Page 44 of Promised in Blood

His hands clench into fists atop his thighs, and he emits a deep, rumbling sound that communicates his frustration. “Son!” he spits. “What kind of son…” His nostrils flare, and he inhales a sharp breath. “Betrays his own father. His mother and grandmother. His innocent sisters.”

Each word is a honed blade aimed at my heart, and I again fight against Lucian’s betrayal as it threatens to swallow me whole. That he was instrumental in the genocide of the elementai is the source of my greatest anguish, and no amount of time can dull the edge of that pain.

Despite my best efforts to maintain control, my lip curls back, baring my teeth. “I know what he did, Giorgios.”

He hisses out a breath. “And you felt him die.”

That is not true. I felt the severing of our bond. We only assumed it meant his certain death. “Perhaps I was wrong.”

He leans back in his chair, his jaw clenched as he stares at the rows of books to the left of us and refuses to look me in the eye.

“What if he knows about Ophelia?” I say, needing to speak the questions that have haunted me since I learned that Lucian still lives. “What if he is somehow the one behind her attendance here?”

His eyes snap back to mine, and the horror of that realization clouds his features. “If that is true, Alexandros… If the Skotádi?—”

“We do not know if he is still connected with the Skotádi after all these years. Surely if he were, we would have learned of his survival before now.” The implications of the Skotádi being aware of Ophelia and her powers are too horrendous to contemplate.

“He was their leader, Alexandros!” My name is a hiss from his tongue. Fury radiates from him like the heat from an open flame.

I roll my neck until it cracks, trying to tamp down my frustration. I was never fully convinced of that claim despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. “That does not mean he remains so. Perhaps he…” I run my tongue over my top lip, and the lingering taste of Ophelia soothes the beast inside me more than anything else on this earth ever could.

“Perhaps he what? Suddenly grew a conscience and left the Skotádi to make the world a better place?” He scoffs.

I suppress my fatherly instinct to tear out my brother’s throat, surprised by how quickly and easily it has returned, solidifying in my bones as though it never left. Yes, Lucian betrayed us all, but he is stillmyson. Instead, I growl a warning.

“Do not pretend that he is not drenched in the blood of thousands of innocents, Alexandros!”

I bang my fist on the table, and the sound of the wood splintering echoes through the expansive library. “I know, Giorgios!” I grit out the words through clenched teeth. “Of all people,Iknow how much blood is on my son’s hands.”

The memory of the last day I saw him forces its way up from the innermost recesses of my mind. I try to force it back down where it belongs, but it emerges from the depths, relentless in its pursuit of being witnessed after five long centuries.

Lucian. My firstborn. My pride and joy, holding his dead sisters in his arms. Covered in their blood. Their still-beating hearts held in his hands. His mother, her body torn to pieces behind him. In our own house. In the same parlor where he sat at her feet as a little boy and listened to her sing whilst she stroked his silken black hair. Where he played with his sisters. Where I told him tales of dragons.

And he wept. He had the nerve to weep for what he had done.

“Alexandros!” Giorgios pulls me from the vortex that the memory yanked me into. I shut it away, locking it behind the walls of granite that I built for fear it would swallow me whole if I ever gave it too much attention.

I rub my throbbing temples. “If he were still the leader of the Skotádi, I would know. They are the enemy of every organization we provide pledges to. If my son were still one of them, certainly if he were their leader, I would have come across his signature by now.”

“Unless he goes by a different name.”

I twist my neck and train my icy glare on my brother once more. “I am not talking about that signature, brother.”

His eyes twitches. “You mean the one that you and he share?”

“Precisely.”

Giorgios licks his lips. “The Skotádi grow in power, brother. The heads of all four vampire houses are growing anxious. Six of our number were slaughtered in an attack in Vienna, two ofthem bloodborne. The Order remains steadfast in their refusal to interfere in anything despite their part in the creation of the very organization that threatens all vampirekind. You must feel the seeds of contention spreading their roots.”

One of the reasons I remain behind the walls of this institution is to distance myself from politics and the age-old battles of magical beings. Here at Montridge, all species work in a harmony of sorts to ensure the survival of all. It is easy to forget that, outside these walls, my kind will always be seen as the enemy. The Skotádi seek to create chaos in an otherwise ordered world. It is why organized crime groups have made enemies of them—they disrupt merely for the purpose of disruption. The Skotádi also aim to erase most of the bloodborne vampires from the world, at least the older and most powerful generations. And the knowledge that my only son, a pure-blooded heir of House Drakos—the most powerful house in existence—joined their number is incomprehensible and unforgivable. That he did not even have the compassion to spare his innocent sisters is beyond any comprehension I am able to see.

“Why do they grow in power now when they were decimated and have been weakened in the last five centuries, as have all species? Who joins their number, Giorgios?”

He shakes his head. “That I do not know, brother. Perhaps as it was before, there are a few bloodborne vampires who sire armies for the Skotádi cause.”

I know he is thinking that it is Lucian’s sireds who grow their numbers once more. “Do you have contacts in the old country still?”

He nods.

---