Page 25 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

“I don’t understand,” I whisper. Not to Azrael. Just... to the page.

Because this is the Wilde family tree. My name shouldn’t be anywhere near this.

I push Azrael’s arms off me, and while I can feel his reluctance, he lets me. I turn toward the book, crouching down and squinting

at my name on a Wilde family tree—certain I must be misreading something.

Still, his large hand stays on my arm.

I barely even feel the heat there, because this Wilde family tree doesn’t only show my name. The line leading from me goes up to my mother, which would make sense if this was the Pendell family tree. And it can

only be her, with that name. Cadence Hilaria Morgan.

I trace the line from my mother to another name, where my father’s name should be. It should say Stanford Pendell in the same dark ink, but instead it says... something else.

A name I recognize, though it doesn’t belong here.

Desmond Wilde.

Emerson and Rebekah’s father. Not mine .

“This is wrong.” That’s the only explanation. I actually laugh. “This is... the Joywood’s dark magic, I guess. A really weird choice, but I never pretended to understand them.”

I turn back to Azrael, and there’s even a smile on my face. Because it’s just... wrong. Fake. Nothing else makes any kind

of sense.

But Azrael is standing there, his arms crossed though he’s still dressed in his finery, and he looks... sympathetic?

It’s not an expression I imagine has often been on his dragony face.

And suddenly, I can’t really feel my body. Like I’ve gone entirely numb.

Too many things are hitting me at once.

My father looking sad, talking about facts and stories .

Azrael saying with such confidence that my parents used to be friends with the Wildes when I never knew them to do more than

exchange a polite nod, then move on quickly—and his shiftiness about it. Not that he was lying, I understand now. That he

didn’t want to lie to me.

The Joywood at our ascension trials telling me I didn’t even know my own past.

And if I go back farther in my memories, I can suddenly remember an old picture of Lillian Wilde that used to hang in the

guest room I often slept in. Emerson and Rebekah’s grandmother treated all of us like grandchildren when we were growing up, even giving me her brownie recipe when I was just the neighbor’s kid.

In it, she was a young, happy bride.

With flowing red curls.

The kind of red I’ve never seen anywhere in any of my relatives, but see in my mirror every day.

Everything goes a little dim then. Like all the lights went out, all that magical gold.

And in the center of the remaining gray is my name on a Wilde family tree.

My. Name.

“Georgina, you must breathe.”

It’s only when he says this, and actually sounds concerned, that I realize I’ve been holding my breath, like I’m trying to

make myself pass out. I suck in a tortured gasp, then let it out on something like a sob. “I don’t understand.”

I lift my gaze to meet his. I stare at him. I can’t make sense of any of this, least of all Azrael.

Because... “You knew?”

He looks uncomfortable. It’s the first time I’ve seen him anything but totally confident since he exploded into his actual

form in the foyer of Wilde House.

“I overheard some things in my time as a newel post,” he says.

Far too carefully.

“What things?”

“Georgina.”

He doesn’t have to say you don’t want to know . I can read it all over his face.

So I have to say it myself. I have to stitch it together myself. This horrible, impossible thing the archives wanted me to

know.

The thing the Joywood certainly knows.

My mouth is so dry it hurts, but I force the words out. “My mother and Desmond Wilde had an affair.”

He does not deny this. And when I only stare at him, he gives a very slow nod.

Holy Hecate. Blessed Soteria. This is real.

I feel like my knees are going to give out, but before they do, a chair is shoved under me, and I collapse into it.

The family tree lies in that book at my feet.

Wilde family tree. Desmond Wilde.

I cradle my head in my hands, like I need extra support as my mind whirls and whirls and whirls. But what I keep coming back

to is my dad tonight.

He knew I’d be getting access to the archives.

He knew what I would find.

Facts are not always the whole story.

“My dad knew,” I hear myself say, muffled because my mouth is buried in my own palms. “It’s why he was sad tonight. He knew

I’d find out. He knew the truth and he knew I’d find it. But how did he know? How long has he known?”

I’m not sure I’m really asking that as a question so much as thinking aloud. I think back, trying to pinpoint a moment. But

in my memory, my parents have always been what they’ve been—the way they are now. Not happy. Not terrible. My mother too sharp,

my father too soft.

Just... them.

Why would he have stayed if he knew what she’d done? Why would he have kept up this fiction?

Why did he... treat me like his own?

“This I do not know,” Azrael says quietly, and he could be answering any of those questions. “After a certain point, your

father never returned to Wilde House.”

“And my mother?”

“There were certain discussions.”

I stand then. My weak knees are replaced by a restless need to move . I pace back and forth, and on one pass, I shove a finger in his direction. “You have to tell me. You knew. ”

He clearly doesn’t care for being pointed at. Just as he clearly prefers to be making the demands. It’s stamped all over his gorgeous face.

If only I’d kept kissing him.

If only I could rewind time and kiss him all night, and not have to know this.

When Azrael speaks, it is gentle, and somehow that’s worse. “Desmond refused to acknowledge you. At first, this enraged your

mother, but then, I suppose, she accepted it. Either way, she never graced the door of Wilde House again.”

I’m thinking about all of those years. My whole life . Emerson’s and Rebekah’s whole lives too. Emerson and I used to say we were as close as sisters, especially in the years Rebekah was in exile. And all that time we were . We are .

We have all been raised in a lie .

I guess this should feel old hat by now. The Joywood sold all of us lies for too many years. I still don’t know how many.

They also knew about this, I remind myself. About me. They had access to this very same book.

It makes me feel almost like they’re in here with me, their oily magic on everything and all over my skin.

“I was only an observer,” Azrael tells me in that same disturbingly quiet way, when I have never heard a story about a dragon

caring for the petty little concerns of mortal witches. But then, Azrael has cared for me even when all he heard were my petty concerns, my sleepwalking truths whispered like prayers in the dark of a sleeping house. “I know what

I saw and heard, but I do not know the full truth. That would have to come from the people who hid this from you.”

Still, he knew. All this time. Like my mother, like my father.

Like my enemies.

“You should have told me,” I say in a pained whisper.

“Why?”

“I had a right to know.”

“I cannot argue that point, but why was it up to me?”

I stare at him. I have no quick answer. Only a cascade of twisted, complicated emotions I can’t make sense of, but seem wrapped

up in all that gold in his onyx gaze.

“You know your coven, your friends,” Azrael says, and some of that gentleness is starting to turn to impatience. Perversely,

that makes me feel the slightest bit better, because it’s him. It’s normal. It’s the first hint I have that I might actually

survive this moment, the weight of this knowledge. “What is it you’re afraid of? I would wager considerable riches on Emerson

being nothing but overjoyed that you are her sister.”

I am actually Emerson’s sister. I am living in Wilde House and I am not an interloper. I belong to it. And to my best friend.

“Emerson will celebrate, but she’ll also be deeply hurt by her father.” And I can’t accept it. I can’t be okay with it. Her father had sex with my mother. It makes my stomach hurt. “Rebekah, on the other hand...”

“Will hate her father more, if possible. That has little to do with you.”

Why is he being so reasonable when everything is wrong?

The worst part, I think then, is that I will be tasked with setting it all to rights. Because I’m the one who found out. I’m the one who’s going to break the lie that we’ve all been living under, and as I know from this last year, no one likes that.

But I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know if this can be fixed. It’s so complicated and twisted, I don’t even know who I should speak to first.

No one, I think. I want to tell no one . Once again, I want to go back in time.

For a moment, I’m actually tempted to try it. But time is a dangerous thing. If you steal time, you lose time, just like the

nursery rhyme taught us.

Then again, I want to lose this.

Azrael grips my arms then, and not gently. “Georgina, get a hold of yourself.”

I look at his eyes, black and gold. For a moment, it’s like I can see a million years reflected back at me. Riding dragons

and fighting the darkness, always the darkness. Crows in the air and around us. Endless wars and a great, bright sword.

But that’s just that stupid book again.

Isn’t it?

He rubs his hands down my arms. Then he pulls me close, into an embrace that is not less affecting for being a simmering fire

instead of a blaze.

“Let us return to Wilde House. I will draw you a crystal bath.” I feel his breath move through my hair, and something relaxes, deep inside, at being in his arms again.

I get the impression that touching me, holding me close, calms him.

Like he needs this too. “You can invite me to join you, of course.”

I think he is trying to make me laugh. To lighten the mood. But with the earlier kiss and this strange connection between

us, he has miscalculated.

And with my entire world upended tonight, I have to make this clear.

I don’t want to wish for too much. I can’t let myself be wrong, not about him.