Last Dragon Standing (Dragon Kin #4)(69)

Curiosity getting the better of her, Izzy dug her hand into the dirt and caught hold of the strip of red leather. She pulled it out and brushed at it, trying to see the emblem.

“Iseabail! Daughter of Talaith! Do you hear me? ” In the back of her mind, Izzy knew she should be jumping at her commander’s bellowing, but she didn’t know how. To say she’d been through more than most of the recruits was kind of an understatement, and after facing down gods, dragons, and, most terrifying of all at times, her mother, some bellowing unit leader who could have the skin stripped off her back for insubordination really didn’t worry her much.

“Commander?” she said, running over to him. “What do you make of this?”

The commander, always annoyed Izzy didn’t jump in terror at a mere word from him, snatched the leather from her hand. He wiped at the emblem with his thumb, his scowl suddenly fading away. “Where’d you find this?” She pointed. “Over at that house there. In the dirt.” The commander slapped the leather back in Izzy’s hand. “Take this to the general.”

Izzy grinned. “Can I get a horse?”

“No!” he bellowed back. “You cannot get a horse. You haven’t earned one!”

“I was just asking,” she muttered.

Bringing two fingers to his lips, the commander whistled.

Izzy shook her head. “No. Please, sir. No.”

Her commander leered at her. It was the one way he knew to get to her. The one thing that set her teeth on edge. Because it was the one thing Izzy had absolutely no control over.

“Enjoy the ride, Iseabail.”

Before Izzy could beg more, the dragon’s tail wrapped around her waist and lifted her out of the small town. As always, she screamed when that happened. Begged to be put down, because she knew exactly what would happen when they arrived at their destination. Because it happened to her at least once a day now. Sometimes more, rarely less.

Yet the cruel beast holding her was no different from all the others who did the same to her—heartless and relentless, thoroughly enjoying the pain she suffered. And usually—family!

“No!” she begged, as she always begged. Especially when she saw the expansive camp that belonged to Annwyl’s troops, right outside the Western Mountains. “Don’t!” Izzy tried again as they flew through the camp.

“Please!”

“Hold on!” was the only warning she got before the tail pulled back and then flicked forward, tossing her through tent flaps and inside the tent.

“Bull’s-eye! Ten points!” the dragon cheered.

Izzy flailed wildly, trying to find a way to land that wouldn’t shatter a shoulder or knee. But before Izzy could fly out the other end of the tent, where she was often grabbed by another tail and tossed somewhere else, big hands plucked her out of midair.

Panting, relieved, she looked up into a face she knew well because it looked so much like her grandfather’s.

“Honestly, Izzy,” her Great Uncle Addolgar chastised. “What are you playing at?”

“Me? ” Why did they think it was always her? True, she’d been known to throw herself from one dragon back to another while hundreds of miles above the earth, but that was her choice, wasn’t it? This particular game was not her choice, but it had turned out that those dragons she thought of as cousins and kin, didn’t care. They insisted on treating her like a human shot, and no one seemed to care! Least of all her great aunt and great uncle.

“Don’t start all that caterwauling,” her uncle warned.

“I do not cater—”

“Why are you here?”

“My commander sent me back. He wanted you to see this.” She held out the strip of leather, and her uncle took it, then dropped her. Izzy’s ass hit the ground hard, but she kept in her grunt of pain. It wasn’t easy.

“Where’d you get this?”

“From that little town you sent us to check out. The barbarians had already been and gone. I found that in the dirt by a house.”

“Oy. Ghleanna. Look at this.”

Izzy’s Great Aunt Ghleanna got up from the chair she’d been sitting in, drinking her afternoon ale. With her hand still around the battered mug, she took the leather from Addolgar and studied it. “Shit and piss,” she finally said.

“What is it?” Izzy asked, trying to get another look.

“Mind your own,” Addolgar told her, pushing her back by planting his excessively large hand against her forehead and doing just that—pushing her back.

She hated when he did that.

The siblings walked over to a corner and talked in hushed whispers while Izzy tried to listen without appearing to. Eventually, as they sometimes did, the pair began to argue, but for some reason Izzy got the feeling they were arguing about her. That was strange. It seemed as if they barely noticed her these days.

“It’s a mistake,” Addolgar said to his sister’s back as she walked up to Izzy. But, like most days, Ghleanna ignored him.

“You were coming back with us to Garbhán Isle, yeah? When we leave in four days?”

Izzy nodded and held her breath. She’d feared this would happen.

That something would come up and she’d be unable to return home. She wanted to go home so badly. Not to stay, of course—she had too much to do—but she hadn’t seen her family in two years. She missed them all, but especially her mum. She wanted to see her mum.