Page 119 of Promised in Blood

“Giorgios. We must leave.”

“Just a little farther,” he says quietly.

I reach for him, and I am about to grab onto his cloak when the room glows orange. Sizzling pain snakes around myshoulders as fiery chains of silver burn through my cloak and shirt before searing into my skin. They wrap around my thighs and chest, and I grit my teeth, ignoring the pain as I try to break my bonds, but I simply struggle against their strength.

“Giorgios!” I have no idea where he is. Has he met the same fate?

A disembodied voice speaks into my ear. “There is no use struggling, son of Drakos; those chains were forged of silver from the sacred mines of Peru, the place where dragons laid their eggs. They are imbibed with more magic than you can imagine.”

“I will take your head for this!”

There is no reply, but a torch is lit on the wall nearby, followed by another and then another. My eyes adjust to the growing light, and the sight that greets me knocks the air from my lungs. At least two dozen hooded figures stand in a semicircle around a pentagram crudely drawn on the ground with the blood of an animal. My heightened sense of smell tells me it is from a goat.

“What?” I growl. “Why are you doing this? Lucian?!” I roar my son’s name, but it is not his face that appears before me.

“Giorgios?” He is not bound in chains. He is as free as the witches who stand around us. They begin to chant. My heart cracks open, and every bit of love I have ever had for him pours out into my chest, scalding like acid.

I glance quickly around the cave, looking for an escape route, but there is none. The silver chains scorch my skin, branding my flesh. My eyes find Giorgios’s. “Brother, please!” I implore him.

He shakes his head, at least having the decency to look me in the eye when he says, “It is the only way, Alexandros. You know this.”

“No!” I roar, the sound bouncing off the walls of the ancient chamber. “Not like this.”

He takes a step closer, and I struggle against my bonds, but they are forged with a magic stronger than any I can break. Opheliacould break them though. If she were here, she would break them all. “She is the one, brother. Your mind will always be the key to finding her. She must be protected at all costs.”

“Even this? We have stood at each other’s sides for over two thousand years.”

He lifts his chin. “Even this.”

His betrayal burns more than the silver wrapped around my limbs. Despair, fury, and grief fight for dominance but end up merging into one colossal mass of emotion. A single tear runs down my face as I stare into my brother’s eyes, and my heart, which only recently felt like it had a reason to beat again, splinters into a million fragments. The only thing stronger than my own grief is the knowledge of the anguish this will cause her. Will cause all of them.

Giorgios peers into my soul as though imploring me to trust him.

But I cannot trust him on this. I have trusted this man more than any other for the entirety of my long life, but this time he is wrong. This is not the way to ensure her safety.

“Giorgios, listen to me.”

“I am sorry, brother.” He closes his eyes and turns away.

The irony of the fact that I am about to lose my head when it is the only time in the past five hundred years I have had a reason to keep it is not lost on me. But that I did not sense my brother’s betrayal disturbs and perplexes me most. I thought…

Rage has every cell in my body trembling. “Look at me when you are betraying me, Giorgios.”

He refuses to turn around.

“Coward!” I spit.

Light flashes off the sharp edge of a sword in my peripheral vision, but my glare remains fixed on my brother. Cloyingdesperation overwhelms me. I fight against it as it tries to claw its way out of my chest. “Swear to me you will protect her!”

He still does not turn around. “This is all to protect her, Alexandros.”

Her face flashes through my mind. Her sweet smile. Her sparkling blue eyes, always so full of trust and innocence. And then I see all my boys, and I am crushed with regret that I was never the father they needed me to be.

Giorgios finally turns and faces me once more. “Alexandros.” He says my name softly, almost reverently. “Thisis the only way. At some point in the future, the history books will look back on this day as the defining moment of our future.”

I growl, fangs protracted, and make a last attempt to escape my bonds. But it is futile. “That my last act on this earth was trusting you, Giorgios, shall be the fire that fuels my rage until we meet again in the netherworld.”

“Trusting me shall not be your last act, dear brother.”

---