Page 11 of Bound in Blood

My eyes open to warmth and familiarity. Ophelia’s soft body is curled against mine, her face nestled into my chest, with Malachi’s hard torso at my back and Axl’s face on the pillow next to me. The feeling of contentment lasts for all of half a second before my entire world comes crashing down around me and a fresh new agony engulfs me like a forest fire. He’s gone. Just like that. All his power and his knowledge and his… I choke down a sob. Everything he was—it’s gone. And soon, we will be too. It all hurts so fucking much I can’t breathe.

Ophelia’s fingertips skate over my chest before landing on the place directly above my heart, as though she’s still checking that I have one. I do, even if it feels broken beyond all repair.

“Xavier.” Her warm breath rushes over my skin, reminding me I’m alive, and soon her pain merges with my own, swirling into one raging torrent of grief.

Malachi and Axl must feel it because they stir awake. It takes but a few moments for the anguish to soak through the room like a sponge soaking up water.

I throw back the covers. “I need to get the fuck out of this room and do something. Or at least feel like we’re doing something.”

Axl and Malachi voice their agreement, but Ophelia remains silent. Her eyes are filled with tears, their tracks carved into her pink cheeks. She closes her eyes.

“Ophelia?” My concern for her fate is so much greater than for my own.

She screws her eyes closed.

Axl traces his fingertips across the palm of her outstretched hand. “Princess?”

“I’m… I’m…” She lets out a frustrated growl and angrily scrubs the tears from her reddened cheeks. “I was trying to use my powers, but they won’t work. Not even a little.”

“It’s the hallowed ground thing,” Axl says. “We never would have brought you here if we’d known.”

She shakes her head and pushes herself out of bed. “I should have realized. I knew about the holy ground. Kai and I read about it, but I had no idea Giorgios’s fortress would be built on an old temple.”

I pull her into my arms and rest my lips on top of her head. “None of us did, Cupcake.”

“I should have asked.”

Axl runs a hand through his hair. “Maybe we all should have asked, but the reality is that we were in shock, and Giorgios was there telling us we had to leave. We did what we thought was best. And now we have to make the best of it.”

“Make the best of it how?” Malachi asks.

“For a start, we can go ask Giorgios what the fuck is going on. Why did Lucian…” He shakes his head hard, unable to say the words aloud. “We can start with some answers.”

After we get dressed,we make our way downstairs to find Giorgios sitting alone in what appears to be his study. The walls are lined with shelves upon shelves of books, a large wooden antique globe fills one corner, and a vast mahogany desk, piled high with more books, dominates the center of the room.

He looks up from the book he was poring over. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

I crack my neck. “I guess.”

Ophelia murmurs something, but we’re all too distracted to be making small talk.

“We want to do something,” Axl snaps, nervous energy radiating from him.

Giorgios closes his book and arches a dark eyebrow. “Such as?”

“Such as finding Lucian?—”

“And tearing his fucking head off,” I add with a vicious snarl.

With a low hum, Giorgios nods and indicates the small sofa off to the side of the room. “Please take a seat.”

The four of us squash onto it with Ophelia perched on Malachi’s lap. “I can assure you that searching for Lucian is my top priority, along with keeping you all safe.”

“And what can we do to help?” Axl asks.

Giorgios strokes his long fingers through his beard. “At this stage, nothing, I am afraid. Lucian is skilled and powerful. Skilled enough to have eluded his own father for over five hundred years. Skilled enough to have lured the most powerful vampire alive into a trap neither of us saw coming, and then to take his head before Alexandros could do a thing to stop him.”

Ophelia’s pain rips through all of us, and I gasp at the intensity, glaring at the man in front of us. Did he have to be so callous in the way he talked about his death?

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