“She did, over the phone just before you arrived.” He nodded peaceably, though his deep blue eyes showed intense interest now. “You’re being Hunted. And you think I can help.”
The way he said it made Layla’s eyebrows rise, and it made Reginald scowl. Leaning forward, Layla set her wine aside. “Fury. Do you know Hunter?”
Fury held her gaze a long moment, and Layla saw dark currents flow in his eyes as his mercurial silver Dragon tried to rage forward again and he stopped it. Glancing to Reginald, Fury held his twin’s gaze as his face softened. “Reginald. Are you ready to hear a truth I have long hidden from you, brother?”
“A truth? What do you mean?” Reginald spoke, setting his wine aside with a carefully precise movement also.
“A truth you will not wish to hear.” Sitting back with a deceptively calm posture though his body was tense, Fury crossed his knees. Swirling his wine with his hand cupped under the globe, he watched his twin with an achingly awful gaze.
“Just say it, Fury.” Reginald spoke, though he frowned deeply now. “You and I don’t keep secrets from each other, we never have.”
“And yet, I have kept this one for years at our mother’s dying request.” Fury spoke quietly. Closing his eyes, he drained his wineglass, then set it aside. Opening his eyes, Fury pinned Reginald with a gaze like iron now, and Layla saw their midnight depths flash with bright silver. She felt Fury’s Siren-Dragon tighten its massive coils all around the island like an impenetrable fortress, as if blocking out prying ears.
And then Fury spoke with a sadness to his voice that shook Layla to her core. “The Hunter is our father, Reginald. And we are his only sons.”
Shock smote Layla as her drakaina seared through her veins in a sudden, vast astonishment. As her mouth became dry, her pulse racing, her gaze flicked to Reginald. He’d done nothing; neither moved a muscle nor flickered an eyelash. But it was like his entire being roared to the vaults as his Siren-drake suddenly expanded a hundredfold in a rush of darkness and wrath.
Without opening his mouth, Reginald roared with the voice of his beast, pummeling a shockwave through the vaults of Fury’s ice-palace like a tsunami and shuddering it to its roots. Layla felt the twins’ powers contest as Reginald’s sun-bright coils heaved against Fury’s silver-dark ones. Fury didn’t fight it, simply let his brother rage and roar. And then Layla felt something she didn’t expect in that tremendous heave and shudder of metaphysical might. She felt Fury’s power stroke Reginald’s in a deep, loving wave, from the tips of his flowing filaments to the piercing ends of every opal-gold talon.
As Reginald sat there, motionless.
Inhaling a deep breath, Reginald blinked at last, slowly. “You’re not lying.”
“Why would I lie about the most odious creature I’ve ever met being my father – and yours?” Fury spoke sadly, as Layla felt their drakes separate with a last sweet slide of scales.
“Tell me it’s not true.” Reginald whispered, holding his brother’s gaze with the most intense look Layla had ever seen. “Tell me that…thing… is not my father. Please, Fury… tell me.”
“I can’t.” Fury spoke, still holding his twin’s gaze. “We are our mother’s sons, but we aren’t Léviathan’s. We’re half-breeds, Aldo. Half Siren and half I don’t know what. But a stronger Dragon than the world has ever seen – and a stronger monster – runs through our veins, rather than any of our siblings. Madness and power; power and madness. You and I have it. And Hunter wants to use it for his own purposes. He wants to use his sons – to take back what he lost long ago.”
“His Bind?” Reginald whispered harshly, his voice tight with agony now.
“His sanity, and his love.” Fury spoke quietly, watching his brother with an aching tenderness. “For my part, I would rather die alone, mad, and unloved before giving the Hunter any part of my power. And I hope for all that’s holy in this world, that you would also.”
Settling back, Fury gave his twin the most heartbreaking look Layla had ever seen.
As Reginald hitched a breath, awful tears slipping down his cheeks at last.
CHAPTER 16 – BASTARD
Reginald had jolted up from the settee, excusing himself and moving towards a side-hall that went to a dining area. He’d asked to be alone, and it left Layla staring uncomfortably at Fury as they sat silently around the uneaten bites upon the table. She could feel Reginald screaming through their Bind as he stepped out to a promontory of the ice island, though he was trying hard to block his careening emotions from Layla as he roared out his rage and heartbreak to the sea. As if he could feel his twin’s anguish also, Fury leaned forward and took up the wine bottle. Refilling Layla’s glass and Reginald’s, he took up a second bottle and poured himself another generous portion.
Settling back, Fury sipped, as Layla did the same.
“How did you find out about… being Hunter’s son?” Layla asked, when the silence had stretched so thick she couldn’t stand it anymore. Through the Bind, Reginald’s screams had ceased, and a great stillness filled Layla now like an endless deep.
“I’d rather wait and explain all that when Aldo returns.” Fury spoke quietly as he glanced to her. “My brother has excellent control over his emotions and magic; he won’t be long gathering himself. But I sense you are the focal point in all this, Layla, though Hunter’s diabolical aims span many centuries, if not millennia.”
“It seems that way.” Layla spoke, watching Fury as she sipped her wine, still feeling a vast emptiness inside her from Reginald. It felt like her own dark void deep inside, black and devastatingly nothing, and Layla fought to not let that sensation swamp her as she watched Reginald’s twin. “Hunter has messed so deeply with my life, and Adrian’s, and Dusk’s, that I don’t know where it all begins, or why. He once told me he had aims of world domination, believing Binds had a divine right to rule. But he wanted me personally because he believed I’m some god-touched combination of powers that can restore someone who died; someone he was once Bound to.”
“No power in the human world or Twilight Realm can restore the dead.” Fury frowned with a scathingly elegant look much like Reginald. “That is a gift of the Ascended Realms; with which few can communicate, much less get a being there to grant them such a gift.”
“Nevertheless,” Layla continued with a wry smile, “Hunter believes that by fucking with my life and the lives of my men that we’ll grow in our abilities, and I’ll be able to do something about his ancient loss.”
“Then Reginald’s and my father is madder than I ever thought.” Fury held her gaze with a deep intensity, and Layla felt his currents call her yet again. Though he held himself mostly in check, Layla felt that pull open between them as he watched her. She felt a slow span of his Siren-magic undulate where it sculpted the sea around the island. Moving in, that massive silver-dark magic brushed Layla like a leviathan in the blackest waters of the Norwegian Trench.
Though Fury hadn’t touched her physically, that smooth stroke of coils all around her was like the deepest mate-taste Layla had ever experienced. Spasming hard in a sudden rush of ecstasy, her wineglass fell from her hand, spilling upon the carpet as she cried out from Fury’s darkwater touch. An immense sensation went rolling through her; smooth and deep and intoxicating. Fury’s scent drowned her; not a smell of the ocean precisely but a sharp-bright scent like quicksilver. It held iron metals and deep water, with something so bright and cold that it didn’t even have a name. Liquid nitrogen might have been close, but even as Layla had that thought, she was falling.
Falling.
