“Exactly.” Adrian spoke with deep gravitas now as he cuddled her closer on the chaise. “What if we lose that luck, that heart-power of Layla’s doing – and we can’t defeat Hunter when the time comes? What if we lose that ability to beat all odds like we’ve been doing, time and time again these past months, and our final push against Hunter fails?”
“Like Fury said, it’s a risk I’m willing to take, Adrian, to bring Hunter down however we need to.” Rhennic spoke back as he watched Adrian curiously. “Are you saying you’re not?”
“I’m just saying I don’t know how things will go if we give into vendetta rather than trying to approach this battle with love.” Adrian spoke back calmly, still stroking Layla’s shoulder as they all processed this conversation.
“We can approach a battle with love easily,” Reginald spoke up now with cutting grace as he sipped his martini, lifting one golden eyebrow. “By keeping steady in our minds and hearts all the people we are fighting for, that Hunter would hurt if we no longer protected them. Fighting for love is far more powerful than fighting for hate. But holding love in one’s heart for thefinal strike… that is a true conundrum. By its nature, thefinal strikeis a place without any emotion, only action. Even if we have no hate in our hearts when it finally comes to it, throwing ourfinal strikeat Hunter, we may not have love, either…”
“Which Adrian’s saying could skew the outcome and cause us to lose our luck in the last moment, causing us to fall to Hunter, or even die.” Dusk spoke up now, his mood far darker than usual as he took a swig of his drink. “We haven’t really talked about that – any of us. I mean, we’ve been hedging around it all night, but what if this is it? What if we fail against Hunter and tomorrow night’s our last? I mean, Rhennic, Fury, Reginald, you three have lived for hundreds of years. How do you feel about death?”
A deep silence overcame them all suddenly, as shit just got really real.
“One doesn’t live for hundreds of years without contemplating death, Dusk.” Fury finally answered, his midnight eyes deep by the fire’s flickering and the low light of the chandeliers. “I can’t even tell you how many times I plotted to kill myself, living at the White Deeps in my misery. I was a wretched thing, despairing my Siren’s power and never knowing if I might accidentally kill a friend or a lover that day, or the next. I was ruined until I found the strength of the Bind. If I die tomorrow… I will die happy, knowing I at least had some time as a whole man. And a good man.”
“I feel similarly to Fury,” Rhennic spoke up as he glanced over at their Royal Silver Siren. “I’ve been in so many battles over the centuries that I think I’ve come to consider each and every one my last. Being a career soldier, you don’t really have time to contemplate life very often, much less truly live it. Since I’ve become part of the Bind, even though it’s vexed me heinously at times, I think I’ve understood what it means to live far more than ever before. And let myself embrace it… far more than I ever have.”
“What if you don’t get the Storm Dragon Kingship?” Layla asked suddenly, wanting to know how Rhennic really felt in this moment of drunken sharing. “What if your Elders confer and deem you unfit for it because of the Bind’s magic?”
“I’ll be pissed, Layla.” Rhennic sighed, darkening as he pondered her question. “But I want to do well by my people and if they won’t have me, there’s not a lot I can do about it. That’s not a fight I can win by muscles and magic. That’s a battle of idealism versus bigotry… and sometimes only the turning of ages can calm those storms.”
“Your people are stupid to think you’re unfit to be King.” Reginald snorted now, his scathing tone viciously supportive as he watched Rhennic with fierce gold-grey eyes. “You’re their strongest Royal in ages, ever since your mother was in her heyday. Would you continue to do battle for the Storm Dragons if they replaced you as King, and be their top General instead?”
“I don’t know.” Rhennic spoke honestly as he held Reginald’s gaze. “I don’t know if I could bear a place in the Storm Court if I was ousted from my rightful position to be offered a lesser one. Or if I would just leave… and dedicate my life to our Bind instead.”
It was a deep answer from Rhennic, and Layla felt his open heart sweep through their Bind with a lovely fragrance like heather and lavender after a summer thunderstorm. She teared up slightly as she heard Dusk sigh heavily beside her, and Adrian nuzzled his lips into her hair again.
“I for one, don’t want to be Desert Dragon King if it means losing King Mathii,” Adrian spoke suddenly, breaking the silence. “I’ve come to respect him tremendously in our short time together. He’s wise in a way I’ll never be.”
“Unless you live tens of thousands of years like he has,” Dusk snorted with a chuckle. “Being around some of these ancient Dragons these past months has seemed like a dream to me. Nadia, King Mathii, Layla’s father King Ruslan Aristov… even Hunter himself. I find myself wondering how onedoesn’tgo mad through the millennia, watching everyone else around them die over and over again. Nadia has lost more people than we will ever know. In battle and out of it.”
“One can only hope we shall be tempered by the ages like Nadia,” Reginald chimed in again, “rather than ruined by it like Hunter.”
“Hunter has a deep instability inside him.” Layla mused as she swirled her bourbon. “He had it right from the first, even as a young man. Charismatic, yes. Powerful, yes. But he began lying to himself right from the moment he first killed… and has been warping his own mind with his lies of self-preservation ever since. It’s made him deeply hateful over time. And deeply unstable.”
“Tens of thousands of years of lies and self-hatred would make anyone insane.” Dusk snorted into his drink.
“And it has.” Adrian spoke as he glanced over at Dusk. Suddenly, Layla felt something in Adrian firm as he paused, then ushered her gently up from leaning against him. Blinking, Layla obliged, and Adrian scooted out from behind her as he frowned at the low-burning embers in the fireplace, then pushed forward off the chaise and came to a seat upon the large sky-blue rug before it, woven with Sirens in the deeps. Glancing at Dusk, Adrian patted the space beside him and Dusk blinked with a confused smile, sliding Layla’s feet off his lap and coming to sit upon the rug at Adrian’s side. Adrian looked at Layla next, and rising with as much confusion as Dusk, she came to him, settling on his other side as Adrian looked at Reginald, Fury, and Rhennic.
As the Bind all came down to the rug now, looking at each other curiously, Reginald lifted an eyebrow. “What are we doing, Adrian? Playingspin the bottle?”
“Not quite.” Adrian spoke as he returned Reginald’s gaze, then looked around the group. “In the interest of fighting for love and our deepest heart’s desire rather than vendetta, I find I’ve got… something weighing on me that I’d like to get off my chest before I die. If anyone would like to join me, I propose a sharing circle… to voice anything hidden that we’ve maybe wanted to talk about – either personally or with each other – but haven’t been able to.”
“So,truth or dare,” Dusk chuckled as he sipped his drink, “rather thanspin the bottle.”
“Except without the dare part.” Adrian nodded back with a small smile.
“But the dare part’s the best part!” Dusk grinned back, roguish.
“How about some truth first, and we’ll see about dares later.” Adrian chuckled now, setting his drink aside on the blue rug.
“Fair enough.” Dusk spoke with a soft laugh as he set his drink aside also. “You want to start us off, Adrian?”
“I do.” Taking a deep breath, Adrian gazed around them all, and Layla felt him suddenly burn off a bit of his inebriation with his Desert Dragon heat, before he finally looked at Dusk and Layla. “So I admitted to Layla earlier tonight that I’ve been discovering the concept oflove is loverecently. I used to dismiss the idea of loving a man, because deep inside, I could never quite align the idea of a strong alpha drake loving other drakes. I’m deeply attracted to women, but now that I’m admitting it, I’ve had sexual fantasies about men. And since coming into the Bind, I find I love all of you – in a deep and unprecedented way I’ve just never experienced before. Now that my heart is opening, I find I want to try embracing intimacy with a man, but I’m still terrified of it. If we live through all this with Hunter… I am promising myself right here, right now, that I will try to open up and get over mydisastrous homophobia, as Reginald calls it.” This last was said to Reginald as Adrian nodded to him.
“Elegantly said.” Reginald spoke back now, sober and not at all flippant as he digested Adrian’s words. “I myself did not know I could love a man until I was the protégé of Quindici DaPonti at the Florence Hotel. I suppose it is my time to share now that I’m speaking, and I shall. I loved Quinn, and some part of me still does, but I block myself from it because I don’t think he truly knows what love is. He is gracious, impeccable, and a fierce ally… but his heart is still empty in a way I find I can never trust. Everything he does is for gain or glory, rather than love. I’ve been avoiding talking with him about it, because I fear his wrath – which I can assure you all, is formidable. But now with the Bind, I trust talking about real love more openly. I promise myself now, that if I live through this battle with Hunter… I shall sit down and have a talk with Quinn directly, and tell him why I can never love him.”
“Can’t say I disagree with you, brother.” Fury spoke up now as he watched his twin. “Quinn was a shipwreck inside your heart from the very first; even I could see it, mad as I was up at the White Deeps at the time. But since Reginald is done sharing, I shall now go. Some part of me has never loved being a Siren. As I told Layla in Seattle, I’ve never been comfortable using my wiles on people or bending their minds. But the deepest part of me – which has nothing to do with my drake – adores it. Secretly, I treasure every time a person looks at me with avarice; every time they swoon from hearing me speak. Because I was a mad thing, isolated for so long, I desire constant feedback now… telling me that I’m desirable and that others want me. It’s a deep instability within me. I promise myself now, that if I live through this battle with Hunter… that I shall speak with Rake André and set up regular counseling appointments to deal with my need for approval from others. And find it within instead.”
“Some part of me doesn’t want to be Storm Dragon King.” Rhennic spoke abruptly now as Fury finished, cradling his drink in his big hands and staring at the fire rather than at any of them. “I feel a duty to my people, and I know I’d be good at it since I was basically groomed for it by my mother ever since I was born. But… some part of me knows I’m sabotaging myself, not allowing myself to really gain full control of the Bind’s magics to appease my Elders. Some part of me wants to be free, like Reginald and Fury. I… don’t know how to reconcile it and don’t know what to promise myself, if I live through this battle with Hunter.”
