Ash Burned
DRAGONS, WITCHES, AND THE DEVIL
The Celts weren't the only people who had to contend with fae creatures over the centuries or who guarded gateways into other realms.
Before men with their sharp weapons and a new god drove them almost to extinction, Italy, too, had dragons. In those ancient times, when the gods of the Greeks, Romans, and Sabines were worshiped, dragons, fairies, spirits of the lands, and many more lived with the humans.
If you ever needed to negotiate, placate, or petition those beings, it always helped to go to a witch.
Sacred to their goddesses, thestregheandstregoniguarded the secret rituals, cures, and songs. When they saw their ways trampled and fading, they carried their knowledge underground. They were the keepers of the old religion, and as times changed and changed again, they made sure to pass their secrets on to their daughters and sons.
They got better at hiding, changing their gods and goddesses to local Santa Marias, painting new saintly faces over the statues of their old deities, but staying true to the heart of who they represented. They adapted and survived through accusations ofDevil worship, witch hunts, and burnings, the birth of alchemy and science, and all the ever-changing power plays of politics.
No matter how the currents of the world shifted, some things never changed. The common people knew where to turn when they needed magic, and they were clever enough to call it a miracle when they got what they asked for.
Centuries changed all things, stories mutated, and new myths were written. Some whispered that thestreghewere taught their knowledge from Aradia, daughter of Lucifer and Diana, the moon goddess who made stars and rain and became the queen of all witches. Others said they were not witches at all, just 'keepers of natural medicines and folk practices.'
Spirits, gods, and fairies still walked the fields, forests, and paved cities alike. The dragons, those precious few, hid away in deep ocean caves, wild mountains, lakes, and forests until they became stories in which knights would slay them for access to treasure, wells of immortality, and to rid them from the lands and rivers they wanted to claim. Their witch allies suffered alongside them, getting more demonized, burned, and exiled.
But time had cleverly shifted again. With the fae returning to England in such a loud fashion, it had made other creatures slowly come into the light in their own countries. Witches had never disappeared entirely in Italy, but now they didn't have to hide what they were unless they wanted to.
As for the Italian dragons, they had yet to reveal themselves to the world once more. In the meantime, Italy was about to gain six more that they didn't expect.
The Greatdrakes were hunting their lost family member. They just needed to find the right witch to help them.
1
After losing his mind the first time, Cosimo Greatdrakes had vowed never to let it happen again. Unfortunately, standing on the bottom step of a staircase for twenty minutes and refusing to climb the stairs wasn't a sign that his mind was as healthy as it should be.
He would have liked to blame the restless dragon inside of him, but he had experienced this feeling long before his dragon had awoken.
When Cosimo's wife had died almost two decades beforehand, he had fought through his long dark nights of the soul and had come out the other side battered, bruised, and changed forever.
He realized he hadn't been a good father to his boys then, but knowing that they understood and forgave him for it didn't alleviate the guilt he still carried.
That guilt hurt now more than Lisa's loss. His grief for her had been embedded in himself, and while there were days he still missed her, for the most part, he tried to remember to keep living his life.
Unlike Lisa, Cosimo had never grieved for his sister.
For a start, he knew that Maria was still alive, wherever she was. Magicians as talented as her were known to stroll off into other worlds and come out again when they wanted to.
Most of the stories of mortals getting lost in Faerie and coming out hundreds of years later usually failed to mention that they were all magic users hunting an obsession.
Cosimo had missed his sister, but he never thought she was dead because the house would have told him. Magicians' houses were strange places at the best of times, but if a magical family lived for centuries upon centuries in one place, the house tended to take on a life of its own.
Too much magic soaking into the walls,his father, Lugh Greatdrakes, had once told him.It makes the house another living family member. Always care for it, and it will care for you.
The house had flickered with the spark of Maria's magic two days ago, when she had appeared to Valentine in the cellars on the night of his mating party. She had been trying to get to Cosimo and had found Valentine instead.
Cosimo had held off going up the winding stairs of Maria's old tower ever since. It still felt like he was about to trespass into a space that didn't belong to him. The house had never removed Maria's rooms, something that only happened when a Greatdrakes died.
Cosimo loved the house for giving him the sign that his sister still lived, as much as he hated it for stripping away Lisa's study and all her belongings after her funeral. It had left pictures of her with the family, but everything down to her perfume bottles and cosmetics had all vanished.
That was the moment Cosimo had lain on the carpet in their bedroom and hadn't moved for two days.
In the present, he flinched at the memory, his shoulders hunching inward. He hated that his teenage sons had to takecare of Reeve and become adults too early because he had been too hopeless to do anything for months.
"Focus on the present and the living," he whispered under his breath. "Maria is alive, and she needs you."
