“I would like that.” Reginald brightened as he buttoned up his shirt, tucking it neatly into his trousers and fastening his belt. “But we’re not going back to the bridge, we’re going to the bow, so dress warmly, please.”
In a few short moments, Reginald and Layla were dressed and heading back through the main cabin of the yacht. Pushing through a glass door to the bow, they stepped out upon sleek white fiberglass embedded with rivers of pearls, though the footing was tacky like the rest of the decks. Moving to the yacht’s foremost prow, Reginald stood tall in the wind. He hadn’t put on a jacket, and stood in his vest and trousers with his shirtsleeves rolled up. With a solemn eyebrow lift, he unfastened the ornately woven cuff of pearls, diamonds, and platinum from his left wrist, handing it to Layla for safekeeping. It was Reginald’s talisman, Layla knew, something he wore on the island and especially around his father to control his magics from getting too pissed off in public.
But Reginald unleashed the vastness of his power now, and Layla felt it rush out into the sea, miles ahead and all around them. Flushing the whitecaps to a glassy smoothness, Layla felt that immense power flood far ahead, curling around an iceberg she could just see in the distance. As Reginald’s power seized the iceberg like a massive hand, Layla felt how enormous that iceberg was – as big as a cruise liner beneath the water, so large it made their yacht seem like a bug on a car’s windshield. With easy grace, Reginald extended his hands. In a series of flowing movements not unlike battle-moves Layla had seen Adrian do, he seized that underwater behemoth and cast it out of their path – releasing it to the ocean’s flow in a current that would take it past their vessel.
Layla felt a massive sensation in her body as Reginald moved the iceberg, and she trembled with a deep eroticism, feeling like he’d pulled the blood inside her every vein; inside her very heart. It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying, and Layla’s lips fell open as a sound left her, somewhere between a gasp and a moan. Glancing at her, Reginald gave a darkly sexy smile. Reaching out, he caressed his knuckles over her cheek, and Layla felt an echo of his tremendous power pull through her again.
“Are you alright?” Reginald asked, a glimmer of amusement at his lips. “I don’t often use the full extent of my power when others are nearby.”
“Fuck, that was hot!” Layla breathed, staring at him. “I didn’t know you could move the blood inside a person’s body like that.”
“It’s not a talent I showcase.” Reginald spoke levelly, watching her now with a deep intensity. “Like Adrian and Dusk, my powers have matured since you Bound me, Layla. I wasn’t able to call blood before, but I can now. And when you Bound Rhennic at Yule, the ability increased again. There is a synergy that exists between Sirens, Storm Dragons, and Desert Dragons, and I am benefitting from that synergy now.”
“Synergy? What do you mean?” Layla asked, not having heard this about Dragon-magics.
“It has to do with moving currents.” Reginald explained. “As Desert Dragons, you and Adrian can move currents of air and create wind; as a Storm Dragon, Rhennic can do so as well. But storms are made of wind, water, and electricity, so Rhennic can also move currents of water to make squalls. Water is my element; as a Siren, I can move water in any form. In the sea, in the air – inside a person’s flesh. And there is yet one more synergy we have inside the Bind; minerals. There are minerals in the ocean and in blood, which Dusk can move. So Dusk and I have a synergy also. All of these synergies inside the Bind compound our powers; each of your Bound men compounds my abilities. And you, Adrian, and Dusk recently gained quite a lot of power together in Egypt and Prague. Though I wasn’t a part of it, I am benefitting from it – tremendously.”
“Do you think Rhennic is benefitting from all these synergies, also?” Layla asked, curious.
“Undoubtedly.” Reginald spoke, extending his hand to the ocean again as another iceberg came into view. “But you would have to ask him; Rhennic is a very private person when it comes to how much power he may or may not have. As Storm Dragon Regent with more fights ahead of him for Kingship, it is a smart battle tactic to not show his hand too openly. Layla, a moment.”
Focusing on the ocean again, Reginald smoothed the next iceberg out of the way as easily as the first. And though Layla felt the same exhilarating pull in her blood again, she felt some of what Reginald was doing now to move the iceberg out of their path. With his hands, he felt the iceberg’s contours, smoothing the ocean around it to map it. Breathing out, he created a current through the air in addition to the stronger pull in the ocean – all of it working to alter the iceberg’s course and move it out of the way. It was like the most decadently elegant Tai Chi Layla had ever felt, but she also felt the power in it. It took incredible force to move an object so large through the ocean. And though Reginald approached it with the most conservation of energy possible, every flow of power leading to the next with almost no loss, she felt how he could move that power faster if he had to.
And smash that iceberg right through an enemy, if it ever came to that.
But Reginald had no more time to speak as icebergs started popping up all around them now. The floes had thickened as they went north, the temperature in the air dropping sharply as if this area of the North Sea hadn’t felt the touch of spring yet. Layla felt the deep chill of the water as Reginald moved it, as if his hands touched the ocean through his magic and she touched it through their Bind. With a shiver, she popped the collar of her peacoat, tucking her scarf close as Reginald truly danced with the water now, moving and flowing in complex patterns with an elegance that swept up icebergs right and left, swirling them away.
Her Royal Siren showed no strain as he worked, dancing as elegantly with the sea as he did with a partner through a waltz. As he smoothed the last behemoths of ice from their path, Layla saw the island that was their destination at last.
And the most impossibly amazing place she had ever seen.
CHAPTER 15 – FURY
The White Deeps was an island of ice in the North Sea. Towering above other icebergs in the ocean, the jagged hunk of ice consisted of massive peaks of white contrasting with smooth blue-white vaults below. Shining like a juggernaut beneath the broken spring sun, it seemed it was only an iceberg, though Layla could feel with Dusk’s Crystal Dragon senses that the island did actually have bedrock beneath it. Covered in massive shelves of ice that had thawed and broken, frozen and re-formed over millennia, the impressive formation had been created over time, inspiring in its rugged elegance.
But the vicious pinnacles of the ice-island weren’t what floored Layla about Fury’s home as they approached. All around, the ocean rose up in towering sculptures of water that surged and flowed as they moved. Dwarfing the island, the impossibly ornate sculptures swirled with the rush of the tides, white-capped with spray blowing from their ever-changing peaks. The enormous artworks towered hundreds of feet above the yacht, and as Reginald maneuvered their craft into a harbor before the island’s vaulted ingress, Layla saw Mermaids writhing through the artworks, bare-breasted and lithe. She saw narwhals leaping from peak to peak, gargantuan whales moving slowly within the deepest blues. Through it all, Sirens writhed, curling dangerously through every part of the massive sculptures.
All of it, made from the sea.
It was deeply humbling, and Layla was awed as Reginald guided their yacht inside that massive ring of beauty and power. As they arrived, Layla saw the artworks flowed up the sides of the ice-island also, penetrating the island through enormous blue arches of ice. As Reginald tied off their yacht at a dock and cut the engines with a flick of his hand, Layla saw those flows of seawater arched into a fantastic blue ice-hall beyond – the ingress to the island.
Helping Layla to the dock, Reginald led them up a broad staircase of blue-white ice, approaching those massive arches writhing with their sea-water décor. Layla was so amazed that she barely registered Reginald supporting her so she didn’t slip on the ice-stairs. As they came to the ingress, she gazed up and around, watching the flowing sea devour the vast blue vaults in ornate patterns. Ahead was a wide hall of icy pillars, all writhing with intricate braids of seawater in ancient Celtic weaves. As Layla stared, a creature of incredible elegance rounded one of those pillars, shining like a streak of silver moonlight on the blackest tides.
Fury Durant.
Layla’s heart actually stopped as Fury’s gaze caught hers – before rushing on, her pulse high in her throat. Fury’s eyes were a blue so deep they were like drowning in the darkest tides, his coloring so pale yet luminous that he shone like a pearl beneath his palace of ice. Wearing a white silk Victorian shirt, it was tucked into grey breeches rather than trousers, pearl-grey snakeskin boots with a modest heel rising to his knees. Braided loosely over one shoulder, Fury’s hair was a cascade of long, silken strands so purely silver they looked unreal, like moonlight shining on liquid mercury.
With Reginald’s striking Versace-model features and perfect dancer’s build, Fury’s moonlit beauty had a darkly cutting allure to Reginald’s striking sunlit grace. Though not identical, they echoed each other so much that Layla found the resemblance uncanny. Wearing a talisman cuff the same as Reginald’s – except crafted of silver – Reginald’s twin was the darker beauty to the brighter. As Layla gaped at him, she had the sudden thought that Fury was the most impossibly beautiful thing she had ever seen in the Twilight Realm.
Other than Reginald himself.
“My twin arrives. Reginald, well-met brother.” Fury Durant’s voice held the same graceful, cutting tones as Reginald’s as he stepped forward to greet them, though with an edge of darkness that Reginald, for all his haughty disdain, just didn’t have. Glancing at Layla, Fury didn’t offer to kiss cheeks or shake hands. He didn’t bow or nod, merely held her gaze with such a formidable intensity that it suddenly turned Layla’s knees to water.
Her whole body succumbed to that gaze, instantly. She’d felt nothing, yet Fury Durant had rolled her with his mesmeric power just that fast. Layla’s breath caught like she’d been punched as she sank, Reginald shoring her up with a bright wave of energy through their touch, their Bind, and his gifts. But though most of Fury’s tremendous power was held at bay by his golden twin, Layla still felt that crushing silver light and darkness trying to roll her under.
Implacable.
But she could feel also, that Fury was not intending to do as he was doing. His aura was simply that tremendous; his power that impossible to shape or pull back. As she felt it still trying to swamp her, her drakaina roaring against it now with a bright fire in her veins to not be totally plowed under, Layla felt how Fury channeled his might into the vast sculptures of the ocean that flowed around the ice island. As he did, the pressure around her eased, her body no longer drowning in his darkwater seas. And Layla knew, as she stared into Fury’s deep blue eyes, that he needed the sea all around him. He needed it, to discharge his power into.
