“This was a stronghold of my people in olden days,” he murmured. “And to the Phoenix it has been returned in my time. But come, that is a story to tell over breakfast. This way.”
Still unable to speak from the glory all around her, Layla nodded. King Falliro Arini smiled his beaming smile, then led them through an arch to the left, the doors to the fortress closing with a boom behind them.
CHAPTER 19 – NEST
Layla and the Phoenix King moved into a vaulted dining-hall nearly as enormous as the receiving-hall. Inside, Phoenix moved about in their human forms, taking bounty from a massive trestle-table piled with dishes of every sort – pomegranates and persimmons, swordfish and mussels, roast boar and fresh nuts, seeds, and chutneys. In all the ostentatious opulence of the breakfast spread, however, Layla noted an absence of eggs or bird-meat. All around, Phoenix nodded to their King, dipping their heads gracefully as he escorted Layla. He nodded back, moving Layla to the giant table and taking up a gilded plate for her.
Handing it to her with a smile, he nodded at the spread. “Take what you like. It is magically-preserved, do not worry about anything going to waste. This mound will feast the entire Aviary for a month, and when it wanes, we shall hunt and forage to replace it.”
“Thanks.” Layla didn’t quite know what to say. As she rounded the table, boggled by the excess of gilded platters piled with delicacies, she felt almost shy. She’d been in the presence of opulence at the Red Letter Hotel Paris, but this was the dining hall of a King, and a powerful one. But as Layla selected a spread of Italian meats and cheeses, plus mango and sliced persimmon, she realized that this hall was informal. Phoenix mingled, taking what they wanted, then sitting at smaller social tables to chit chat or suddenly manifesting enormous wings in a half-shift and launching into flight, taking their breakfast up to the vaulted arches to sit and watch the morning.
As she glanced around, Layla realized each Phoenix was as different as the birds they mimicked. Some had ostentatious feathers like peacocks grown into long fanciful gowns around their downy nakedness, some were a sleek pearl-grey like mourning doves, while others were entirely black with an iridescent sheen like crow feathers. Birdsong chirruped through the hall as Layla took her plate to a long table with a gilded wooden throne at the end. It was Arini’s high seat, though it was modest, and as he claimed it, he beckoned for Layla to take the chair at his right. She did, listening to the lovely trilling speech of the Phoenix mingling through the hall with the calls of real birds. Though as Layla settled in and King Arini poured a chalice of water for her from a copper ewer, he continued to speak in heavily-accented English.
“I am pleased you came to us, Layla.” He eyed her with the full wisdom of his stunning gold irises and black pupils. “I have wanted to speak with you again. Tell me, what is the situation at the Paris Hotel?”
“Not good, I’m afraid.” Layla sighed.
King Arini gestured for her to continue and Layla launched into the full tale as she ate, conscious of keeping her voice low in the echoing hall. Through it all, King Arini nodded sagely. When she had finally finished her tale of Hunter and the mayhem he had caused by killing Sylvania as Adrian, the Phoenix King heaved a sigh.
“I wondered when something like this would happen.” He spoke softly, his golden gaze penetrating. “For that was how it was long ago, when the Hunter stalked me. Over and over, he would take the faces of those I held dear, slaughtering others who were close to me. Leaving me terrible gifts of the dead, trying to befriend me with false visages to get me to join his cause as a Royal Dragon Bind. He does not seem to understand the concepts of trust or friendship, and thus has no sanctity for life. I perceive, as I did of old, that Hunter is a solitary creature, lonely and dark in his heart. As dark as his eyes when he is angry.”
Carefully filing all this information away to tell the Intercessoria later, not to mention Adrian and Dusk, Layla nodded. “I’ve seen his eyes when he’s crossed. They’re terrible.”
“And yet, he has an agenda I cannot fathom.” King Arini sat back in his wood and gilt throne. “He seems to wish to unite the Dragon Binds under his banner, yet… he has no banner. He is a more clandestine creature even than I, and that is saying much. If he never steps out of the shadows to show his true face… which of the remaining Dragon Binds will come to him?”
“Remaining Dragon Binds?” Layla’s brows rose. “Only Hunter has ever said anything to me of other Dragon Binds still living. I thought he was lying.”
“Oh no,” King Arini’s gaze grew piercing and sly. “He was not lying. They are out there. Do not think your Lineage is entirely extinct, though they may seem so. They have gone into hiding so deep over the years that even the blackest arts of the Intercessoria cannot find them. But I can.”
“You can?” Layla sat forward.
“I can smell them on the winds.” Arini smiled slyly now. “Do you think it was mere coincidence that I was there at the Hotel the day you arrived? I had scented you out in the human world many years before, just as I have scented out a number of other Binds. But waiting to see you casually at the Hotel to satisfy my curiosity about you was the right move. As a Phoenix, I need an intense amount of glamour to travel the human world. And those with Twilight blood can often see through it.”
“Where are the rest of the Binds?” Layla spoke breathlessly. “How many of them are out there?”
“Perhaps a dozen, hidden in both the human and Twilight Realms.” King Arini spoke softly. Reaching out, he stroked a black talon over Layla’s cheek. “You are the youngest, but not the weakest. Not by far.”
“How do I contact them?”
“Patience.” King Arini smiled gently. “There will be time for that. In the meantime, I must relate to you everything I know about Hunter, and everything I have presumed over the years. Come, walk with me. Let us explore my Aviary and enjoy its many heights, and I will tell you the deepest part of what I know about our mutual nemesis.”
Rising from the table, Arini extended his hand. Layla took it, finding the touch of his black talons somehow thrilling upon her skin. Wrapping her hand around his lean arm, he led them out of the hall and up a stone staircase with no railing that curved around the side of a massive turret. Heading to the top, they came out upon the roof of the world. It was actually only a few hundred feet above the sea, but it seemed like a mountaintop as Layla took in the wide vantage of sun and glimmering water. From here, she could see the mainland, though the near shore was still obscured by rolling grey fog. Far above, other turrets towered, but as Layla shaded her eyes and glanced above, she could discern no way of getting up to them.
“How does one get all the way up there?” She asked.
With a sly smile, Arini glanced down at her. “Do you trust me, Layla Price?”
“I’m here alone with you, aren’t I?” She spoke, wondering where this was going.
With a delighted laugh that trilled like thousands of birds, King Falliro Arini suddenly scooped Layla off her feet into his arms. With a startledeep, she clung to him around the neck as enormous cobalt wings suddenly flared from his back through slits in his robe, moving the air in a gale wind. With a powerful launch from his strong, lean thighs, he catapulted them up into the morning sky – a screech of delight issuing from his throat with the roar of a Dragon.
Layla clung to him, terrified of flying so exposed and so far above the ocean as they wheeled upwards with powerful beats of Arini’s wings. He moved them fast through the morning air as if Layla weighed nothing, holding her firmly against his chest so she wouldn’t fall. As her heart hammered from fear and exhilaration, and her Dragon roared to feel so weightless and free, King Arini flew them up to the topmost turret of the five islands – a floating turret not reached by any bridge. As they flew up to a wide patio of flagstone, Layla saw there were no egg-shaped nests dangling from this turret, but that the entire rear of the tower had fallen away and been replaced by a woven bower of feathers and sticks, grasses, shells, and sundry.
As King Arini touched down on the wide balcony, a lush Persian garden of fruit trees and vines sprawling through the broken stone all around, he gave a laugh of delight. His eyes sparkled with gold as he made a flexing motion and those enormous cobalt wings whisked back inside his shoulders, leaving him in man-form once more. But his gaze was pleased as Layla gaped at his shift – amazed that he could accomplish it so easily.
“How do you do that?” She spoke, as a morning breeze whipped the height of the broken tower. “Transform so easily?”
“Phoenix are one of the few shifting Lineages that need no down time.” He chuckled, birdsong rolling through his laugh. “We can also partially-shift with ease, experiencing no discomfort. As the smallest of the Dragons, it gives us an evolutionary advantage to be able to change into our beast on the fly, so to speak, or partially change as I did just now.”
