Page 100 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
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 helptoday, 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 thesame 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 thingsitting 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 newelpost.
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 couldread 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 himsee 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 witha 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’stake 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 fashionin 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 veryeyes 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, andeight.
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 simpleread ofThe 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 anunaccepted version?” I have never heard this in my life, and I have studied alotof 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 thisfeelsimportant. “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 thedistance, and that humming inside me gets louder, because I can tell he’ll keep going. “The two missing historical periodsare something I first wondered about as a child. All throughout my schooling, I tried to find proof, thinking I’d make somegreat 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. Nottooodd, 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 willhurt. “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 hishead, as if he’s as baffled by this information as I am, hearing it for the first time. “We were working together, not exactlyin secret but not openly either, before we were married. We had both made separate discoveries that led us to believe therewere two missing historical periods from the teachings. We wanted to prove that. And then we wanted to determine why theseperiods 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 inthat 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.”
