Dragon Cursed (Secret Kingdoms: The Draquonir #3)

Chapter 1

P oppy Brightwood

Present Day

A shadow flashed overhead.

Poppy ducked under the branches of an ancient oak and squinted up through the tangled limbs.

She’d ventured deeper into these untouched woods than any sane person should go.

Local lore said the forest was haunted and full of magic, but the Aos-sí-bloom she sought was worth the risk.

Its petals, harvested under the new moon and properly prepared, could cure the most virulent of fevers — a remedy she desperately needed for the children in the village.

All her senses tingled like mad—a gift, she’d been told, inherited from her mother.

Poppy was sensitive to nature, to the vibrations of all living things.

Some would call it psychic. Her grandmother said it was magic.

All Poppy knew was that there were too many wonderful, extraordinary things in the world to get all twisted up by a label.

Didn’t change a thing about who she was.

Her grandmother had taught her that there was something unique and special about every living creature, and all she had to do was open her eyes and her heart to see its true beauty.

“Almost there,” she muttered to herself as she carefully navigated through the dense brush.

Something followed her.

Not footsteps. Not movement exactly. Just the unmistakable sensation of attention — heavy and focused between her shoulder blades.

Pressure settled beneath her ribs, deep and instinctive, as though the forest itself had gone still to listen.

The fine hairs along the back of her neck lifted.

Ferns dragged against her jeans as she pushed through the undergrowth. Damp earth and crushed cedar filled her lungs. Somewhere high above, branches rustled softly against each other, though no wind touched the forest floor.

She paused for a drink, tipping her head back as cool water slid down her throat, a welcome relief after hours of steady hiking.

Keeping her movements slow and casual, she scanned the dense forest around her from beneath lowered lashes.

Plenty of eyes could be hidden out there — birds tucked among the branches, deer standing motionless in the undergrowth, maybe even a curious fox watching from the shadows.

Just because it feels like something big and dangerous, doesn’t make it so. It’s probably just some sleepy old owl, angry because you’ve disturbed it. Besides, you’ve come too far to turn back now, so stop letting your imagination run away with you.

With stiff fingers, she capped the water bottle and put it away, then adjusted the worn leather strap of her satchel where it cut into her shoulder.

The bag knocked softly against her hip as she began walking again, heavy with amber glass jars wrapped in cloth, bundles of twine, and her grandmother’s botanical press.

The old thing weighed far more than dried flowers and paper ever should.

Its walnut covers had darkened with age, the grain polished smooth by generations of careful hands, while the leather straps creaked each time she shifted them higher onto her shoulder.

Pressed between its thick, yellowed pages lay specimens no modern botanist would have believed real.

Silver-veined moonwort gathered beneath eclipse skies.

Ghost orchids that bloomed only where the veil between worlds thinned.

Black hellebore threaded with faint traces of gold along the stems. Plants whispered about in half-forgotten folklore and dismissed by scholars as superstition or mistranslation.

Poppy had spent her childhood turning those fragile pages beneath the warm glow of her grandmother’s kitchen lamp, breathing in the scent of dried lavender, old parchment, and crushed herbs while rain battered the cottage windows.

Every specimen had been labeled in fading ink, each note written in the careful hand of some ancestor long buried beneath the cliffs of Cuanfirth.

Proof.

Not stories. Not myths.

Evidence preserved petal by petal between layers of paper and time.

The modern world beyond her grandmother’s village chased glowing screens and concrete skylines, eager to bury old beliefs beneath convenience and steel.

But in Cuanfirth, the old knowledge endured quietly.

Hidden in weathered journals. Whispered over simmering tinctures.

Pressed carefully between ancient pages and passed from mother to daughter like a secret the world had once tried very hard to erase.

A shiver ran over her skin. The haunted woodlands certainly lived up to every tale whispered about them. Her search for the Aos-sí bloom had drawn her three days from her grandmother’s cottage at the edge of the village, each passing hour carrying her farther into the forest.

Mist clung to the ancient trunks like grey shrouds, and the canopy overhead had grown so dense the midday sun barely pierced through, dappling the forest floor in shifting patterns of shadow. Most people would have found the oppressive silence unnerving. To Poppy, it was like coming home.

The village, Cuanfirth, clung to the coast like a barnacle to a rock.

A stubborn collection of weathered grey stone and fishing nets, it rejected modernization with a fierce, quiet pride.

There were few glowing screens. Fewer humming machines.

Only the timeless rhythm of the tides and the scent of brine and woodsmoke to lull her to sleep.

When sickness or sorrow took hold, the villagers sought the quiet solace of her grandmother's dusty little shop, with its walls of fragrant herbs and drawers of forgotten remedies. Bundles of yarrow and mugwort hung from the ceiling beams, their shadows swaying gently above rows of cloudy apothecary jars. Drawers lined the walls floor to ceiling, each marked in her grandmother’s faded hand — feverfew, comfrey root, sea fennel, foxglove.

The air always carried the same layered scent: beeswax, dried herbs, salt blown in from the harbor, and something faintly medicinal simmering in the copper kettle near the hearth.

The people of Cuanfirth still trusted the old ways long after the rest of the world had forgotten them. They still believed in magic.

As Poppy ventured deeper into the forest, a strange vibration pulsed beneath her boots. Not the familiar heartbeat of living earth she’d known all her life — this carried a jagged wrongness that set her teeth on edge. Ancient power lingered here. Powerful. Wounded.

A shiver slipped down her spine.

The forest was dying here.

The realization struck hard enough to slow her steps.

Towering trees arched overhead in quiet majesty, but something about them was brittle, strained.

Their leaves curled at the edges with patches of brown despite the fresh green of spring.

The rich scents of the forest carried a bitter undertone now, sharp as scorched herbs left too long in the fire.

Magic tainted and rotting beneath the soil.

She paused, her hand on the gnarled bark of an oak that had no doubt stood when her great-grandmother was born. The thick, grey-brown bark was deeply furrowed with age and rough against her palm.

She closed her eyes and let her awareness stretch outward.

Beyond the whisper of leaves overhead. Beyond the scurry of unseen creatures weaving through fern and brush.

She searched for the unmistakable signature of the Aos-sí bloom — the bright, silvery current that had threaded through her dreams all week.

Nothing.

Then—

A hollow opened in her senses. A darkness. A void where life should be. Vast and unnatural, a place where the living pulse of the forest simply stopped. Not cruel. But grieving.

Breath snagged in her lungs. The unnatural presence loomed against her awareness like something colossal sleeping beneath deep water — ancient enough to dwarf mountains, heavy enough to crush the life out of every living thing.

Its sorrow rolled through her in slow, crushing waves, until her chest tightened around it and her eyes burned with sudden, inexplicable tears.

"Who are you?" she whispered into the stillness. Her voice sounded small in the vast silence.

Cold slipped between the trees without warning, threading beneath her collar and skimming across damp skin.

The mist thickened around the roots of the oaks, swallowing the birdsong one voice at a time.

Even the whisper of wind through the upper branches ceased.

The air grew thick, charged with a warning that prickled her skin and raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

Her eyes snapped open. Every instinct screamed at her to turn back, to flee this place that felt both sacred and dangerous.

But her feet remained rooted, her worn leather boots sinking slightly into the damp, mossy earth.

Something about that sorrowful presence called to her — a loneliness that echoed in her soul, a loneliness that she rarely acknowledged.

She waited there. Strained to hear footsteps. Movement. Anything.

There was nothing. Eventually she grew restless, urgency overriding her fear. She needed to find the Aos-sí-bloom before another child died.

"Just a little farther." She pushed forward, her muscles tight with tension. "It has to be close."

A narrow deer trail wound upward toward a rocky outcrop. As she climbed, the feeling of being watched intensified. Not the casual observation of a forest creature. Focused. Deliberate. The attention of a predator.

Or a forest guardian, like the ones her great-grandmother had written about in the family histories. Poppy had never met one. That didn't mean they didn't exist. She was, after all, carrying a book full of drawings and pressings of plants that didn’t exist. Not in any modern book, anyway.

The trail opened into a small clearing where sunlight finally broke through the canopy, illuminating a cluster of pale, glowing flowers nestled in the crevice of a moss-covered rock.

Aos-sí-blooms.