The words loosened my tongue.
“Why?” I demanded. “The gods must have known what he would do with the power they gave him. Why accept his fertility knowing he’d use it to kill so many?”
Every eye turned to me. Portia’s mouth fell open. Niall looked like he wanted to strangle me for questioning the gods’ mouthpiece.
But when Asmira turned her gaze on me, I could have sworn amusement appeared briefly on her face. “The gods do not trade in certainty, warrior,” she said. “They trade in possibilities.” She looked around the clearing, her attention resting briefly on everyone assembled before settling on me. “Each curse contains the seed of its own breaking. Mullo Balfour made his choice. But so did those who came after. Niall, who chose love over vengeance. Isolde, who chose to survive. Cormac, who chose to endure. And your mate, who chose duty over desire.” She spread her hands, and lightning flashed overhead. “Would you undo the curse if it meant she was never born?”
Images of Portia rushed me. Her flashing green eyes. Her proud chin—so often raised when she challenged me. Her sweet curves made for my hands. The reluctant quirk of her lips when she didn’t want to laugh at me but couldn’t help it. The soft way she looked at Albie. The soft way she looked at me.
“No,” I said hoarsely.
Lightning flashed again, temporarily throwing the stones behind her into day.
“Then the gods were wise,” Asmira said.
The shade in the portal writhed, Mullo’s face twisting with rage.
“Mullo is dead,” Niall said in a tight voice. He still stood between us and the Oracle, his power whispering around him. “The Curse is broken. Our women live.”
Asmira tilted her head. “How many daughters does the dragon race have?”
Silence fell.
My heart sped up. I looked at Portia, who was rigid at my side, then to Isolde, who was just as rigid next to Cormac. Portia was the only female born since Mullo’s death, and her birth had nearly killed Isolde.
“One,” Niall said softly. “Just one.”
The breeze around Asmira picked up. It drifted toward me, ruffling the grass and stirring Albie’s hair.
He stirred, too, lowering his hands from his face and opening his eyes. The undamaged one was clear and free of pain.
“Mullo’s Curse died with him,” Asmira said, “but his other curse lives on, buried in the past where he first cast it.”
Albie sat up.
Asmira looked at him. “And now the past and present have collided.”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
ALBIE
Irose to my feet on shaking legs. The brutal, stabbing agony in my eye was gone, but the memory of it left me queasy.
Tavish bent and retrieved my spectacles from the ground. Worry hovered in his eyes as he settled them gently on my face.
The shadow in the portal screeched, and my stomach pitched. An echo of the pain flashed through my skull. Bile burned my throat as the shade of Mullo Balfour tried to claw its way toward Portia.
The Oracle of Asmira shook her head, her long, white curls stirring around her golden shoulders. “Not Portia, scholar,” she said. “You.”
Shock rooted me to the ground, and not just because she’d read my mind. What could Mullo Balfour want with me? I was no one significant.
Asmira didn’t smile, but something in the air around her shifted. It was nothing I could have put my finger on. Nevertheless, an overwhelming sense of warmth radiated through the space between us.
“No one significant,” Asmira said, “and yet you’re the last full-blood dragon ever born.”
I swallowed hard. I’d never given much thought to my birth. It was hard to feel special when my species’ women were dying all around me.
