Page 57 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
“I overheard some things in my time as a newel post,” he says.
Far too carefully.
“What things?”
“Georgina.”
He doesn’t have to sayyou don’t want to know. I can read it all over his face.
So I have to say it myself. I have to stitch it together myself. This horrible, impossible thing the archives wanted me toknow.
The thing the Joywood certainly knows.
My mouth is so dry it hurts, but I force the words out. “My mother and Desmond Wilde had an affair.”
He does not deny this. And when I only stare at him, he gives a very slow nod.
Holy Hecate. Blessed Soteria. This is real.
I feel like my knees are going to give out, but before they do, a chair is shoved under me, and I collapse into it.
The family tree lies in that book at my feet.
Wilde family tree. Desmond Wilde.
I cradle my head in my hands, like I need extra support as my mind whirls and whirls and whirls. But what I keep coming backto is my dad tonight.
He knew I’d be getting access to the archives.
He knew what I would find.
Facts are not always the whole story.
“My dad knew,” I hear myself say, muffled because my mouth is buried in my own palms. “It’s why he was sad tonight. He knewI’d find out. He knew the truth and he knew I’d find it. But how did he know? How long has he known?”
I’m not sure I’m really asking that as a question so much as thinking aloud. I think back, trying to pinpoint a moment. Butin my memory, my parents have always been what they’ve been—the way they are now. Not happy. Not terrible. My mother too sharp,my father too soft.
Just... them.
Why would he have stayed if he knew what she’d done? Why would he have kept up this fiction?
Why did he... treat me like his own?
“This I do not know,” Azrael says quietly, and he could be answering any of those questions. “After a certain point, yourfather never returned to Wilde House.”
“And my mother?”
“There were certain discussions.”
I stand then. My weak knees are replaced by a restless need tomove. I pace back and forth, and on one pass, I shove a finger in his direction. “You have to tell me.You knew.”
He clearly doesn’t care for being pointed at. Just as he clearly prefers to bemakingthe demands. It’s stamped all over his gorgeous face.
If only I’d kept kissing him.
If only I could rewind time and kiss him all night, and not have to know this.
When Azrael speaks, it is gentle, and somehow that’s worse. “Desmond refused to acknowledge you. At first, this enraged yourmother, but then, I suppose, she accepted it. Either way, she never graced the door of Wilde House again.”
