My anxiety spiraled higher as the men finished their tea. Tavish cleared the dishes, waving off Albie’s offer of help, then the men led me to the courtyard.
Several chickens rushed toward Albie, who smiled as he scooped feed from a bucket and scattered it over the stone. “There you go, ladies. Enjoy your breakfast.”
He dusted his hands, and both men turned to me with expectant expressions.
I pressed a hand to my stomach. “I can’t shift like you. With clothes and all, I mean. My dad can do it, and so can my brother, Malcolm. But I’ve never managed it.”
Albie gave me a reassuring smile. “I couldn’t do it, either, when I was young. It takes centuries to master.”
Relief loosened the knot in my chest. “My dad says he doesn’t remember being young.”
“Aye,” Tavish said. “Cormac is truly ancient.”
Albie’s gaze turned thoughtful. “Is that why you took the Consort’s surname?”
“Yes. My dad says he’s never had one.” In most cases, the first child born to a dragon triad took the last name of the eldest father, and subsequent offspring rotated between sires. Dad was definitely the oldest, but he wassoold he didn’t actually remember how old he was.
The men exchanged a look. “It makes sense,” Albie said. “Cormac is older than surnames. And possibly trees.”
I blinked. “Trees?”
He nodded vigorously. “Some scholars believe this plane was once covered with giant mushrooms. The fossil record shows some species of fungi growing up to thirty feet tall. Can you imagine it? Entire forests of?—”
“Now you’ve done it, lass,” Tavish said, folding his arms. He tipped his head toward Albie. “Once he gets started, he doesn’t stop.”
Albie pushed his glasses higher. “You have to admit the idea of thirty-foot-tall mushrooms is fascinating.”
“Are they edible?” Tavish asked.
“I don’t know.” Albie frowned, a perplexed look stealing over his handsome face. “I’ve never considered it, but I supposed they must have been, considering modern mushrooms descend from them.”
I looked between the men, curiosity overriding my anxiety. “How old are you?”
“Eleven hundred,” Tavish said. “Give or take.”
“Give or take, what?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Sixty-five years.” He paused. “I think. I never wrote it down. People rarely did back then.”
I did the math in my head. He’d been born in the year 577. In my time, he was over fourteen hundred years old. Reeling a little, I looked at Albie.
“I’m seven hundred and fifty-two years old,” he said.
Over a thousand in my time, I realized, the weight of their ages—and the vast span between us—settling over me. I’d spent my entire life around immortals, and just about everyone I knew measured their birthdays in centuries instead of years. But I’d never considereddatingone of them.
Not that I was thinking of dating Albie and Tavish. Because I most certainly was not.
“Albie is the last full-blooded dragon ever born,” Tavish said.
The quiet pronouncement jerked me from my thoughts.
“Is that true?” I asked Albie.
He sobered. “Aye. My mother was sick with the Curse when she delivered me. She died hours later, and my fathers followed a year after that.” He looked at Tavish.
“My story is similar,” he said, “although, my mother didn’t fall ill until I was hundreds of years old.”
An ache filled my chest. I’d grown up in the shadow of the Curse, the darkness growing longer every year that passed without another female birth. But Tavish and Albie had witnessed its devastation up close. They’d lived it.
