Page 53 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
But then she smiles. “All right. But if you need us...”
“I know.” I always know. Even if the world ended right now, Emerson would find a way to have my back.
We exchange our goodbyes, and there’s some reluctance in leaving me alone with Azrael that amuses him, but eventually everyoneis gone. It’s the two of us.
The melody of the river is back, and I almost look over my shoulder at where it’s coming from, but the song between us islouder—
“Go on, then,” he says to me, nodding at the building. “You’ve been waiting your entire life for this. Unlock it.”
He isn’t wrong, and it makes me forget about the music. It makes me want to hug him.
Because long before I dreamed of ruling covens, I dreamed of having access to the witchlore archives. To all that knowledge,all that history, hopefully untouched by the Joywood’s dark magic.
And if I can find clear-cut evidence of the Joywood’s misdeeds, then maybe this long nightmare can really be put behind us.
I move up the path. The building is glowing, but nowhere more so than the door I usually unlock first in the mornings. It’sa small one in the back, facing the river, and once inside, you can either go up into the museum or down into the basement.
But suddenly there isn’t just one keyhole in this door I know so well. There are two. One is dark.
One is gold.
I put the key into the gold one, holding my breath, and the door opens. It looksalmostthe same as it would normally, but the stairway down to the basement is bathed in more bright, shimmering gold.
I can hardly contain myself as I run down the stairs, Azrael behind me.
When I wave my hand to turn on the lights, the basement looks almost like it usually does—until I cross the threshold andall those old boxes and shelvesshift. Every step I take, another part of the room resolves or dissolves itself.
It’s like Frost’s library. Things move and change, expand and retract.
As the Riverwood Historian, I’ll have more control over it, unlike when I’m in Frost’s library.
The idea of control immediately vanishes though, because as I step forward, there on the gleaming table at the center of everythingis my book. That stupid fairy tale once again. Complete with that clinch cover.
I can’t think of a single reason it should be here amidst all these important tomes I am itching to get my hands on.
Before I can reach out, or send some magic out to make it disappear, Azrael steps around me and picks it up himself. He studiesthe picture of the dragon and the princess intertwined, then looks at me with a raised brow. “Interesting.”
I try to sound unbothered, but I flush. “Is it?”
“What do you suppose this one means?” he asks, but his smile is hungry. And knowing.
I laugh, but why does it sound so... shaky? “Who even knows? It’s not a fortune teller, Azrael. You have yet to fall bleedingfrom the sky.”
“Because it gave me a warning, and I heeded it. The coverchanged because you lot had the good sense to save me from myself. Had I gone charging after the Joywood or exposed myself as a dragon, that would have likely been me.”
My heart is beating so hard in my ears, I’m certain I didn’t hear him correctly. “What?”
He looks impatient. “The spell? That makes everyone think I’m a human? It worked. The book warned me and I listened. Now we’reon to this next part.”
“It’s a book, not an oracle,” I argue immediately. Even though I can feel all that song and shimmer inside me. That longing,that recognition.
My body is still humming with the magic of the spell, the archives of knowledge are all around me, and I’m Historian enoughto find that exciting. But he’smoreexciting, and that should scare me.
It does.
Because I know that there is nothing casual here. Nothing between us that doesn’t matter.
No thread in me that fate can’t pull tight and make sing.
