"A dozen or fifteen true Old Races once walked this world," Eliseo murmured. "The ones I named and others besides. There are so few of us left now, though, Sarah. There are dragons and vampires, of course. Selkies, who are seal-people from the far north and Ireland. I never understood that," he said absently. "Why they spawn in such different places, when most of us call one birthplace home. There are a handful of siryns and sea serpents left, but like the selkie, they're dying. Your people are hard on the oceans, Sarah. Hard on the magnificent beings that live within it. And there are djinn in the deserts, and the gargoyles, like your friend Alban Korund."

  "Alban? Alban is—?"

  "It's why he only came to watch over you at night. His people are bound to stone during the daylight hours." Eliseo spoke evenly, as if steady words would help calm her racing heart. "It's a terrible limitation, but they carry the memories of all the Old Races. Stone binds them safely for all our sakes. Without them we might forget the ones who have faded away."

  "And if they're forgotten you're all lost?."

  "We are." Eli's voice remained soft, reassuring. "We are not human, Sarah. You are ephemeral, ever-changing, ever forgetting and ever learning. It is a pity when you lose what has gone before, but you discover it anew, in time. We are too static for that. We depend on one another, even as we turn our backs on each other and walk our own paths. Our secrets belong to all of us, and we become less with each of our various kind who slip away. If we lose what has gone before, we become nothing as we face the road ahead. Worse than nothing, perhaps. In the end it may make us...human, and then we are truly lost."

  "It is not flattering," Sarah whispered, "that I should be 'worse than nothing' to you." She could not tear her gaze from Janx, could not waken offense in her breast at Eli's words. Faced with an eternal dragon, she was less than nothing, a fragile seed already lost in the wind.

  "No." The word was almost a sigh. "Humans, the best of you, are equal to the best of us. More than, for your flexibility and daring. But you are also different, and if we let ourselves become like you, we have nothing left at all. We must hold our memories tightly, and remember what we are."

  Sarah was not listening, not in truth. She nodded, but she also crept toward Janx, even as she wondered at her own boldness. She should be afraid. She was afraid, but not for her life. Excitement thrilled her instead, so sharp it was a kind of fear in itself. But the fear was for losing what she stood on the brink of understanding, not of the two men: they would have done her harm long since, if they'd meant to at all. Janx lowered his head to his paws—enormous paws, nearly as large as she was, from heel to claw-tip—and watched her with jade eyes bigger than her head. She touched one of his whiskers and it twitched, making her laugh with breathy nerves. It took long minutes to work her way around him—the roof looked smaller with a dragon ornamenting its center—and when she finally reached his head again, he pushed up and extended a front leg in clear invitation.

  Her heartbeat soared, but she looked toward Eliseo. Even with only the moon's light, vexation and acceptance were both clear in his expression. He was quick, Janx had said, but Janx could fly. He nodded once, scant motion, and as if released, Sarah kicked off her shoes and scrambled up the scaly forearm offered to her. Her skirts and the long point of her corset were poorly suited for riding a dragon astride, but she wrenched them around—her maids would never approve—and huddled down low against Janx's spine.

  He sprang upward in a surge, wings snapping open behind her. Sarah shrieked with glee, casting one panicked, delighted glance back at Eliseo, whose faint smile faded into the distance within seconds. Then she was among the clouds, catching at them in amazement. They felt nothing like they looked, their downy softness entirely imagined. Instead their thin mist left droplets on her face and soaked her dress, but the night's warmth and Janx's heat were enough to keep her from being cold. A wingbeat or two more and they were beyond the clouds, nothing between Sarah and the stars but moonlight. She reached for them, too, clear light making blue shadows on her skin before she buried her fingers in Janx's ruff again and let him take her where he would.

  London sped by beneath them, torchlight marking streets and showing her the jumbled city in beautiful lines. A few tiny people moved between the lights, but she was invisible so far above them, just a cut-away against the sky. Another few minutes' flight and they soared above the Channel, and then over land again: France, which she had certainly never thought to see. The earth curved into black distance, starlight on broad rivers and rolling mountains. She had the wild impulse to fling herself free of Janx's back: to fly alone, unbound and untouched. The dragon would catch her, if he could.

  If. It was that which prevented her from being a fool, and instead Sarah ducked her face against plate-sized scales and laughed with delight. The world could be hers to see, with this impossible beast of burden, and she had little doubt he would willingly carry her across oceans.

  The eastern sky was bluing with dawn, and the whole of her body bluing with cold, before the view became the manor grounds, and the broad rooftop a familiar landing-place. The roof was discolored, though, even from the distance, and when they landed it was in a riot of flowers, purple and red buzzing everywhere in the rush of Janx's wings. Sarah slid from his back, so numb she could hardly stand, and gaped at what awaited her.

  Eliseo Daisani, not to be outdone, stood with waterfalls of flowers overflowing his arms. Daisies she knew, though she'd never seen red ones, and the other blooms were thistle-purple, elongated, and entirely unfamiliar. He knelt, scattering them amongst the hundreds of others already burying the roof, and murmured, "Red daisies for beauty unknown and amaranth, for love everlasting."

  "Nothing lasts forever," Sarah replied, but not even she believed that, not now. For some reason there were tears in her eyes as she knelt and gathered blooms into her arms. They warmed her and smelled of summer heat greater than any England knew. "How far did you go?"

  "India." Janx exploded back into human form, answering when Eli would not. "Amaranth is from India, Sarah. Half the world away."

  "A quarter," Eliseo said disagreeably, and Sarah, arms full of flowers, laughed through her tears.

  "You are mad. You are completely mad, both of you, and I love you for it. What are you?" She raised her face to Eli, petals brushing her jaw. "Prometheus who brings fire is a dragon, of course, but what is Epimetheus? What is the impetuous brother?" Impetuous: a word she hadn't known, not until these two men had come into her life.

  "A vampire," Eli said. "Fast but not wise. Such is the fate of my kind."

  "You said...vampires...drink of blood. Men's blood?"

  "And women's. Not, however, when I'm courting. Not unless I'm asked." Eli glanced at Janx, then back to Sarah, taking a deep breath before he said, "But I would offer you a sip of mine."

  Janx made a small motion, enough to indicate surprise, and Sarah looked at him, not Eliseo. "He offers you the gift of health, Sarah. That all your years you will be strong and fit. It is not," Janx said carefully, "an offering he makes lightly. Or often. And I think perhaps never to one who isn't already a lover."

  "Occasionally," Eliseo said, and bit his own wrist so blood welled up. Horror squeaked in Sarah's throat, but he chuckled. "It will heal in an instant. One taste for health, Sarah. Will you take it?"

  This was not a time to think. She stepped forward and seized his wrist, brought it to her mouth and tasted a shock of too-sweet blood, its thickness coating her tongue. Eliseo hissed, then broke away with a deep-throated sound of pleasure. "Enough. One sip alone is enough. You should feel it quickly enough."

  "I do." The words came roughly as the remaining chill spilled from her body as if chased. Aches she'd been unaware of disappeared from her spine, her hands, her legs. She'd had no trouble breathing, though the air up high had seemed thin, but her next breath came more deeply and fully, straightening her shoulders and bringing a sense of vitality. She came to her feet with an armful of flowers and spun, flinging the blooms in the air. They rained down around her, soft scents dashing against her cheeks, and when she opened her eyes, smiling, it was to find both men watching her eagerly.

  They stopped her where she was, their gazes so bright and intent in the coming sunrise. Again, again, the moment burned into memory: Janx's fiery hair turning gold, Eli's sallower skin coming to life in the forgiving light. Flowers everywhere, petals catching and drifting on a curious breeze, and herself in the midst of it all, a focal point when she had never dreamed of such a thing.

  "I have never," she whispered, and now she was afraid again, with the same overflowing, heart-aching excitement of revelation. "Not at all, much less with..." With men of the Old Races. With a dragon, with a vampire. With two. There were too many ways to end the fumbled explanation, and so she finished with silence.

  Janx and Eliseo shared a complex glance of befuddlement before Janx, with less grace than she'd ever seen, mumbled, "Yes, of course. But which...which of us would you prefer?"

  She looked at him, at them, in astonishment. Looked at constraint and caution in two men who had uprooted her life with hardly a thought, much less a show of uncertainty, and asked them, "How could I choose? How could I ever, ever choose?"

  They were old. Very old, and she was very young, but she had surprised them. They looked at one another again, no longer confounded, but perhaps judging. Brothers, Sarah thought, though they were not, and she could hardly imagine what more, or less, they might be to one another.

  It was Janx, of course. Janx who was bright and easy and full of laughter, who finally looked away from Eliseo to smile at Sarah and to promise, "You don't have to, my dear. In the end, you will never have to."

  Sunlight, gold and soft, warmed the amaranth to a rich scent that tickled Sarah's nose. She was warm, far warmer than the flowers; Eli's skin was hot to the touch, more than enough to keep all three of them warm, even with Janx's cooler temperature. She, still tangled between them, felt soft and content and calm. The manor house staff would be shocked. Sarah laughed, and the men surrounding her stirred.

  "That," Janx said into her shoulder, "is not the sound of a woman facing the day and the cold light of reason with misgivings in her heart. I, for one, am grateful. What's so funny?"

  "I thought the staff would be shocked," Sarah murmured. "And then I thought the slaughterfield's daughter should be shocked. And then I thought of a man who is a dragon, and another who can run to India and back in the space of a night, and I wondered how the slaughterfield's daughter could ever be shocked again."

  "Like this," Eli said very softly, and offered his wrist with the words. Sarah's heart jumped. Janx drew a sharp breath, then was still, so the three of them were as statues in morning sunlight. "Two sips for life, Sarah Hopkins. Will you risk immortality? This," Eli added, confirming what she'd thought Janx's indrawn breath might mean: "This I do not do."

  He was right, then: she could still be shocked after all. She didn't take his wrist, not yet, though thick blood, dark blood, welled and prepared to drip, only said, "Then why?"

  Eliseo met her gaze, then looked briefly, almost bitterly, at Janx. "Because no one has ever dared to love us both."

  "They were all fools." Sarah caught Eli's wrist and drank again. Drank without thought, one sweet sip before he pulled away.

  "One for health. Two for life."

  "And three?" she asked playfully. "Three for love, perhaps?"

  Eli closed his fingers around the wound, though it healed already. "Three for death, Sarah. That's the price of a vampire's gift."

  A shiver rushed her and she looked away. He saw the tension in her and sighed. "Not easily. It's the third bloodletting, usually, though if you broke away and came back to the same cut it would kill. Swallowing away the taste of what's left in your mouth is not the danger, Sarah. Do not fear." She nodded, feeling small and for the first time in weeks, afraid. Not the delighted fear of exploration and passion, but of being out of her depth and little more than a trinket to astonishing men. Janx put his mouth against her shoulder and murmured, "Don't. Don't retreat from us, Sarah. Not now. Not...not when so much possibility lies before us. We might have..." He lifted his gaze, though not his head, and Eli responded to the unspoken query.

  "Decades, certainly. Decades of youth, Sarah. Decades of strength and beauty and wit. Perhaps longer. Perhaps centuries."

  "You don't know? I thought you had given...this...to others."

  "From time to time, yes, and it's lasted decades. It depends on the woman. On her health when we met, on her age, on..."

  Clarity fell over Sarah, not entirely welcome, but it somehow lessened her fear. "On her wish to survive. How long do they—we—usually last, Eli?"

  "Decades," he said a final time. "Often over a century. Never two. Not yet."

  Sarah closed her eyes, breathed in the scent of amaranth, and smiled at the warmth of close-pressed bodies. "I think I would like to be the first, then."

  "In that case," Janx said, suddenly bright and irrepressible again, "we had best be prepared to let you out in public."

  He had not meant the slaughterfields, when he said that. Indeed, his expression had been one of comical horror when she announced an intention to return, and had only worsened when she said she'd go alone. "They won't know me," she told him blithely, "and even if they did, and hate me for it, Eli says I'm very hard to hurt, now."

  "Not hard to hurt," Janx muttered. "Hard to kill. There's a difference."

  "I'll take the carriage," she promised, and for the dozenth time thought of the arrogance and unlikelihood of that simple phrase passing her lips. Thought it from the carriage seat, watching the city's cobblestone streets pass beneath the wheels and turn to hard-packed dirt, then to blood-streaked mud. The horses disliked that, snorting and tossing their heads.

  Faces Sarah knew glanced or gawked at her carriage and at the fussy matched set pulling it. Some looked away rather than curtsey or tug a forelock, while others offered smiles desperate for a thrown coin. She had some—Eli had thought of that where she would not have—but she kept them clutched in her purse, in her palm, as she was drawn through the streets and fields that had so recently been her home.

  There was no light of recognition in anyone as she passed by. She was a fine lady in a fine coach, and even if they had more than a glimpse of her, they wouldn't know her. She had come to prove that to herself, though the proving left a score across her heart. These had been her people, after all.

  But she had decades, even centuries, ahead of her, and with a lifespan of so many years, no one could ever quite be her people again. No one except Janx and Eli, perhaps, but she would never be what they were, either.

  "Stop the coach, please." A tap against the front panel caught the driver's attention and he reined in the fussing horses. Sarah started to open the door, then, fingers clenched around her purse as a reminder, let the footman do it for her. He held his mouth pinched and his nostrils flared, unspoken but clear opinion of the muck he had to walk in to do so. Sarah, with a solemnity that would do Janx's most outrageous theatrics justice, lifted her skirts enough for the footman to see the sturdy slaughterfields boots she wore under a gown of silk and brocade. His eyes popped and she grinned, then nodded toward his coach-side perch. "Get back up there. You needn't ruin your shoes. I'll only be gone a few minutes."

  "The master will have my hide if I let you go alone, my lady."

  "I won't be alone." Sarah lifted her voice to call "Jacob!"

  Two dozen men who weren't named Jacob and one who was looked up at her call. Those who weren't lit up with the same gossipy expressions they'd had when Janx first called on Sarah, but Jacob himself slowed in his work, then stopped, staring down the small distance to Sarah. After a moment he wiped his hands clean of flour and bread, then cast aside his apron and came to her, ignoring the calls and whistles from the other men. "They don't know you," he said when he got close enough to speak. "How could they know you? You're well, Sarah? You're...safe?"

  "I am." It had been spring when she'd left the slaughterfields. It was the heat of summer now, and the harvest would be on them soon. In another month the fields would lie fallow for winter, and then a year would be gone. The first of many spent in immortal youth: a year that would slip away and be nothing in a life counted in decades and centuries. That was why she had to come back now, before she was someone else entirely. "I wanted to see you. I wanted to thank you."

  "For letting you go," he said, and gave a crooked smile at Sarah's nod. "You weren't mine to keep, Sarah. I think even if we'd been wed, you wouldn't have been mine to keep."

  "But you might have hated me. You might hate me still." She no longer sounded like him, though with his rough accent in her ears, her own was less polished than Eli had made it.

  "For escaping? No. It's good of you to come back. To tell us you're all right."

  Sarah cast a look at the others. Some had recognized her now, and wore expressions from sneers to wonderment. Not all of them would be glad she prospered, and it would be made worse if she offered the purse in her hand. She turned back to Jacob with that purse at the ready anyway, and made an awkward gesture. "I am. More than all right. I wanted to give you this. I have so much now, and we might have..."

  Jacob gave the purse, then Sarah, an odd look. Not insult; that was a fear she'd had, but he only seemed perplexed. "A dowry for a promise never made? No, keep the coin, or give it to God if you must give it away. You owe me nothing, Sarah. I might have wished it otherwise, but the world's not made of wishes."

 

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