Page 3 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

I lean against the front door of Wilde House, staring at the grand staircase that will lead me upstairs. I feel like I’ve

run a marathon. I feel an aching, awful pain in my chest.

It’s not my heart that hurts, though. It’s my pride. And a million other things.

I’m not sad I’ll never kiss Sage again, or hold his hand, or get one of his thoughtfully precise presents. I’m devastated

I’m going to have to admit to my friends they were right. I’m furious he cheated on me, when I thought...

When I knew .

If Sage was punching above his weight, that also means I was punching down. And I tried to convince myself that wasn’t true.

I tried .

Because even though I’ve been trying so hard to heed my mother’s advice to let all my romantic dreams go, I still had this

fleeting thought that there might be something special about me, about the Riverwood Historian I’m going to be.

But a man I didn’t even love cheated on me, having the kind of fun with someone else he never had with me. Like I meant nothing at all.

That’s when the tears start. And it’s a relief. I’m not afraid of crying, unlike my entire family and most of my friends.

I welcome the cleansing magic of a good cry. But I’m not going to let anyone see me cry over Sage Osburn .

It’s better to get it out here and now while I’m still alone. When no one has to be concerned about my hurt feelings.

They wouldn’t understand them anyway. Wildes are important . Goods are a scene . Norths and Rivers are upstanding and respectable . I don’t know what Frosts are because our Frost has outlived them all, but I somehow doubt the arrogant former immortal ever

worried about who he was meant to be. He just... became it.

Meanwhile, I’m the only redheaded Pendell, which has always been viewed as an affront. As if my hair was a sign from day one

that I was going to disappoint my cold, buttoned-up family no matter how hard I tried to be the right kind of Historian. And

daughter.

I push away from the door, wiping at my face. I need my room so I can have my things around me and my crystals glowing in

my hands. I need to feel and process these emotions and have them appropriately worked through before I see my friends tomorrow.

They’re going to be so careful , and that makes a little sob catch in my throat. They all told me, indirectly, that they didn’t think Sage was right for

me. But no one is going to guess, no matter how little they liked him, that he cheated on me . With Cailee Blanchard, of all people.

So there will be outrage, but also confusion. Careful outrage. Careful confusion. Those shared behind-my-back looks of what do we do?

I prefer to be part of said sharing looks behind backs. Being the subject of them sucks.

I want to fly back to Sage’s and punch him just for that. Or curse him and his inadequate genitals that I pretended were lovely.

But none of those things will fix this .

I want to turn back time, but I know better than that. If you steal time, you lose time , according to the nursery rhymes. The only choice is figuring out how to handle this so that my friends aren’t careful and sympathetic, because I know I won’t deal with that well.

And even my usual go-to routine of acting like a space cadet is unlikely to help.

I move for the stairs but come up short as I take the first one. A book that was definitely not there a moment ago is now

sitting on the second stair. The same book from my childhood that I keep trying to give away, but can’t. I gave it to Ellowyn

as a baby gift after we found out she was pregnant, but it doesn’t seem to want to stay put. I keep assuring her—and me—that

it will stay with her once the baby is born. Once it understands it’s not mine anymore.

Though I’m starting to wonder.

I know I didn’t leave it on the stairs. I didn’t leave it in this house at all. And I doubt Ellowyn dropped it off in anticipation

of my early return when she doesn’t know I’m here.

I flop onto the stairs and pull my knees to my chest. Then I stare at the book accusingly, because it’s like salt to the wound,

rubbed in hard to make sure it stings.

It’s the concentrated version of all those childhood fantasies I was finally leaving behind.

I consider marching over to the fireplace and burning the book until it’s nothing but ash, because surely then it will leave

me alone. Except I am a firm believer that no book should be burned, ever. Except I gave it to Ellowyn as a gift for the baby

who will be here soon. Except Sage was the one who made fun of me for my favorite book being a fairy tale , and I will make myself into ash before giving him a say now .

I pick up the offensive tome. “This. This was the bill of goods I let myself believe in,” I say aloud, arriving at the page

I used to sigh over.

“ I am yours ,” I read aloud.

I don’t even have to look at the words. I memorized them a long time ago, back when I still lived next door. I used to recite

them in my mirror, pretending I was the heroine of my own novel. That somewhere, dragons and epic battles were waiting for

me. That I had somehow lived through them before, like maybe I was the lone witch in all of witchdom special enough to have lived many lives.

That my entire existence would be marked by great passion and epic adventures.

I keep reciting the book, looking at the pages but thinking of the little girl I’d been back then, knowing full well I’d get

in trouble if my mother found this book in my possession again. Pendells, she told me over and over, distinguished themselves

by leaving special to others.

I keep saying the words anyway. “You are mine. Our souls intertwine. I would lay down my life for you, but even then I would not die. Because love cannot

be torn asunder.”

I snort at that. I stare down at the illustration of a red-haired woman I used to tell myself looked like me, since no one

else in my family did. At her sword and her tiara and a dragon winging its way through the sky with a pack of crows fanned

out behind it. “What utter bullshit.”

Or is it that I want it to be bullshit, because then it wouldn’t hurt? Because my friends have significant others, and I have

witnessed their love. Real, beautiful love. Love that I have never once felt myself, not in the daylight.

No matter how many times I dream until my heart hurts at night.

I say the last part, the part that used to make me swoon, in nothing more than a choked whisper. “Love will set us free.”

I used to trace my fingers over those letters again and again and again while my mother icily tore apart my father downstairs.

Having what she claimed were not fights but the honest conversations that he always allowed. And he said little in return but, Now, Cadence. That’s not fair.

Maybe the real Pendell legacy is that we think love comes with interrogations that feel like barbed wire.

Before I can sink into that sea of self-pity, something trembles beneath me. The stairs shake, like an earthquake. But it

doesn’t remind me of the one I remember when I was a kid—waking up to a vague shaking kind of feeling and then going back

to sleep because this is Missouri. We might have a fault line, but it’s not California.

This is deeper than any earthquake . It’s the house, not the ground beneath me. Wilde House is... undulating. Like contractions. The mermaid-shaped chandelier

in the entryway shakes and tinkles and sounds almost like someone’s shrieking.

Maybe the Joywood are up to something evil. Again.

I should get to my friends—but before I can push myself to my feet, I watch as a crack snakes down the length of the spindle

holding up the newel post. Then the wood of the newel post seems to... peel back.

Away from those onyx eyes, and then something in deep, swirling blues and greens smokes out of the opening. The familiar onyx eyes are moving with it.

I should say some kind of protection spell. Call out for help. Do something other than watch the smoke engulf the foyer in front of me beneath the chandelier. Do anything but watch as it begins to form a body. Claws.

Scales.

I must be dreaming. Hallucinating? Maybe the magic I’ve always thought was in tears is going a little haywire tonight, because

Azrael isn’t real .

He’s a charmed carving, that’s all—but it sure looks like he just... escaped the newel post. While I sat on this stair

and watched.

Now there’s a living, breathing dragon in front of me, filling up the entire front hall of Wilde House with its high ceilings and graceful dimensions, though there is nothing graceful about a dragon who can’t be real—

“Why wouldn’t I be real?”

The voice is smooth and silky and decidedly male.

And clearly came from the dragon that’s formed before me. With sharp white teeth and gold-and-onyx eyes and a tail. And wings . And talons .

Actual talons.

I’m dreaming. Sleepwalking, per usual, and the dreams have gotten really, really realistic. I’ll wake up with a crick in my

neck on the stairs like I always do, but then I can talk about this with my friends tomorrow instead of Sage.

But his voice is sleek and sharp and real . It reverberates through the room and me. “I thought you were better than this, Georgina.”

“Better than what?” I find myself asking.

As if I am actually having a conversation with the dragon that materialized out of a newel post . A newel post that’s just been sitting there, very much a newel post and nothing but a newel post—okay, one with a little enchantment, sure—since I was a child .

“The kind of witch who can’t believe in true magic.” He huffs out a strange dragon breath that sizzles into the hazy smoke still hanging in the air.

I want to laugh. Maybe this is hysteria, and actually, that’s comforting. I’ve had a break with reality, that’s all. I am

magic, all on my own, but this isn’t magic. This is dragons , and dragons don’t exist.

And while most things that you’ll find in the witchlore existed at some point, it is common, accepted knowledge that dragons and unicorns and the like went extinct long before witches set foot

in St. Cyprian. Or Salem, for that matter.

But there is a dragon looming there before me, and I am not waking up. I push myself to my feet, wondering if that’ll get the dream to stop.

He looks up to the ceiling like he’s seeing the chandelier for the first time and blinks his large golden eyes. Then the scales

begin to melt away, and he shrinks down, slowly morphing from scaled, winged dragon to... a man.

A big man—a very big man—but still. A man . Dark-haired and -eyed, though there’s still gold in his gaze. And somehow he seems just as dangerous now that he’s no longer

the size of the entire room.

He’s tall. And broad. Muscled in ways it would be rude to study more closely. It’s as if he’s still carved, only now in flesh,

not wood.

More importantly, he’s still here , not fading away into dream or imagination.

I take a breath and I can feel it in my lungs, laced with smoke so it tickles, and there’s no way that’s a dream.

And I think, very distinctly, Oh. At last. It’s him.

It hits me so hard I don’t know how I’m still standing. It’s him . It’s all my daydreams come to glorious life. Passion and loud, wild sex and the way my friends take care of each other and

life-altering kisses and intensity and him—

But before I can take that on, my friends appear. My coven. The Riverwood, the new leaders of the witching world.

All six of them land around me, looking alarmed and pissed and ready to fight. They look around, as if searching out an enemy—

“No one’s here,” I manage to croak out through the thunder inside me.

“Georgie! You’re home early.” Emerson tosses her arms around me and squeezes. “We felt a very strange disturbance and came...”

She trails off as she seems to realize there’s someone else in the foyer with us.

“Did you bring home... a guy?” Rebekah asks, sounding impressed.

“A hot guy at that,” Ellowyn mutters to Rebekah, and I try to take comfort in the fact that since she can’t lie, Azrael is not only

real, but really and truly that hot. “Can you say upgrade ?”

“I’m right here ,” Zander complains.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re hot too.” She waves him off, one hand resting on her ever-expanding belly. She smiles at me. “So, are

you going to introduce us?”

But before I can think of even one word to say, because oh it’s the dragon newel post come to life seems like not enough, Nicholas Frost steps forward.

The unknowable former immortal witch turned Riverwood coven member narrowly regards Azrael—apparently not just a newel post

any longer.

Then they speak the same word at the same time, fury and hate sparking off each other.

“You.”