The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

Lady Seraphine...tall and elegant, with copper hair that caught the light like burnished gold, set down her embroidery hoop with more force than necessary. The small frame clattered against the marble side table.

The sound made several women jump.

”This is absurd,” Seraphine said, her voice carrying the weight of pent-up frustration. ”Absolutely absurd.”

Across from her, Lady Vivienne...dark-haired and sharp-featured, with the calculating eyes of someone used to observing others, looked up from her book. She had been pretending to read for the past hour, turning pages at random intervals, but she had barely absorbed a single word.

”What is?” Vivienne asked, though she already knew.

”This. All of this.” Seraphine gestured around the room with a sweep of her hand, encompassing the furniture, the fire, the other women, the entire suffocating situation. ”We’ve been paraded before the kings like livestock at market. We’ve attended banquets where we were judged like prize heifers. We’ve danced at balls, made conversation at garden teas, smiled until our faces hurt. And for what? They barely look at us.”

Her voice had risen slightly, and several of the other women glanced up from their occupations, trying to find out what was happening.

Vivienne closed her book carefully, marking her place with a delicate silk ribbon, and studied Seraphine. There was something almost satisfying about watching one of the more confident noble daughters begin to crack under the weight of rejection.

”King Kaelen looked at you last week,” Lady Celeste offered, her voice high and hopeful. She was the youngest of the selection, barely nineteen, and still held onto optimism with the desperation of youth. ”During the banquet. I saw him. He was watching you the entire time you were speaking with Lord Matthias.”

Seraphine’s laugh was sharp, bitter. ”He looked through me, Celeste. As if I were a piece of furniture he was considering moving. There was nothing in that gaze but appraisal and, ultimately, dismissal.”

Celeste’s face fell.

Vivienne watched this exchange with clinical interest. She’d noticed it too, the way the kings looked at the noble daughters. The way Draeven’s golden eyes swept over them with the polite interest of a merchant examining merchandise he had no intention of purchasing. The way Kaelen’s pale gaze was cold, almost contemptuous. The way Thorne simply... didn’t look at them at all. He attended the events, but it was as if the daughters didn’t exist in his presence.

It was deeply unsettling.

”They’re not interested in any of us,” Vivienne said quietly, stating what they all already knew but were afraid to voice. ”It’s becoming increasingly clear.”

A heavy silence fell over the room.

Then Lady Margaret, one of the older daughters, perhaps thirty, with the bearing of someone from a northern house, asked the question everyone was thinking.

”Then why do they keep us here? Why continue this charade?”

It was a good question. An honest question. And there was no good answer.

The door to the sitting room opened.

And Lady Isolde entered.

She moved like a predator entering a room of prey.

Her pale blue gown, clearly one of the most expensive fabrics available, imported from the eastern kingdoms, swished around her ankles with each deliberate step. Her blonde hair was piled high on her head in an intricate arrangement of braids and curls, adorned with small diamonds that caught the firelight. Her skin was powdered to a porcelain perfection, her lips painted a deep rose, her eyes lined with kohl that made them appear even larger and colder than they naturally were.

She looked like a duchess. Like royalty. Like everything a noble daughter should be.

But there was something in her expression, something in the set of her jaw, the curve of her smile, that belied the perfection.

There was hunger there.

And cruelty.

”The kings are cursed,” Isolde said without preamble, settling into a high-backed chair near the fire as if she were sitting on a throne. She did not ask permission to sit. She did not acknowledge the other women. She simply claimed the space and the attention.

”Everyone knows it. They can’t produce heirs. The council is terrified the line will die. So they’ll keep parading women in front of them until one of them finally takes.”

Her words hung in the air like a pronouncement.

Several of the younger daughters looked away, uncomfortable with the bluntness of it.

But Vivienne leaned forward slightly. She’d been waiting to hear what Isolde would say. Isolde always seemed to know things before others did. And right now, Isolde had a particular glint in her eye that suggested she knew something.

”Or,” Vivienne said carefully, ”until they find the one the prophecy speaks of.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

Several of the girls shifted uncomfortably. The prophecy was not something discussed openly, not usually. It was a thing of legend, of dusty books and old stories told to children by nursemaids.

But it was also very, very real.

Isolde’s smile was thin. Practiced. Predatory.

”If such a woman even exists,” she said dismissively.

But her eyes betrayed her. There was something there. Some knowledge. Some certainty masked by false indifference.

Celeste, the youngest, caught it. ”What if she does?” the girl asked, her voice uncertain. ”What if she’s already here? What if she’s... one of us?”

”She’s not.” Isolde’s tone was flat. Final and certain.

”How do you know?” Celeste pressed, and there was almost a note of desperation in her voice. Because if one of them was the chosen one, the Mother of Dragons from the prophecy, then all of this waiting, all of this suffering, might have been worth something.

”Because,” Isolde said, leaning forward slightly, her voice dropping to a more intimate register, ”if she were, the kings would have known. The prophecy says their blood will recognize hers. That she’ll call to them in a way no other woman can.”

She paused, letting that sink in.

”And I’ve seen the way they look at us.”