The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

”I planted the necklace,” she said, and her smile was absolute satisfaction. ”What are you going to do about it?”

She stepped back slightly, enjoying Morgana’s expression.

”What?” she asked mockingly. ”Do you think they will believe you over me? A respected noble daughter with a family history stretching back centuries? Or a servant girl who has been caught red-handed with stolen goods?”

Morgana’s hands clenched into fists.

”The kings will...” she began, but Isolde cut her off immediately.

”Will do nothing,” Isolde said flatly. ”The kings will do absolutely nothing. Or perhaps I should rephrase it for you: they won’t be able to do anything.”

She moved even closer to the bars, her voice dropping to something that was barely audible.

”Even if they find out that I did it,” she continued, her eyes absolutely cold, ”they still won’t be able to save you from being killed. Because they know what it would cost them, to go against my family for a mere servant girl.”

She looked Morgana up and down, her gaze contemptuous.

”A mere servant girl,” she repeated, as if the words themselves were an insult.

She turned as if to leave, her point seemingly made.

But then she stopped and turned back, facing Morgana once more.

”And another thing,” she said, her voice taking on a mischievous quality. ”I’ve heard things about you, you know.”

Morgana’s eyes widened.

”Some of the maids have reported that things seem to move around you,” Isolde continued, tilting her head slightly, studying Morgana’s reaction with the intensity of a predator watching prey. ”Strange occurrences. Fires behaving oddly. Animals responding to you in unusual ways.”

”I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Morgana said quickly, but her voice wavered slightly.

Isolde smiled, a knowing, terrible smile.

”Well, I don’t care about that,” she said, as if dismissing the suggestion entirely. ”True or not, you’ll be gone soon enough, and I’ll be rid of you.”

She turned away again, but her final words froze Morgana in place.

”Don’t worry,” Isolde called over her shoulder, her voice carrying a promise of cruelty. ”I will come and watch your execution after the trial in two days’ time. I will be there to send you off.”

She walked away from the cell with Marta at her heels, her movements graceful and unhurried, the embodiment of someone who had achieved exactly what she wanted.

The sound of her footsteps faded as she climbed back up the dungeon stairs.

Morgana watched Isolde leave.

She watched the torchlight fade as the noble woman ascended the stairs.

And the moment the light disappeared entirely, the moment she was absolutely certain she was alone, she let go.

She moved to the cell door and gripped it, gripped it with all the fury and rage and desperation that she had been forced to contain.

The iron bars were cold beneath her palms.

And then they began to heat.

Just slightly at first....a warmth that could almost be attributed to her own body heat, her own anger radiating outward.

But it intensified.

The metal beneath her hands grew hotter and hotter.

She could feel it burning against her skin, but she didn’t let go.

She gripped harder, and the bars grew hotter still.

The spot where her hands touched the iron began to glow...a deep, angry red that spread outward like blood seeping through water.

The heat increased until it was almost unbearable.

She could feel her magic responding completely now...uncontrolled, absolutely unleashed, burning through her like fire through dry wood.

The bars began to smoke.

Actual smoke, rising from the spots where her hands pressed against the metal, the air around it shimmering with heat.

It smelled like burning metal and something else, something older and more primal. The smell of dragon fire.

Morgana held on for just a moment longer, letting her magic burn, letting it consume, letting it express the absolute fury that threatened to tear her apart from the inside.

And then she forced herself to let go.

She jerked her hands back as if burned, and they were burned. Her palms were marked with red welts where the heated metal had seared her skin.

She looked down at her hands, and they were still glowing.

Faintly, barely visible in the darkness of the cell, her hands were glowing with an inner light that was distinctly dragon-origin magic.

She immediately pressed her palms together and closed her eyes, forcing the glow to fade, forcing the magic back down into the depths of herself where it couldn’t escape.

Within seconds, the glow had vanished.

Within moments, the only evidence that anything had happened at all was the red marks on her palms where the cell bars had burned her.

Morgana moved back to the spot where she had been before Isolde arrived and sank down onto the cot.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

Not from the pain of her burned palms, that was nothing compared to the emotional devastation consuming her.

Tears came because she was trapped.

Absolutely, completely, inescapably trapped.

Isolde had done this with full knowledge that there was nothing...nothing at all, that could save her now.

The council would never believe her denials against Isolde’s testimony.

No one was coming to save her.

In two days, there would be a trial.

And after the trial, there would be an execution.

Her shoulders began to shake.

Her thoughts spiraled into desperation.

Is there really no way out?

Will nobody come for me?

Am i really going to die?

And then the thought that devastated her most:

What about my mother? How will she manage without me?

The image of her mother came to her mind, sick and weak, depending on her for so much, for everything. How would her mother survive when she was gone?

The thought broke something inside her.

She wrapped her arms around herself and sobbed.

Not silently. Not in the controlled way she had been crying in the dungeons since her arrest.

But openly and desperately.

Her body shook with the force of her anguish.

Her cries echoed off the stone walls of the dungeon, bouncing back at her, magnifying her despair until it seemed to fill the entire space.

She cried for herself.

She cried for her mother.

She cried for the unfairness of it all.

She cried because she had discovered that even magic....ancient, powerful, dragon-origin magic, was not enough to save her from the cruelty of those who had power and status and nothing to lose.

She cried because she understood, finally and absolutely, that she was going to die.

And there was nothing...nothing at all, that could stop it.