Page 103 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
“I remember it distinctly,” I say in a harder voice, because I can’t believe she’s trying to lie about this too. “You gaveit to me yourself.”
“It was... not from me.” Her hand is at her throat, and I have never in my life seen her so rattled. I didn’t know it waspossiblefor her to get rattled. “Someone else gave it to me to give to you.”
“You can’t honestly think I’ll buy that? When you’ve lied to me my entire life about who I am? About...everything.” I look at her, try to rationalize this new story. “Surely you have more brains than to take a gift from the Joywood, evenback then.”
“It was Desmond.”
She clears her throat as if it hurts, then slowly lowers herself into a chair like she can’t bear her own weight anymore.
Desmond.“You mean my father?” I shoot at her, and I think this is more lies, but—
Mom closes her eyes and sighs, and I’ve never seen her lookdefeatedbefore. Not ever. “Right before your pubertatum, he told me he wanted the daughter he couldn’t claim to have something ofhis family’s. But he couldn’t give it to you without arousing suspicion, so he asked me to do it. And I did.”
I swear I don’t breathe. I can’t even think. All these years I’ve thought of Emerson and Rebekah’s father as an asshole, sure.But one too self-absorbed to cause any real trouble. Even finding out he wasmyfather too didn’t change that estimation.
But right before I took the test to determine if I wielded enough power to be considered a witch, and before Emerson and Rebekahwere given different forms of punishment for not having enough magic—when, really, it was because they had too much—he gaveme a necklace imbued with black magic.
The Joywood specialty.
“Georgina. I did not know,” my mother says to me now, forthright and earnest in a way I’ve never seen her before. “I haveno interest in dealing with black magic. It’swrong.”
But she doesn’t argue about what happened. Which means she isn’tsurprised, really. Which means she knows this is something Desmondwoulddo, even if she wouldn’t.
She gets to her feet and crosses the room to stand in front of me. “You must stop,” she says to me with this new earnestnessthat makes me uneasy. Because she isn’t lecturing or demanding. There is desperation here, and I don’t know what to do with that—not coming from her. “Stop all this pushing, prying, fighting. Dragons aren’t what we need. Dramatic battles aren’t what we need. We need peace.”
“By capitulating to the most evil force there is?”
She makes a face. “I thought you would understand once you had access to power. I thought you would bebetterthan this.”
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 sorrowfulway 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 shehurriesto 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’sgone, 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. Witha 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-callednonsensehe 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 painfulache, that meeting with Gideon yesterday actually haunts me. Like a dream I vaguely remember, just out of reach. An itch I can’tscratch.
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 strengthof the pages. I whisper soothing words, hopeful words, about what information it will let me have.
