Page 109 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
I look at Azrael. He looks away.
He huffs out a puff of smoke. Everyone is looking at him now, and he is staring at his own terrifying statue. “I fought withthe crows once and was rewarded for my sacrifice with a knife to the heart.” His hands clench into fists. “I mean that literally.”He turns that dark glare on me. “This curse, and the people who used black magic to imprison my people, are my only enemiesstill living. I will see them all dead this time or die trying.”
“What a rousing vow of fealty,” Gideon murmurs, earning a sharp glance not just from Azrael, but from me as well. I softenalmost at once, because the trickle of blood has not gone away. If anything, it has intensified. He needs to return home.
I cross to him. I put my hands on his shoulders, and I see a baby in my arms suddenly. I feel an overwhelming wave of warmththat I shouldn’t. I don’t know what he sees or feels, but he looks at me with a deep suspicion, so I know it’ssomething.
“There is no fealty here, Gideon,” I tell him. “There is only cooperation. There is only working together to end the curse that holds your people even now.”
I feel the dragon tear heat against my skin, and I somehow know my next steps. I take the dragon tear necklace off. It washis grandmother’s. A symbol of her love that was taken away from her. But she did not crumble. She did not give up. She lovedher children and her grandchildren—something I think is evident in the way Gideon speaks of her now. And something I knowis evident in the hope she had for the world, for our future.
The words come to me as if they have lived my whole life right there on my tongue, waiting for this moment. “We cannot alwayschange the world. Sometimes we must change ourselves, and our own bitter hearts, and hope that in so doing, we plant the seedsthat will change futures we can never see.”
Gideon’s face shifts, into something not quite wonder. Not fully hope. “My grandmother often said those words to me in herlast days.”
I nod. I may not remember my past lives, but there is aknowinginside me. A piece of my soul was there. A piece of my soul loved him as a little boy. I put the necklace around his neck.“Go home and stay there. Do not hurt yourself anymore. We will free you when we can. And when we do, Gideon, you must be preparedto work with us. Because you’re not alone anymore.”
He stands very still. His eyes are a gleaming black.
And my heart aches, an echo of the soul I once was.
At last he steps away from me, the dragon tear sparkling at his neck. “You do notruleCrow Island, Riverwood coven. But we will work together for the best of all, even so.”
He slides one last look in Azrael’s direction, then nods.
“Even dragons,” he says quietly.
Then a gust of wind moves through the cemetery, and he isa giant raven in flight, winging his way toward the river and the confluence. A sparkling dragon tear hanging around his neck.
I’m not the only one who watches him go.
“So we’re working together,” Rebekah says. “We’ve got dragons and crows, and once we figure out how to uncurse everyone, awhole slew of magical creatures. Do you really think that will just... erase black magic? That it’s really the answer?”
“No,” I say, because unfortunately, I don’t think that. “But I believe the answer will find us. If we take the right steps,if we believe. If we work together.” I turn to Azrael then, chin lifted. “You’re the lone holdout, dragon.”
He sneers when I call himdragon.
“These pipe dreams are almost cute,” he says, and he pretends like he’s addressing all of us, but I know it’s just me. “Togetherness.You’re the first to think of it, I’m sure.”
It takes everything I have not to scowl at him. “We’ll be the first to make it work.”
“We tried that once.” And now he makes no bones of staring at me and only me. “I believed in it. Once. And I was killed forthe trouble.”
“How noble,” I say, pulling out my bright, bubbly Georgie smile.
A lick of flame shoots out of his mouth, but his imprisonment keeps it from being more than the end of a lit match.
“Why don’t you fly after your little crow friend, since you have become so close?” he suggests, but it’s in a vicious tonethat hurts more than fire or claw ever could. “You can tend to his wounds. Listen to his crow lies. There’s a reason they’recalled an unkindness at best. A murder at worst. But do not take my word for it.”
It occurs to me he must misunderstand the connection I feel to Gideon. “You don’t have to be jealous.”
Azrael snorts at that. “I am notjealous, Georgina. I am worried for your welfare. Andmine. The last time we trucked withcrows, we were both punished for it.Iremember it well. You do not.”
“Maybe not, but I know how to learn a lesson, Azrael. Do you?”
He steps forward, and I recognize that there is a deep well of hurt here, one I did not fully understand before. But he isprojecting it onto the wrong people, and for that, I’m angry instead of sympathetic.
Also, I’m hurt myself.
