The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

Agnes found him in the east study, where the morning light fell across a desk buried in maps.

Draeven did not look up when she entered. He had a letter flattened under one hand and a pen in the other, and a column of figures about grain stores in the southern provinces stood half finished on the page. He had been writing the same line for some time.

”Your Majesty.” Agnes called out.

”Agnes.” The pen did not stop. ”Is she awake?”

”She is awake, and she has eaten.” A pause. ”The king’s breakfast was well received.”

His mouth moved at one corner. It was gone before it reached his eyes.

”She is dressed,” Agnes continued. ”She asks to go to the stables.”

The pen stopped.

Draeven lifted his head slowly. The gold of his eyes was steady, but behind it something old and large shifted its weight, and Agnes, who had served the palace for forty years, felt the temperature of the room change by half a degree.

”Outside,” he said.

”Beyond the walls of the royal wing. Yes, Your Majesty. She says it is where she was sent, and she wishes to visit the stables.” Agnes folded her hands. ”And the master who gave her a room when she had none. She has not seen him since the cells.”

Draeven set the pen down.

”No.”

The word rose in him whole, from somewhere below thought. It was INFERNUS, and it was not a refusal so much as a wall. She would be beyond the gate. There were Carrick’s men in the palace, and the council splitting like river ice, and a white-haired girl in the guest chambers whom none of them understood. There were three ancient dragons below the east tower who wanted her brought to them. His brothers had each taken her in their own way, and their dragons had tasted her. His had not.

He could not feel her.

That was the thing that stung. GLACIUS knew where she was every hour of the day. NOCTYS hummed with her like a plucked string. INFERNUS lay in his chest and felt nothing but her absence, and it was an ache that had been growing since the night she walked into the throne room in a servant’s dress and looked at him without lowering her eyes.

”Your Majesty?” Agnes called out.

He looked at Agnes.

”If all three of us come at her with full intensity, she will see a cage.”

He had said it to his brothers not an hour ago. He had said it with perfect certainty, and now the first time it mattered, his own fire was telling him to bar the gates.

”Tell her she may go,” Draeven said.

Agnes’s face did not move, but her shoulders eased.

”Tell her she may stay as long as she likes. She is not to be hurried, and no one is to question her.” He rose, and the chair scraped back. ”Send Captain Rhen to me.”

”At once.” Agnes replied and bowed.

”And Agnes.”

She paused at the door.

”Did she seem well?”

The old woman considered the question with the care it deserved.

”She seemed,” Agnes said slowly, ”like a person who has been shut in a room for a very long time and has just remembered there are windows.”

He nodded once. She curtsied and went out.

***

Rhen arrived within the quarter hour, the scarred line along his jaw flexing as he came to attention.

”Lady Morgana is going to the stables,” Draeven said. ”She will go by the lower courtyard, and I want a man with her.”

”One man, Your Majesty?”

”One. Not a detail. Not a guard of honor.” Draeven turned from the window. ”She has spent the past few weeks being watched by people who wished her harm. I will not send her out with an escort that looks like a leash.”

Rhen’s brows drew together, but he nodded slowly. ”Corin, then. He is young. He is quick on his feet, and he has the sense to keep his mouth closed.”

”Is he good?”

”He’s the best I have for this.” Rhen paused. ”He’ll lay down his life for her if it comes to that, my king.”

”That will do.” Draeven’s eyes held the captain’s. ”He is to stay near enough to protect her and far enough that she never has to see him. If she turns around, he is a servant on an errand. If she is in danger, he is a wall. Do you understand?”

”I understand.” Rhen replied.

”Then see to it.”

Rhen bowed and left.

The door closed. Draeven stood alone in the study with the map of the south spread under the window, and he pressed two fingers against his sternum, where the dragon lay coiled and awake.

”Be still.” He commanded.

INFERNUS didn’t answer. It rarely did anymore these days.

***

The corridors of the royal wing had a different sound when Morgana walked through them in riding boots.

She noticed it on the third landing. The slippers they had put on her feet since the cells made a soft, hushed noise on the stone, a ward’s noise. The boots rang. Each step struck the flagstones clean and clear, and the sound ran ahead of her down the long gallery and turned heads.

Servants stopped. A pair of maids with a linen basket drew into an alcove and curtsied so low that one of them nearly dropped her load. A page boy stared. An old steward in the colors of the east wing bowed from the waist, held it too long, and straightened with his eyes fixed on the middle distance, as though she were a thing it was not safe to look at directly.

She felt it all along her skin. The whispers began behind her the moment she passed, soft and quick and sibilant.

—the ward—

—King Thorne’s chambers, all night, The maids says—

—and Lord Kaelen before—

She kept her chin up and her hands loose at her sides. The brown wool sleeves of her shirt covered the bruises on her arms. Her collar was high, and the plait lay along her neck and concealed the mark on her shoulder, and still she felt as though she walked in her own bare skin down the length of the palace.