Page 5 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

Besides, I’m all for him incinerating the Joywood. Shouldn’t we all be?

Emerson shakes her head. “You broke him out.”

I don’t think I actually did, but there’s no use arguing with Emerson and a dragon. “So what? I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I think that means he’s yours,” Rebekah offers. “Like a chinchilla.”

I don’t know how I feel about the word yours , or how it shifts inside of me—hard—but I suppose she has a point. I was the one who was here.

Besides, her mention of chinchillas, historically a fraught topic between them, diverts Emerson’s attention from me.

“He won’t be able to incinerate them,” Frost says darkly. There’s something torn in his expression. “He doesn’t understand

what’s changed.”

“Do you?” I ask.

His eyebrows draw together. “Not fully.”

Because why would anything be that easy? I sigh. I’ve unleashed the dragon, allegedly, so somehow it’s up to me to re- leash him before he makes a mess.

Or a bigger mess than... whatever’s happening in me.

That makes me want to laugh, but I rush outside into the bitter cold of the dark November night instead. I’m getting ready

to try a quick spell to locate him, but I don’t have to. He’s stopped before the gate that leads out to the sidewalk.

And he’s still in the form of a man, looking up at a bright crescent moon.

Like he’s drinking it all in, and I suppose if he’s really been trapped in a newel post for what has to be at least a hundred

years he should. Fresh, cold air. The rivers murmuring all around us. Moonlight. Magic and life and movement.

I take the moment to try to reason with him. With a dragon , because every myth I’ve ever read suggests that’s a possibility.

“Azrael. You can’t go incinerate the Joywood,” I tell him. Not that I think he’ll listen to me, but I don’t know how else

to talk to supernatural creatures.

He’s still staring up at the moon, and the fact that he’s only wearing a T-shirt while the cold wind cuts through us doesn’t

seem to bother him in the least. “Why not?”

“If they cursed you once already, won’t they just curse you again?”

“Only if they know I’m coming,” Azrael says, with a lack of concern that I should find alarming.

But I don’t. All that offhanded confidence makes something in me... hum .

“Maybe they do know you’re coming,” I point out, ignoring any humming and focusing on my rational, reasonable approach to an ancient, powerful dragon .

Because I might not understand that burst of fate and him and passion and mine , but reason and rationality I can do.

Reason and rationality are who I am. “Maybe they felt it the same way my friends did.

Wilde House is protected, but we don’t actually know if they’ve got eyes on you . Maybe the mermaid is a spy.”

Azrael scowls at this. “She would be. She likes a grudge, does Melisande.”

The way he says that makes me think—but I shove images of dragons wrapped up with mermaids in a variety of acrobatic poses

aside. Facts are what matter, not fantasies. Something I keep trying to learn.

Besides, there are far more important questions to ask him. “Why did they curse you in the first place?”

Azrael doesn’t spare me a glance. “For their own shitty and nefarious reasons, Georgina. Obviously.”

He turns to look at me then. Really look at me. I feel those dark gold eyes on every inch of my skin. And the strangest part

is that it’s not all that different than when he was in the newel post, because he always felt real, no matter how much I

told myself he wasn’t.

Did I sleepwalk as much as I tell myself I did... or did I just like to sit with him? With him .

Night after night after night?

I know I should be thinking about the Joywood and the implications of magical creatures being cursed so that we all believed they were mythical or lost. But instead I’m thinking about all the ways I’ve unloaded my most private thoughts over the years on what I thought was a charmed inanimate object that, sure, spoke every now and then. But charmed things do that.

My cheeks heat, embarrassment ripe.

His smile goes sharp and self-satisfied, like he knows why. “I was very cognizant of everything happening around me during

my time as a post.”

I want to melt into the ground, but it’s frozen solid beneath my feet. “Ah.”

“He isn’t worth your tears, you know.”

I stiffen. This day really couldn’t get worse. A dragon saw me cry and thinks it was about my lame ex-boyfriend. “I do know,

thank you,” I say, sounding prim to my own ears. “I wasn’t crying for him.”

“Good.” Azrael studies me for a moment, then looks out at the night again. A crow caws from somewhere up above, and Azrael’s

eyes sharpen. He takes a deep breath. When he exhales, the cold air turns into a big puff of smoke. “Perhaps you’re right.

Going head-on at the Joywood is never the answer. It’s what got us into this mess in the first place. This calls for subterfuge.

And them not knowing their curse can be broken.”

He breathes out another puff of smoke, a ring this time. He watches it disappear into the night as if fascinated. Hot air

meets cold and makes condensation. It’s simple science. Not magic. But Azrael seems delighted.

Then he turns to face me head-on again, and he has a kind of battle light in his eyes that reminds me of Emerson.

If Emerson were a large man who’s really a dragon.

“The truth is, Georgina Pendell, Riverwood Historian, you need me.” That jolts in me in a way I tell myself I don’t love,

but he keeps going. “You all need me. We need to have one of those meetings your Wilde sister is so fond of. We have work

to do.”

Then he strides back inside, like he was never going off to incinerate the Joywood at all.

Like he’s... one of us.

I’m left out in the cold once again, and unlike him, I’m shivering against it. And trying, furiously, to catch up with how

the past few hours have completely flipped every script there ever was.

I glance over at my childhood home next door. The lights are off. It’s late. No doubt my parents are asleep in their separate

rooms, lost somewhere in their chilly life together.

Beyond the house, the holiday lights of St. Cyprian shine down on the bricks that are supposed to keep us all safe.

And dragons are real.

I might not understand how this is at all possible, or what it means for the Riverwood and our plans to take on our new positions

with as little drama as possible, but I laugh in spite of myself.

This man straight out of my daydreams is here. He’s really here .

More importantly, the dragons I’ve always dreamed of are real .

And somehow, the most unlikely person in the world—me—has gone and set one free.