Page 58 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
I’m thinking about all of those years. My wholelife. Emerson’sand Rebekah’s whole lives too. Emerson and I used to say we were as close as sisters, especially in the years Rebekah was in exile. And all that time wewere.Weare.
We have all been raised in alie.
I guess this should feel old hat by now. The Joywood sold all of us lies for too many years. I still don’t know how many.
They also knew about this, I remind myself. About me. They had access to this very same book.
It makes me feel almost like they’re in here with me, their oily magic on everything and all over my skin.
“I was only an observer,” Azrael tells me in that same disturbingly quiet way, when I have never heard a story about a dragoncaring for the petty little concerns of mortal witches. But then, Azrael has cared for me even whenallhe heard were my petty concerns, my sleepwalking truths whispered like prayers in the dark of a sleeping house. “I know whatI saw and heard, but I do not know the full truth. That would have to come from the people who hid this from you.”
Still, he knew. All this time. Like my mother, like my father.
Like my enemies.
“You should have told me,” I say in a pained whisper.
“Why?”
“I had a right to know.”
“I cannot argue that point, but why was it up to me?”
I stare at him. I have no quick answer. Only a cascade of twisted, complicated emotions I can’t make sense of, but seem wrappedup in all that gold in his onyx gaze.
“You know your coven, your friends,” Azrael says, and some of that gentleness is starting to turn to impatience. Perversely,that makes me feel the slightest bit better, because it’s him. It’s normal. It’s the first hint I have that I might actuallysurvive this moment, the weight of this knowledge. “What is it you’re afraid of? I would wager considerable riches on Emersonbeing nothing but overjoyed that you are her sister.”
I amactuallyEmerson’s sister. I am living in Wilde House and I amnotan interloper. I belong to it. And to my best friend.
“Emerson will celebrate, but she’ll also be deeply hurt by her father.” And I can’t accept it. I can’tbe okaywith it. Her fatherhad sexwith my mother. It makes my stomach hurt. “Rebekah, on the other hand...”
“Will hate her father more, if possible. That has little to do with you.”
Why is he being so reasonable wheneverythingis wrong?
The worst part, I think then, is that I will be tasked with setting it all to rights. Because I’m the one who found out.I’mthe one who’s going to break the lie that we’ve all been living under, and as I know from this last year, no one likes that.
But I don’t knowhowto fix this. I don’t know if this can be fixed. It’s so complicated and twisted, I don’t even know who I should speak to first.
No one, I think. I want to tellno one. Once again, I want to go back in time.
For a moment, I’m actually tempted to try it. But time is a dangerous thing. If you steal time, you lose time, just like thenursery rhyme taught us.
Then again, Iwantto lose this.
Azrael grips my arms then, and not gently. “Georgina, get a hold of yourself.”
I look at his eyes, black and gold. For a moment, it’s like I can see a million years reflected back at me. Riding dragonsand fighting the darkness, always the darkness. Crows in the air and around us. Endless wars and a great, bright sword.
But that’s just that stupid book again.
Isn’t it?
He rubs his hands down my arms. Then he pulls me close, into an embrace that is not less affecting for being a simmering fireinstead of a blaze.
“Let us return to Wilde House. I will draw you a crystalbath.” I feel his breath move through my hair, and something relaxes, deep inside, at being in his arms again. I get the impression that touching me, holding me close, calms him. Like he needs this too. “You can invite me to join you, of course.”
I think he is trying to make me laugh. To lighten the mood. But with the earlier kiss and this strange connection betweenus, he has miscalculated.
