Page 54 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

His face darkens, but it’s an intensity of emotion, not temper.

I feel it inside me like a new storm. “I do not want to lose you. I cannot stand the thought, but you were right to call me out on how... I love you for the woman you are and always have been, always willing to be brave, to fight. You are special, but not just to me. In every time, you have been special to all who need you, and in this lifetime, like that damn crow lifetime, there are so many who need you.”

My heart catches in my throat.

“I know how to love, Georgina. It is all I know how to do when it comes to you. But I have never been given the chance to

live and love. We have been torn from each other in every time, and always too fast. Too soon.

More than once by crows . Yet if you are the teacher, Georgina, I have no doubt I can learn to be better.

To love you for who you are without fear .

And maybe I can even learn to forgive. If it will save the world.

If it will give me you, who must save the world. ”

My breath comes out a little shaky. I’m beyond tired. My magic is down to zero. I need so many things, but mostly I just need

him.

I always need him.

Just for a moment.

I move forward and rest against his huge, hot body. I lean my forehead against the broad wall of his chest. “Azrael, we have

to do the saving of the world part first.”

“I have called in reinforcements.” He nudges me toward the cave. “What do your books tell you?”

“They are most certainly not my books.”

Still, I step toward the cave. We must do what needs doing, and then... then we can do this. Us.

This time I want there to be an us . A future. Not an almost ripped from us in the midst of yet another battle of right versus wrong.

I focus on the pile of evil books. I hold up the key. I murmur the simple spell that has never failed me and has led me down a thousand roads through otherwise impenetrable texts. “Lead me where I need to go, show me what I need to know.”

The books shudder and shake. Then something... glimmers.

I realize there’s a small book on top of the larger ones—or there is now. It’s a slim paperback. I lean forward, afraid to

step too close.

Then I forget everything.

Because it looks just like my fairy tale, but... not. The cover is horrifying. It’s far too much like a vision Ellowyn

projected to us during the ascension trials, showing us what the Joywood rule would look like. A mansion on a hill of gleaming

gold—not all that different than Carol’s house. Everything else black, dying, rotting.

But instead of the entire Joywood enjoying a feast through the window of the house, it’s just Carol. She’s youthful and thin,

supple and pretty. Her hair is in beautiful honeyed waves, her smile sultry and satisfied. Bones litter the ground beneath

her. Azrael’s dragon head is on a pike outside the house, and she has clearly been eating a feast of birds. Crows.

There is a bright, gleaming sword leaning against the table. I recognize that sword because it’s in my book too. The princess

has it in her hands in one of the scenes, riding her dragon toward battle.

A scene Ellowyn also saw in her dream on All Souls’ Day.

I’m hesitant to even touch the book, but I need to get back to that wedding. I’ve already spent too much time here. I mutter

a quick spell to protect me from any lingering black magic, then pick up the book and flip through the pages.

Each one depicts Carol, or a version of her, murdering each one of her coven members—or versions of them. There are also magical

creature sacrifices, each more grisly than the last. There’s blood, blood, and more blood.

And with every death, Carol looks younger, more beautiful.

But she is alone on the cover, at the end. Alone , while those who remain are tortured and faceless as they suffer at her feet.

I know this will be her undoing. We’ve known it since the start of this wild year.

She can’t beat us if we’re united.

Then I turn to the last page, and everything inside me turns to ice.

It’s a wedding that looks far too much like Emerson’s. Except the wedding in the book has been ruined by a gruesome creature—some

repulsive Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from the pieces of people and creatures she’s killed and ritually sacrificed.

Including the Joywood members she ruled St. Cyprian and the witching world with for years.

An untold number of years.

Some of them were her friends.

Like my father. Despite the outcome, I know that they were once friends.

“We have to go,” I say then, shutting the book with fingers turned to icicles. “We have to hurry.”

It hasn’t happened yet, or I’d feel it. I’d feel my coven’s reaction. I’d feel the danger itself. And even though I haven’t

felt it yet, I know we still have to hurry. There is only so much time.

I put the fairy-tale nightmare down on the stack of other books. I try to magic some sort of protective case around them,

but I’m spent.

Then Azrael puts his hand on my shoulder. “Try now.”

I feel his magic pump into me, and I’m able to do it. I make a safe holder for all the books, then magic it all to the witchlore

archives. Before I can say or do anything else, Azrael shifts into his dragon form again.

It’s a shimmering brightness, and then he surrounds me, gleaming scales and his immensity . And he simply lifts me up and, in a graceful maneuver, plants me on his back.

Then he rises up and flies out of the hole he made in the roof.

But he doesn’t go to Main Street. He soars over the roof and straight down in front of Carol’s house, where my father is at the gate, still fighting against whatever wall has kept him from getting into the house.

“How did you break through?” I ask Azrael as he lands in front of my father.

“Magic, Georgina. Of course.” He inclines his giant dragon head toward my father. “Mr. Pendell.”

“Ah. Mr.... Dragon?”

“Azrael. Azrael Evermore. Now, let’s save the world.”

He uses a wing to place my father on his back, right behind me.

“Oh, dear ,” Dad breathes, wrapping his arms around my middle and holding on tight.

Azrael jerks his head up at the sky then, so I do too. And I see... crows.

So many black birds, circling above us.

Reinforcements , he said. Azrael somehow got them to come. To help. They aren’t free yet. I know that. But they are all risking pain for this. Risking whatever they can give.

Because we need to work together.

And because my dragon asked.

I hold on to him tightly. Thank you.

I wouldn’t be thanking me yet.

But this is literally our last, best weapon. Maybe our only weapon. Working together, no matter how hard it is.

I can hear the voices echoing from the wedding. The readings must be over because I can hear Jacob’s voice. The vows are starting.

“We have to hurry.”

But one of the big ravens flies in front of us and leads us down to the ground. He’s violet-eyed and huge. He morphs into

a man as he lands.

“You’d better be right, dragon,” Gideon says darkly. Then he holds out his hands, palms up. And I realize with a start that...

Azrael had to have gone to Gideon. Specifically. Found Crow Island, rallied them all and their king. No matter his pride or his fears.

Gideon mutters a few words in a language I can’t quite work out, and a sword appears. He holds it for a moment. I understand

that it is very heavy—and infinitely precious.

His eyes gleam as he offers it to me.

I’ve never seen it in person before, but I know it at once. The sword from the book. My book and Carol’s.

“The sword of unity,” my father says in awe. “It’s supposed to be a myth. A—”

“Fairy tale?” I supply for him.

He chuckles. “Yes.”

I lean down and take the sword from Gideon. It feels right in my hands. Not heavy at all.

“You may remember it,” Gideon says, a touch of irony in his voice. “It was my grandmother’s. Hidden on Crow Island for as

long as I can remember. I’m entrusting it to you, Georgina Pendell, in the hope that you’ll know what to do with it.”

I raise the sword with one hand. A storm is rumbling in the distance. Evil is on its way, and we must fight it. “Hope, love,

and unity,” I say.

The words from Gideon’s grandmother’s essay.

Gideon murmurs the same, then bows. “Together we live or together we die, princess .” There’s a rumble deep in my dragon’s chest when he calls me this. I think we can all tell from Gideon’s smirk that he did

it deliberately for that very response. But his expression is dead serious when he meets my gaze again. “We will fight for

as long as we can. Until the curse is broken. That cannot be long.”

There is a loud cawing then that fills the sky.

I hold the sword in my hands, sitting astride a dragon. The moment calls for a rousing speech, but I’m not Emerson. I read words. I make worlds in my mind.

Speeches aren’t my thing.

So I raise the sword into the air, and I say the only thing I can. “Then let’s go break a curse.”

Azrael lifts into the air once more as Emerson’s voice takes over on the speaker, reading the words I once spoke aloud to Azrael. Speaking them into every nook and cranny of witchdom.

Everywhere a cursed creature might wait, dreaming of deliverance.

“I am yours,” she says to Jacob. To the world. To the people we hope to govern , not rule , because we aren’t like the Joywood. We don’t want what we could get only by black magic. We want a magical world filled

with complexity and opinions, whether we like them or not, and all the people and creatures that hold them. “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.”

But before she can finish, the whole damn world begins to shake.