Page 125 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
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 needhim.
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 haveto 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 notmybooks.”
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 anus.A future. Not analmostripped 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 athousand 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 tostep 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 Ellowynprojected to us during the ascension trials, showing us what the Joywood rule would look like. A mansion on a hill of gleaminggold—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 beneathher. 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 princesshas 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 muttera 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 magicalcreature 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 thosewho 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—somerepulsive 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’tfelt it yet, I know we still have to hurry. There is only so much time.
