Page 16 of Crimson Devotion
“That’s not all, Valerio,’’ I add.
“What is it, Ophi?”
I take a deep breath. “My heart started beating again.’’
SEVEN
Ophelia
I’m such a creep.
Faith is asleep in my bedroom, in my bed, curled under my sheets. She’s been sleeping for the past couple of days, her body trembling. The process of being turned into a vampire is similar to that of humans breaking a fever. Her body temperature is high, and she’s filled with sweat.
The sweat is the last thing she’ll ever have that’s human. Once the transformation is over, her body temperature will fall drastically, and she’ll no longer feel cold or warmth. She’ll be stuck in the endless cycle of not feeling a damn thing, of not being able to taste human food.
I sit on the bed, close to her body. The mattress dips under my weight, and I bite the inside of my cheek, eyes stuck on her face. She’s been restless, tossing and turning, and from time to time, she’d cryout for her parents.
My hand reaches for the cloth on the bedside table, and I gently dab it all over her forehead. Her hair is sticky, greasy from all the sweat it absorbed. I’m careful not to touch her skin, terrified of the confirmation of her being my mate.
I can’t wake her up, even if I wanted to. Until the transformation’s been completed, she’ll remain asleep. Sometimes, it takes them a day or two, but other times it could last up to four weeks of continuous sleep, fighting inner demons as the darkness starts to consume their soul, and heart.
The scars along her arms have healed, leaving behind perfect skin. Her face has brightened up, too, with a glow that I’ve never seen before in anyone. Her lips have gotten a rosy shade, pinker on the inside of her lips and paler on the outside.
God, I’m barely holding myself back from kissing her.
I shake my head, trying to shove the thoughts to the back of my head. It’s insane — all of this. Not once did I think I’d be the one to have a soulmate, and the fact that it’s someone who came here to kill me is laughable.
The cloth drops from my hand, landing just next to her exposed shoulder. My eyes zero onto the matching mark on the side of her neck — the very same spot my teeth had pierced through. It’s all I can focus on, two perfect little rosy dots that decorate her otherwise perfect skin.
My heart starts beating against my ribcage, and the feeling is foreign. I’m dead. It shouldn’t be beating. The rest of my abilities are still here. The wounds heal immediately; blood is the primary source of strength, and I cannot enter daylight without burning. Yet, my heart is beating. It’s a steady rhythm that blasts through my eardrums, and I don’t know what to do.
I’m still immortal, that much I’m certain of. But it’s not normal for a vampire to have a beating, functioning heart. God knows how much that would be worth on the black market, and if anyone were to find out that one of the Sacred Seven has a humanheart inside of them, I’d be a constant target.
With a deep breath, I rise from the bed, my heels clicking as I walk, until I find my way to the empty side. Hesitantly, I lie down next to Faith, staring into her side profile. Her hands curl around the blanket, clutching them tightly. Her eyebrows narrow slightly, a frown on her lips. It all lasts perhaps a couple of seconds, before her expression returns to normal, and her body relaxes.
Guilt starts filling my body, something inside of me clenching. When I first became a vampire, I’d killed a lot of people accidentally. As a young vampire, from the first generations of vampires, I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to control the thirst, how to control the overwhelming emotions.
The seven of us were all alone, and we were dealing with a lot of burdens. Valerio’s way of dealing with it was to shut himself into a room, and he starved himself until his urges won, and he ended up killing an entire village. I’m sure he’s still dealing with the guilt to this day.
Darius, Aurelia, Juliana, Cassius and I were monsters. We had no concept of stopping, and no amount of blood was enough to quench the thirst that ran deeply through our veins. More than that, we were angry because of the curse that was forced upon us, and we were taking our anger out on anyone and anything that got in our way, with no worries for the human lives we took, the bodies left in our wake.
Lucifer was a different story.
From the beginning, he was drinking little by little. It took him half a year to control his urges, and not once has he killed a person. He’s turned a lot of them into vampires, but not once has he killed.
Then, because he was tired of us killing people, he’d take us one by one to the cellar of our old house and chain us to the walls, starve us until he could hand feed us small amounts of blood. It worked out eventually, and not only did we learn how to controlour thirst, but we learned how to manage our heightened emotions, our strength, and how to control ourselves in front of blood without killing.
Well, except Juliana.
That girl doesn’t give a shit.
My hand lifts, as if to touch Faith’s face. The action is immediate, almost as if my body’s reacting to her proximity without my input. I force the hand back down, clenching my fist. My long nails dig into my flesh, piercing through it with ease. Blood fills my hand before I relax it, the wound closing almost immediately.
When my eyes snap to the side, Valerio’s right there. The kindness he omits is there, though this time, something else is very evident. I can’t quite place it, but his body language is tense. His shoulders are rigid, his jaw clenched shut.
His eyes dart between the sleeping Faith and myself, a couple of times, before they settle on me. He offers a small smile, though it’s not sincere. Something’s wrong with him, and I can’t put my finger on what it is.
I sit up, then walk over to him. He follows me down the corridor silently, nothing but our footsteps there to break the silence. Once we’re a safe distance from my bedroom, I turn to face him.
