The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

Sleep had abandoned Kaelen hours ago.

He lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling of his private chambers, watching the way candlelight flickered across the ornate plasterwork, and felt the rage building inside him like a storm that refused to break.

It was still dark outside. Pre-dawn, that liminal space between night and morning where time seemed to stretch and distort. His chamber was cold despite the dying fire in the fireplace, a cold that came from within, from the ice that had taken root in his chest somewhere over the past month.

The curse was worse.

He could feel it with absolute certainty now, not as a theoretical concept but as a physical reality. It was like poison spreading through his veins, consuming his humanity piece by piece, replacing it with something older, colder, more primal.

Kaelen pushed himself upright and ran a hand through his pale blonde hair.

His hands were trembling.

That alone should have terrified him. Kaelen of the Storm, the cold king, the one who never lost control, and yet his hands were shaking like a frightened child’s.

He stood and crossed to the window, pulling back the heavy curtains to look out at the city below. The capital was still dark, still sleeping, still unaware of the danger lurking in the palace. Unaware that the curse that had haunted the Dragon Kings for two centuries was reaching some kind of critical point.

The past month had been torture.

Ever since Morgana had arrived at the palace, Kaelen had felt something shifting inside him. Something that didn’t make sense, that defied logic and reason. He’d tried to analyze it clinically, the servant girl was merely a distraction, a curiosity, nothing more. His interest in her was biological, chemical, explicable through straightforward cause and effect.

But the truth was far more complicated.

When she was near, something in him wanted to claim her. When she was distant, something in him raged. And when he’d touched her, when his hands had made contact with her skin in his chambers, he’d felt something ancient stir. Something that wasn’t entirely him anymore.

His dragon.

For the first time in two centuries, his dragon had wanted something badly enough to override his human will. Had wanted something badly enough to make him lose control.

And he hated it.

He hated the loss of mastery. He hated the uncertainty. He hated that a common-born servant girl could shake the foundations of his carefully constructed self.

Kaelen turned from the window and looked at himself in the mirror that hung on his chamber wall.

His face was gaunt. His eyes...pale blue, almost colorless in the candlelight, had dark circles beneath them. His skin was paler than usual, almost translucent, as if something was draining the life from within him.

And his eyes...

As he watched, something flickered across them. A flash of something not-quite-human. A shimmer of silver, like scales catching light.

The curse is consuming me, he thought, not for the first time.

And I can’t stop it.

He looked away from the mirror, unable to bear the sight of himself any longer.

The rage was building. It had been building for hours....days, really, and he needed to release it before it consumed him entirely. He needed to burn off the pressure, the tension, the desperate need for control that was slipping through his fingers like sand.

Kaelen moved to his wardrobe and began to dress in training gear.

Black leather trousers. A simple linen shirt. Boots meant for combat rather than ceremony. He wrapped a belt around his waist and secured it with practiced efficiency.

By the time he finished dressing, the sky outside his window was beginning to lighten. Pre-dawn was giving way to the earliest hints of morning.

Perfect.

The training grounds would be nearly empty at this hour. He could train alone, could push his body to its limits without witnesses, without the need to maintain the careful facade of control that he presented to the world.

He could, perhaps, figure out what was happening to him.

Kaelen left his chambers and made his way through the silent palace, his footsteps echoing on stone floors. No servants questioned him. No guards tried to stop him. Everyone knew better than to interfere with the kings’ movements.

Within minutes, he was striding across the palace grounds toward the training fields that lay beyond the main walls.

The air was cool on his skin, carrying the faint scent of earth and grass and morning dew. The sky was transforming from deep purple to pale blue, stars fading as the sun approached the horizon.

It should have been peaceful.

But Kaelen felt nothing like peace.

***

The training grounds were exactly as Kaelen had expected, nearly empty, with only a handful of early-morning warriors conducting their drills.

It was a vast space, perhaps two hundred paces across, surrounded by a high stone wall on three sides. The open side faced the palace, allowing those who wished to observe training to do so from the walls above. The ground itself was a mixture of packed earth and grass, worn smooth in some places from years of combat practice, scarred with the marks of countless weapons.

Various training implements were scattered about: wooden dummies for sword practice, straw targets for archery, canvas bags filled with sand for striking practice. Stone benches lined the walls, where warriors could rest between drills or watch their fellows train.

At this early hour, only perhaps a dozen warriors were present.

They were seasoned fighters.....men in their thirties and forties who understood the discipline of early-morning training. They bowed immediately when Kaelen appeared, recognizing him instantly despite the plain training gear.

”Your Majesty,” one of them said, a captain named Rhen. He was older than the others, perhaps in his late fifties, with a scarred face and the bearing of someone who had spent a lifetime in service. He had trained all three kings since they were young, and he was one of the few people in the palace who dared speak to them with a degree of candor. ”We didn’t expect you this morning.”

”I felt like training,” Kaelen said flatly. ”Don’t mind me. Continue your drills.”