Page 42 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

I keep my heartbreak to myself for the time being. It doesn’t help us any, and the solstice looms ever closer. We have no

answers, no matter how I want them, and even though the Joywood seems to simply be melting away in a horror show scene of

rotting corpses, I don’t trust that their end will be that convenient or have so little to do with us. Especially considering

Carol’s current resplendence.

So I will find the answers however I can. Even if that means consorting with a raven king.

I spend the night at Ellowyn and Zander’s, fussing over baby things and making them a dinner with my own two hands. I crash

on their couch, and then in the morning, I go to the ferry with Zander and ride over the river on it like a human.

A highly protected human with a glowering Guardian watching over her.

When the ferry docks, I walk quickly away from the river and head toward the archives. Zander doesn’t start the ferry moving

in the opposite direction until I am safely on the bricks. I can’t decide if I feel protected or smothered, but it’s too cold

to ponder that one too closely.

I brave the chill and dreary day with my neck bent against the wind and don’t see the person outside the archives’ doors until I’m shoving the key into the lock.

“Dad.”

He’s sitting on a bench with his nose in a book, as usual. He’s bundled up, but the tips of his ears are red. He blinks once,

the way he always does when he has to reorient himself to reality. “Good morning, princess. You did say you wanted my help

today, didn’t you?”

It feels like a hundred years since I told him that. But he’s here. “I did. And I do. Come inside and warm up.”

We head into the archives—the magical ones. Down the stairs and into all that gold and light. I unwind my scarf, then do the

same for Dad, because otherwise he’d forget.

I glance at the table as I shrug out of my coat, to see what the archives have given me today—if anything—but the only thing

sitting there is my fairy tale.

I rush to grab it up, thinking the cover will be new. Another sign. But in what feels like the strangest turn of events yet,

it’s back to the original cover. The one I grew up seeing. The one that never changed until Azrael was freed from the newel

post.

I sigh a little.

“Ah, your old friend,” Dad says with a chuckle, and despite everything, I like the way he characterizes the book as a friend.

He holds out his hand, and I hand it to him. “You used to make me read this to you over and over and over before you could

read the words yourself,” he tells me fondly. “It’s why I got to calling you princess.”

I smile at that. At him. A mix of nostalgia and pain at how little I knew then waves through me, but I try not to let him

see it. I go to the table and call the archives for one of the books I was reading yesterday. It lands in front of me with

a thud, opened to the page I left off reading.

Dad’s still riffling through the fairy tale, so I let him.

“You know, I never noticed...” He’s muttering to himself, as he often does when he’s deep into reading something. “Surely I would have noticed.”

“Noticed what?” I ask absently, frowning at the book before me. I still have so much to read about black magic that Dad’s

take on the fairy tale doesn’t seem that important.

“Well, the princess character dresses in eight different outfits,” he tells me. “And each outfit is emblematic of the fashion

in each of the witchdom eras, or time periods.”

At first, I don’t really think much of that. He’s talking about costume changes, and I’m reading about how to block your very

eyes from the allure of black magic, lest it set your soul to festering.

But there’s something about the words he’s using. Eras , for example. Time periods , princess character , and eight .

Eight is a meaningful number this year. Eight is Azrael, making us a true coven whether he breaks my heart or not.

So I turn away from a treatise on black magic and study my father instead. “We’re only taught six time periods in school.”

Ones that mostly align with human history, though we place a little bit more importance on human witch hysteria than a simple

read of The Crucible . “Why would there be eight?”

My father looks chagrined. “Six is the accepted version of historical events, yes. That’s why it’s what’s taught in school.”

Accepted. “There’s an un accepted version?” I have never heard this in my life, and I have studied a lot of history. Theories and proven fact alike.

He hesitates, then gestures to my large, boring tome. “Perhaps we should focus on—”

But there’s something here. Humming inside me. Maybe it’s a misguided hope that there’s an answer somewhere, but this feels important. “Dad, I need you to tell me your unaccepted version.”

He blinks at that. “It isn’t that I don’t want to tell you. It’s just that it’s complicated.” But he’s gazing off into the

distance, and that humming inside me gets louder, because I can tell he’ll keep going. “The two missing historical periods

are something I first wondered about as a child. All throughout my schooling, I tried to find proof, thinking I’d make some

great historical discovery. But I wasn’t alone in that.”

“Other people believed you?” This is new. Even amongst Historians, my father presents as, well, a little odd. Not too odd, since he’s a Pendell. Just a little. Just enough.

“I was studying it, trying to discover the proof with... Desmond Wilde.”

I press my fingers to my eyes, wondering if every single revelation will hurt . “What?”

“That’s how we got to be friends. We both had this theory. Years and years ago, long before you were born.” He shakes his

head, as if he’s as baffled by this information as I am, hearing it for the first time. “We were working together, not exactly

in secret but not openly either, before we were married. We had both made separate discoveries that led us to believe there

were two missing historical periods from the teachings. We wanted to prove that. And then we wanted to determine why these

periods were being kept from us.”

I stare at him.

I know I should form words, but I can’t quite get there.

“Desmond had discovered a few books in the Wilde library, ones that Lillian had charmed and locked up,” my dad tells me in

that same musing way of his, as if he’s reading me another fairy tale. “He got to them anyway. They were about fabulae, crows,

all sorts of magical creatures we had been led to believe didn’t exist in our timeline. But we thought they did.”

That shocks me into speech. “You believe in fabulae?”

He tuts at that. “Of course. I didn’t need your coven to tell me that there’s more than just us , Georgie. Though a dragon is also very convincing. I voted to free him, of course. No one should be imprisoned out of everyone

else’s ignorance and fear .”

I can’t think about Azrael and votes. But it does make me wonder. If the vote is close , are there more like my father? Witches who suspected this long before we brought it to light? Did they hear Emerson at the

parade and think, Finally ?

My head is spinning. I don’t know how to take any of this on. “So... you and Desmond Wilde studied books on magical creatures,

including crows, and determined...?”

My father sits a bit straighter, the way he does when he’s in full possession of his facts, and thus in his happy place. “There

are two periods erased from our history. The first covers a civil war amongst the fabulae, before any of our witch trials

began. Witches were involved, and I think they took sides.”

I wonder if this is where Frost’s and Azrael’s animosity stems from. They both would have been around, even if Azrael had

been in a previous life. And as he told me, dragons remember.

“The second lost period sits in between witch trial movements,” he continues. “Similar, but it was a crow-specific civil war

then, which most of the other fabulae stayed out of but witches... didn’t.”

“Crows are fabulae?”

“Yes, there are two kinds, you see, and even those who thought they went extinct agree on this. Magical creatures like your

dragon, which become myths and fairy tales and are largely magic on their own. Then the animals with magical powers that roam

the earth and support witches and even some humans. Your familiars, for example. Desmond’s and my theory was that crows were

a third type. A bit of a mix of both. But any proof of this was lost somewhere along the way.”

In my readings the past few days, I had seen the two different types, but never something that put crows in a third type. But the fairy tale sure keeps them front and center, doesn’t it?

“The books we found outlined everything that had gone on between these groups, and Desmond and I found clues that led us to

believe the events occurred long after the dates we had been told magical creatures went extinct, but nothing is that straightforward,

unfortunately.”

I try to work through the implications of this. Civil wars amongst magical creatures. With witch involvement. This has to

be where all the animosity between immortal, fabulae, and crow stems from.

My father sighs, that gleam of facts in his gaze dimming. “I used the accessible archives to attempt to create a timeline, but...”

“But what?”

“Not long before your mother... fell pregnant, Desmond said it was all for naught. We’d just been young and stupid, and

it couldn’t be true. He shut me out. Turned me into a bit of a pariah while he was at it.” He smiles a bit ruefully. “I suppose

I set it aside because...”

Because it was all mixed up in betrayal and infidelity. And because it was, even though I know I need to focus on everything

that might help my coven, I ask him the question I couldn’t before. “Why did you stay with her?”