream, half cry with the unfairness of it all.

This bitter pain kept her company throughout the night until day found her wearily walking around her room in a half dazed fog.

Isabelle turned slightly at the sound of something scurrying across the floor of what she had dejectedly decided was her bedroom. She frowned at the offending brown tuft of fur. Just a mouse after all then.

It was mid-morning. She had bathed with a small pitcher and a slightly scratchy cloth. No large, heated baths for her down here. And then she had decided to dress in a simple gown of blue. She had gathered her hair in a sloppy bun, nothing too fancy and besides, no one would be around to notice her hair today anyway. Not that anyone really cared.

She had tried to see Caden earlier, but he had been eating breakfast and had seemed far more interested in it than in her disjointed mutterings. She had left quickly, unable to tell her brother of the latest news in a series of things he was much too young to understand but tried hard to anyway. She appreciated his effort at least.

Isabelle turned slowly toward the doorway, barely a length of heavy cloth covering the opening. At least this opening seemed too small for what she imagined the Draconians to be in the natural state. The furniture, too, was smaller than in Faolan’s room, though not nearly as nice as his. Human furnishings, a human doorway, all for a human bride, she thought with a scowl. She began picking at her nails and then threw her hands down to her side, her fists rapidly clenching and then unclenching as she fought the range of emotions that seemed to find her already this morning. She had never thought of herself as a spiteful person, but perhaps that was changing now. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least, not with all the changes Kylin said would be happening to her over the next few months. It seemed a bit early for mood swings to be developing, but she quickly decided they were the cause of her bad mood that morning and the night before.

Hoping that a change of scenery would lighten her earlier thoughts, Isabelle stepped gracefully out of her small room, the curtain closing behind her with a loud swoosh of fabric, and proceeded down the hall, her bare feet soundless against the stone floor.

Her walk was aimless, just the motion of moving her feet forward, but having no real direction or will behind her actions. Her only decision since she stepped out of her room minutes before was that she wanted away from there, and nothing more. Perhaps she should have thought more about it, or should have paid more attention to where she was going, because she quickly found herself standing in front of the familiar carvings of a wooden door.

She should not have stayed as long as she did, or stared at it as she was. If Isabelle had been thinking she would have kept walking, preferably in the opposite direction, the minute she realized she had found herself in front of Faolan’s door. But she had decidedly not been thinking and so the only thing Isabelle was certain of as she stood there dumbly staring at what had been her mountain home up until the night before, was that she missed him.

As odd and ridiculous as that sounded, she missed Faolan. He was only her husband in name really, they were little more than an arrangement, and he had made it undoubtedly clear that she meant very little if anything to him at all yesterday. But she couldn’t deny those feelings, as they crashed against her like an angry torrent wave.

She, Isabelle Falcone, had fallen for the Draconian prince.

It was enough to bring a derisive laugh to her pale lips. It simply was not happening, could not be happening, and yet it was. Andrew had always called her rash and uncivilized. Well, she now found herself quite smitten with the son of the leader of the one group of people he thought to be the most uncivilized out of the bunch.

Smitten seemed such a strange word for her to be using. It was much more her mother’s word when describing why the young ladies of the court acted so strangely. And Isabelle certainly did not think she was acting like someone had taken her mind. Any more than usual, she could hear Andrew’s soft voice teasing in her ear. She even missed him, she thought with a roll of her watery eyes.

But back to Faolan, she thought with a mental shake. She wasn’t smitten, she decided. But she was loathe to call it love, especially when she had only been a bed partner to him.

She slowly slid to the floor across the wall from that familiar wooden door. She was unaware of where she really was, and who could walk by at any moment. All she knew was that she had to sit, had to think, had to just be, at least for a moment.

It was unfortunate then that Faolan found her a half hour later, fresh tears making their slow trek down her cheeks as she stared unblinkingly ahead at nothing in particular. Without saying a word, he sat down on the floor beside her, his warm shoulder pressing against hers.

As soon as she felt the contact, she startled, her body going rigid next to him until she turned slightly and saw him staring ahead as well, his mouth formed into a pale line. She saw his dark eyes flash to hers uncertainly.

She pressed herself more against him, letting out the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

They sat in comfortable silence, neither one of them willing to break it, fearing that the other would leave at the slightest word.

Finally, it was Faolan who spoke. “Hello,” he said, sounding quite unsure of himself. She smiled wryly at him and he blushed gently.