Page 44 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

I know there’s real fear in her, not some put-upon thing. And maybe how she’s always harped on me is all born of her own fear,

as I let myself imagine before.

But it’s the coward’s way out. I know this deep down, like sinew and bone. “You thought wrong.”

She sighs, and there’s some of that control back. In the way she frowns, in the way she steps back from me. In the sorrowful

way she shakes her head. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she tells me softly.

And I don’t think I’m imagining that she hurries to leave the room, like I’m contagious.

I want to sink into a chair myself. Have a little cry, or maybe a nice long one. But there’s no time. I need those books.

I start scouring the titles, wondering what I’m looking for.

A few minutes later, Dad peeks his head around the corner, as if worried my mother is still here and he’ll be seen. But she’s

gone, and I’m...

There’s no time to wallow in all my feelings. I gesture him forward. “Show me the books.”

He nods and leads me to a little corner shelf. It’s where he keeps his oddly shaped books about fungi, or so I thought. With

a swipe of his hand, the fungi books disappear. In their place are two thick black leather-bound tomes.

“I’ll keep watch for your mother,” Dad says, frowning toward the door. “She shouldn’t know we’re doing this.”

I don’t ask him why. If it’s because she’s never liked the so-called nonsense he liked to fill my head with or something more insidious. Like that maybe her loyalties are suspect?

Maybe I don’t want to know the answer.

“You look through them,” Dad urges me. “See if anything pops out as important.”

I nod and take the heavy books to a chair. I don’t know where to start, but while everything with Azrael is a painful ache , that meeting with Gideon yesterday actually haunts me. Like a dream I vaguely remember, just out of reach. An itch I can’t

scratch.

I want to know why. I have to know why. If this is what’s to come between me and my dragon, I’d better understand it.

I open the crow book first. I get to know the book, running my hands over the cover, the spine. Testing the weight and strength

of the pages. I whisper soothing words, hopeful words, about what information it will let me have.

And it likes me. It blooms open for me.

I learn about an island of crows. A civil war. A fight with a dragon. I find myself oddly drawn to a crow queen. And if I

trace her family tree, she has a grandson.

Named Gideon.

Is she the original owner of my necklace?

The book is filled with interesting, not-taught-in-school facts about ruling fabulae families, wars that include magical creatures,

and witches forever taking sides.

I want to sit and study the pages forever, but I can’t. Because it’s not giving me what I need so desperately. Nothing on

how to save the fabulae—all kinds—from a Joywood curse. Very little about black magic, except suppositions about who might

have been wielding it.

I get to the end of the book, frustrated with how little this helps.

Maybe I’m going about it the wrong way. Maybe I need to be studying the Joywood themselves. Maybe, regardless of the fairy-tale book, I am looking in the wrong place.

“The problem is, while this is all presented as real historical fact, we found no proof of it,” Dad says from where he watches

the library door. “No proof of the existence of crow shifters, or dragons or unicorns or fairies. No access to this crow island,

wherever it might be. I believe it was written down because it’s true. I believe these books are important because what’s

in them is true, or was. But there’s no way to make the connection between this and the reality of it. Or at least, none that I found, with or without Desmond. I made a vague timeline. Even that isn’t

proof .”

My father has limits. How he acts around my mother shows me that. That’s who he is. His strength is books, analyzing. Noticing

things like eight costume changes in a book.

He is not brave.

I am.

And it’s not only me. My coven is brave. My dragon, that bastard, is brave. Blinded by old fights and wars, sure, but brave.

I focus back on the book. I will find something. I will find some avenue to walk down, no matter how dangerous or scary.

I flip through and find myself focusing on a chapter that has my heart leaping into my throat.

The Night of Dragon Tears.

I begin to read, half skimming in impatience because... what?

There’s a battle between two different crow factions. A royal group and a revolutionary group. A crow woman in the revolutionary

group, who is royalty herself. A princess who doesn’t believe in her family’s rule. She believes in the revolution.

She enlists the help of a small pod of dragons, falling in love with one of the dragons in the process. My heartbeat kicks up. A princess. A dragon. So much of it is like my fairy tale. Down to the Revelares and their contributions.

But there is no happy ending here. Though the revolutionaries win the war, they do not lead well. With his newfound power,

the leader of the revolutionaries crowns himself king. He uses black magic to kill the dragons who helped him and takes the

princess for himself, imprisoning her in a marriage she does not want but must endure for the safety of her people.

It’s a sad story, told in the way of historical battles. Factual, with little emotion. And yet I feel all the emotion swirling

around inside me as if these are my memories. I want to weep.

This was not the happy ending I was promised in my fairy tale. The difference between fact and fiction, I tell myself—but

it feels like an indictment of every happy-ever-after I’ve ever wanted to believe in.

And Azrael knows all this because... he lived it. He cannot trust crows because they killed him. And yet, if that really

was him , the princess was me . Or she had my soul. Or however this whole thing works.

I was a crow. If I was the soul in that princess, does that mean Gideon is my grandson ?

How can I turn my back on that?

I can’t dwell on these horrible, contrasting feelings. Feelings are not facts, even mine, and I have to press on. I have to

find out if there’s anything to learn from this horrible war. Anything I can use for now .

But no matter how I flip through the book, letting it lead me, there’s nothing. I’ll have to read it again more closely to

see if I missed any details. But nothing major leaps out at me, and this is a disappointment.

I’m about to switch it for the fabulae book, but something catches my eye. A little... ripple on the back cover. Like the

light playing tricks on me, but that shouldn’t be happening, unless—

“Reveal to me, what I should see.”

The ripple intensifies, the warmth of the dragon tear against my skin becoming a pulsing kind of heat.

Books have been our salvation time and time again in this long, strange year. They told us Emerson was a Confluence Warrior,

Rebekah a Chaos Diviner. They introduced us to Revelares, and the cover on my fairy tale has warned us and guided us with

each of its changes. They have led us every step of the way.

The answer is in books —texts, written histories, grimoires and ancient spells and even fiction. Maybe especially in fiction. In the metaphors and

the emotion behind what we’re doing here and why.

I close my eyes and wrap my hand around the dragon tear, letting myself really feel the power inside it. I think of Azrael and what it feels like to fly together, his hungry smile, the way he saved me, the

way he held me when I cried over my parentage.

And still he took his ring back. Because we both have to do what we each think is right.

We are each drawn to complicated choices and harder sacrifices.

“ Reveal to me what I must see ,” I say again.

I feel something shimmer in the air—much like in the alley yesterday.

“Georgie,” Dad whispers.

I open my eyes to a room full of sparkling light. Sparkling magic. Like the alley, but more. Bigger, brighter, pulsing with

its own power.

The magic of the books unleashed.

The two books in question hover above me. The pages are flying like there’s a great wind moving through them. Then they’re...

merging, almost. A new book seems to morph together in the destruction of the other two.

It falls into my lap. The title is written in pretty gold script.

A Study of the Failures in the War that Came Before: A Case for How to Fix It

By Morgane Wulfram, the Raven Queen Consort