“It was once called the Palace of the Chronicle, or something like that.” Hunter spoke with quiet reverence as he followed Layla’s gaze, walking with his hands casually tucked in the pockets of his jeans now. “It exists not in the Twilight Realm or human world, and I know not who built it. The language of their runes is dead to every scholar I have ever asked about the subject, so my approximation of its name is only that. It exists in a Realm the Ascendants know asVittria– a Realm that was destroyed long before theQuattre Virand theSevne Virwere even born. Once it was a place of many peoples and vast magic. Now it is abandoned, the Realm itself broken up into only a few pocket-places here and there. This pocket survived the destruction that demolishedVittria. But that was so long ago, even the Ascendants do not recall it, except in hints of memory.”
“Jesus.” Layla breathed, wondering how many millions of years old a place would have to be to have been forgotten even by creatures who were nearly as all-knowing as gods. “You found it when you began to teleport through the ether?”
“Yes.” Hunter spoke as he beckoned them into another long hall with more ruined rooms sprouting off it. “Very few beings can move through the ether as I have learned to do, and the Ascendants do not come to the last pockets ofVittriabecause it makes them sad to see an entire Realm destroyed. But I find it a quiet place, and have long made it my home where I can rest between engagements. Here we are. Please join me for a morning repast, would you?”
Hunter had gestured out of the hall through a side-arch. Enormous doors of silver had been blasted apart and stood half-melted from their hinges, though Layla could see they had been deeply etched with runes and embedded with precious gemstones at one time. Shards of sapphires and diamonds as big as her boot lay scattered upon the floor and half-hidden by tree roots, as if shattered from much larger stones initially. As Layla and Hunter stepped out, she felt a breath of terrible warding-magic brush her, as if it still lingered in that massive doorway. Hunter gave her a knowing look as he gestured out into the flooding sunshine and down a series of blasted green marble steps.
To a sprawling garden beyond.
Layla’s eyes widened to see Hunter’s living space, for that was what the beautifully-tended garden was. To one side beneath the trees sat a small stone cottage with filigree carved through its walls, a lovely flagstone patio extending from it. Complete with wicker furniture and homemade chaises with hand-woven silk cushions, the patio overlooked a short drop to the garden itself.
Teeming with beds of well-tended vegetables, berry bushes, and grape arbors continuing down the hill to sprawling fruit orchards and a broad lake in the distance, the garden was a riot of full summer glory. Red-toed geckos darted through the greenery along with birds, skinks of vivid blue catching butterflies with ornate patterns, and Layla saw racks of what looked like boar meat curing in the sunshine near the stone cottage. As Hunter beckoned her down the ruined palace steps and over to his patio, he indicated a trellis of roses and lilacs encompassing a set of wicker dining furniture and a table overlooking the gardens.
“One moment.” He spoke peaceably. “I was just making breakfast when I felt you arrive.”
As Layla took a seat at the table overlooking the gardens, feeling odd but strangely calm in Hunter’s home, he ducked inside the open door of his cottage. As Layla inhaled scents of rose and lilac, combined with a border of lavender bushes that flanked the patio, Hunter returned. Carrying an etched silver tray with a silver coffee-pot, china cups, and numerous dishes of food upon it, he began laying everything out. Layla saw poached quail eggs in a spicy red sauce, a salad like tabbouli that smelled of mint, strips of thick boar-bacon, and thin cuts of venison-steak cured in balsamic vinegar, plus grapes, blackberries, and a spiky yellow fruit that reminded her of rambutan.
Serving her modest portions of everything and taking only a slight bit more for himself, Hunter poured their coffee and mixed it with honey. Sitting with a pleasant smile, he dug in to his breakfast. Shaking her head at how civil they were being, Layla began tucking in to her own breakfast, finding everything divine and having no doubt Hunter had cooked it all himself. They eyed each other as they ate, though neither said anything. As Hunter finally pushed his plate away, taking up his coffee and sipping it, his dawn-sky eyes fixed curiously upon Layla.
“I have wine also, if you like.” He spoke naturally, as if she’d been his guest a hundred times. “It’s all homemade, but my recipes have been perfected over a few millennia.”
“Maybe I should try some.” Layla snorted, still incredulous about it all. “It’s not everyday a girl gets to try wine from a ten-thousand-year-old winemaker.”
“I am somewhat older than that, Layla, by a few extra ten-thousand years.” Hunter spoke with a twinkle of humor in his eyes now, though he pushed back his chair and rose. “One moment.”
Layla found herself trying to wrap her mind around Hunter’s vast age as he returned to his cottage, and as she sipped her coffee, she realized Nadia was even older than that. Hunter had once professed that he was the origin of the Royal Dragon Bind Lineage, and Layla wondered at that now; if he was actually the oldest Bind or if there had been others before him. From trying to guess how old her Lineage actually was, Layla’s mind turned to trying to estimate the age of the pocket-realm around her and found she couldn’t. It was the same as trying to imagine the age of the dinosaurs compared to modern humans; a time-scale so absurd it was impossible to wrap the mind around. But before she’d considered it long, Hunter returned, carrying a bottle of red and two beautifully artisan-blown glass wine goblets, setting them upon the table.
“I take it you made the wine glasses, also?” Layla snorted as Hunter cut off a wax seal around the wine, then uncorked it, pouring.
“I make everything here,” he spoke comfortably as he handed one goblet to her. “One has plenty of time to learn everything when a person has a life-span as long as mine.”
Layla shook her head, waiting as she watched Hunter sip his wine, then smile as if it pleased him. Layla sipped also, finding the bouquet and flavor more complex and deeply pleasing than any of the finest wines she’d ever had, including the one she’d tasted at Heathren’s. Layla’s eyebrows rose and she couldn’t help but nod in delight as she acknowledged Hunter’s creation.
He might have been a horrible person, but he did make a very fine wine.
Swirling their wine and sipping, they came to a deep silence. Both Layla and Hunter alternated between staring out over the morning gardens and glancing at each other, as if neither was entirely sure how to start this conversation. More intensity pulled between them now, though it was still soothed by the bright summer day and how well both of them were controlling their magics at the moment. But as Hunter finished his glass and poured himself another, topping Layla’s off also, he suddenly spoke.
“We could pretend our past never happened and sit here all day with each other, drinking wine.” Hunter said quietly, sitting back now in his wicker chair and cradling his goblet as he watched her. “But it would do us both a disservice.”
“It would.” Layla nodded back, sipping her wine and eyeing him.
“Part of me is surprised you came,” Hunter spoke more deeply, his dawn-eyes level and bright as he regarded her. “Part of me is astounded you haven’t slit my throat yet, sitting here as we are like two ancient enemies become friends. But I suppose that’s part of the game also.”
“Maybe I will still slit your throat.” Layla spoke with dire humor. “If your next bottle of wine sucks.”
“Maybe you will.” Hunter spoke with a terrible chuckle, so sad and haunted that it made Layla’s skin crawl as her spine shivered. Shifting in his chair, he eyed her, and though he wasn’t trying to look sexy in his modern attire, his dark blazer gaped, showing his beautiful caramel skin and chiseled chest.
And Layla’s burn-mark, seared across his heart.
“See me, Layla Price. For I am a monster.” Hunter continued quietly as he watched her, letting her take him in. “I deserve no better than a brutal death at your talons for all the things I have done to you. But through all this mad dance you and I have had, I tell you this. Never have I felt so much myself as since you pardoned me. Never have I felt so natural in my own skin since that day I tricked you into tasting my blood upon that silver knife as Adam Rhakvir. For I sought that day to entice you closer to me by the craving of my scent. But what actually happened… was far, far different.”
“What happened that day?” Layla asked, frowning as she recalled the intensity of that moment when he’d been Adam, though he’d laughed it off like a summer breeze just after. It had been a deep moment for Layla also, tasting Adam’s sweet apple-orchard blood upon her tongue, which she now realized had been Hunter’s, tinged with the fragrance of those little white star-flowers. But that moment had been hard for her to resist only briefly.
Yet as she stared at Hunter now, she saw a very different story shining in his eyes.
“You devoured my heart that day, when you took my blood upon your tongue, Layla Price.” Hunter spoke solemnly as he stared her down with his dawn-bright eyes. “And you have been devouring my heart into the vast maw of your power, ever since.”
CHAPTER 24 – DEVOUR
