Page 75 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
I’m clinging to whatever silver lining I can.
Until this moment, I don’t think I knewhow muchI have come to depend on this man. My dragon. My newel post confidant brought to beautiful life. It isn’t just the book. Fate.The lure of other lives, hard losses, and a love so deep I sometimes imagine it’s threaded into my bones.
I just like him.
I really, really like him. This man who is funny and irreverentand so dangerous—while always being a safe place for me. This man who pretended to be a human and helps us whether we want it or not and happily took his place in our coven—in our lives—before we knew he belonged here.
This man who taught me how to fly like a dragon, and that was only the beginning.
Likedoesn’t begin to cover it.
I can’t remember him through other eyes. I’m glad I can’t, because I like this view so much.
Thisdragon is definitely worth being tied to throughout time.
“Did the Joywood fail to imprison him in stone on purpose?” Frost asks in a musing sort of tone, his icy-cold gaze movingfrom the statue to Azrael and back. “Or is this because their power is fading?”
I don’t care. I launch myself forward, through the gates, directly at Azrael. And he catches me. He’s sturdy and warm andhere.
He wraps his arm around me and holds me like no one’s cursed or ever could be. And I can feel that he is holding on to makesureIam okay, the same way I am holding on to make sure he is.
Likereally isn’t the word.
“I’m betting on the latter.” Azrael looks out over the stones, and the statues of familiars. “Though I wouldn’t trust thatthe power fading will last.”
“How would they get it back?” Zander demands.
“Destroying you lot.” Azrael looks down at me. “Something attacked her, and then me. They have power somewhere, still. Blackmagic, at a guess.”
“I tried to reach out to everyone,” I say.
“They blocked you. Isolated you in the hopes of picking you off.” Azrael looks at me, his eyes gleaming with that hot gold.“The usual Joywood playbook.”
“If she couldn’t reach out to us, how did you get the message she needed help?” Rebekah asks him, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
But I already know the answer. I look down at the ring on my finger. “What you gave me are the only crystals on my body thatdidn’t burn me.”
Frost frowns at that. “The burns weren’t from the water?”
“No.” They hadn’t been on my legs, where I was getting sucked in. That was bad but didn’tburn.That had been the crystal I was holding, the crystals in my pockets and on my body. The necklace I always wear—the prehnitefrom my mother at pubertatum—but not the crystals on Azrael’s necklace. There was only one burn on my neck, right betweenmy collarbones. “It was my crystals.”
“Take them off,” Azrael says darkly. He has taken his arm away from me. He points to the ground, then grunts in frustration.“My magic does not work here.”
I pull the crystals out of my pockets. Take the prehnite necklace off. Hold them out in my hands. I stare at them. They lookand feel like crystals. How could they burn me? How could someone get to crystals I have cleansed and charged and worn?
“Put them in something,” Azrael orders me. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him like this. Darkly furious, but with a very tightlid on it. I want to reach for him, but clearly the focus is on the crystals, so I magic myself a little bowl to put everythingin.
Azrael nods toward Frost. “Take the bowl outside the cemetery. Destroy them.”
I don’t know what to think about the fact that Frost does this immediately. He doesn’t question it, either. More telling,he doesn’t balk at Azrael giving him orders. He doesn’t even shoot the dragon one of hisI’m the first Praeceptorglances.
Like this is so serious nothing else matters.
Rebekah and I exchange a wide-eyed look.
Frost strides through the cemetery gates and keeps going, almost to the path that leads through the woods and down to the river. A few crows sit on a branch and seem to watch him. He mutters a spell, and there’s a small explosion in the bowl. A flash of light, a loud, crackling kind of flame, and then dark smoke billows up.
When Frost comes back through the iron gates, he holds the bowl out to the rest of us.
