Page 21 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

“Against Sage?” I laugh. “I enjoyed watching you step in and all, but I could have handled him if I’d needed to. He’s not

complicated. Trust me.”

He says nothing, but he’s glaring at me, and I don’t understand why.

“Did you get the artifact?” I ask, worried that something went wrong there and that’s why he’s so upset. He can’t really be mad I stopped him from murder . Can he?

“I got it,” he says, but darkly.

I’m going to ask him why he’s still so grumpy then, but he produces a long, slim box made of glass. Inside is a golden horn.

Everything else in my head simply evaporates as I stare at it.

It’s real. I can tell it’s real .

“A unicorn horn,” I say on an exhale, mesmerized by the way the moonlight catches all that gold, which should seem unnatural

but doesn’t. “I can... feel it.” It’s not like Azrael’s magic, dark and smoky. It’s like a prism, and it hums around the box in a kaleidoscope of magic.

I look up at Azrael, excitement making me want to laugh or dance. We did it. But the we has me thinking of the coven, and remembering...

“This isn’t the unicorn Frost... maybe ...” I can’t say it.

Azrael sighs deeply. “Of course not. The artifacts are not made from mutilated, murdered fabulae. That could only be dark

blood magic. These artifacts only retain their magic if they’re given of a creature’s free will. Usually toward the end of

their lives. That’s why there are so few of them. Don’t you think the Joywood would have a trove of them otherwise?”

I want to reach out and touch it, but the glass is protecting it, and more, I can feel the spells keeping watch over it too.

“Only magical creatures can move it, wield it,” Azrael tells me. “Magical creatures, and those witches who are given specific

permission to carry such an honor.”

I manage to tear my gaze from the horn, to meet his golden, gleaming stare. My hands itch to touch, I want to beg him to give me permission, but...

“Emerson, obviously, should—”

But he’s shaking his head. “Georgina, it’s you.”

I swallow at the sudden lump in my throat.

At the weight of the responsibility he’s just laid across my shoulders.

It’s not that I don’t want it, but it feels overwhelming for a minute.

Like Felicia said, I am the star of the show tonight.

This is about archives, and a Historian has to be a good, intuitive researcher to track down

the keys at all.

Tonight is my domain.

And tonight is why the Joywood never had to target me the way they did my friends. There was never any need. They knew this

ceremony was a fail-safe. Without a magical creature—or the knowledge that magical creatures were real and some had left artifacts

behind in anticipation of their approaching deaths—they didn’t have to come after me.

All they had to do was wait for me to fail tonight, and better yet, have no idea why—because they hid their tracks long ago.

But I’m not going to fail now, thanks to this artifact.

Thanks to Azrael.

“How do I ask for permission?”

“You do not have to ask,” he says, his voice strangely husky.

He holds out the glass case to me, his gaze never leaving mine. I have to take a deep breath to steady my shaking hands. Then

I reach out to take it from him.

For a moment, we’re both holding it. I can feel magic pulsing around us. His. The unicorn’s. Mine.

Inside me. Outside me.

If there’s a song at the confluence, I can’t hear it.

For a moment, it’s just us.

A melody I know as well as my own heart, my own breath.

Then Azrael releases the case, and it’s in my hands alone. I have to work to steady my breath. To do something about my heart

rate.

“Send it to wherever you’re keeping the keys,” Azrael instructs me. “You won’t reveal it until right before you start the

ritual.”

I nod. I’m feeling more... fragile. Like one wrong move won’t just ruin everything, but will shatter the amazing magic

I’ve been trusted with.

And I’m not sure which one would devastate me more.

Still, I close my eyes. I center my magic. And then I send the horn to stay with the keys until it’s time.

When I open my eyes, Azrael is staring at me. The intensity isn’t new. I’ve caught him staring at me like that before. It’s

more that I’m having a harder and harder time convincing myself it doesn’t mean... exactly what I feel like it means.

What I’m no longer so sure I want to pretend I don’t know it means.

Inside, I am nothing but longing and fire and fate . That same sense that my life was leading me straight here, to him, all along. That everything about this is inevitable.

That the only reason he is not rushing in is that he already knows where we’re going.

Even a few days ago, that made me feel uncertain, but it doesn’t tonight.

It feels like confirmation.

“There’s not much time left of this ball,” Azrael says, and I’m not sure he’s ever sounded so calmly serious. Like every move

we make is weighty. “Let’s go back in.”

I nod again. Finding my voice seems impossible. So we walk back inside together.

I meet Emerson’s gaze across the room. She notices Azrael, then looks at me expectantly.

We’ve got it , I send to her.

She gives me a discreet little fist pump, which eases some of the tension inside me. We’ve got this. I know we do. We were

meant for this.

Azrael’s hand is suddenly on my back, directing me not toward Emerson, but to the little dance floor.

“We should dance,” he says in my ear, creating a cascade of sparkling shivers through me.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a mental image of that book cover pops into my head. It is emblazoned on my mind as we move to the music. But maybe this was all it meant. A dance while we’re pretending to be a couple, so no one knows what he is.

But I understand that’s not what it meant at all.

“You know what we are, Georgina,” he murmurs, making me startle in his arms. “You always have. You always will.”

I let my breath out, a long, slow shuddering. Inside me are all those daydreams. Passion and wild sex and laughter and longing

and him . Us. This. You can’t just go cavorting around my thoughts.

“Think quieter, then,” he says pleasantly enough, and I’m all but plastered to his body while we sway to the music, and nothing

I feel is quiet .

Still, I endeavor to do just that.

I try to empty my head of all thoughts.

Because the clock is striking down, fate is real, and it will be midnight soon enough.