Page 80 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
Zander lets out a sound like I punched him in the stomach. Which I guess I did. “Ouch.”
Ellowyn closes the book. “This should be a full coven thing, Georgie.”
“Great. Let’s gather them.”
“A full,truecoven, meaning Azrael too.”
I hesitate, then I shake my head. “No. We got this far with only the seven of us. We can do this with only the seven of ustoo. And I think we have to do it. There’s something he doesn’t want me to find in the past.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t find it,” Zander argues, but more carefully. “Particularlytoday. A day when you’ve beenattacked.”
I keep my gaze on Ellowyn. Because I know she’s on my side, and if she is, Zander will be eventually. “Would you stop tryingto find what you knew you needed to find just because someone told you not to? Or, worse, if someone tried tostopyou?”
She’s caught, because we all know telling Ellowyn what to do is a useless enterprise.
“Did you know,” she murmurs, “that when you put a certain number of men—”
“Wynnie,” I say, dropping that nickname she only allows rarely as a bomb.
She sighs. “Let’s head over to the North Farm,” she mutters instead of wowing us with misdirection in the form of facts aboutmen. “Get everyone to meet us there.”
20
It doesn’t take long to gather everyone in Jacob’s cozy little farmhouse. This afternoon’s attack andbayingmobhave left everyone on edge, or that’s how it seems when every single one of my friends—including Frost—makes a big deal overme and how I’m still standing when I haven’t had time to think about it.
When I’m not sure Iwantto think about it—that song, the burning crystal, the slick and greedy tug of all that black, the moment before Azrael descendedwhen I thought all was lost—
I focus on the farmhouse instead, because we’ve spent a lot of time here over the past year. It’s looking far less like asingle, solitary man lives here these days. There are lots of colorful,organizedtouches from Emerson everywhere I look. They’ve melded their lives into one life, and that will only become more and morea thing.
Once they get married. Take all those next steps.
For a moment, I’m struck by that idea. A futurebeyondascension. Beyond this longest year. My friends will get married, have babies, live very adult lives—all while we run thewitching world.
You know, if we can get past all this dark magic business.
And where will I be? I wanted the future to be Sage because that’s what my mother told me I was destined for. I gave it myvery best shot.
ButI’vealways known, even when I didn’t want to, that I was destined for dragons.
I think all thesedoubtsare the same doubts she planted in me when I was small. Maybe all mothers try to make a fortress against fear, and end upjailing their daughters there. Maybe that’s a kind interpretation of what my mother did with a child she intended to lie tofor the whole of her life.
But I believed those doubts. I internalized them, one after the next, likefacts.
Facts that made Sage seem like the best prospect, no matter that I had more feelings for the fictional characters I read about.I was taught so well. Fiction and feelings were for silly little girls. Grown women who wanted to fight the ruling coven neededfacts and rationality.
But the dragonisa fact, and so is what needs to be done.
“We need to do a past life regression on me,” I tell the assembled group once everyone has settled and I’ve answered all thequestions I intend to abouthow I feelin the wake of the attack. I hold out the book the archives gave me. “This tells us how to do it. Ellowyn has to lead it,but we all need to help.”
There’s a beat of silence. And one by one, everyone looks to Emerson. Our leader through all of this, every step of the way.The one all final decisions go through. She’s made a lot of tough, fair choices this year. Maybe soon I’ll be able to considerthat agreeing to imprison Azrael was one of those. Maybe.
Right now, though, is the first time I’ve ever seen an expression on her face that makes me think she doesn’t actuallyalwayswant to be the one deciding.
Because she doesn’t want to agree, but she doesn’t want to hurt me either.
“I know the Joywood have lied to us and skewed our pasts beyond recognition, but some things remain true,” she says gently.Kindly.I brace myself. “Witches and past lives...” Emerson sighs. “It doesn’t make sense. We’ve dealt with ghosts. We might notknow everything that happens on the other side, but we know that’s the next destination.”
Meaning we don’t do reincarnation dances through the ages.
