Page 48 of Blood Ties (City of Blood #1)

Elina

What the hell is this? I stare down at the birth certificate.

Elianore Celeste Girard Devereaux

Father: Ezekiel Devereaux

Mother: Nora Cecilia Girard

Date of Birth: August 17, 2003

This is obviously me but I’ve never seen this document before in my life.

I was born at home, my birth wasn’t registered with the L’Empire des Ombres Nocturnes—there would have been no reason to.

This disputes that fact, and a lot of other facts I know about myself.

My maman took Le lien eternel with the King of Ville de Sang?

I sit in stunned silence, trying to absorb all of this. None of it makes any sense.

If grand-mere knew, why had she lied to me for twenty-five years? If she didn’t know, how had maman kept this a secret? Based on what Sebastien told me, the only way they could have conceived is if they were bound.

I’m suddenly struck by a thought. Oh my god—I’m a bloodline vampire. Bash explained this to me, he did this himself. Any time now, I should begin the transformation to vampire. It was never a matter of me choosing this life or consenting to turn for Bash. It was my destiny the entire time.

I take stock of what I know. I’m in love with Sebastien and I want to bind with him.

I am being held captive by a branch of my own family.

Nicolas, my cousin, is attempting to get me to bind with him.

Based on the information from Sebastien, I can’t inherit since I am a woman, but it seems that Nicolas needs me for something.

That something definitely has to do with who I am.

I mourn the fact that I finally learned who my father was, and, in the same instant, learned he is dead. I am just as much an orphan as I was before I had this information.

Everything has changed, and yet, nothing has changed at all. I was going to give up my humanity and walk in the moonlight for Bash, this proves to me that it was the right choice.

I know that Nicolas has left this information for me, but why? What does he want me to do with it? My trust for him has plummeted to a new low, he knew something earth shattering about me which he weaponized for himself.

Knocking on my door to get the attention of whomever is lurking out there, I yell, “I need to see Nicolas.” I hope someone’s out there to hear me.

The lock clicks and the door pushes open, revealing a vampire I don’t recognize.

“I would like to see Nicolas,” I repeat.

“No. He has already dismissed you for the evening.”

“Please just ask if I can meet with him?” I all but beg in front of this stranger.

He pulls the door shut in my face and the tumbler of the lock falls back into place.

Dammit!

Lying flat on my back on the bed, I stare up at the coffered ceiling, reflecting on the absurdity of this situation.

I’m Ezekiel Devereaux’s daughter, a princess, if they are still observing the laws.

I am being treated as a hostile intruder in this place when I suspect it should belong to me.

I have to be weary and watch my back, I do not have friends in this court.

The door swings open and the stranger stands there.

“Nicolas says you may attend him, he is in his private quarters,” he tells me with an obvious smirk on his face.

Gripping my arm tightly, he hauls me down the hall and around the corner.

We enter into a new wing, past the staircase, and there are significantly less doors lining this walkway.

He pauses in front of a set of double doors. “Here you go. He's inside. Good luck.” He laughs joylessly as he pivots and stands at the end of the hall.

I grab the handle, twisting it, and push the door open.

As soon as my eyes take in the scene awaiting me, I understand what the vampire found so entertaining.

There is a very large—larger than I’ve ever seen—bed in the center of the spacious room.

It is heavy and dark. Surrounding it are chairs and lounges full of naked people.

In the center of the bed is Nicolas, completely naked and lost in the body of a lithe woman who is sitting astride him, gyrating her hips.

I can’t see her face but I can hear her exclamations of pleasure.

There are five other naked women in the bed in various states of sex—touching, kissing, performing sex acts on one another.

I am immediately sickened by what is happening.

“Hello, Elina. What brings you to visit this evening? Care to join?” Nicolas pats the bed beside him before returning his hand to the hips of the woman he is engaged with.

He watches me, his eyes boring into mine before he flips her over onto all fours and begins to roughly pound into her body, her cries drowning out all the other noise coming from the bed.

Nicolas’s movements become faster and more erratic as he stares straight into my eyes before he cries out and collapses across the woman’s back. I tear my gaze away, feeling sick from the sight.

Nicolas begins to laugh. “See something you like, princess, or did you have another reason for stopping by?” His words and mocking tone are such a sharp contrast to the man who was clearly trying to charm me earlier. Him calling me princess cuts deep, knowing the truth.

“I-uh-I wanted to talk about the folder, but clearly I have interrupted–” I wave my hand in the general direction of the debauchery “–something.”

He laughs again, this time with more mirth and less cruelty.

“We are vampires, Elina. This is what we do. It’s our nature.

It will be yours soon.” His fangs drop from his gums and he roughly bites the neck of the woman he is still buried inside.

I still can not see her face, but he sucks deeply and she shudders under his touch.

Pulling his teeth from her neck and climbing off the bed, he comes to stand in front of me, his cock jutting out ahead of him. He gives me a slow perusal, lingering on my lips, before looking into my eyes, and I refuse to give into his trap by looking at his naked body.

“Come with me, we will talk in my office.” Wrapping his arm around my shoulder, he steers me toward a door in the corner. I glance back over our shoulders and spy Cindy climb off the bed before making eye contact with me. Guilt and shame color her cheeks.

Another person who is not a friend in this mansion-prison.

The inside of Nicolas’s office is exactly what I expect from the psychopathic vampire I have come to understand he is.

The paintings lining the dark walls are macabre in their scenes of bloody massacre, fang-toothed cherubs, and monsters dragging people into the pit.

The floors are covered with plush black carpeting, an aggressively large mahogany desk fills the entire center of the room, and dark leather chairs and a sofa create a sitting area near a black marble fireplace.

There are floor to 10-foot tall, floor-to-ceiling windows behind his desk, overlooking the courtyard, showing vampires milling around.

There is a tall painting above the fireplace showing Nicolas and Genevieve on a country estate, rolling hills behind them, a dog at their feet.

They are wearing regency era clothing, a small tiara on Genevieve’s head. The moon hangs heavy behind them.

I tear my eyes away. While I quickly surveyed the office, Nicolas has gotten dressed in dark wash, distressed, denim jeans, with a grey evening shirt he leaves unbuttoned.

Sitting behind the grandiose desk, he gestures for me to take one of the chairs stationed in front of it.

I sit, my bare feet sinking into the carpet.

“So, Elina, I guess you saw the gift I left for you?”

The word ‘gift’ is such a manipulation of the circumstances.

Leaving me a file that exposes every lie that I have been told my entire life, a file that changes everything I know about myself and my future, was never about kindness or benevolence, it was always about control.

He is parsing information out to me as he sees fit, on his own timeline to keep control of me and our situation.

“I did,” I agree genially. It’s too soon to reveal how unsettled I am. How unsteady he has made me. “How did you know about this?”

“Do you think that half-breeds are not recorded in the archives, like everyone else? Ezekiel decided to take a human to bed,” he says human with a level of hatred I was unprepared for, “but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t keep track of the offspring.

Just because your sire was extinguished like the coward he was, doesn’t mean we would never find you. ”

What does he have against human-vampire bonds?

“I meant, the archives say the child was lost in the war. Why? If you, and the rest of the remaining Devereaux, knew this whole time, why does it say that?”

“Because, crepulsculien, the rest of them don’t know.

Only Genevieve and I do, we discovered the record of your birth while looking through old paperwork buried in Ezekiel’s belongings.

It wasn’t widely known who your mother was, or your name, so it was easy to lose you.

” He watches me, his eyes alight with an emotion I don’t quite recognize.

Almost excitement, but more frenzied somehow, like he has it all figured out and the rest of us are along for the ride.

Tilting my head, I ask him, “What is that? Crepulsculien? Claudel has been calling me that.”

“It means ‘twilighter’ essentially, there isn’t a translation.

It means someone born between. Not of the light.

Not of the night. A hybrid.” He says the last bit bitingly as though I am somehow to blame for my own existence.

“Now, back to the question at hand. Bond with me. You will be queen. It seems you have a thing for vampire princes.” He laughs at me as I narrow my eyes.

“No.” I will not bow to him and I will not tie my eternity to him.