The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

Thank you, Morgana thought, and did not say it.

She laid her cheek against her knees and closed her eyes. Her mother’s face rose behind her lids, the hollows under her cheekbones and the dark handkerchief pressed to her mouth. Protect them, Astraea had said. Enemies will hurt everyone you love. Rowan’s hands moved over her back, quick and sure and kind, and Morgana thought, with a sudden cold clarity, that Rowan was also someone she loved.

She held the thought carefully, the way you hold something that might break.

***

Agnes was waiting in the sitting room when they came out.

She stood by the window with her hands folded at her waist, her silver-streaked hair coiled neatly under her cap. Two young maids stood behind her with a covered tray between them. When the bedchamber door opened she turned and looked at Morgana, wrapped in a linen robe with her hair in a wet braid down her back, and her face did something Morgana had not seen it do before. It folded into tenderness, very briefly, and then it was composed again.

”My lady,” Agnes said, and curtsied.

Morgana felt the heat start up her neck.

”Agnes. Good morning.” She tried to keep her voice level. ”I did not expect....”

”His Majesty King Thorne asked that a morning meal be sent.” Agnes’s voice was perfectly pleasant. ”He returned from the throne room and found his chambers empty. I’m told he stood in the doorway for some time.” Her mouth did not quite smile. ”He sent it here instead. With instructions that you were to eat all of it.”

Morgana looked at the floor.

She looked at the weave of the rug and the fringe along its edge. She looked at her own bare toes. Beside her, Rowan made a small sound that might have been a cough.

”Thank you, Agnes,” she said to the rug.

”Of course, my lady.” The old woman turned her head. ”Set it there, girls, on the table by the window. Quietly. Quickly. Lady Morgana is hungry.”

The maids moved. A cloth was laid, a lid was lifted, and the smell reached Morgana a moment later: warm bread, honey, a pot of something that smelled of cinnamon and apple, a dish of eggs, a small plate of cold meat, and a cup of hot water steeped with something green. Her stomach turned over with a loud, undignified growl that every person in the room heard.

One of the maids pressed her lips together very hard. Rowan studied the ceiling.

”I think,” Agnes said gravely, ”that the king knew his business.”

Morgana laughed in spite of herself. It surprised her. It came out cracked and a little wet, and the knot that had lived under her ribs since the cold pool loosened by half an inch.

”Sit, my lady. Eat. The girls will go.”

The maids curtsied and left. The door clicked shut. Agnes stayed by the window, and Rowan went to fetch a hairbrush, and Morgana sat at the little table and tore a piece of bread in half.

It was warm. The crust cracked, and the inside was soft and slightly sweet. She ate it standing at first and then sitting, and then she ate the eggs, and then she ate the cold meat and half the apple dish, and she did not think about anything at all for some time.

That was the strangest thing. In the whole of her life, she could not remember the last time she had eaten a meal that someone had thought of for her.

When she looked up, Agnes was watching her with an expression Morgana could not read.

”Is something wrong?” She asked.

”No, child.” Agnes looked back out of the window. ”Nothing at all.”

***

The mirror in her chamber was tall, framed in dark wood, and she had avoided it since her arrival.

She sat before it now with her wet hair loose around her shoulders and her robe pulled close. The face in the glass was pale. There were shadows under her eyes, though less deep than she’d feared. There was color in her cheeks that was not fever. Her lips looked fuller than they should, and when she touched the lower one with two fingertips, the skin was tender.

Her eyes looked older.

She studied them. They were still the same grey-green, her mother’s color, but something had changed behind them. She could not name it. It was as though a door she had kept closed all her life had been opened a hand’s breadth, and she had seen what lay in the next room and could not stop seeing it.

Mother of Dragons, said a soft voice from yesterday.

A title, not a person.

Atheris, her own mind answered, and her stomach tightened. He masked you. He hid you for years.

She put her hand flat against her breastbone and breathed.

”Do you want the green or the grey?” Rowan said from behind her. She had the wardrobe open and was holding up two gowns, both rich, both well cut, both entirely wrong. ”The grey has the silver thread at the collar. Agnes says the king’s tailor had it made in your shade.”

”Neither.”

Rowan lowered the dresses. ”Neither?”

”Something plain.” Morgana turned on the stool. ”Something I can move in. A skirt that isn’t made of six yards of wool, and a bodice that doesn’t need two people to lace it. Do I still own anything like that? The brown, maybe. The one I came here in.”

”The brown?” Rowan’s eyebrows rose. ”I burned the brown.”

”You did not.”

”I certainly meant to.” She stood there with the two silk gowns in her arms. ”I can find you something simple. There are riding clothes. Lord Kaelen’s tailor had a few made after the.....after you went flying.” She had the grace to blush. ”They’re soft. Fitted. No lacing to speak of.”

”Those, then.”

”Morgana.” Agnes had come away from the window. She stood a few paces off with her hands folded again, but her head was tilted and her eyes were sharp. ”May I ask why plain clothes today?”