Page 4 of Promised in Blood

The three of us can do nothing but watch and wait for them to tell us what the hell happened in the past hour.

“Hey.” Ophelia gives us a shy smile when they finally reach us.

It’s Malachi who responds first. “Hey, sweet girl.” I know we all want to touch her, but this is uncharted territory, and none of us dare attempt it while Alexandros is holding onto her hand like he’ll never let her go. I stare at him and try to read his expression, but as usual, he gives nothing away, so I focus all my attention on my girl. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes bright and shining. The curve of her lips is faint, probably because she’s feeling as awkward as the rest of us are. Still, she’s practically fucking glowing.

“What happened?” Xavier asks.

Ophelia presses her lips together and glances at Alexandros.

He nods toward the house. “Let us go inside.”

Xavier and Malachi turn and head toward the door, but the tension in my body solidifies my limbs, and I remain rooted to the spot. My heart is pounding in my chest. Something’s different, and I need to know what it is.

My eyes lock on Ophelia’s, and she smiles, then slips her free hand into mine. Her touch soothes a little of the tension in me. Enough to unglue my feet from the ground. With her hand firmly clasped in mine, I follow her and Alexandros into the house.

Alexandros clears his throat,and we sit on the sofa and watch him, waiting with bated breath for him to talk. A memory of my former life flashes before me. I’m thirteen years old, sitting on the sofa and waiting for my father to tell me that my brother, Frederik, won’t be coming home that night, his face unreadable and impassive. The same feelings of fear and trepidation wash over me now.

Ophelia sits on Xavier’s lap, his arms banded tightly around her waist like he’s scared she might float away.

“I had a family.” Alexandros’s voice is low and calm, but it’s filled with an emotion I don’t think I’ve ever heard from him before. “A wife, Elena, and two daughters, Alyria and Imogen. They were elementai. And they were all murdered in the genocide over five centuries ago.”

Malachi shifts beside me. Xavier rests his lips on Ophelia’s shoulder, his dark brows knitted with a frown.

I lean forward, sure I misheard him. “You had a wife and kids?”

He nods.

“And you kept that from us? You never once mentioned?—”

“There are a lot of things about my past that you are unaware of, Axl.” His tone remains calm and controlled, but there is no denying the implicit threat it carries.

“So why are you telling us now?” Xavier asks.

He glances at Ophelia, who smiles at him reassuringly. Some of his tension visibly slips away from his shoulders. “In order for Ophelia to discover who she is, to accurately explain the elementai and what happened to them, I…” His voice cracks a little, and he clears his throat again. “Their entire history is too long and too complex to explain. I had to show her what happened. And that included what happened to my family.”

“So you bonded with Ophelia to show her the truth of her past? You bit her?” Xavier asks, his tone accusatory.

The harsh look Alexandros gives him communicates a clear warning. “Yes.”

“And it seemed to unlock my power somehow,” she quietly adds.

Alexandros hums his agreement, and he seems to sit up straighter as his eyes fill with something I rarely see from him. Pride.

An unexpected and unfamiliar emotion burns in my chest. It feels a lot like resentment. I have shared almost my entire life with him, yet he has shared nothing of his true self with me, and that stings more than I care to admit. I suddenly understand a little more about Xavier and how he feels at being left out. “Would you have ever told us? If not for Ophelia, would you have always kept us in the dark?”

Malachi places a supportive hand on my thigh. “It doesn’t matter how we came to know, only that we do,” he says in that soothing tone he’s so good at. He threads his thick fingers through Ophelia’s slender ones. “What happened with your power, sweet girl?”

She draws in a shaky breath. “When I felt Alexandros’s pain… It was like it tore something open inside me. And then all of this power just poured into me, filling up every part of my body until it reached the tip of every hair on my head.” Ophelia’s eyes light up now, sparkling with her usual curiosity, but I canfeel her nervous excitement. “It’s hard to explain, but it was like… like being hit by lightning and being wrapped in a warm blanket at the same time. It was devastating and euphoric.”

I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s the same feisty girl who tried to stop three vampires from biting one of her classmates. Yet she’s somehow radically different. Extraordinary, vibrant energy radiates from her, and it feels like I’m standing too close to the surface of the sun. And I can’t help but wonder if we are all about to get burned.

Alexandros clears his throat. “I believe Ophelia can access all four magical elements. If she can master all of them, then…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, but his eyes cloud with worry.

I’m not entirely sure why that’s significant, but Malachi’s low whistle tells me that it is. “That’s pretty impressive, right?” he says.

Alexandros rubs a hand over his jaw. “More than impressive.”

“But what does all this actuallymean? Ophelia has powers now—so what?” Xavier glances at her and winces. “No offense, Cupcake.”

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