Promised in Blood: Chapter 2

“What the fuck is going on?” Xavier bounces on his toes as we stand on the porch and wait for Ophelia and the professor to return. “You think we should go check on her?”

As much as I’d like to do exactly that, I shake my head. “Alexandros made it clear we were supposed to wait here.” The order he gave us fifteen minutes earlier still rings fresh in my head. His tone, as usual, was commanding and gruff, but there was something different about him.

Xavier jogs down the three steps and stands beside Malachi on the grass. “What do you think it is? Something definitely happened to her, didn’t it?” He glances back over his shoulder at me. “You both felt it?”

I nod and absentmindedly run my fingertips over the thick veins in my forearm, recalling how they burned with pure fire a short while ago. And without a shadow of a doubt, I know the rush of adrenaline that accompanied it had something to do with Ophelia.

Malachi stares out across the lawn and into the distance. “I think it’s her power. Something happened with her power.”

“You think it was something to do with the witches? Is that why Alexandros was so mad at her?” Xavier glances anxiously between the two of us. “Because he sounded real pissed when he went to get her, right?”

I nod, my mouth dry and my throat working as I try to swallow.

Xavier spins around, directing all his attention at me, his blue eyes wide with terror. “He wouldn’t hurt her, would he? We’d know if she was hurting, right, Axl?”

“Of course he wouldn’t hurt her,” I assure him, although that same fear already snaked its way into my thoughts too.

“And we’d know if he had,” Malachi says, his eyes still focused on a spot in the distance. He cranes his neck. “Here they are.”

I follow his gaze to find the unmistakable figures of Ophelia and the professor walking side by side. From here, they both look the same, but everything has changed. I can tell by the closeness of their bodies and the way she steals glances at him every few seconds. And then he looks at her too. Their eyes meet at the perfect moment. Neither looks away.

As they grow closer to the safety of the Dragon houses, away from the potential prying eyes of the college, she slides her tiny hand into his. He doesn’t pull away from her, and my heart sinks through my chest. If he’s claimed her, what does that mean for us?

I jog down the steps and stand between Malachi and Xavier.

“Do you see that?” Xavier asks, and the same anxiety inside me ripples through each of them too.

“Yeah.”

“It’ll be okay,” Malachi says reassuringly.

Xavier snarls. “I’m not giving her up. He can try to take my fucking head, but he can’t have her.”

Malachi reaches behind me and squeezes Xavier’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” he mutters again. But the sideways glance he shoots my way speaks volumes.

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 can feel 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 actually mean? Ophelia has powers now—so what?” Xavier glances at her and winces. “No offense, Cupcake.”

She smiles sweetly. “None taken. I’d kinda like to know myself.”

Alexandros clears his throat. “This university is full of magical beings, but Ophelia is not like any one of them. I should have known that showing her the pain of her species would unlock her powers, but …” He draws a deep breath, the vein in his temple throbbing. We all wait for him to finish speaking while he rubs the spot between his brows. “Perhaps I was careless.”

Malachi edges forward, hands clasped between his spread thighs. “But her powers were always meant to be unlocked, right? Isn’t that why she has them? To use them?”

“Why were Ophelia’s powers bound? And by whom?” Alexandros sighs. “There are too many unanswered questions. But I am sure of one thing.” Pausing, he looks at each of us, his dark eyes full of worry, then continues in a grave tone. “This was inevitable. And now we all must prepare for what this will mean.”

Ophelia shifts on Xavier’s lap, waves of anxiety rolling off her now. I reach over Malachi and rest my hand on her thigh. “Whatever it means, we’ve all got you, princess.”

“But what does it mean, Alexandros?” Xavier asks. “Surely Ophelia getting her powers is a good thing for all of us.”

He tips his face to the ceiling and mutters something in Greek that I don’t understand. When he looks at us again, his expression is back to its normal unreadable state. “I cannot lie and tell you that the existence of an elementai is not a good thing for our species. Our fates are irrevocably and eternally bound together, and that is both a blessing and a curse.”

I squeeze her thigh reassuringly. I can’t even begin to imagine how disconcerting this must be for her. It confuses the fuck out of me, and I’ve spent over two hundred years surrounded by magic. Yet I still don’t understand the elementai and their powers.

What I do know—and what I allow to comfort me now—is that the universe bringing Ophelia to me, to all of us, will only ever be a blessing.