The Caged Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 1) by Dan Michaelson (websites to read books for free txt) 📕

city we’d used over the years, though we’d been forced to use them quite a bit recently. There were a few on the outskirts of the city we hadn’t used. Those healers we had tried to avoid, though they were often more inexpensive than the healers found further into the city. They preferred a different type of medicine, oftentimes mixing claims of magic with it.

“We could get the healer to come here,” she said.

“Not fast enough,” I said. “Thenis needs our help. If we go to the city and bring a healer out here, not only will it be more expensive—” most of the healers who did house calls were far too expensive, if they were even willing to do so “—it will take too long for them to get out here.”

Scooping my arms underneath , I lifted him. He remained stiff in my arms, his entire body drenched with sweat. There was the stench of urine mixed with it. When was the last time that he had been changed? All of the work I did to help care for my family and my own mother wasn’t willing to do what she needed to help her son? I carried him through the doorway carefully as I navigated back through the living room, stepping around the table and chairs, glancing over to the crackling hearth and remembering that my father wasn’t inside. When I stepped outside, I didn’t see him.

Groaning to myself, I hurried to the barn. The door was open.

I paused for a moment, but there wasn’t time to linger. Instead, I carried Thenis into the barn, navigating by feel. With the fading sunlight it was difficult to see much , though I knew exactly where to go. I hurried to the wagon and set him in the back. He deserved more comfort than what I could offer him , but hopefully a blanket would do. He was still burning up, and I didn’t think that he needed anything else to make him even hotter.

I hurried over to Gray’s stall so I could hook him to the wagon, when I realized Adela was missing. “Where did you go now?” I whispered.

“What was that?” She called from behind me.

I turned and nodded to Adela’s stall. “Dad took off. He took Adela.”

“Where could that old fool have gone now?”

I shook my head, though I had my suspicions. I had to wonder if he had decided he was going to go after the caravan, thinking that maybe he would be able to catch up to the king’s men.

“You’re going to have to bring him into the city,” I said. “I’m going to have to go after him.”

She looked over to Thenis lying on the cart. “I still think we should get the healer to come to us,” she said.

“And I think you’re wrong. You don’t know that the healer wouldn’t be able to get here in time,” I said.

I looked over to Thenis. He still hadn’t come around, moaning occasionally. I shook my head. “He doesn’t get like this. This is something else. I don’t know what happened to him, but he needs help. He needs a healer. A real healer . Now stop arguing with me, and get Thenis the help he needs.”

She clenched her jaw and opened her mouth briefly as if she were going to argue with me, but then shook her head, as if thinking better of it.

I hurried through the motions of getting Gray hooked up to the wagon and guided him out of the barn. When I let them through the gate and onto the road, I motioned for my mother to climb into the seat. She did so reluctantly.

It made me look at her in a different light. This was the way that Alison had seen her. Alison had spent so much time with her, and knew how she had been acting, and she had suffered because of it. All of this was because my mother hadn’t wanted to care for Thenis? She climbed into the driver’s seat, then started off. Gray guided them along the road toward Berestal. They moved quickly, Gray’s hooves clopping along the road.

I raced forward, catching up with them, and touched Thenis on the hand for a moment, resting there as I breathed out. “Get better,” I whispered.

My mother glanced back at me, saying nothing, and I ignored her as I turned back.

Now it was time for me to find my father.

Returning to the barn, I needed another horse. We had four horses, though we once had more. When my father and Thenis had been injured, we’d been forced to trade one of them for medicine. In hindsight, my mother’s objection to that made a lot more sense now.

I found Flop looking at me. He was a bit spirited, and one of our young green horses, but he was awake. Catching Adela in the dark required an animal that wouldn’t object to racing out into the growing night.

Pulling him out of his stall, I patted him on the side as I strapped the saddle to him. “I’m going to need your help, Flop.”

He pressed his head up against my hand, almost as if he were agreeing. Maybe it was just my imagination.

We started off, racing toward the forest where I believed my father had gone. There was a mixture of tracks in the muck, making it difficult to follow. I had no idea whether or not he was out there, but I suspected. If he’d taken Adela, she wouldn’t object to heading toward the forest. She was our best horse, which bothered me even more than the fact that father had taken her.

She had never been his horse either. That had been Gray. Adela had been Thenis’s, and then when Thenis had gotten injured, I had taken over caring for her. In the last few years, I had grown closest toAdela. I wasn’t about to let my father do anything that would harm her.

Flop moved with a spirited gallop, and though