“I’m not miserable,” she said quickly, inching away from him.
He laughed. “So barely coming out of your rooms is just an act then?”
She was quiet for a moment, hesitating as she waited for the right words to come. Finally she gave up. “I’m afraid,” she whispered, looking away from him.
“No one here will harm you,” he replied quietly, his voice serious.
“Maybe not with you around, but there isn’t exactly a happiness there when the guards see me,” she quickly told him. It seemed like such a trivial thing to be frightened of with everything else that could hurt her in these mountains. But something about the guards just didn’t seem natural.
“Most of the guards are useless. Ignore them.” His voice was flat, almost bored.
She stared at him openly. “How are humans useless?” She could hear the wicked smile in his voice. She should have been afraid, but she couldn’t make herself move away from him.
“They are criminals. Amalthea, the queen of Feeorin, sends them to us to work off their debts so that they don’t take up space in her dungeons.”
“So they’re dangerous? You’re letting dangerous criminals run around with my brother sick and unable to defend himself?” she shrieked at him. She hadn’t realized how close he was as she felt his warm breath on her shoulder and unintentionally cringed away from him.
“Petty criminals. Thieves mostly. Men who were starving that stole bread or some salted meat. They don’t speak to you more than necessary because you grew up with food and wealth and tutors and everything else that you had that they didn’t. You think of them as dangerous, they think of you as a spoiled little girl that they have to put up with sometimes,” he told her.
She took a few deep breaths and nodded. She wasn’t so stubborn that she couldn’t admit when he was right. But there was so much that she didn’t understand about him and the world he lived in.
“Thank you, Faolan,” she said after a few moments of silence. “For talking to me.” She saw him nod in the dim light. She hesitated, licking her lips and breathing deeply. “May I kiss you?”
He went still next to her, eying her cautiously. “I suppose so,” he replied. He forcibly relaxed his muscles as she turned toward him.
Isabelle placed her hand on his bare chest, her fingers splaying over his heated skin as she leaned in toward him. Her heart was pounding in her ears, vaguely she wondered if he could hear it, too. Before she could change her mind, she quickly pressed her lips to his. Surprisingly she felt his mouth move beneath hers. His arms wound around her, pressing her tightly against his chest.
* * * *
Faolan released her the moment he felt her go still in his arms and swam away, a fierce blush covering his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her neck.
She nodded. “Will you walk me back to my rooms now?”
“If I don’t take you now, I’ll just have to wake up later anyway to find you once you’ve gotten yourself thoroughly lost down here,” he joked, hoping that it would relax her.
She giggled and playfully splashed him with water. “Don’t be mean,” she chided him before slipping her fingers gently into his and following him back to the edge of the pool.
Chapter Eight
Before dawn the following morning, Isabelle stood staring at Caden’s pale features, her fists shaking at her sides as she struggled to keep the tears from flowing down her cheeks. “How did he get worse so fast?” she hissed at Kylin, not daring to take her eyes off the face of her sleeping brother.
“Come now, Isabelle, you’re an intelligent young woman. Why do you think his illness is back?” the man grumbled.
“You can’t possibly be implying that I had anything to do with this!” she shrieked under her breath. She spared a glance for Caden to make sure she hadn’t woke him up before glaring at the old man.
“You’re the only one that can make him better. His health is dependent on you producing an heir. When you fail to do even the necessary minimum task to get that heir, his health suffers. Are you suddenly dense or were you just not paying attention when Thadius explained that to you?” Kylin spat back at her, his hands planted on his hips, his gaze hard and unforgiving.
“The minimum task?” she shot back. “I have done far more than just the minimum!”
“Oh really? If you had been even a little more unselfish and just laid on your back, Caden wouldn’t be sick right now. If you had just decided to deal with this instead of making a spectacle of it all, he would be fine and you would be pregnant and we could all get back to doing what we enjoy. Instead he’s sick and you’re stuck here all because you won’t stop being selfish!”
She suddenly went pale and brushed away a tear that was trailing down her cheek. “I will fix this,” she whispered.
“I don’t doubt it,” Kylin replied. “Why don’t you go get to it and let this old man get back to sleep? And next time wait until after breakfast to start raging at people. It’s bad manners.” He growled at her and then shooed her into the hallway.
Before she could say goodbye to him the door was already closed in her face. Isabelle spent a few moments glaring angrily at the worn stone wall before leaving to go find Faolan.
Hours later, she had given up. There were only so many places that she knew of to look for him and he was in none of them. Finally she came back to her rooms, pleasantly surprised to see him standing by the window, gazing out into the clear afternoon sky.
“Hello, Faolan,” she called brightly.
He only nodded, his eyes never leaving the sky.
She walked over to him, her hand resting on his arm. “You seem tense,” she said. “Would you like a massage?”
“Not right now,” he replied, moving out of her reach.
She scowled at him and came to stand in front of him, forcing him to look at her. “What’s wrong?”
“I’d rather not talk about it. I just came here to see if you needed anything. But you seem fine so I’ll go now.”
She realized that he definitely didn’t seem like he would be in the mood to come to bed, but she couldn’t get the image of Caden laying so pale and helpless from that morning out of her mind. She needed him to help her get Caden better, certainly he could understand that.
She tried kissing him like she had the night before, but he moved his mouth away from hers after just a moment. She trailed her kisses over his jaw and neck, hoping to get him to react to her at all.
“What are you doing, Isabelle?” he hissed at her through clenched teeth.
She was trying to be seductive, really she was, but having no experience with men was really not paying off. She smiled up at him, hoping that she was properly flirty. “I thought that was obvious,” she teased.
“Stop.”
“Stop what?” she asked, her lips coming to his exposed collarbones.
“I said stop, Isabelle.”
Faster than she had seen him move before, he flipped her around, her back pressing painfully into the hard stone wall. Tears stung her eyes as she trembled under his grasp. “Please…” she choked out, her eyes wide.
“Please what?” he growled in her ear.
“Faolan….” she pleaded as the pain began tearing down her back.
“Tell me!” he roared at her as he pushed himself against her, his body flush against her as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Is this what you want?” he growled, pressing his lips roughly to the side of her neck, causing her to cry out as she pushed against him. “No, it isn’t. You want your brother better and you’ll put up with me in the process. You come to me when you want to see results with him. I touch you no more than is necessary and I dismiss everything else. Well no more. I’m tired of being your whore.”
He shoved a leg roughly between hers and held her shoulders tightly in his hands. “Today I’m taking what I want from you, wife,” he growled in her ear.
She shut her eyes tightly and bit her lip
to keep from screaming. But she felt nothing else.
Isabelle was distantly aware of the loss of contact between them as he moved away, but it was only when she heard the bedroom door slam shut behind him that she opened her eyes. Still shaking, she pulled her legs up against her chest and sobbed loudly into her knees.
It was hours before Isabelle had decided to move as she made her way through the hallways and cautiously stepped into the library, her eyes instantly going to the tall man sitting by the window, a book dangling haphazardly on his lap.
“Thadius?” she called, her voice weak.
His dark eyes met hers and he smiled gently, although not very warmly. “Hello, child, come in.”
She paused at the entrance, wary of him. “May I speak to you about Faolan?”
“Did you two have an argument?” he asked without answering her question.
“How did you know?” she asked quickly, forgetting that she was frightened as she sat down next to him.
“He came in here about an hour ago, fuming about contracts, and said he was going hunting.” His eyes were dark, pinning her in place as he watched her.
“Oh…I see,” she replied meekly, dropping her head.
* * * *
“Care to tell me what happened?” Thadius asked her, carefully controlling his voice to avoid frightening the child further. He needed her pliable, not cornered and shaking. He thought Faolan would have understood that.
She gulped nervously, a blush already forming on her cheeks. “We were in my room and…I thought I could…Well…”
“Yes?”
Isabelle’s hands formed tight fists by her side. “I tried to seduce him,” she breathed quickly before burying her face in her hands.
“Because you wanted to or because you wanted to make Caden better?” Thadius asked, biting back a sigh at the girl’s meekness. It was little wonder that his son had felt the need to go hunting if this was how the girl was to have a conversation with.
Isabelle raised her eyes to meet his, a frown forming on her full lips. “Is there a difference?”
He raised an eyebrow at her and sat back in the overstuffed chair. Obviously this was going to take some work. “In one you wanted him as a man. In the other you were using him.”
She was instantly defensive as she said, “I wouldn’t call helping Caden get well using him.”
Thadius quirked a little smile at her. “Oh no? What does he get out of it?”
“An heir for one,” she quickly replied, obviously flustered.
“Which he does not desire,” he reminded her, just as fast.
“Well then he gets a wife in his bed,” Isabelle said, openly feeling uncomfortable again.
There it was, the heart of what Thadius wanted to discuss with her. “Oh really? Do you think he enjoys it?”
She shrugged. “He’s a man.”
“Do you believe he sees it as a duty and as helping you?” Thadius pressed.
“Of course,” Isabelle replied confidently.
“Then how can he see it as anything else?” he continued.
“But—”
“Do you let him kiss you?” Thadius said, ignoring her.
“Well I—”
“Do you give him the opportunity to please you?” Thadius asked, smiling ruefully at her as she squirmed. “Sleeping with him for you is nothing more than a way to cure Caden. As long as he does his part, you couldn’t give less of a damn about his enjoyment. You’ve probably never once even tried to have a decent and meaningful conversation with him, have you?”
* * * *
“We aren’t really like that though,” she whispered as hot tears stung her eyes. No one had ever spoken to her like Faolan, and now Thadius, did. She was terrified and backed into a corner. For really, what was the first time in her life, there was no one bigger and stronger than her to intervene on her behalf. The idea that she really was at their mercy, both physically as well as mentally, was almost too much to bear.
Thadius brushed her off with a quick wave of his elegant hand. “Because you won’t let him. He’s so afraid of upsetting you and staying away from you and being there at night for you that he hasn’t left these halls since your marriage. No wonder he needed to go out hunting tonight. The boy has been so frustrated by all of this that he hasn’t once let off steam.”
* * * *
Her eyes flashed, causing Thadius to smile inwardly. He knew this girl had some promise. Even though he could see her trying to control her temper, her voice was still harsh as she said, “He’s frustrated? What about me? I didn’t exactly plan on sharing a bed with a stranger for the next year either.”
“Yes, but you did choose to. He had no say in this.”
“Because of you,” she was quick to reply.
“I’ve been making decisions for him his whole life, that’s nothing new. But you, he’s changed his entire life for you without an argument and you haven’t once shown him anything even remotely like affection,” he said casually, watching her closely as she let what he was saying sink in. He watched as the heat left her face and her hands relaxed in her lap. She appeared tired and confused, but perhaps ready to listen to what he had to say.
“Then what do I do to change this? I thought passively accepting the situation would be enough,” she whispered. She hung her head and let out a soft sigh.
“Obviously it’s not, unless you both sit down and talk about it and decide that’s all you want from this.”
She glanced up at him, her forehead creased in a frown. “You think he wants more?”
Thadius smiled at her. It was a soft smile, meant to comfort a frightened child. He hoped it worked at least a little on her. “Try talking to him about it the next time you are together and calm. I don’t enjoy seeing either of you upset and I’ve never seen him that angry.”
Isabelle paled. “Never?”
“He doesn’t become outwardly angry. At least I didn’t think that he could. Now, if there is nothing else, I think you had better get back to your rooms now. This old man is growing tired.”
“There is one more thing,” Isabelle said hesitantly, looking away from him again and shifting in her seat.
“Yes?”
She gulped nervously. “I want to meet with him…the dragon.”
Thadius paused, his hand frozen as he reached for his cup of tea. That was quite unexpected, but the girl seemed serious about it. “Alright. In a few days you can. I will arrange it,” he said, before he could change his mind.
She smiled quickly at him before letting herself out.
Chapter Nine
Isabelle stretched her arms over her head, smiling as she felt the unused muscles moving and warming up after months of little use. She smiled as she walked toward her little brother. Caden returned her easy smile. She ruffled his hair gently, marveling at how long it had grown in such a short time.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said to him, slinging her arm around his narrow shoulders.
He rubbed a hand roughly over his eyes in an effort to wake up.
It was early in the morning, much more so than he usually woke up, but she had been up for more than an hour. They walked hand in hand toward a large chamber she had discovered while walking the halls the afternoon before. As they came to the large wooden door, she pressed her ear to it, knowing that it would probably be empty, but wanting to listen for any sounds just in case. Once she was satisfied that they would be alone, she opened the door and swept Caden inside. She silently closed the door after her and pulled him along behind her as she walked noiselessly into the room.
His gaze wandered across the walls, stopping often on the various weapons that surrounded them. He found a large broadsword, its body gleaming brightly in the torchlight. He shuddered and continued looking around the room.
She smiled at him, leading him toward a set of wooden short swords. They were obviously well used, probably from Faolan’s childhood if she guess
ed correctly. Caden was still weak and a bit wobbly on his feet, but she promised to go slowly and to take it easy on him. Certainly one short work out couldn’t hurt him. She hadn’t been with Faolan since their argument, but Caden had seemed well enough to take a short walk when she had visited him this morning. Perhaps all the rest he was getting was finally helping.
“You probably don’t remember, but Andrew and I used to practice often. And before he left, father would teach us, too,” she told him with a slow smile.
He nervously pulled on her delicate fingers as he struggled to keep up.
She turned to him, considering him in one quick look before turning away again. “You’re stronger now, strong enough to hold a practice sword anyhow. Exercise will help you improve.”
“Says who?” he asked skeptically.
“Alright. I’m also incredibly bored here in these mountains and I thought we could have some fun,” she conceded with a flash of a grin.
Instead of arguing with her more, Caden smiled brightly and picked up the wooden sword she offered him. It was big for him. If he had been the size of other boys his age, the sword would have been a good fit. Instead it was heavy and cumbersome, but she thought he could probably handle it anyway without much work. They were only having fun after all.
Isabelle chose the larger of the practice swords. The wood was crudely carved and the scratches in it proved that it had clearly seen better days. But it was smooth and well-worn beneath her palm, evidence of having been used for a long time by someone that had cared for it. She smiled as she thought of Faolan using it as a child.
Unexpectedly a wooden sword tapped her on her arm. She looked up to find Caden grinning at her as he twirled the sword clumsily in his fingers. He had never held one before since he had never been strong enough. Now though she wanted to remedy that.
The Dragon’s Treasure Page 8
