Dragon Fires Everywhere, page 4
Like he’s . . . one of us.
I’m left out in the cold once again, and unlike him, I’m shivering against it. And trying, furiously, to catch up with how the past few hours have completely flipped every script there ever was.
I glance over at my childhood home next door. The lights are off. It’s late. No doubt my parents are asleep in their separate rooms, lost somewhere in their chilly life together.
Beyond the house, the holiday lights of St. Cyprian shine down on the bricks that are supposed to keep us all safe.
And dragons are real.
I might not understand how this is at all possible, or what it means for the Riverwood and our plans to take on our new positions with as little drama as possible, but I laugh in spite of myself.
This man straight out of my daydreams is here. He’s really here.
More importantly, the dragons I’ve always dreamed of are real.
And somehow, the most unlikely person in the world—me—has gone and set one free.
5
When I make it back inside, my friends are still standing in the foyer, but Azrael isn’t with them. Frost is glaring toward the archway that leads into the living room, while Rebekah is eyeing him like she expects an explosion. Zander and Ellowyn are studying Emerson, who looks . . .
Thunderstruck.
Not something we often see on our fearless leader.
“He . . . A dragon just called a meeting of the Riverwood.” She blinks a few times, then shakes her head. “I call the meetings. I am the Confluence Warrior. Even when I didn’t know who I was, I called the meetings.”
Jacob rubs her back sympathetically, but his expression is amused. It’s not often someone comes along and tries to upend the natural order of Emerson.
“Shake a leg, witches. We don’t have forever,” Azrael calls from the large living room where we often hold our meetings.
Emerson’s stricken look quickly changes into her usual focus mixed with irritation, and woe betide the dragon who gets in her way. She marches into the living room and the rest of us exchange a look, then follow.
Azrael is standing in front of the stone hearth that now has a robust fire crackling in it when I know it didn’t before. More than that, he’s standing in Emerson’s usual spot.
I get the strangest feeling he knows that.
But she marches right up to him. “Azrael,” she says, and her voice is calm. Reasonable. Even friendly, which is one of the reasons she’s so good at local, human-facing politics too. “I am the leader of this coven. A coven that certainly wants to help you, as we all want an end to the Joywood’s reign of terror. But you’ve been stuck in a newel post for quite some time. You don’t know—”
“You’re right. I’ve been stuck in that newel post for a century or more.” He waves at the shattered remains of it at the foot of the stairs, just visible from where he stands. “But I have seen and heard everything that’s gone on around me. If it was anywhere near the stairs, I saw it. And I’ve heard pretty much everything that’s been spoken on this ground floor. You’re not exactly quiet, Emerson.” Then he looks at me, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the ways his glances shiver through me. “Dragons have excellent hearing.”
“How excellent?” Ellowyn demands suspiciously.
Azrael offers her a look, that dragony grin taking over his mouth. “Irrelevant, though should you ever see your ghosts again, you might want to let them know that although most of the people in the house can’t see them, I certainly could.”
Ellowyn’s jaw kind of drops, and Zander gets a look like horror on his face. They both met their ghostly ancestors last month after a summoning gone awry, and were fond of them, so I’m not sure why they’re having this kind of reaction—
But Azrael is already moving on. “The first order of business has to be—”
Emerson makes a sound. Kind of like a shriek, but with more temper. “You can’t decide the order of—”
“—obtaining a new Praeceptor. Because Nicholas Frost, traitor to magic, won’t do.”
We all straighten at that, less amused than before.
Frost says nothing. He looks dark and stormy, as usual.
But Rebekah crosses her arms over her chest, her eyes narrowed and fury radiating off her. “Or we could get rid of the asshole dragon who literally just appeared after having been kindling for the past century.”
“Azrael. Clearly you don’t understand what happened on Litha,” I offer, trying to find some rational ground here. “None of us would be here without Frost. He—”
“Sacrificed himself?” Azrael shrugs as if it was nothing. “After a literal millennium of living as an immortal. Something he was able to do because he was an integral part of a dark, sick coven who used evil for their own gain.”
Everyone looks at Frost, who still denies nothing. Whether that’s because he doesn’t remember, or doesn’t want to, I’m not sure—but I can’t remember him ever defending himself, even when he could remember all the things he’s done.
Emerson butts in again, sounding less patient than before. “We appreciate your support, and we’ll protect you in whatever ways we can, but you don’t have a say in the makeup of our coven.”
He nods. “Our coven.”
She frowns at him. “That’s what I said.”
Azrael shakes his head. “You can’t become the ruling coven without a magical creature. And you can’t live forever without sacrificing the magical creature in your coven after ruling for a hundred years, even if it’s a lowly ramidreju weasel.”
We all frown at that, as if a weasel should mean something to us. As if it does. I have come to suspect that this sort of thing is another little bit of evidence that the Joywood have messed with something.
But Azrael is still speaking. “This is the reason why the Joywood killed or cursed us all. They wanted to make sure they were the last coven that could achieve immortality, ever. They wanted to be the last ones standing.”
He says this like it’s a law. Like it’s common knowledge.
When we all look at him blankly, he’s clearly baffled. “You don’t know this? I thought you were just making do because you couldn’t find any of us.”
“I don’t buy it,” Rebekah says then. She’s clearly angry. And it’s no surprise why. She doesn’t just love Frost. She knows he risked everything to save her.
“I don’t think he’s wrong,” Frost says. Stiffly. “I was part of a ruling coven. I don’t remember anything about what we did to become one or what became of my coven, but I do not think he’s wrong.”
Azrael looks around with satisfaction, but I don’t think any of us feel satisfied. I certainly don’t. We’d be lost without Frost, no matter what misdeeds he might have done during his long, long life.
“It doesn’t matter,” Emerson says quietly. “What happened is in the past. We’d all make terrible mistakes if given a millennium to make them. What’s important is the here and now, and that means making sure the Joywood are well and truly stopped. Frost is our Praeceptor.”
“Then I will not be your dragon.”
“I’m not certain we need a dragon,” Emerson says, but not meanly. She’s trying to be careful. A fair leader. “But we will protect you all the same.”
He snorts, a very dragon kind of noise. “I do not need protection from a bunch of witches.”
“If the Joywood wanted to wipe out all magical creatures, it isn’t safe for you,” I say, sounding a little too much like Rebekah just did. Angry. I laugh, trying to be the airhead I’m not. “I mean . . . is it?”
His gaze lifts to mine, and I can’t read these dark gold dragon glances. I’m usually good at taking the temperature of any room I enter and every person I meet, making sure I project the image I want them to take away. But he’s different.
I can’t read him at all.
“You’ll find the answers, Georgina,” he tells me in that silken, knowing way of his. “And then you’ll understand that you need me.”
Everyone looks at me. And I feel that fatefulness rising inside me—but I shove it down. This is about reason. “Of course I’ll do research on the matter. The way I always do.”
He nods, as if he’s won here. It’s disconcerting. “Very well. Once you prove what I already know to be true, we’ll reconvene.”
I think Emerson’s head might be ready to explode, but when she speaks, she’s still her calm self, every inch the leader. “Azrael, for your own safety, you should probably go back into the newel post until—”
“Try it,” he suggests, with clear, dark, and malicious intent. “And see what happens.”
Jacob’s eyes glow in clear warning at that. He’s a quiet one, our Healer, but he doesn’t take threats to our Warrior—his fiancée—kindly.
I have to solve this. “You can’t just saunter down Main Street as a dragon. Or even go wandering around in your man costume.”
“I do not wear costumes. I am not a Halloween party trick. I am an ancient and unknowable force that cannot be contained in a single—”
“Shifters,” Frost says, as if he’s tired. And possibly bored. When Azrael glares at him, it’s his turn to shrug. “That’s the word they use to describe what it is you and the other magical creatures do. You shift.”
How he manages to make the delivery of that information an insult is its own master class, but I’m focused on the dragon, who looks like his temper might get the better of him and turn flamey at any moment.
“The Joywood will know, if they don’t already,” I say softly. And since they haven’t appeared to strike him down, I assume they don’t yet. But they could. “They’ll figure it out. That’s what they do.”
His eyes are more gold than they were before, and I feel all the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. “I will not be cursed and trapped again.”
“That’s fair,” I say hurriedly, because my friends didn’t see him in his dragon form. They don’t know what all that gold means. And they clearly can’t feel it like I can. “But what about a compromise? I’m assuming you can’t do some kind of glamour, or you all would have done that to keep from getting killed and cursed.”
“With access to dark magic, powerful witches can sense our magic, no matter what,” Azrael says mirthlessly, looking Frost’s way again, but at least there’s slightly less gold in his gaze. “They feed off it.”
“What if we all did a spell?” Emerson suggests when it looks like Rebekah, always this close to chaos, might try to take a swing at him. “We can pool all our magic together to create a tighter, more armored glamour. To actually hide what you are. Maybe even strong enough to ward off their dark magic. We’ve had plenty of run-ins with it this year. We can fight it.”
Ellowyn, who hid her own pregnancy for months, studies Azrael dubiously. I can’t help but do the same. Hiding all that seems unlikely.
More than unlikely—undoable.
“It’s possible.” Frost takes a moment to say that, as if he’s going through that glorious library of his in his head. “With our power and the right spell.”
“I wouldn’t trust you to make me dinner,” Azrael growls.
Frost actually smiles at that, a cold curve of his admittedly beautiful face. “I might not remember everything, but I know better than to break bread with a fire-breathing worm.”
“I’ll work with Frost to create the spell,” I jump in then, before the serpent in question decides to demonstrate his fire. I’m not sure why I think Frost trusts me. But he does. Or he always acts as if he might, which with Frost is as good as the real thing. “I’ll make sure it’s correct. We’ll cast it together. And if it works, then we can say you’re some . . . long-lost Wilde cousin, or something.”
“The Joywood have access to all the family trees by way of your foolish witchlore archives.” Azrael studies me even more intently. “As will you once the Cold Moon rises and you get access to the archives. They’ll know I’m no Wilde.” I’m not certain why it seems like he’s leaving off a bit of information there, but what am I certain about when it comes to him?
“Georgie can say that she brought a human home from England.” I look at Ellowyn when she says that. She is decidedly not looking at me. “She can tell everyone he followed her back to St. Cyprian,” she continues merrily. “That it was love at first sight in the British archives or whatever and such a strong connection that they couldn’t be parted.”
She waves a hand and smiles, guilelessly. When she is never guileless.
“You want me to pretend to be in love with a dragon,” I say flatly. I do not look at the dragon in question. I tamp down the mess in me even more ruthlessly. “And vice versa. Is this a pregnancy brain lapse or something more serious?”
“What about Sage?” Emerson asks before I can laugh uproariously.
And she asks it gently.
I want to scowl. Instead, I plaster on my best dreamy smile, because if they try to console me, I will lose it. “Funny you should mention that,” I murmur. “Sage and I have mutually decided to part ways.”
Maybe I can keep the cheating a secret. Especially the part involving the dreadful Cailee.
Emerson frowns at me. “When did this happen?”
“Gradually,” I say, happy that I do not share Ellowyn’s inability to lie. “But coming home finalized the feeling of having grown apart.” Emerson reaches out for me, but I just keep smiling. And don’t let her touch me. “It’s fine. For the best, obviously. A good experience, but one I’ll move on from now. Ellowyn’s plan is great.”
It’s not. It’s horrible. Pretending I’m in love with a dragon? While also pretending he’s not a dragon? It sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Particularly when it’s this dragon.
When it’s him.
Yet somehow, it’s better than everyone being careful around me over a man I thought I should date, who didn’t break my heart, but betrayed me all the same.
“Tomorrow I’ll go to Frost’s library, and we’ll try to come up with a spell,” I say. “But for tonight? You guys, I’m exhausted. And it’s Thanksgiving.”
Everyone murmurs assent at that, more or less. But before I can magic myself away from this mess and up into my bedroom, Emerson takes me by the arm and steers me deeper into the room, so it’s just the two of us having a conversation while everyone else . . . flees.
Okay, maybe they just pair off and leave, but it looks a lot like fleeing when I can’t do it myself.
“Are you sure you’re okay? I know you really . . . liked him,” Emerson offers.
Because she’s a good friend. My best friend.
I smile at her. Not too brightly. Just enough to make it look like I’m sadly brave but not fully heartbroken. “I’m okay. It really was the best thing.”
“I’m glad you figured that out. You deserve so much better.” She hugs me tight, and I know she means so well.
But I’m lying to her, so her meaning well just makes me feel awful.
“I really am exhausted, Em. It’s been a long day.”
“Get some rest. And . . . I can come up with a different idea. You don’t have to pretend to be in love with a man-dragon.”
I wish I believed that was in the cards, but I’m not going to argue with Emerson. “We’ll see. Good night.”
I don’t magic myself to my room after she leaves. I look around, half expecting—
The house is quiet. Everyone’s gone.
I sigh, and decide to walk up the stairs because it’s such a habit. I like to put my hand over Azrael as I go. Maybe talk to him a little bit.
But there’s just a broken newel post now, and I stare at it.
He’s real. He’s a whole dragon. It’s all real.
And I need some serious sleep before I can even begin to figure out how to deal with that. I take the steps with a certain resoluteness, as if the act of climbing them is how I’ll shake off this day. I make it to the third-floor turret and walk down the hall, running my hand over the half-cracked door to my library as I pass it. Once I finally make it to my room at the far end, cozy and light and home, I’m ready to just collapse into bed and sleep for twelve hours straight.
But my room isn’t empty.
Azrael is standing in the middle of it with his arms crossed over his impressive chest.
And he smiles at me, but it doesn’t feel like happiness or joy or even kindness.
It feels like passion. It feels like danger. It feels like the wildest daydreams I’ve ever had.
All over me.
6
“What . . . are you doing in here?” I manage to ask him, despite that shivery sensation that’s making my skin prickle. “This is my room.” I remind myself that he’s been living in a newel post for at least a century, apparently, so he might not know where to go. “I’ll find a room on the second floor for you to—”
“I’ve always wondered what your room looked like.” He wanders from one side of the room to the other, studying the crystals littered on every surface, the stacks of books, the old photographs propped up everywhere and pinned to the walls, and the dried-out flower wreaths hanging from ancient hooks.
“Why?” I hear myself ask, because I cannot fathom why a dragon would have even the slightest interest in my room.
“You can tell a lot about a witch by the place they rest and practice their most intimate magic.” He doesn’t look at me when he says that, so there’s no reason for me to feel suddenly overwarm. He’s obviously only talking about spellwork. Azrael looks over at me then, his eyes gleaming. “I always make it a habit to study the private domains of my Historians.”
My Historians. “What do you mean, your Historians?”
“Dragons are always assigned to protect Historians.” When I only stare back at him, his expression shifts into that same astonishment. “Not even this has survived as common knowledge?”
I shake my head. The idea of a protector is ludicrous—who would bother with a Historian enough for them to need protecting? From what? Bookworms and dust?
And even if I thought that reading was more fraught with peril than it is, here’s what I know for a fact: Every single one of the women in my coven has been directly targeted by the Joywood this past year . . . if not over the course of their whole lives.
