Page 6 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

When I make it back inside, my friends are still standing in the foyer, but Azrael isn’t with them. Frost is glaring toward

the archway that leads into the living room, while Rebekah is eyeing him like she expects an explosion. Zander and Ellowyn

are studying Emerson, who looks...

Thunderstruck.

Not something we often see on our fearless leader.

“He... A dragon just called a meeting of the Riverwood.” She blinks a few times, then shakes her head. “ I call the meetings. I am the Confluence Warrior. Even when I didn’t know who I was, I called the meetings.”

Jacob rubs her back sympathetically, but his expression is amused. It’s not often someone comes along and tries to upend the

natural order of Emerson.

“Shake a leg, witches. We don’t have forever ,” Azrael calls from the large living room where we often hold our meetings.

Emerson’s stricken look quickly changes into her usual focus mixed with irritation, and woe betide the dragon who gets in

her way. She marches into the living room and the rest of us exchange a look, then follow.

Azrael is standing in front of the stone hearth that now has a robust fire crackling in it when I know it didn’t before. More than that, he’s standing in Emerson’s usual spot.

I get the strangest feeling he knows that.

But she marches right up to him. “Azrael,” she says, and her voice is calm. Reasonable. Even friendly, which is one of the

reasons she’s so good at local, human-facing politics too. “I am the leader of this coven. A coven that certainly wants to

help you, as we all want an end to the Joywood’s reign of terror. But you’ve been stuck in a newel post for quite some time.

You don’t know—”

“You’re right. I’ve been stuck in that newel post for a century or more.” He waves at the shattered remains of it at the foot

of the stairs, just visible from where he stands. “But I have seen and heard everything that’s gone on around me. If it was

anywhere near the stairs, I saw it. And I’ve heard pretty much everything that’s been spoken on this ground floor. You’re

not exactly quiet, Emerson.” Then he looks at me, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the ways his glances shiver through me. “Dragons have excellent hearing.”

“How excellent?” Ellowyn demands suspiciously.

Azrael offers her a look, that dragony grin taking over his mouth. “Irrelevant, though should you ever see your ghosts again,

you might want to let them know that although most of the people in the house can’t see them, I certainly could.”

Ellowyn’s jaw kind of drops, and Zander gets a look like horror on his face. They both met their ghostly ancestors last month

after a summoning gone awry, and were fond of them, so I’m not sure why they’re having this kind of reaction—

But Azrael is already moving on. “The first order of business has to be—”

Emerson makes a sound. Kind of like a shriek, but with more temper. “You can’t decide the order of—”

“—obtaining a new Praeceptor. Because Nicholas Frost, traitor to magic, won’t do.”

We all straighten at that, less amused than before.

Frost says nothing. He looks dark and stormy, as usual.

But Rebekah crosses her arms over her chest, her eyes narrowed and fury radiating off her. “Or we could get rid of the asshole

dragon who literally just appeared after having been kindling for the past century.”

“Azrael. Clearly you don’t understand what happened on Litha,” I offer, trying to find some rational ground here. “None of

us would be here without Frost. He—”

“Sacrificed himself?” Azrael shrugs as if it was nothing. “After a literal millennium of living as an immortal. Something

he was able to do because he was an integral part of a dark, sick coven who used evil for their own gain.”

Everyone looks at Frost, who still denies nothing. Whether that’s because he doesn’t remember, or doesn’t want to, I’m not

sure—but I can’t remember him ever defending himself, even when he could remember all the things he’s done.

Emerson butts in again, sounding less patient than before. “We appreciate your support, and we’ll protect you in whatever

ways we can, but you don’t have a say in the makeup of our coven.”

He nods. “ Our coven.”

She frowns at him. “That’s what I said.”

Azrael shakes his head. “You can’t become the ruling coven without a magical creature. And you can’t live forever without

sacrificing the magical creature in your coven after ruling for a hundred years, even if it’s a lowly ramidreju weasel.”

We all frown at that, as if a weasel should mean something to us. As if it does. I have come to suspect that this sort of

thing is another little bit of evidence that the Joywood have messed with something.

But Azrael is still speaking. “This is the reason why the Joywood killed or cursed us all. They wanted to make sure they were

the last coven that could achieve immortality, ever. They wanted to be the last ones standing.”

He says this like it’s a law. Like it’s common knowledge.

When we all look at him blankly, he’s clearly baffled. “You don’t know this? I thought you were just making do because you couldn’t find any of us.”

“I don’t buy it,” Rebekah says then. She’s clearly angry. And it’s no surprise why. She doesn’t just love Frost. She knows

he risked everything to save her.

“I don’t think he’s wrong,” Frost says. Stiffly. “I was part of a ruling coven. I don’t remember anything about what we did

to become one or what became of my coven, but I do not think he’s wrong.”

Azrael looks around with satisfaction, but I don’t think any of us feel satisfied. I certainly don’t. We’d be lost without

Frost, no matter what misdeeds he might have done during his long, long life.

“It doesn’t matter,” Emerson says quietly. “What happened is in the past. We’d all make terrible mistakes if given a millennium

to make them. What’s important is the here and now, and that means making sure the Joywood are well and truly stopped. Frost

is our Praeceptor.”

“Then I will not be your dragon.”

“I’m not certain we need a dragon,” Emerson says, but not meanly. She’s trying to be careful. A fair leader. “But we will

protect you all the same.”

He snorts, a very dragon kind of noise. “I do not need protection from a bunch of witches .”

“If the Joywood wanted to wipe out all magical creatures, it isn’t safe for you,” I say, sounding a little too much like Rebekah

just did. Angry. I laugh, trying to be the airhead I’m not. “I mean... is it?”

His gaze lifts to mine, and I can’t read these dark gold dragon glances. I’m usually good at taking the temperature of any

room I enter and every person I meet, making sure I project the image I want them to take away. But he’s different.

I can’t read him at all.

“You’ll find the answers, Georgina,” he tells me in that silken, knowing way of his. “And then you’ll understand that you

need me.”

Everyone looks at me. And I feel that fatefulness rising inside me—but I shove it down. This is about reason. “Of course I’ll do research on the matter. The way I always do.”

He nods, as if he’s won here. It’s disconcerting. “Very well. Once you prove what I already know to be true, we’ll reconvene.”

I think Emerson’s head might be ready to explode, but when she speaks, she’s still her calm self, every inch the leader. “Azrael,

for your own safety, you should probably go back into the newel post until—”

“Try it,” he suggests, with clear, dark, and malicious intent. “And see what happens.”

Jacob’s eyes glow in clear warning at that. He’s a quiet one, our Healer, but he doesn’t take threats to our Warrior—his fiancée—kindly.

I have to solve this. “You can’t just saunter down Main Street as a dragon. Or even go wandering around in your man costume.”

“I do not wear costumes. I am not a Halloween party trick. I am an ancient and unknowable force that cannot be contained in

a single—”

“Shifters,” Frost says, as if he’s tired. And possibly bored. When Azrael glares at him, it’s his turn to shrug. “That’s the

word they use to describe what it is you and the other magical creatures do. You shift .”

How he manages to make the delivery of that information an insult is its own master class, but I’m focused on the dragon,

who looks like his temper might get the better of him and turn flamey at any moment.

“The Joywood will know, if they don’t already,” I say softly. And since they haven’t appeared to strike him down, I assume they don’t yet. But they could . “They’ll figure it out. That’s what they do.”

His eyes are more gold than they were before, and I feel all the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. “I will not be cursed

and trapped again.”

“That’s fair,” I say hurriedly, because my friends didn’t see him in his dragon form. They don’t know what all that gold means.

And they clearly can’t feel it like I can. “But what about a compromise? I’m assuming you can’t do some kind of glamour, or you all would have done that

to keep from getting killed and cursed.”

“With access to dark magic, powerful witches can sense our magic, no matter what,” Azrael says mirthlessly, looking Frost’s

way again, but at least there’s slightly less gold in his gaze. “They feed off it.”

“What if we all did a spell?” Emerson suggests when it looks like Rebekah, always this close to chaos, might try to take a swing at him. “We can pool all our magic together to create a tighter, more armored glamour.

To actually hide what you are. Maybe even strong enough to ward off their dark magic. We’ve had plenty of run-ins with it

this year. We can fight it.”

Ellowyn, who hid her own pregnancy for months, studies Azrael dubiously. I can’t help but do the same. Hiding all that seems unlikely.

More than unlikely—undoable.

“It’s possible.” Frost takes a moment to say that, as if he’s going through that glorious library of his in his head. “With

our power and the right spell.”

“I wouldn’t trust you to make me dinner,” Azrael growls.