Page 127 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
“You may remember it,” Gideon says, a touch of irony in his voice. “It was my grandmother’s. Hidden on Crow Island for aslong as I can remember. I’m entrusting it to you, Georgina Pendell, in the hope that you’ll know what to do with it.”
I raise the sword with one hand. A storm is rumbling in the distance. Evil is on its way, and we must fight it. “Hope, love,and unity,” I say.
The words from Gideon’s grandmother’s essay.
Gideon murmurs the same, then bows. “Together we live or together we die,princess.” There’s a rumble deep in my dragon’s chest when he calls me this. I think we can all tell from Gideon’s smirk that he didit deliberately for that very response. But his expression is dead serious when he meets my gaze again. “We will fight foras long as we can. Until the curse is broken. That cannot be long.”
There is a loud cawing then that fills the sky.
I hold the sword in my hands, sitting astride a dragon. The moment calls for a rousing speech, but I’m not Emerson. Ireadwords. I make worlds in my mind.
Speeches aren’t my thing.
So I raise the sword into the air, and I say the only thing I can. “Then let’s go break a curse.”
Azrael lifts into the air once more as Emerson’s voice takesover on the speaker, reading the words I once spoke aloud to Azrael. Speaking them into every nook and cranny of witchdom.
Everywhere a cursed creature might wait, dreaming of deliverance.
“I am yours,” she says to Jacob. To the world. To the people we hope togovern, notrule, because we aren’t like the Joywood. We don’t want what we could get only by black magic. We want a magical world filledwith complexity and opinions, whether we like them or not, and all the people and creatures that hold them. “You are mine.Our souls intertwine. I would lay down my life for you, but even then I would not die. Because love cannot be torn asunder.”
But before she can finish, the whole damn world begins to shake.
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Azrael drops my father off on the outskirts of the wedding crowd in a quick, smooth move that I appreciate. He doesn’t reallyslow down, but still manages to place my father outside the fray, near a growing snowdrift that might give him some cover.This is where he belongs.
The wedding situation has deteriorated, to put it mildly. Our coven stands on the stage in defensive positions. The onlookershave created a kind of circle in the audience.
And in the middle of that circle of people below the stage is Carol.
Her hair is wild. Her skin seems to be... melting. Black, oily swirls stretch out in coils from her fingers, which is nauseating.But much worse—much,muchworse—is what’s erupting from the ground as if it’s beingpulled outlike some kind of dark afterbirth by those black tendrils.
It’s that hideous creature from the book. That shuffling, disgusting patchwork of evil.
It’s huge. Not only monstrous... anactual monster.
Not thesuggestionof monsters we’ve fought off all year, but a real one, like the red-eyed horror show adlets that attacked Emerson in March.
And it seems to have a kind of gravitational pull. Chairs and heaters whip in the wind it kicks up, crashing against its immensebody. It doesn’t seem to care.
My stomach threatens to come out my throat, and my heart is clawing at my ribs. Some witches seem frozen in horror, not thatI can blame them. Others are screaming. Still others are scrambling, running away, or trying to take cover in the alleys andshop doors along Main Street. Some braver witches are trying to fling their magic at Carol. It only bounces back.
But I am also brave. And I am part of the Riverwood. Brave or not, handling this is our duty.
Azrael lands us on the stage, and I rush to swing myself down from his back, sword in hand, until I’m standing there in allmy state in front of my friends.
“It’s like the book,” Ellowyn says, gazing at me while holding a blast of magic, aimed at Carol. “It’s like mydream.”
I don’t know whatbravelooks like on my face, but I do it. “Let’s make sure that dream has a happy ending.”
Rebekah grins at me, lazily, like this is a garden party instead of a horror show. “Badass, Georgie. I like it.”
“Zander, Frost, try to clear the area of bystanders,” Emerson belts out then, swinging back from what looks like a quick reconof the wedding guests. Of course she’s calm enough to hand out assignments. “Azrael, does your fire do anything to black magic?”
He lets out a flare of it, like a test. Or a warning. “Not permanently, but temporarily it can break the bonds dark magiccan make.”
“Go, use it,” she tells him. “Break whatever bonds Carol has formed.”
