The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

It had started in the center of the village, in the old archive building where records were kept. The flames had spread quickly, consuming documents, destroying the history of the village, obliterating any records that might have existed about arrivals, about who had come and when.

Elara had felt the fire in her bones. Had felt it like something outside of herself reaching toward her. She had been in the marketplace when it started, preparing to move on, planning to continue her flight eastward. But when the fire began, something had shifted.

It was as if the universe itself was protecting her.

As if something...some power, some magic, some force beyond her understanding, had reached out and cleared away the evidence that might have led the priests to her. The records that might have proved she was in Ashford. The documentation that might have made it possible to trace her path.

Had it been Morgana’s magic? Was it even possible for an unborn child to command fire? Elara didn’t know. She had no understanding of magic, had never studied it, had only learned what Kael had shared with her during their time together.

But she had accepted it. She had taken it as a sign that she was meant to stay in Ashford. That she was meant to have her daughter here. That she was meant to build a new life in this small village that fate, or magic had just helped her escape to.

She had found Marta, the herbalist, half-mad with pain from the early stages of labor, desperate and terrified and absolutely determined to protect her child. Marta had taken her in without asking questions. Had helped her through the birth. Had been present when Morgana entered the world.

And when the midwife had spoken the name, when she had looked at the newborn child and said something in the old language, something reverent and weighted with significance, Elara had understood that her daughter was not just any child.

Her daughter was special.

Her daughter was exactly what the priests and Kael had been searching for.

And Elara had spent the next eighteen years doing everything in her power to make sure they never found her.

*RETURN TO PRESENT*

The years in Ashford had been both the hardest and the most fulfilling of Elara’s life.

She had built a new identity. Elara of Ashford, the quiet woman who had somehow arrived in the village and simply stayed. No one asked too many questions about her past. No one pressed for details. The village had a way of accepting people as they were, without demanding extensive histories.

She had raised Morgana alone.

Every day had been a careful balance between love and protection, between allowing her daughter to be a child and teaching her the necessity of secrecy and caution. She had worked with her on needlework and cooking and all the practical skills of life. And, quietly, carefully, she had taught her daughter to understand and hide her magic.

”Never reveal what you can do,” she had told Morgana countless times, her voice serious, her eyes intent. ”Never show anyone that you are different. Never, under any circumstances, let them know that you have power.”

”Why?” Morgana had asked when she was younger, her young eyes confused and curious.

”Because there are people who would hurt you if they knew,” She had said. It was the truth, though not the whole truth.

She had built a life that was small and circumscribed and safe. A life where Morgana had everything she needed....food, shelter, education, love. A life where the danger that she had fled seemed like a nightmare from another world, increasingly distant, increasingly unreal.

But nothing gold can stay.

***

The cough had started about a year ago. Just a small thing at first, a tickle in her throat, nothing serious. But it had gradually worsened. Now it came frequently, sometimes violently, and each time she knew that something was wrong inside her body. Some sickness, some deterioration, some slow consumption of her strength.

And Morgana had left for the palace just as her health had begun to noticeably decline.

She had wanted to refuse. She had wanted to keep her daughter close, wanted to hold onto her while she still had time. But Morgana had been so stubborn that night, so determined, so desperate to go earn coins for her treatment. Elara had seen in her daughter’s eyes the same rebellion that she herself had felt at that age, the need to see beyond the boundaries of her small world, to understand what lay beyond.

And she had relented.

She had allowed Morgana to go.

Now, sitting in the cottage with the wooden dragon in her hands, hearing the rumors of an investigator in the village, understanding that the danger she had fled eighteen years ago was finally arriving on her doorstep, Elara was not sure if it had been the right choice.

***

Elara set the wooden dragon down on the table and looked out the window at the darkening evening.

Tomorrow, she decided. Tomorrow she would go back to the market. Tomorrow she would speak to Rowan’s father, would ask carefully about the stranger, would try to glean information about what questions he was asking and who he might be.

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

She would gather what information she could. She would try to understand the threat. And then, somehow, she would find a way to warn Morgana.

Even if it meant leaving the safety of the cottage. Even if it meant stepping out of the shadows that had protected her for eighteen years.

Even if it meant facing, at last, the danger she had spent her entire life running from.

Elara rose and moved to the small shelf where she kept a few precious items. She withdrew a piece of parchment and a quill. In careful handwriting, she began to write a letter, words intended for Morgana, to be delivered only if the worst happened. Words of love and explanation and apology. Words that her daughter might someday need to read in order to understand who her mother really was and why she had been forced to live such a hidden, restricted life.

She wrote until her hand ached. She wrote until the candle burned low. And when she was finished, she folded the letter and placed it in a hidden compartment in the cottage, a place where Morgana would find it if she ever came looking, a place where it would be safe until it was needed.

Then she lay down on her narrow bed, listening to the sound of the wind outside, feeling the weight of her illness, feeling the pressure of time running out, and waited for dawn to arrive so she could take the first step toward confronting the danger that had finally come for her daughter.