The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

Elara didn’t remember the walk back to the cottage.

Somehow, she was simply there, inside the small dwelling, the flour still clutched in her hand, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might burst through her ribs.

She set the flour on the table and sat down heavily on one of the simple wooden chairs, her mind working through possibilities, running through scenarios, trying to determine what this investigation might mean.

Who would send someone to look for her after all these years?

The priests of Valorhold were the obvious answer. They had wanted Morgana as a child. They had wanted to study her, to test her, to use her. But eighteen years was a long time. Surely they would have given up. Surely they would have assumed Elara and Morgana were dead, or had fled to somewhere unreachable.

Unless they hadn’t given up.

Unless they had been searching all along, slowly and waiting for any hint of where Morgana might be. And now, eighteen years later, they had finally followed a trail to Ashford.

Or perhaps it was someone else entirely. Someone new. Someone with different reasons for looking for them.

The uncertainty was almost worse than knowing the truth would be.

Elara’s hands were shaking. She clasped them together, trying to steady herself, trying to think clearly.

The man was in the village now, asking questions. But had he found what he was looking for? Had anyone given him information about her and Morgana? Had anyone connected the vague description to the quiet woman who lived on the edge of the village?

Probably not. She had been careful. So very careful. She had lived quietly and unremarkably for eighteen years. She had avoided drawing attention. She had built a life that was solid enough to withstand casual scrutiny.

But scrutiny from someone specifically looking for her? From someone who knew what they were searching for?

That was a different matter entirely.

And Morgana was at the palace. Morgana was where she couldn’t protect her. Morgana was in danger from forces that neither of them fully understood.

Elara coughed....a sudden, violent spasm that bent her over and left her gasping for breath. When she finally got control of it, she tasted blood on her lips.

The cough had been getting worse.

She had tried to ignore it, to tell herself it was nothing, to convince herself that it would pass with time. But she knew, in the deepest part of herself, that something was wrong. Something was worsening inside her body, eating away at her, slowly consuming her from within.

How long did she have? Months? A year? She didn’t know.

What she did know was that she was running out of time. That Morgana would soon be alone in the world. That her daughter would be vulnerable to whoever had sent this investigator, vulnerable to the dangers she had spent her entire life trying to protect her from.

She had to know what the investigator wanted. She had to understand the threat. She had to find some way to protect Morgana from a distance, even though she was trapped in this cottage, even though the palace was so far away.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow she would go back to the market. Tomorrow she would speak to Rowan’s father more carefully. Tomorrow she would try to glean information about the stranger, about his questions, about what he was searching for.

It was a fragile plan. It might yield nothing. But it was all she had.

***

That night, unable to sleep, Elara sat by her small fire and remembered another fire.

It had been perhaps five years after she and Morgana arrived in Ashford. They had been settling into their new life, building routines, beginning to feel almost safe. And then, one day, there had been rumors. A man had come through the village, a traveling scholar, asking about the old families, about who had arrived when, about births and deaths and the history of the village.

Elara’s terror had been absolute.

She had prepared to flee. She had packed what few possessions they had. She had planned a route out of the village, a direction to run. She had been on the verge of taking Morgana and disappearing into the night, abandoning everything they had built, when the fire had started.

It had begun in the old archive building, the place where the village kept records of births, deaths, marriages, arrivals. The fire had spread quickly, consuming documents, destroying records, obliterating the history that might have connected Elara and Morgana to their past.

By the time anyone could respond, it was too late. The building was completely destroyed. The records were gone. Any documentation that might have existed proving Elara’s arrival, proving Morgana’s birth, proving anything at all, it had all burned.

The village had mourned the loss. The scholars and record-keepers had been devastated. But Elara had been grateful. Deeply, profoundly grateful, even though she couldn’t explain why or how the fire had started.

Even though, in her heart, she had wondered if somehow, impossibly, Morgana’s emerging magic had been responsible.

Even though she had never asked her daughter about it, had never mentioned it, had simply accepted it as a gift from the universe, a stroke of luck, a miracle of timing.

Now, sitting by the fire in her cottage, remembering that earlier fire, Elara wondered if the investigators had ever tried to trace her arrival in Ashford through the records. Wondered if they had found the destroyed archive and realized that crucial information had been lost. Wondered if they had been searching in the dark for eighteen years because those records no longer existed.

Wondered, in the deepest part of herself, if Morgana’s magic had protected them even then. If her daughter’s power, manifesting in ways neither of them understood, had been shielding them all along.

It was a comforting thought, but it was also a terrifying one.

Because if Morgana’s magic was that powerful, that uncontrolled, that able to manifest in ways that shaped events around her...

Then Morgana was in danger in ways that Elara had never fully comprehended.

And Elara was powerless to help her.