Lulu the Little Goddess

Villagers accuse Lulu of witchcraft after she revives a dead crow and can speak with animals; they drive her out. Alone in the snow, she heals an injured deer, then has no home to return to.

She finds wounded King Alaric in the snow and heals him. His guards find them; Alaric brings the child back to the castle and gives her a home.

In the castle, Prince Cassian is near death from illness. Royal steward Odran puts him at less than a month without the legendary sacred lotus from the mistswood. Lulu holds his hand; Cassian wakes and his symptoms fade. The physician had judged him nearly beyond saving.

Alaric investigates Lulu's past: she was abandoned at the village entrance three years ago and an old hunter raised her. Her ability to understand birds and beasts and bring plants back to life made the villagers call her an evil witch; after a plague and livestock deaths, they blamed and drove her out. Alaric orders those villagers exiled to the northern frontier for hard labor and defensive works.

A summons from the Dragon Nest Temple forces Cassian's dragon rider coming-of-age. Under royal succession law, failure to bond a sufficiently powerful dragon passes first place to the Nockent line and Lord Corvus. Grand Duke Nockent spreads rumors that Cassian is terminally ill and unfit. Alaric prepares the ceremony and plans to proclaim Lulu a Princess of Elyria before the gods and foreign envoys.

At the temple, Corvus Nockent awakens an Azure-scale silver Dragon, a true Dragon bloodline seen once a century, and challenges Cassian's claim. Cassian chooses an egg that has not responded to anyone in two thousand years after Lulu identifies it as the brightest. The egg reacts.

The trial leaves Cassian's succession and Lulu's royal place tied to the Nockent challenge. Lulu's healing magic then faces the Nockent power grab and Kingsland hostility; food and medicine crises and threats to the royal family and civilians widen the fight beyond one throne.