The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

”No. When he realized I’d noticed him, he simply... left. Disappeared back into the palace. But he’ll be back. Men like that don’t just watch once.”

Morgana’s hand had gone white-knuckled on the brush. ”Maybe he was just passing through. Maybe he was...”

”No,” Garrick interrupted firmly. ”This wasn’t random. This was deliberate. Someone sent him. Someone wants to know about the comings and goings of this stable.”

He looked at her directly. ”And I’d wager my best horse that they’re particularly interested in you.”

With that, he turned and left the stables, leaving Morgana standing motionless beside the mare, her mind spiraling with implications and fears she couldn’t quite name.

***

After Garrick left, Morgana continued her work automatically.

But her mind was not in the stable anymore.

She moved through the motions of grooming and caring for the horses, but her thoughts were elsewhere, tangled in knots of worry and confusion and desperate longing.

Days. It had been days since she had seen any of the kings.

Days since Draeven had looked at her with those burning golden eyes. Days since Kaelen had regarded her with that cold, calculating gaze. Days since Thorne had watched her with those understanding dark eyes.

At first, she had told herself that it was simply how things were. That whatever attention they had paid to her before was passing, temporary, the kind of casual interest that nobles sometimes showed toward interesting servants before moving on to other diversions.

But that didn’t feel right.

Something had changed. Something had happened in the palace. The air itself felt different....charged with unspoken tensions.

And she was caught in the middle of it, isolated in the stables, with no way to understand what was happening or what it meant.

The rumor about one of them, she still didn’t know which one....losing control of his transformation. She had heard servants whispering about it, about destruction in the training grounds, about something so serious that the palace had ordered complete silence about the matter under threat of punishment.

Which king was it? She had wanted desperately to ask Rowan when her friend visited, but she couldn’t risk it. If she showed too much concern, too much knowledge, it would invite questions that she couldn’t answer.

So she had remained silent, trapped with her worry, unable to voice it to anyone.

She led Shadowmere to a water trough and watched him drink while her mind churned.

They haven’t called for me. They haven’t sent for me. There’s been no summons, no acknowledgment, nothing. For dayss, I felt like I was at the center of something important, something significant. And now I feel like I don’t exist at all.

Is one of them hurt? Is that why they haven’t sent for me? Or have I simply been forgotten? Have I become irrelevant so quickly?

The rumor said something about transformation, about loss of control. If one of them lost control... what does that mean? What does it mean for him? What does it mean for all of them?

She was standing completely still now, the brush hanging loosely in her hand, her eyes focused on nothing in particular as Shadowmere drank from the trough beside her.

The anxiety was becoming almost unbearable.

Something was happening in the palace. Something significant. Something that involved the kings and.....

”Morgana?”

She jumped, startled, turning to find one of the younger stable hands looking at her with concern.

”Are you alright?” he asked. ”You seemed... lost. Distant.”

Morgana realized she had been standing motionless for who knew how long.

”I’m fine,” she said, forcing a smile that she hoped looked genuine. ”Just thinking about the afternoon’s work. There’s a lot to do before evening.”

The young man accepted this explanation and returned to his own tasks, but Morgana felt the weight of her own anxiety pressing down harder.

She needed information. She needed to know if the kings were alright, what was happening to them.

But she also knew that asking questions was dangerous. That showing too much interest in the kings would invite scrutiny she couldn’t afford.

***

It was during the afternoon grooming sessions, when the sun had reached its highest point and the stables were quiet except for the occasional sound of a horse shifting or the distant voices of workers elsewhere in the palace, that Morgana found herself alone with Shadowmere.

She had finished grooming him earlier in the day, but she found herself returning to his stall, needing the comfort of the stallion’s presence, needing something familiar and safe in a world that was becoming increasingly complicated and frightening.

Shadowmere greeted her with a soft nicker, already knowing the pattern of her visits. She had apple slices in a pocket of her skirt, she had taken to bringing small treats for the horses, particularly for him, and she offered them to him flat on her palm.

The stallion’s soft muzzle tickled as he took the apple, his dark eyes watching her with an intelligence that sometimes made her wonder if he understood far more than he should.

”You’re the only one who makes sense,” she murmured, running her hand down his neck. ”Everyone else is so complicated. So caught up in games and power and things I don’t understand. But you... you’re just honest. You want what you want, and you don’t pretend to be something you’re not.”

Shadowmere turned his head toward her, and for a moment, they simply regarded each other.

Then Morgana smiled...a real smile, the first genuine one she had allowed herself in days. And in that moment of connection, of being truly seen and accepted by another creature, something in her loosened.

Almost without conscious thought, she felt the magic stirring inside her.

It was a familiar sensation by now...the warmth building in her core, the energy beginning to flow through her veins like liquid fire, the ancient magic that was so much a part of her nature that suppressing it was almost painful.

She held up her hand, still facing Shadowmere, and released the control she maintained so carefully most of the time.

Fire bloomed in her palm.