The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

Seraphine was already thinking ahead, calculating what Morgana’s removal would mean for the political landscape of the palace, for the selection process, for the opportunities it might create.

Celeste sat in a chair, silent and pale, staring at nothing.

The guilt was written across her face, but it was too late now. She was complicit. She was bound to the conspiracy. There was no backing out.

And Marta, observing from her position near the door, noted everything with those sharp, intelligent eyes.

She made no judgment. She simply observed and understood and accepted that this was how power worked. This was how the world operated.

The strong preyed on the weak.

The beautiful manipulated those who loved beauty.

The clever orchestrated the downfall of the innocent.

And those who were loyal to a powerful mistress became part of that machinery, whether they liked it or not.

***

*THE DUNGEONS*

The night came slowly to the dungeons.

Not with darkness....there was no window, so the darkness had been complete from the moment Morgana entered her cell, but with a deepening silence.

The guards’ footsteps faded. The sounds of the palace above grew quieter. The world contracted to nothing but cold stone and the sound of her own breathing.

Morgana lay on the cot, staring up at the ceiling she couldn’t see.

Her mind would not stop working, would not stop running through possibilities, assessing threats, understanding what had happened.

Someone had deliberately planted the necklace.

Someone had orchestrated her arrest.

Someone had conspired to destroy her.

But she still didn’t fully understand why. She still didn’t comprehend what she had done to deserve this.

She had been a servant. She had done her work. She had tried to be invisible, to cause no trouble, to exist without drawing attention.

And yet, somehow, someone had decided she needed to be eliminated.

The fear was cold in her chest.

Not fear for what would happen in the trial, though she was afraid of that too. But a deeper fear. An existential fear of a world in which conspiracy and lies could work so perfectly, in which truth meant nothing, in which she was utterly powerless against the orchestrated lies of those with power and status.

She pressed her hand against the cold stone wall of her cell.

It was absolutely real. It was absolutely unforgiving.

And it was absolutely inescapable.

She had never felt more alone in her life.

She had never felt more trapped.

The rage that had been building inside her...suppressed, controlled, hidden for so long....suddenly erupted.

Not screamed. Not shouted. But a silent, internal EXPLOSION of fury so absolute, so consuming, that it tore through every careful boundary she had constructed.

The injustice of it.

The deliberate, calculated cruelty of it.

The way she had been set up, framed, destroyed by people who barely knew her name.

Morgana’s hand pressed harder against the stone.

And the wall responded.

At first, it was subtle...a tremor, barely perceptible, like the stone itself was drawing a sharp breath. But then it deepened. The entire cell began to vibrate with a frequency that seemed to come from the very heart of the earth.

The stones beneath her palm began to glow.

Not with natural light. But with a deep, burning red that radiated from inside the rock itself, as if fire lived beneath the surface and was forcing its way through.

Morgana gasped and jerked her hand away, but the red light continued, spreading from where she had touched like blood seeping through water.

The walls shook.

Harder now. Violently.

The cot rattled. The bucket in the corner tipped over. Dust from the ancient stonework drifted down from the ceiling like snow.

Morgana could feel her magic....the ancient, primal dragon magic that lived in her blood, responding to her rage, responding to her powerlessness, responding to the absolute injustice of what had been done to her.

It wanted OUT.

It wanted to BURN.

It wanted to DESTROY.

The stones were humming now, a sound so deep it was almost below hearing, felt more in the bones than in the ears. The red glow intensified. The cell felt like it was about to EXPLODE....like the very walls were going to crack open and release an inferno.

Morgana’s hands were shaking.

She could feel the power moving through her like lightning through a tree, wild and uncontrolled and absolutely terrifying.

She forced herself to breathe.

She forced herself to PULL it back, to SUPPRESS it, to push it down into the deepest parts of herself where it couldn’t escape.

The red glow began to fade.

The trembling of the walls slowed.

The humming sound decreased from a roar to a whisper.

Within seconds, the cell was still again. Silent. Cold. The stones returned to their ordinary grey, as if nothing had happened at all.

But Morgana was gasping.

Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might tear through her ribs.

Her hands were still shaking violently.

She heard it then....footsteps.

Heavy boots on stone, approaching rapidly from somewhere deeper in the dungeons.

A guard. Someone coming to investigate.

Someone who might have felt the tremor. Someone who might check on the cells.

Someone who might see her, might see her fear, might realize that something had just happened.

Panic flooded through her.

She forced her shaking hands behind her back, pressing them against the wall, trying to control her breathing, trying to compose her face into something resembling normalcy.

The footsteps grew closer.

Closer.

She could see the flicker of torchlight beginning to illuminate the corridor outside her cell.

Her entire body was trembling.

The guard appeared at her cell door, holding a torch aloft, his expression bored and professional.

He looked at her for a long moment...really looked at her, studying her face, noting her state of disarray.

”What’s going on down here?” he asked, his voice suspicious. ”I felt vibrations. Sounded like the whole place was shaking.”