That night, when one of Hunter’s actual Bound lovers came in the dead of night and broke him free, flying him far out into the desert so Hunter was away from the Seer’s mind-influences, Hunter did not know the man. Layla saw how Hunter thought it was yet another trick; how he argued with his male lover out beneath the midnight stars. She saw how Hunter had changed; the vicious, tortured creature he had become as he attacked his male Bound lover.
Fighting him in their Dragon-forms – killing him.
Only when Hunter felt the Bind with his lover break with a terrible howling in his soul, had he realized the man had not been his teacher in disguise. Layla’s heart screamed, feeling it as Hunter had felt it, though she was watching the scene as if looking down from the midnight desert breezes. Something inside Hunter had still been beautiful until that moment. Insanity took him then, and Layla could barely hold her mind back from the same as she collapsed to her knees on the bower’s stone floor, clutching her heart with both hands.
Hunter was screaming in the memory. Layla was screaming in King Arini’s bower. Hunter was sobbing, fallen over the corpse of his beautiful dark-skinned beloved as the man somehow changed back into human form after death. Layla fell onto her hands and knees, dry-retching so hard she thought her insides were going to come out. She felt a hole of darkness open up inside Hunter – the void opening inside of him. She felt the hollowness in his soul, in his heart, in the very essence of his being.
And she felt it open wide inside herself also.
The rest of the memory was inconsequential. Layla came to a sudden stillness on her knees, staring with blind eyes as the rest of Hunter’s vision careened in. His other lover, flying in and finding them. Her fury; she and the male lover had been a mated pair before Hunter had Bound them. Her and Hunter’s Dragon-battle; terrible. But though Hunter was stronger, he was empty as he fought, and already wounded. Layla watched the battle come to a stalemate as dawn rose over the dunes. She saw them both limp away – but not until after the female lover had cursed Hunter, to wander the world alone forever for what he had done.
Layla felt those words smite Hunter’s heart, what was left of it. Imprinting him with loneliness in addition to the emptiness.
It was then that he became the void-shadow. A void inside a shadow of his former charismatic self as the sun rose over the desert. Hunter had flown to an oasis to heal, but the dark emptiness inside him never would. Layla felt the rest of his memories as a blur; Hunter, returning to the Seer to kill him. Hunter, wandering for years learning mystical arts and how to change his resonance to mimic others. Learning that he could kill; inhaling and digesting other people’s powers to imitate them.
The memories flickered out, leaving Layla gasping in the silence of King Arini’s bower. All of her fire had died, her heat-mirage gone. The mobiles above fluttered in a sea-breeze and some part of her was astounded to realize it was still morning. She knelt on the stone floor, her mind still a thousand years away, her Dragon stunned and coiled up tight inside her from the inundation of awfulness that had been Hunter’s memories.
From the awfulness of his madness.
“She was always out there, my Nadia, after that battle over the death of our Nimir.” Hunter’s voice was like a slap to the face as he broke the silence. “She spent thousands of years finding other Royal Dragon Binds as powerful as me – turning them against me to wreck her vengeance.”
Layla glanced up at him, her eyes wide, still shocked.
She didn’t speak, couldn’t speak.
“In those days, I was the Hunted.” Hunter continued with a sad gaze. “Nadia was not a Bind, but she was persuasive. She sought other Binds and twisted them with her words, making them believe I was evil – making me fight for my life when they came after me. I began to win some to my side, and then a great battle was waged among the Binds by Nadia, destroying many. In her wrath after losing that battle, she summoned a being from the Otherworld, the Realms that lie beyond even the Ascended and Demonic Realms. She made a deal with it – that if she gave it her body, they would make of her loins a child that could destroy me. They mated; that child was born. But the Otherworld Being gave that child a holy curse: it would either destroy me or it would be destroyed by me, and from its bloodline would someday be birthed a Golden Dragon Bind that could undo Nadia and I’s ancient war. A magic that could restore what we had lost – our Nimir.”
Layla’s gaze had fallen to Hunter’s knees as he orated the last act of his story, picturing it almost as if she was still inside Hunter’s memories. As he spoke his final words, she looked up, seeing a flash of Hunter with his hand turned into cruel black talons, standing in the shadows of some ancient desert abode behind a slender young man. She saw those talons run red – as the young man collapsed to the adobe floor with his throat slit.
“You killed the child.” Layla spoke softly, horrified.
“I did.” Hunter nodded. With a sigh, he hunkered before Layla, gazing deep into her eyes. “I killed the godly child of my beloved enemy. But not before it reached maturity, mating with a female Crystal Dragon and passing on its bloodline. That bloodline became fractured amongst many different Dragon clans, and I have followed it through the years. For a long while, I thought Falliro Arini was the Golden Dragon Bind, as his mother held the bloodline. Then I watched Adrian and Dusk as children, though they managed to withstand my machinations to push them into their power. They all held the bloodline in generous amounts, but none were volatile enough to be the Golden Dragon Bind I sought.”
“And now you believe it’s me.” Layla breathed, her heart dropping like a stone. “How are you so certain?”
“Because when you were born, I felt a golden fire consume my mind.” Hunter spoke softly, his dark eyes penetrating as they bored into Layla. “I felt it flare like a beacon in my heart, Layla, inside my very soul. Inside the utter blackness of everything I am – leading me to Riad Rhakvir, to you. It was something I had never felt before with any of the others; a confirmation. Both your father and mother carried the bloodline of my ancient enemy and her godly consort. And now their holy curse has reached its pinnacle. You are the one who can restore my Nimir, Layla. You are the one who can help me unite the Binds and calm Nadia’s wrath. You are the one… who can make us all whole once more.”
CHAPTER 22 – RUIN
Layla stood staring at Hunter as a sea-wind blew through the bower. All she could hear in her ears was static. As if Hunter had just taken everything she knew about the world and turned it upside-down, Layla had that out-of-body experience again, like she was hovering at the upper reaches of the dome watching herself. A moment stretched between them, full of a strange tension. Before, she had wanted to kill Hunter for harming her friends. But to truly know the depth of his insanity, and how much ruin had come from so much love, made her cold inside with fear.
“That’s impossible.” Layla spoke, slowly rising to her feet like she would with a rabid animal, feeling something strange move between her and Hunter. “I can’t be descended from some god-born Lineage. I don’t believe in God, or gods.”
“Don’t you?” Hunter eased to standing also, his green-black eyes intense though his posture was still calm. “Is it so impossible to believe that your bloodline carries a godly anomaly? You’ve seen powers in the Twilight Realm that other humans could only describe in terms of gods and demigods. Why is it so impossible to imagine that your ancient ancestor once mated with a being so unique as to be considered a god by Twilight Realm standards?”
“I can’t make your broken Binds whole again, Hunter.” Layla breathed. “I can’t resurrect the dead. Isn’t there some Twilight Realm Lineage with that kind of power?”
“It is a godly ability,” Hunter spoke, his gaze beseeching now. “None have it but the truly blessed.”
“So find one of them to do it.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried? Don’t you think I’ve hunted down every Ephemeral I could find to see if they could summon a god to hear my plight?” Hunter returned, moving a step closer. Layla startled at his sudden motion, taking a fast step back, her hands flashing up to a warding stance. He eyed her ruefully, and with a sad look on his face, suddenly morphed. One moment he was Tempeste Durant, and the next, his entire body wavered in a whirling mirage. For a moment, Layla saw a flash of light in his core, followed by a cavernous blackness. And then, standing in Tempeste’s elegant three-piece suit was the tall, broad-shouldered Adam Rhakvir, running a hand through his thick golden mane and down his short beard.
“Are you less afraid of this visage?” Hunter asked softly.
“It’s not your faces I’m afraid of, Hunter,” Layla spoke, her hands still up and ready. “How about showing me your real self for a change?”
She saw a terrible woe seep into Hunter’s eyes then, a look she had glimpsed twice before. In all his personalities, this one element had bled through each time; that terrible pain. Not a pain of the body or the heart, but a pain of the soul. As Hunter watched her with his pained eyes staring out of Adam Rhakvir’s Roman-brigand handsomeness, Layla suddenly understood.
