Page 48 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
I meet Emerson’s gaze across the room. She notices Azrael, then looks at me expectantly.
We’ve got it, I send to her.
She gives me a discreet little fist pump, which eases some of the tension inside me. We’ve got this. I know we do. We weremeantfor this.
Azrael’s hand is suddenly on my back, directing me not toward Emerson, but to the little dance floor.
“We should dance,” he says in my ear, creating a cascade of sparkling shivers through me.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a mental image of that book cover pops into my head. It is emblazoned on my mind as we move to the music. But maybe this was all it meant. A dancewhile we’re pretending to be a couple, so no one knows what he is.
But I understand that’s not what it meant at all.
“You know what we are, Georgina,” he murmurs, making me startle in his arms. “You always have. You always will.”
I let my breath out, a long, slow shuddering. Inside me are all those daydreams. Passion and wild sex and laughter and longingandhim. Us. This.You can’t just go cavorting around my thoughts.
“Think quieter, then,” he says pleasantly enough, and I’m all but plastered to his body while we sway to the music, and nothingI feel isquiet.
Still, I endeavor to do just that.
I try to empty my head of all thoughts.
Because the clock is striking down, fate is real, and it will be midnight soon enough.
13
The ball ends at eleven thirty, and even if humans were tempted to linger, something is in the air. It’s a magic prompt tellingthem to go home. I look meaningfully at Azrael, and he nods, because Peter the London Boyfriend is meant to be human too.He needs to make a show of leaving.
It would be embarrassing to admit how little I want him to leave, so I don’t. I don’t admit anything. Besides, it’s appropriatefor me to be nervous about the ceremony.
Azrael steps back from me, letting go of me and ending all thatdancingI can’t even begin to think about right now with a spell hanging over my head.
You won’t see me. You won’t feel me. But I’ll be there adding my magic as well.
I don’t know if he says this only in my head, or in the full group channel. He’s looking at only me as he lifts my hand andpresses a kiss to it.
It should feel chaste. Fake. Even silly. A gesture in line with one of Sage’s bow ties.
It. Does. Not.
What it does instead is light me up and make me wonder what it would be like totrulyfeel a dragon’s fire—
But that, I tell myself sharply, is not helpful. I am about to lead a spell to open the archives I’ve been waiting my wholelife to see. It’s no time for fairy tales, no matter how real they might be.
Azrael’s eyes gleam, and then he slips away, threading in and out of the packs of humans until he’s no longer inside. Thewitches are spilling out of the building as well, but the magic makes sure the humans don’t notice. They’re off to their homesor whatever else they do at eleven thirty at night, but we’re all headed to the same place: St. Cyprian’s first capitol building.
It’s right on the river, an old-fashioned fort where the human archives have been housed for as long as history has been writtendown in this area.
But we don’t go inside. We all come together outside along the riverbank.
Any human who had the wild thought to be outside by the river on a frozen December night would see nothing. Maybe they’d thinkthey saw a shadow, but on further inspection, all they’d really see was a murder or two of crows.
Where’s Azrael?Emerson asks in my head.
Proving that what he said earlier was, indeed, just for me.
Just for meseems to echo in my head like a portent.
