Page 38 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

A day in the archives with not much to show for it feels a bit like the good old days, pre-dragon. Pre-ascension. Pre...

this year of learning too much and sometimes wishing I thought ignorance really could be bliss.

There’s a dull ache behind my eyes from reading page after page in one musty old tome after the next, but it’s a good ache.

Whatever else it might signify—like that maybe I need glasses—it’s also a sign of work being done.

It’s the only sign of progress I really have.

I read a lot about black magic. Mostly treatises about why it’s against the law, dire accounts of its use and its effects,

and example after example explaining why it’s subject to the harshest punishments in witchdom. And while I understand the

historical context of St. Cyprian staples like our enchanted bricks, offering safety—and no black magic—to all, it’s not enough

to move forward with anything that might help us now .

I keep the stalkery fairy-tale book—written by my grandmother, for me—with me the whole time, thinking it might give me a

clue as to where I should look next and what might be coming.

But it doesn’t change.

I’m determined to stay in the archives until I figure everything out and can go back to my coven with spells and a plan, but

Emerson starts sending me messages as the hours drag by. About brains without food.

So when I close up the archives, it’s dark and cold. A fully December sort of night, here in a river town in Missouri all

decked out in holiday lights. A faint snow is falling as I head outside and shiver into my coat. I feel a pull to walk back

to Wilde House, to wander down Main Street and soak in the lights set against the darkest time of the year—

But that pull reminds me a little too much of being sucked into the river, so I magic myself over to the front gate of Wilde House instead.

I want to scratch the itch of holiday perfection by looking at one of the prettiest houses around, all done up in the snowy

moonlight.

Instead of having a moment to breathe in the cold air and get right with the Cold Moon, I immediately notice that my father

seems to have done the exact same thing.

Except he’s not my father, I remind myself. He’s Stanford Pendell, and he’s no relation to me. He never has been.

It makes my heart hurt.

We’re both standing in front of our respective gates, gazing up at the house I grew up in and the house I live in.

If we weren’t so close, I might have hurried in and pretended our paths hadn’t crossed, because I have no idea what to say.

Or do. Or feel.

But there’s no hiding in the moonlight. Not with snow on my face and his gaze steady on mine from yards away.

He smiles that same sad smile from the Cold Moon Ball, illuminated only by the flickering streetlamp and the stars above.

“Working late again, princess?”

I swallow at the lump that’s suddenly lodged deep in my throat. I realize that I’m staring at him. Because he’s so... familiar.

He’s so dear to me.

Yet he’s not mine.

He’s always called me princess, even when my mother berated him for indulging me in my chronic daydreams. I walk over to him,

propelled by something I can’t quite name.

Maybe I can fix the distance between me and somebody .

It’s a pull that feels far more elemental than a melody or a river. It seems to come from the depths of my own heart.

When I get up close, the only word I can manage is, “Why?”

He aims that smile toward the cold ground between us. “You could be asking a lot of different whys.”

The night is frigid and getting colder as we stand here. The snow is coming down harder, small flakes that speak of future

snowdrifts and snow days. No one should be standing out here like this for too long, no matter how heartbroken we might feel.

We should go inside, I think. I should invite him in for tea, have a mature, adult conversation, and work through this in

some kind of healthy way.

But I feel rooted to this spot, on a sidewalk with my nose growing colder by the second. And the lobes of my ears. They both

sting. “I wasn’t yours. You knew I wasn’t yours.”

He studies me in that quiet, patient way of his. I used to find this annoying. I used to think that when he was deep in research

mode, he only ever saw me as a problem to be solved.

But I wasn’t his problem. I never was, and he always had time for me anyway.

“I suppose, in a matter of blood and whatnot, that is true,” he says in that careful way of his that I have spent my life

trying and failing to emulate. “And I did know it.”

“So,” I say, and I don’t sound as careful as he does. Or as careful as I should. “Why?”

“What I also knew was that you were here. A perfect little baby girl with all that red hair.” He shakes his head.

“I knew that Desmond was not going to admit any involvement, and your mother was ashamed. Of her own actions. Of her own mistakes.” He smiles again, and it’s even sadder this time.

“She’s never been good at making those and dealing with the consequences. ”

He understands her better than I’ve given him credit for. Certainly better than I ever have.

I want to tell him that, but it’s like I can’t speak. Like this time, my own history has me in its grip, so hard around my

throat that all I can do is stare at him through the snow.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen your mother really love anyone,” he tells me in that same quiet way. “Perhaps it’s not in her.”

And then he shrugs, like that’s... just life. Some people don’t love . “It seemed to me, or it did when I saw an innocent baby, fresh and new and with old souls in her eyes, that someone should

love her. And if it wasn’t going to be her father or her mother, it might as well be me, because I loved you from the moment

I saw you, Georgie.”

He makes it sound so simple. A choice he made. Like that’s all love is, in the end. A choice .

Like he’s always known about old souls and never thought them foolish, or that I thought too highly of myself to imagine I might have an old soul myself.

He made that choice to love me, day after day. Maybe he never stood up to my mother in any real way, but much like with Lillian,

I knew I would always find a soft spot to land with this man. He was who I ran to when I was little.

And maybe I did let my mother get to me, finally. Maybe I had too much of her in my head as this year unfolded and it became

clear that we were going to take on the Joywood. When it became obvious what that could mean for me personally.

Still, for a whole lot of years, I got to daydream as I pleased. I got to retreat into my fairy tales and enjoy them as I

liked. Because of people like Lillian Wilde, Emerson and Rebekah and Ellowyn—all of my best friends.

But it started here. With him. All because Stanford Pendell thought someone should love the baby his wife gave birth to after an affair.

A few tears fall onto my cold cheeks, and he reaches out and brushes them away. Just like he always did, that achingly familiar

brush of his gloves against my skin. “Nothing has changed for me, Georgie. It’s as I told you—facts aren’t the whole story.

You of all people should know that you get to write your own as you go.”

It makes me think about past lives. New lives.

And the thread that moves through all of them, no matter the ending.

A thread that isn’t red and terribly painful.

Love.

Maybe none of us can choose who we love, but we can certainly change how we love. This man is living, breathing proof.

I move forward and envelop the only father I’ve ever known—and the only one I imagine I’ll ever acknowledge—in a hug. “Thank

you for loving me... when you didn’t have to.”

He squeezes me back. Hard. “It’s no great sacrifice to love you, Georgie. I can’t think of a single reason why anyone would

ever do anything but.”

I think I knew that, deep down under all the confusion that family tree kicked up, but I needed to hear it. I needed to do

this. Maybe I still need to deal with my mother and Desmond at some point, but this is the person who matters the most to

me.

Because this is the person who showed me what love is, every single day of my life.

How can I pretend I don’t love him in return? As wholly and completely as I always have?

“Dad,” I say, because he is my dad. Maybe he’s never been my biological father , but he is, and always will be, my dad .

“I’d like you to come help me in the witchlore archives.

I know I can’t officially deputize you yet, so it might mean a lot of sitting around being a wall I can bounce ideas off of until we get past Yule, but I think. .. I think that’s what we need.”

The people we love and who love us, no matter the circumstances.

No matter the difficulties.

Hasn’t that been the lesson we’ve learned over and over again this year? Love is magic.

Love is the antidote.

To everything.

“I’d be happy to,” my dad tells me. We release each other and smile at each other, wider than ever, maybe because now we both know that love is a choice. That this love is our choice. “Come in for tea, princess. I’ve got a new book I want to tell you about.”

And I might be hungry, I might be tired, but that’s just what I do. I follow him into my childhood home. I sit with my dad

in the parlor and discuss books over tea while a fire crackles in the hearth. Octavius senses me over here and magicks himself

into my lap. If my mother is somewhere, she doesn’t make an appearance, and that’s a good thing.

It’s just us. Just like before.

And it’s what I need to really believe what he said.

Facts aren’t the whole story.

After a while, my father falls asleep in his chair, and I head back outside. I walk through the snow, the porch lights of

Wilde House beckoning to me. I carry Octavius cradled in my arms like a baby.

Inside, it’s dark and a little cold. It still feels like home, but it also feels emptier than it should when I’ve been living

here alone more often than not these days. I look down at the snoozing orange cat in my arms.

I suppose him being here means I’m never really alone.

But there’s no dragon in the newel post, or in my bed. So all that new, wild warmth is just kind of dull and cold now. A big

stone statue outside of town, in fact.

Love is the answer , I tell myself. It’s a voice that doesn’t sound like mine, though it comes from deep inside me. And I know it’s true .

A love that has existed between Azrael and me across lives.

Through too many deaths to count, and yet we always find each other again, following that red thread down through the ages.

Maybe it’s not so much reincarnation as a chance to get it right. In every other scenario, one of us died violently. Maybe

we keep coming back until... until we don’t.

Until we find the answer.