Page 28 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

Emerson puts her hand over mine, her gaze concerned. “But none of what you told us is a change, is it? Except your level of

access to witchdom’s history.”

“True.” I take a deep breath. Then I tell them about the book interruption. The way it opened itself up to the Wilde family

tree. “My name was on it.”

Emerson’s grip on my hand tightens, but she’s grinning. “Oh! Are we long-lost cousins? One of those you go back far enough

and we’re tenth cousins twice removed type things?”

I shake my head. “A little... closer than that.”

“How much closer?” Rebekah asks darkly, like she knows where this is going. I can’t imagine she does, not just yet, but she’s

definitely picking up more than Emerson is.

“My mother’s name was there.” I don’t mean to drag this out and make it more dramatic. But it’s so hard to find the words.

“Stanford Pendell was not listed as my father.” I suck in a deep breath, then look at Azrael. He gives me a reassuring nod,

all gold eyes, and that helps me say the thing I won’t be able to take back. “Desmond Wilde was.”

A heavy silence fills this room I know so well. This happy kitchen where Emerson and Rebekah’s grandmother used to putter

around, singing little songs to herself, always far more aware of what we were up to than we liked to believe.

Maybe I’m not the only one remembering Lillian Wilde and her brand of magic that sometimes wasn’t magic at all, but love—and thinking about the fact that she was my grandmother too.

It all settles on us, hard and irrevocable and yes, ugly. I wish I could say something else, something to fix this and make

it less... huge .

I wouldn’t say Emerson looks devastated , exactly, but she’s clearly thinking about her parents and their marriage.

Maybe about the details , like what Desmond had to be up to that year if he got three daughters out of it.

About what it means that they all kept this lie this long. Wondering if everyone knows but us.

She looks at me, a little desperately. “Maybe the Joywood changed something and...” But she doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Em. I don’t think the Joywood can change what’s inside the archives. Hide it, maybe, but make actual changes to the lore?

I don’t think so. Too much adds up. The way my father was acting, things the Joywood have said, the red hair, like your grandmother’s.”

I can’t call Lillian mine . Not yet. Not out loud . No matter what that family tree said. I take a deep breath, hold her gaze and her hand. “I don’t think it’s wrong.”

“We can’t really be surprised that Dad’s an even bigger dick than we already thought he was, can we?” Rebekah asks darkly.

“I don’t know the details,” I tell her, with a great calm that must come from somewhere, though I have no idea where. “Azrael...

observed some things, overheard some things, during that period.”

“Did our mom know?” Emerson asks him.

He lifts a shoulder. “I’m not sure. The only thing I saw or heard was Desmond and Cadence speaking. There was fighting between

your parents, but that was hardly new. I do not know if anyone else knew. If they did, it was not spoken of around me.”

Emerson nods, and then she looks back at me. Her smile blooms, even if it’s a little wobbly, and I can still see those worries

in her eyes. “That means you’re our sister.”

I feel my own eyes starting to tear up. I nod. “Yeah.”

“Georgie.” She shakes me by the shoulders, and even though a tear spills over that she quickly dashes away, she’s grinning

from ear to ear. “We’re sisters .”

It makes me laugh. And for the first time, I’m really able to feel the joy at that. My best friend in the world is my sister. My sister .

“Thank Hecate,” Rebekah says, and she’s smiling too, though there are no tears. And no darkness or bitterness when she reaches

over to squeeze my hand too. “Now we can share the load of having to be Emerson Wilde’s little sisters.”

“I am honored ,” I whisper back, past the knot in my throat.

“Did you find anything else out?” Frost asks. “Perhaps the next step in fully ascending?”

He’s trying to sound dry and like he doesn’t care, but I don’t believe that. I think maybe he’s protecting Rebekah’s feelings.

“I was a little distracted,” I say. But that’s not really the right word. “Upset. It’s not easy to accept that you’re not

who you thought you were.”

“Nothing about you changes, Georgie,” Emerson tells me fiercely. Her arm is still around my shoulders.

“I think maybe it does, but in a good way,” I assure her. “The whole last week—or year, or maybe my whole life—I’ve been trying

so hard to be realistic . Scholarly and rational. The perfect Pendell my mother wanted me to be. But I’m not a Pendell, and she’s not perfect herself.

So maybe... maybe this is the last straw, and I can finally let all that go.”

Emerson squeezes me again. “You could have come and told me last night. You didn’t have to sleep on it.”

I glance at Azrael. I could lie. I could say it delicately. But why bother? I have my dragon, and he has me. “We were...

not sleeping, Em. First we were not sleeping in the air. Then we came back here and continued to not sleep in my bed. And

the shower. Or beneath my crystals in the trees in the back garden, which you might think would be cold, but not with a dragon.”

Zander puts his fork down and runs a hand over his face. “Why? Why would you say all that out loud? I didn’t need to know that. I never need to know that.”

Frost looks like a statue. Jacob looks like he’s exited his body.

I realize that I’m happy. Just... happy, despite everything. Or maybe because of it.

“I needed to know all of that,” Ellowyn says emphatically. She leans toward me, grinning. “Details, please.”

But before I can offer any, just to see how all the men—including Azrael—will respond to details , Emerson’s phone alarm starts trilling.

“That’s the five-minute warning before I have to leave for the store,” she says, glaring at her phone. “And the historic home

tour starts in fifteen. Do you want me to call off the tour? I can.”

“No, of course not. I can handle it.”

“But you don’t have to.”

I think about sacrifices, and the difference between the ones forced on you and the ones you choose. I think of the responsibility

we’ve been handed by our entire community. It’s a weight, but it’s also a gift. And so is this.

“No, I don’t have to,” I say. “I want to. I love giving the tours, and we haven’t let anything that’s happened this year get in the way of

living our normal lives. Why start now?”

Everyone begins to move. Zander says goodbye to Ellowyn with a kiss for her and the baby, then is off to the ferry. Jacob

magicks himself off to a Healer call.

“Once I finish the tour, I’ll head back to the archives and see what else they have to tell me,” I assure Frost.

Rebekah stands with him, then pulls me into a rare hug. “I guess you belong in this house after all,” she whispers to me.

I want to cry again, but I know Rebekah would recoil at that, so I just squeeze her back and release her, so they can head

back to Frost House to continue the ongoing research into any and all details on ascension we can find.

Then it’s Emerson’s turn. She pulls me into an even harder hug.

“This doesn’t change who we are. Not really. Everything before this moment still happened, and everything we’re facing still has to be overcome,” I tell her, but I hold on just as hard to her.

She pulls back, just a little. “We didn’t need blood to be sisters, but it’s... it’s amazing, all the same.”

I nod.

Then Ellowyn and I eye each other.

“I’m not particularly tactile,” she says, but then smiles and gives me a quick hug too—which might just be a greater miracle

than a staircase accessory turning into a dragon lover.

Then the two of them head out onto Main Street to walk down to their shops together.

Azrael slides his arm around my waist and tugs me closer into him. Easy. Like this is just who we are. A unit.

Like all those little gestures Jacob and Emerson have been doing for months that make my heart ache .

I thought I was jealous, and maybe I was. But maybe I also knew I had this out there somewhere. That it wasn’t Sage , no matter how much I told myself it should be.

I lean into him and let his strength replenish my own. It’s a lot. This year has all been a lot . And there’s still so much more to come.

But for today, I need to give one of the tours of the historic houses on Main, all dressed up for the holiday. The first tour

group will meet here in just a few minutes. Then I’ll take them around Wilde House before moving them on to the next. The

Pendell house.

It’s not really the morning for a dragon.

“You could tag along with Ellowyn to Tea & No Sympathy,” I suggest. “Flex those merchant muscles.”

He’s silent for a moment. “Trying to get rid of me?”

“Unless you want to pretend to be human in a group and learn about the history of this house—which you probably already know—I

think helping Ellowyn out might be more fun for you, and more helpful for Ellowyn than it would be for me.”

“Are you calling me a distraction?” He grins down at me.

And I remember, in my mind’s eye and every inch of my body, just what last night was like.

“Yes,” I say.

Emphatically.

He laughs, but then sobers. “What are you wearing for protection?”

“Black jade.”

He makes a considering sound, like this is acceptable, but not enough. He takes my hand and slides a ring, black tourmaline

twisted with gold, onto my finger.

My left ring finger.

Suddenly everything that I’ve rolled with well enough over the past twelve hours seems to crash inside my chest, a little

like panic. “Azrael...”

“You’ve worn it before,” he says, lifting my hand and pressing a kiss to the top of it. His eyes so gold it hurts. It reminds

me of what it was like when he was inside me. “Because in every time, you are you. You are my own. And in every life, I claim

you as best I can.”

“Claim?” I echo, a new kind of song rising in me.

“I will always claim you,” he tells me, and he sounds almost formal. “With fire and fury, as suits a dragon’s woman.” Then

he flashes that grin at me, as if he’s not making my head spin. “And my favorite princess.”

“Tell me,” I whisper at him, not sure where this desperate longing comes from. “Tell me about us.”

His expression saddens, and that hurts more than the desperate longing.

“I cannot tell you what our past lives were, Georgina. It is not what magic or time or my soul will allow. Your soul might

be old, well traveled, mine —but it is in a new body, with a new life, and you must live the current one. Not relive the past ones.”

I suppose this makes sense, though I don’t love it. Especially considering my entire life is dedicated to the past, essentially. Also... “Why do you remember, then?”

His response is as grave as I’ve ever heard him. “Dragons always remember.”

He doesn’t say, It is our curse , but it hangs in the ether, like something I once knew.

Before I can ask more questions, the doorbell rings. And Azrael disappears in a dramatic puff of dragon smoke. I think it

was supposed to make me laugh, but I’m stuck on dragons always remember ... as if the memories are not always good .