The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

Frost crawled out from beneath Kaelen’s boots.

It spread across the marble in thin white veins, silent and quick, and stopped a hand’s width from the first step of the dais.

Thorne did not look down at it. He kept his eyes on his brother, the smirk still on his mouth.

”Say it,” Thorne said. ”Whatever you came over here to say.”

”I felt it.”

Kaelen’s voice had gone flat. The pale blue of GLACIUS burned in his eyes, and the scales along his jaw had risen without his leave, a silver line from ear to chin.

”Every second. Her gasping. The cold water. Your hands.” His fists tightened. ”I felt you take her apart.”

Thorne rose.

The shadows in the throne room moved when he did. They slid from the corners and the pillars and the long gaps between the torches, and they pooled around his boots like water finding the lowest ground. NOCTYS sat in his eyes now, black swallowing the brown.

”You had your night,” Thorne said quietly. ”I did not stand in your doorway. I did not stop you.”

”You didn’t have to stop me. You were in the room with Draeven, deciding who got to go next.”

”I went because she was burning.” Thorne said.

”You went because you wanted to!” Kaelen snapped back at him.

”Both can be true, brother.” Thorne said and smirked at him.

The frost reached the first step. The shadows touched it, and where they met, the ice cracked with a sound like a snapped bone.

Claws slid from the ends of Thorne’s fingers, black and curved. Kaelen’s breath came out as white mist in a room that had been warm a moment before.

”Do it,” Kaelen said. ”Come down off that thing and face me.”

Thorne took one step.

”Enough.”

Draeven did not raise his voice.

He stood, and the heat came with him. It rolled out from the dais in a single slow wave. The frost on the marble went to water. The shadows thinned. The torches along the walls leaned toward him and flared. INFERNUS was awake in his golden eyes, vertical pupils cutting through the gold, and when he spoke again his voice carried a second voice beneath it, older and rougher.

”Sit down, Thorne. Kaelen, step back.”

Neither moved.

”I will not ask a third time.”

The heat pressed against them like a hand on the chest. Kaelen’s jaw worked. He stepped back, one pace, then another. Thorne’s claws drew in. He lowered himself onto the throne,

The torches steadied.

Draeven came down the steps slowly. Water ran in thin lines across the marble where the frost had been. He stopped between his brothers.

”Look at us,” he said.

Neither of them answered.

”Three kings. Two centuries of search. A curse that has not loosened in all that time.” He looked at Kaelen, then at Thorne. ”And the first thing that finds us in the end, we turn into a reason to tear the throne room apart.”

”She is not a reason,” Kaelen said, low.

”No. She isn’t.” Draeven nodded. ”That is exactly my point. She cannot be what breaks us. Whatever she is, whatever she turns out to be, she cannot be the thing that sets us at each other’s throats.”

He turned toward the doors, where Cedric had gone.

”Carrick is under our roof. Writing letters to noble houses, telling them he holds the Mother of Dragons. Astraea walks our halls, and not one of us understands what she is. The council is splitting into factions, and I would wager every one of them is already deciding what it wants from her.” He turned back. ”And the ancient dragons stood in the Sanctum and told us, in plain words, that we do not have much time.”

Kaelen flinched at that. It was small, but Draeven saw it.

”Auryn spoke to you,” Draeven said, gentler now. ”Not to Thorne. Not to me. He looked at you and said he could feel your dragon deteriorating.”

”I heard him.”

”We all did.”

Kaelen turned away. He walked three paces toward the tall windows and stood with his back to the room, hands braced on the stone sill. The frost along his knuckles was already melting.

Silence stretched.

”She was burning up,” Thorne said.

Kaelen did not turn.

”You wanted to know why I took her. That’s why.” Thorne’s voice had lost its smirk. ”By the time I reached her she was mumbling in her sleep. Nothing that made sense.”

Kaelen’s shoulders shifted.

”I carried her to my chambers. She slept. I held her. Then I woke in the dark with my whole room floating.” Thorne’s mouth thinned. ”Books. Boots. Goblets. All of it hanging in the air above the bed. Her magic was pouring out of her, and she was lying in the middle of it, drenched, hot as a forge. I put my hand on her forehead and it was like touching a coal.”

”The physician,” Kaelen said.

”I sent Silas. He came. Examined her. Said her core was feeding the fever, that the sickness and the magic were driving each other higher.” Thorne looked at his hands. ”He gave me a potion. She wouldn’t swallow it. Turned her head from me, said it was bitter. Said it over and over.”

”So you.....”

”I put it in my own mouth and fed it to her.” Thorne said it without apology. ”She took every drop.”

Kaelen turned around.

”Then she kissed me back,” Thorne said. ”I did not ask for that. She was half out of her mind, and she pulled me closer, and I....” He stopped. His jaw flexed. ”I am not going to pretend I wasn’t glad of it. But I would have put her in the cold pool and sat there all night with my hands off her if that was what the fever needed. The physician said cold water. She needed it.”

”And after the cold water?”

Thorne held his brother’s gaze.

”After, she wanted me. And I wanted her. I won’t tell you otherwise.”

The room was quiet.

Kaelen’s face did not change, but something behind it did. The pale blue in his eyes dimmed and steadied. When he spoke, the edge was gone from his voice.

”I was terrified.”