The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

Draeven’s mouth curved. ”He won’t.”

”You sound sure.”

”GLACIUS is steadier than he was a week ago. More contained.” Draeven leaned back on the bench, one arm along the stone. ”That is her doing. Whatever it is she does, he has quieted. I felt it this morning when he came in.”

Thorne said nothing for a moment. Then, without looking at him: ”She likes you more than she likes me and Kaelen.”

Draeven turned his head. ”What makes you say that?”

”I know.” Thorne shrugged, though the movement was stiff. ”I have seen how she looks at you. When you walk into a room, her eyes go to you first. Even when she is angry, even when she’s frightened. She looks, and then she looks away.” He finally met his brother’s gaze. ”No offense, Draeven. I know she cannot feel the same about all three of us. I do not need her to. I only hope she opens up to us more.”

Draeven said nothing.

”She hasn’t told one of us why she hid that she’s a witch,” Thorne said. ”Why she walked into the palace knowing how dangerous it was. Why she kept it from every one of us, even after Kaelen....” He stopped. ”She holds something back. I can feel it when I’m close to her. She is a locked door.”

Draeven leaned back and looked at the ceiling, at the old carved dragons curling along the beams.

”We don’t know her very well, brother,” he said. ”Not really. We know how she tastes and how she sounds when she’s afraid. We do not know what she is afraid of. And if we press her now, with all that is happening, she will close that door and bar it.”

”So we wait?” Thorne asked.

”We give her time.” Draeven’s voice was quiet. ”I don’t want her overwhelmed. She is being asked to carry a palace, a prophecy, three dragons, and a curse that is none of her making. Let her breathe. When she is ready to tell us, she will.”

Thorne shook his head, but there was no argument in it. He rose from the bench and straightened his tunic.

”If you will excuse me, brother,” he said. ”I have to get back to her.”

”Go.” Draeven said.

”She might want to see me when she wakes up.” He said

”Then go, Thorne.” Draeven gesture for him to leave.

Thorne nodded, turned, and walked toward the doors. The shadows ran at his heels like hounds. He did not look back.

The door closed after him.

Draeven sat alone on the bench, in the cold light, in the great empty room.

For a long time he said nothing. Then, very softly, in a voice meant for no one:

”INFERNUS. Be still.”

Deep in his chest, something ancient and enormous turned over, and did not obey.

***

*MORGANA’S ROOM*

The water had gone lukewarm, and Rowan had not said a word in a quarter of an hour.

Morgana sat in the copper tub with her knees drawn up and her dark hair pinned in a knot on top of her head. Steam had long since stopped rising. Behind her, the cloth moved across her shoulder blades in slow, firm circles, wrung out and dipped and wrung out again. It was the sound of a woman working so she would not have to speak.

Morgana knew that sound. She had heard it in the village kitchen, the winter she broke her mother’s good pitcher.

”You’re scrubbing very hard,” she said.

The cloth did not slow down.

”Only I’m told the palace is short of wards this season. If you take the skin off my back, the kings will have to send to the village for another.”

Still nothing.

”Rowan.” Morgana pressed again.

”Hold still.” Rowan snapped back.

”I am holding still. I’ve been holding still since the ewer.” Morgana tipped her head back and found the ceiling beams. ”I’ve been very good. I have not complained once about the water, or the lye soap, or the fact that you pinched me on the stairs.”

”I did not pinch you.” Rowan snapped at her.

”You did. Here.” Morgana lifted her arm and pointed at the soft part above her elbow. ”You looked at me as though I’d robbed a church, and then you pinched me.”

”You were walking too slowly.” Rowan said.

”I was walking exactly as slowly as a person walks who cannot feel her legs.”

The cloth stopped.

It stopped for only a moment, and then it started again. Morgana felt something in her chest give, relief and dread tangled together. The silence was a thing with edges. Rowan was angry, and Rowan angry was loud, and she would speak when she had decided where to begin.

Morgana let her.

She looked down.

The water was clear enough to show what was under it. She had avoided it since Rowan pulled her upright in that dark room and bundled her into a cloak, since the walk through the corridors with her head down, since the door of her own chambers had closed behind them.

Four marks climbed her left hip, pale violet going to blue at the edges. Fingers. She laid her own hand over them without meaning to, and her hand did not cover them. Another bruise ran along her inner thigh, longer, fainter. A third sat on the point of her shoulder where Rowan’s cloth passed over it, a crescent of small marks pressed into the skin. It stung when the soap touched it.

She remembered how it had come to be there.

She remembered the cold pool and her own pulse hammering in her ears. She remembered his voice at her ear, low and certain, and the way he had said her name as though it were a thing he’d been saving. She remembered a hand against her throat that had held and not hurt. She remembered his weight at her back, the heat of him, and her own voice saying I can’t and his answer.

You can, Morgana. And you will.

Her face went hot, and the bathwater did nothing for it.