Morgana shook her head slightly.
Agnes placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, the first real human contact that wasn’t designed to help her bathe or move her along.
The touch felt like an anchor. Like something real in a world that had become surreal.
"If you need anything...anything at all, ring the bell by the bed," Agnes said, gesturing to a small brass bell on the nightstand. "Someone will come immediately. Day or night. You’re safe now. You’re under the kings’ protection."
The words landed in Morgana’s ears but didn’t penetrate her mind.
Safe.
She was safe.
But was she?
Agnes squeezed her shoulder gently and then turned to leave with the other maids.
The door closed softly behind them.
And Morgana was alone.
***
The silence of the chamber was absolute.
It pressed down on her like a physical weight.
Morgana stood in the center of the room, looking around at the beauty of her surroundings, and felt nothing but emptiness.
Her legs gave out and she sank onto the edge of the bed.
The fine linens were soft beneath her, but she couldn’t appreciate that softness. She could only recognize it as evidence of the surreality of her situation.
The shaking started in her hands.
Small tremors at first, then growing stronger, until her entire body was vibrating with a tension she couldn’t name and couldn’t release.
She tried to understand what had happened.
The trial had ended. Isolde had been exposed. The conspiracy had been revealed. She had been found innocent.
And then...the Law of Crown Protection. Words spoken in a language of power and authority that she didn’t fully understand.
She was a ward of the throne now.
But what did that mean?
What exactly was a ward of the throne?
What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to live?
Nobody had explained it to her. Not Draeven, not Kaelen, not Thorne. Not Agnes, though Agnes seemed to understand the implications perfectly.
Nobody had said: this is what you’ll do tomorrow, this is what you’ll do the next day, this is how your life will work now.
She had simply been moved from the trial chamber to these quarters, bathed, clothed, fed, and left alone.
The questions formed in her mind like poison:
What is a ward of the throne?
What responsibilities do I have?
What am I supposed to do with myself?
How am I supposed to live this life?
Nobody has told me anything about what this means.
This room is beautiful but I don’t know how to exist in it.
This life is surreal and not like anything I’ve ever known.
I don’t know the rules of this world.
I don’t understand what’s expected of me.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
The fear began to crystallize in her chest.
She wasn’t afraid of the comfort. She wasn’t afraid of the beauty of the room or the kindness of Agnes or the apparent safety of her situation.
She was afraid of what came next.
***
Morgana stood and moved toward the window as if drawn by invisible strings.
The night had fully settled over the palace.
Below her, the grounds were illuminated by torches placed throughout the courtyards and gardens. The light caught the stones of the palace and turned them golden, almost ethereal in the darkness.
She could see movement below...servants heading to their quarters for the night, guards making their rounds, the machinery of the palace continuing its endless operation.
The palace was vast and alive and indifferent to her presence.
She could see the stables in the distance, the place she had lived not so long ago. The place that had felt like home since she got to the palace.
She could see the servants’ quarters beyond.
She could see the lower levels of the palace where she had worked, where she had scrubbed floors and carried trays and tried to be invisible.
And now, from this window in the royal wing, she looked down at her old life as if it belonged to someone else. As if it was a separate world, one she had escaped from but could never return to.
The view was breathtaking in its beauty.
But it was also isolating in its perspective.
She was above everything now.
She was removed.
She was separate.
Morgana pressed her hand against the cool glass of the window.
The glass was smooth and cold and real, the only thing that felt solid in this moment.
Morgana raised her other hand slowly.
She focused on the sensation of magic within her....the ancient magic that had lived in her blood since birth, that she had spent eighteen years learning to suppress and control.
The magic answered her call.
A small flame danced to life in her palm.
It was warm. It was real. It was familiar in a way that nothing else in this chamber was familiar.
She watched the fire with fascination.
It responded to her emotions, her thoughts, her will.
She shaped it with her mind, forming it into patterns:
A bird...its wings spreading wide, feathers of pure fire catching the candlelight, the shape lifting slightly as if about to take flight.
The bird dissipated and reformed into a flower.....petals unfurling, each one made of dancing flame, the shape delicate and beautiful in her palm.
The flower melted and became a spiral....twisting and turning, spinning faster and faster, hypnotic in its movement.
And finally, with a focus that brought tears to her eyes, she formed it into a dragon.
Small and delicate, barely bigger than her thumb, the shape of a baby dragon, a young one, freshly hatched, innocent and perfect.
This was the shape that Atheris had taught her. The shape that the ancient dragon had shown her how to create, how to hold, how to appreciate as a symbol of her own nature.
A bay dragon, he had called it. A young dragon, filled with potential and power and the possibility of becoming something great.
Despite everything....the trial, the fear, the confusion, the isolation, Morgana smiled.
It was a real smile.
A genuine smile.
A smile that came from somewhere deep inside her that still understood beauty, that still recognized magic, that still believed that something in her was good.
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