Page 88 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
And the dragon statue shakes a little, so I know he’s gone in there. Purposefully and by choice gone into the prison the Joywoodmade for him.
Leaving me out here, all alone.
22
A day in the archives with not much to show for it feels a bit like the good old days, pre-dragon. Pre-ascension. Pre...this year of learning too much and sometimes wishing I thought ignorance really could be bliss.
There’s a dull ache behind my eyes from reading page after page in one musty old tome after the next, but it’s a good ache.Whatever else it might signify—like that maybe I need glasses—it’s also a sign of work being done.
It’s the only sign of progress I really have.
I read a lot about black magic. Mostly treatises about why it’s against the law, dire accounts of its use and its effects,and example after example explaining why it’s subject to the harshest punishments in witchdom. And while I understand thehistorical context of St. Cyprian staples like our enchanted bricks, offering safety—and no black magic—to all, it’s not enoughto move forward with anything that might help usnow.
I keep the stalkery fairy-tale book—written by my grandmother, for me—with me the whole time, thinking it might give me aclue as to where I should look next and what might be coming.
But it doesn’t change.
I’m determined to stay in the archives until I figure everything out and can go back to my coven with spells and a plan, butEmerson starts sending me messages as the hours drag by. About brains without food.
So when I close up the archives, it’s dark and cold. A fully December sort of night, here in a river town in Missouri alldecked out in holiday lights. A faint snow is falling as I head outside and shiver into my coat. I feel a pull to walk backto Wilde House, to wander down Main Street and soak in the lights set against the darkest time of the year—
But thatpullreminds me a little too much of being sucked into the river, so I magic myself over to the front gate of Wilde House instead.I want to scratch the itch of holiday perfection by looking at one of the prettiest houses around, all done up in the snowymoonlight.
Instead of having a moment to breathe in the cold air and get right with the Cold Moon, I immediately notice that my fatherseems to have done the exact same thing.
Except he’snotmy father, I remind myself. He’s Stanford Pendell, and he’s no relation to me. He never has been.
It makes my heart hurt.
We’re both standing in front of our respective gates, gazing up at the house I grew up in and the house I live in.
If we weren’t so close, I might have hurried in and pretended our paths hadn’t crossed, because I have no idea what to say.Or do. Or feel.
But there’s no hiding in the moonlight. Not with snow on my face and his gaze steady on mine from yards away.
He smiles that same sad smile from the Cold Moon Ball, illuminated only by the flickering streetlamp and the stars above.“Working late again, princess?”
I swallow at the lump that’s suddenly lodged deep in my throat. I realize that I’m staring at him. Because he’s so... familiar.He’s sodearto me.
Yet he’s not mine.
He’s always called me princess, even when my mother berated him for indulging me in my chronic daydreams. I walk over to him,propelled by something I can’t quite name.
Maybe I can fix the distance between me andsomebody.
It’s a pull that feels far more elemental than a melody or a river. It seems to come from the depths of my own heart.
When I get up close, the only word I can manage is, “Why?”
He aims that smile toward the cold ground between us. “You could be asking a lot of different whys.”
The night is frigid and getting colder as we stand here. The snow is coming down harder, small flakes that speak of futuresnowdrifts and snow days. No one should be standing out here like this for too long, no matter how heartbroken we might feel.
We should go inside, I think. I should invite him in for tea, have a mature, adult conversation, and work through this insome kind of healthy way.
But I feel rooted to this spot, on a sidewalk with my nose growing colder by the second. And the lobes of my ears. They bothsting. “I wasn’t yours. YouknewI wasn’t yours.”
He studies me in that quiet, patient way of his. I used to find this annoying. I used to think that when he was deep in researchmode, he only ever saw me as a problem to be solved.
