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“Father’s documents,” she shrugged, probably not sure herself. She was touching the scrolls gently, as if they were made of the finest fairy dust and a clumsy touch might destroy them completely. “We were never allowed even a peek into this safe. This feels almost like sacrilege.”
She suddenly stopped touching the documents, pulling her hand away as if she had been scorched.
“Well, someone has to go over them, sort them out,” I reminded her. “Do you want a stranger to do that?”
“No.” Her answer was clear.
“Then, don’t be afraid,” I urged. “Maybe some of these documents are important. Why else would he keep them in his safe?”
She nodded, then slowly started to unroll scrolls she took out one by one. She recited what she was reading aloud, and it was just as we thought. Mostly official decrees and similar. But then, she found something that didn’t look like any of the others. As she unrolled it, the parchment crackled with age, and the inked letters revealed their story.
“The two brothers must never come together,” she said.
I lifted my eyebrow. “What?”
“That’s what it says,” she replied defensively. “I’m just reading.”
“Is it a story of some sort?” I wondered.
“I don’t think so,” she shook her head. Then, she continued reading to herself, but she did so silently. I could see her eyebrows lift, her eyes widen, her mouth gasp apart. But still, no sound came from her. Only when she lifted her gaze to meet mine did I realize that something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
“What is it?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off of her, and my concern was growing with each passing moment. “What does it say?”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she shoved the scroll into my hands. Impatiently, I started to read.
Forgotten tale… two brothers… powerful bloodline of vampires…
And there it was. My name. My name.
“Is this a joke?” I asked, incredulous.
I skimmed through the text again disbelief and denial warring inside of me. The words on the scroll were not true. They couldn’t be.
“It bears Father’s seal,” she reminded me, and that could mean just one thing. There was evidence behind it. But what evidence?
The ground beneath my feet started to spin, and I had to take a seat.
“Adrian, honey? Are you all right?” I heard Lilith ask, but I felt as if I was falling deeper and deeper into a well, and I was barely able to hear her. I was disappearing into the darkness of this newfound knowledge about who I was.
It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. I couldn’t share the same bloodline as Constantine. Because that would mean exactly what the scroll said… that we were brothers.
Chapter Two
Lilith
I watched as Adrian paced about the room like a caged tiger. I could sense that his skin felt tight on him, that he was aching to jump right out of it and run away from himself, from whatever truth this scroll held. I gave him a few moments to try and compose himself, then I approached him, as he stood by the window and gazed outside. The sun was high in the sky, painting everything in a sparkly, golden hue, almost as if someone had give you glasses that made the entire world sparkle for just one brief moment.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and rested my head on his shoulders. I closed my eyes, trying to absorb some of his anxiety, although I knew that there was little I could do to help him. I could just be there for him, until we figured out what this whole mess really was and whether it was really true or not. Although the very fact that my father had kept it hidden from everyone, nestled inside his safe, already proved one thing, and that was that my father believed it was true.
“It can’t be true,” I finally heard him say.
He didn’t turn around, although I could probably imagine how deep and fathomless his eyes were right now. And his voice… I couldn’t remember the last time he sounded so helpless, so lost.
I inhaled deeply, squeezing him tighter. This time, he curled his fingers around my hands and caressed them. The sun was still bathing us in a soft, honey-golden afternoon light.
“Maybe it’s not,” I finally said, although without much conviction.
As the wind rustled through the leaves of the ancient oak tree in the garden, the air around us remained heavy with the weight of this revelation.
