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Writings engulfed the pages, the given little space along the margins embellished by minuscule drawings. It ranged from doodles of nature to rough sketches of stick figures, each influenced by the colors.

During our teachings, our mother would assign us each a colored crayon. She’d point at the spaces we were able to draw in, each brother taking a turn to avoid fights from erupting. The memories brought a smile to my face, one that was as faint as a distant memory. Long unachievable. Yet, her voice still rang with such great presence.

“Flowers have their own symbolic language,”she’d say during my time along the chosen page. “And like flowers, colors have significance. When beauty is before our eyes, we tend to overlook those depths. But remember, Alek, there will always be underlying messages in your color.”

Suddenly, my body halted, and I absorbed the sight before me. The memories, the drawings, the colors, the pages that they were in— the pieces of the puzzle abruptly appeared.

Christopher neared as I began shifting through bundles of pages, falling on the section where garnet red immersed the borders. Due to theHistory of Vampirescomprising of three volumes, each division was parted with a blank title page that was outshined by our childish drawings. Mine adorned the second volume,Biographies of the Seven Families, on theEpidetitle opening sheet. My red sketches ventured across their section, the only name that had gone extinct.

I paused before the family tree, where it extended to the last few pages where paintings and photographs rested. They depicted the families in the old ages, yet, one page in specific bore photographs upon a thick page that was stiff along my touch.

The pictures protruded as if it was attachment rather than a part of the paper itself. It stood out like a shriveling petal along a flourishing bud. Although it was a unit within the book, its’ semblance didn’t fit.

I angled the page upwards and ran my index finger along the fore-edge, a gap revealing itself at the top of the sheet.

“What is it?” Christopher strode to my side.

The pocket widened as my hand slowly slithered inside, a piece of paper caressing the tips of my fingers. Once I retrieved it, I rested it before Christopher and I, both of our gazes fixed on the folded sheet. My body remained still, further settling in the embracing chair, while Christopher unfolded the page and read through the contents.

“These are all books,” Christopher said.

“What types?” I leaned over to the sheet and read through the names, all of which brought a collection of familiar but hazy memories.

“Ones she used to read to us as children.” He motioned toward the spiraling staircase that connected the three floors. He ascended the steps and paused before the access door that blended into the ceiling. The third floor of the library had once been open to us all while our mother was still present, but after her passing, it was shut away by That Man. He held the only viable key— or so we believed.

Christopher removed his glasses from its chain, twisting the hinges from the temples, bending the pieces apart and together to create an imitating key.

He inserted it through the flat lock, the access door widening above him after a click echoed. He vanished into the depths of the ceiling. I hovered on the last few steps, staring at the entrance I hadn’t passed through since the night of our mother’s demise.

My throat tightened as the memories engulfed me, a trembling seizing my fingers. I couldn’t step inside. Although I forced my body to move, to follow where Christopher’s feet thumped against the ground, I remained utterly frozen, shrinking in stature.

“How did you know I could uncover it?” The question emerged through a constricting tension in my chest.

Christopher neared the access door, his body a shadow from where I stood. “Because you were mother’s precious child, Alek.”

“No, I wasn’t.” His words were a slap in the face, one so prevalent that it flushed my cheeks. “How could you say such a thing?”

“It’s true,” he muttered, his voice growing distant. “Since our youth, Kaleb had been the destructive one, Noah the rambunctious child, and I the muted one. Jacque, Jacob, and Raphael were the vexatious children who had yet to uncover themselves. You, on the other hand, were the child our mother had always envisioned. The one she molded to her liking.”

A blazing fire raged within my body, a match sparking my veins with a scorching ache. “That’s not possible. I had continuously been the weak child, the sibling you three despised— you’ve all loathed my very existence since the day I could remember.”

“I never once felt that way toward you, Alek,” Christopher murmured, his voice a wisp along his breath.

“Then why. . . ” My jaw tightened, and my eyes blurred with stinging tears. “Why did you allow Kaleb to do such abhorrent acts to me?”

“I don’t have an excuse,” Christopher stated with a frank, somber tone. “Nor do I have an explanati—”

A low knock on the second floor interrupted his words. Christopher swiftly, instinctively, shut the access door, forcing me to the door frame. To my surprise —and pure relief— Tristan stood within the hallway.

He immediately bowed and raised his head to meet my ear. “It’s Katerina. She’s been reported missing.”

Instantly, my feet moved into the hallway and toward my chamber next door. “By who?”

“A fellow guardian,” he peeked through the door and then closed it after surveying the corridors, “who has declared himself as her cousin.”

“Her cousin? But her files stated she had no family members.”

“It’s for immediate members, as in parents and siblings. The CEG files never dive deeper than that,” Tristan said as he walked toward the window that overlooked the driveway.