Chapter 2 - The Witches' Cage and the Blood of the First Dragon
Hundreds of leagues away, across jagged mountain ranges and treacherous, fog-shrouded swamps, Princess Amber slowly fluttered her eyelashes open.
She wasn't tied to a chair. Her small wrists were free of manines, and her ankles rested comfortably against the cold, damp stone of an unfamiliar circular room. Yet, she could not move past an invisible boundary line. A shimmering, iridescent ring of blood-red runes traced a perfect circle around her, pulsing with a low, hypnotic hum that made the air taste like copper and ozone.
Amber sat up, rubbing her sleepy eyes with the back of her small hand, showing remarkably little panic for a seven-year-old child snatched from her bed. She looked around the cavernous chamber, noting the flickering torches mounted in iron skulls along the damp stone walls.
"Where am I?" she asked aloud, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
A soft, mocking chuckle emerged from the dense shadows near the back of the room. "Somewhere your almighty father can never, ever reach you, little bird."
Amber turned her head toward the sound. Out of the darkness stepped a tall woman draped in cascading layers of midnight-black silk. Intricate silver symbols, resembling creeping thorn vines, were tattooed across her pale arms and neck. Her eyes were entirely milky white, devoid of pupils, gleaming with an eerie, supernatural luminescence.
Amber tilted her head, studying the newcomer with unabashed curiosity. "Are you a witch?" she asked.
The woman smiled, a thin, cruel slash of red lips. "Yes, child. I am."
Amber blinked. "Are you a bad witch?"
The woman laughed, a sound like dry leaves scraping across stone. "Oh, the worst kind imaginable."
Amber nodded thoughtfully. "Okay."
The witch paused, her smile faltering slightly in genuine confusion. "Okay? That is all you have to say to that?"
Amber shrugged, her small shoulders lifting and falling. "My daddy says bad people usually talk too much about how scary they are instead of just doing things."
A muffled snort echoed from the dark corner behind the witch. One of the armored guards standing watch nearly broke composure, coughing quickly to mask a laugh.
The witch snapped her head around, glaring daggers at the guard. "Silence!" she hissed.
The guard instantly dropped his head, staring rigidly at the floor. The witch turned back to the captive princess, her white eyes narrowing. "You have a remarkably insolent tongue for someone trapped in a cage of divine suppression."
Amber crossed her tiny arms over her chest, mimicking her father's posture when he was displeased with his generals. "What's your name?"
"I am Seraphine, High Priestess of the Hollow Moon," the woman declared grandly, spreading her arms wide.
"I'm Amber."
"I am well aware of who you are," Seraphine sneered. "Everyone across the five kingdoms knows the name of the Dragon King's precious little daughter."
Amber’s expression hardened just a fraction. "My daddy is going to come get me."
Seraphine laughed openly this time, the sound grating and harsh. "No, he won't."
"Yes, he will," Amber insisted stubbornly.
"He cannot find this place. It is masked by ancient blood-wards that conceal us from both mortal eyes and magical scrying."
"He always finds me," Amber said with absolute, unshakable childish certainty. "When I hide in the royal treasury, he finds me. When I hide in the dragon caves, he finds me."
Seraphine stepped closer to the shimmering boundary line, looking down at the little girl with a mixture of pity and malice. "This time, he won't. Because your father hasn't been searching for you in the right places—he has been spending the last seven years hiding what you truly are from the world."
Amber’s confident little smile faltered. Her hands uncrossed, falling limply to her sides. "What... what am I?"
Seraphine's expression shifted into something predatory and triumphant. "Ah. So he kept it from you. He truly thought he could lock away destiny behind castle walls."
Amber stood up inside the magical circle, pressing her small palms against the invisible barrier, though she kept her distance from the stinging runes. "Tell me! What do you mean?"
Seraphine smiled wider, leaning down until her face was level with the child's. "You carry the blood of the First Dragon, little one. The primal spark that existed before kings, before empires, before your father ever claimed the throne."
Suddenly, every torch in the stone chamber flickered and died, plunging the room into absolute darkness, save for the pulsing red glow of the runes.
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Amber’s eyes widened in shock as a strange, deep warmth bloomed in her chest, unlike anything she had ever felt before. "What does that mean?" she whispered, her voice trembling slightly for the first time.
Seraphine stepped backward into the shadows, her voice echoing through the cooling air. "It means your father isn't protecting you from the world... he's protecting the world from you."
