The Dragon’s Treasure Read Free Page B

the truth of Caden’s condition. “What about the mountain people? You know that they are powerful, Andrew! They could help us! I’m sure they could! The healer said that they have cures for almost everything. I know that they could help him! All we’d have to do is ask. Please let me ask them, Andrew. Please?” was her impassioned plea.
    His eyes grew wide at this and his thin lips turned into an uncharacteristic sneer. “Murderers and rapists, the whole lot of them. You would trust him to those types? Do you care so little for him that you cannot let him die in peace with what little dignity he has left?”
    Isabelle chose her words carefully, biting them out between labored breaths. “If there was a chance…If they could fix him…”
    “There is no chance, Isabelle! No one can fix him! The boy’s already half dead as it is! Let him finish it!” Andrew yelled as he gripped her arms and shook her.
    “Get. Out.”
    He blinked quickly, his arms falling limply to his sides.
    “What?”
    Her eyes remained intent on him, rage boiling just below the surface. “Get. Out. Now. I don’t want to see you again.”
    “But…”
    “I said get out.”
    Her brother wisely shut his mouth and quickly left the room. Only once the door was closed did she let out her inhaled breath.
    Isabelle curled up against her brother, holding him tightly to her as she wrapped her arms around him. Warm tears began to flow down her cheeks in silent rivers to slide over the boy’s pale forehead. Within moments though, her body had relaxed along with his, her tears ebbing to mere sniffles, as a restless sleep welcomed her into its grasp.
    It was a rash decision to leave, which Isabelle knew as she hurried through the palace. Her pace was brisk, but not fast enough to alarm the few guards that she passed. They would just assume she had gone out for a late night stroll. Only Andrew would question her at this hour and thankfully she had heard the sound of his loud snores as she passed by his bedroom on her way out of the palace.
    Isabelle stepped out into the night, the drizzling rain chilling her to the bone as she pulled her cloak tighter around her shivering body. She had changed her clothes, opting instead for a loose tunic over an old pair of Andrew’s pants. Her long brown hair was tied back and knotted low at the base of her neck. Her transformation into a young man for the night had been completed with the addition of her brother’s short sword, taken from his room earlier that evening. He hadn’t touched it since they were children so she doubted that he would miss it. Though she had some experience with it as well as other weapons she knew that if a fight tried to find her on this night the blade would be for little more than show. Her nerves were wound far too tightly from worry over her brother for the clear, calculated thinking that a duel would require. She would be dead before her body hit the rain soaked mud beneath her feet.
    With that thought, she began to hurry through the wide deserted streets of Nuer. She had been born in this small city and knew the twists and turns of these roads as easily as she knew the ones in the small palace she shared with her brothers and the man that currently sat on the throne in her father’s stead, her uncle, the brother of Andrew’s mother.
    Though Andrew’s uncle was neither royalty nor her blood relation, he still expected her to do some of what he asked of her. She barely suppressed an eye roll at this. Whenever the man tried to inflict his ideas on her, it took much of her willpower not to attack him openly. Even Andrew could barely stand the man, though he did hold him in higher esteem than she did.
    The city was quiet and seemingly deserted as she made her way further outside of the palace walls. She knew being out this late without the company of at least one guard was dangerous, especially as she left the small section of town that the noblemen lived in.
    She had visited the