Dragon Thief Read Free

we consider your extensive hoard down south–”
    Kal gasped, “Who the hells are you?”
    Rising, the girl pointed at him, eyes ablaze. “You are a liar and a thief, Kallion of Fra’anior.”
    A cold as frosty as an Immadian midwinter seeped from the pit of his stomach, casing his limbs in a heartbeat. Kal choked on bile, hearing a wailing in his ears as if storm winds keened over barren rock.
    “I don’t like liars, not even the most handsomely packaged ones.”
    What could he say? All his life, Kal had drifted through a world of lies and half-truths, subterfuge and misdirection, hiding his tracks and his trade with an obsessiveness bordering on paranoia. Now … her? He refused to die like this!
    Not without a kiss, at least. That should roust his doom from its hiding place.
    “I-I d-did not lie about stealing hearts,” he faltered. He had to drop his gaze, for the girl’s eyes minded him of staring into the heart of a bonfire. He feared to combust. “Besides, the disadvantage is mine.”
    “Oh?”
    “Nameless hearts are hardly worth stealing.”
    “Hardly worth–” her roar echoed in the chamber. He had no need to look to feel the heat of her glare. She hissed, “You brave little burglar. Very well. I should inform you that you speak with Tazithiel. I prefer to be addressed as Tazi. Tell me, how does a man go about stealing that which can never be stolen?”
    Please, let the heavens open and smile upon the grave he was cheerfully excavating for his soon-to-be flaccid, truncated corpse. Forcing gravel into his voice, Kal said, “Tazi. Tazithiel. Thou art the twin suns’ radiance descended from heaven itself to illuminate my worthless existence in splendour.”
    “If you think a few lines of bad poetry will–”
    Kal was already in motion, striking with the speed and precision of a cobra. His lips clamped over hers. Softness. Fire. Heat detonating with unbearable sweetness between their bodies.
    Growling, “Kiss me, thou beauty,” Kal kissed Tazithiel as though she were the last woman in the Island-World, his salvation and his muse, his passion and his heartsong. He kissed her as the stars kiss a velvet night sky. He kissed the girl as if he recognised this was the last act he would perform upon the Isles of the living, which it likely was.
    For he kissed a Dragoness.

Chapter 2: All that Glitters
     
    T HE IMPACT oF Tazi’s clenched fist against his upper lip brought Kal’s dreamy kiss to an abrupt halt. He flew backward over a treasure chest, flipped head over heels in an ungainly somersault, and landed with a thump on his rump wearing a king’s coronation crown with a certain rakish flair, he decided, over his left eye. Great Islands, the woman had a punch like the recoil of a Dragonship’s war crossbows. He dabbed his lip in approbation. Split like a ripe prekki fruit.
    She was so sexy, it hurt.
    As for the girl-possibly-Dragoness, she immediately covered the essentials with her hands, but that gesture, happily, left much exposed to Kal’s admiration. Shock slackened her lips, which moved as though echoes of their kiss–a veritable Island-trembler of a kiss–still played havoc with her constitution. Pools of hungry fire, her eyes drew him in as though she reeled in a Dragonship by its anchor-hawsers.
    Kal cleared his throat. He had no idea what had just happened, or how much time had passed, but he knew he would die a man who had just supped upon the mythical Isle of Paradise.
    He whispered, “That would be how to steal your heart. No lies.”
    “But you are a fortune hunter.”
    Tazi coloured as her words emerged low and husky.
    Kal knew he must not smirk. Ha. Old lava-lips had struck; now he must talk his way out of this fine fettle. Assuming an air of injured dignity, he said, “You presume I am some common cutpurse or marketplace idler. You presume motive, where none exists. You cannot know my heart. For all you know, Tazi, I was passing on the wings of a Cloudlands storm.”
    “So,