Page 73 of For Love and Blood and Fury

Maybe she’d been too hasty, she thought, a flicker of doubt creeping in. Maybe she shouldn’t have left Zuri’s place. Maybe she should have stayed hidden, protected, until she knew more. Until she knew anything. Maybe she could have called Librada to her side instead of coming home.

But it was too late for regrets. She was back in the game, and she was going to make it clear that her retribution would be tenfold. But what if it wasn't enough?

What if, despite her best efforts, Zuri and Marisol were caught in the crossfire? The thought sent a chill down her spine, an icy dread that settled deep in her bones. It was wrong for them to be anywhere other than under her roof. She had to rectify that. Now. She wouldn’t be able to focus otherwise.

Chapter Forty-Two

Zuri approached the coven house,the scent of night-blooming jasmine and mildew a familiar but unwelcome greeting. Even before she reached the porch steps, a wave of despair punched her in the throat. The magic, once a vibrant force that grew from the house’s foundation, was faint. She already knew, with a sickening certainty, that they’d lost more witches.

She wanted to call Candela and Avani, to share the burden of this grief, to wallow in their rage together. But the memory of unanswered texts and calls held her back. She didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know they were pissed. She’d iced them out, shut them out, retreated into the chaos of Elena’s bullshit. And now, she didn’t have the energy to answer for her silence.

Fucking Elena.

She felt heavy and old and tired. The weight of the future and the past pressed down on her. She wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head. To find a way to stop giving a shit. To let it all be someone else’s burden, someone else’s inherited duty.

Instead, she turned away from the house, heart aching and spirit depleted. She drove back to her duplex on the edge of the Grove. After parking her car on the gravel drive because herlandlord refused to make real parking spaces, it took her several minutes to muster the energy to get out.

Inside her apartment, the silence was deafening. She didn’t bother turning on any lights while she moved through the tight two bedroom. Dropping onto her bed face first like she was belly flopping into a pool, she groaned into her pillow.

She imagined what her grandmother might say if she was there. If she were sitting across from her at the kitchen table, eyes twinkling with mischief, her smile warm and hard to earn. How would she keep the coven together? How far would she go?

She rolled onto her back, annoyed that her grandmother didn’t feel like talking to her. She blinked up at her ceiling. She’d never felt more alone in her life.

Zuri closed her eyes again. The image of Elena and Marisol, tangled together in her bed, flashed through her mind. The memory of their laughter, their shared intimacy, the warmth of their connection… It ached in her chest and reminded her again that she was alone.

It had been so easy, so natural, to fall back into that rhythm with Elena. To slip into their familiar little dance of push and pull. To feed the desire they both knew could only end the way it had the first time—in heartbreak. And Marisol, with her gentle heart and surprising bite, had fit into their dynamic with a surprising ease.

Zuri had felt more at home in the last few days than she had in years. But it was stupid. Pointless. It was a little sex and now it was over and she had to attend to her actual problems that didn’t involve vampires or angels.

Against her will, her thoughts drifted back to the cottage and their seclusion. There had been something about the three of them together. Of how Marisol softened something in Elena. In both of them.

Triangles were the strongest shapes, weren’t they? She couldn’t remember jack shit about high school geometry, but there was something about weight distribution. About resilience and supporting heavy loads.

Had that been the original idea for the triumvirate? To give the coven strength and balance? She shut her eyes and tried to sleep, but her thoughts took off in a sprint.

Whatever the hell the founders of her coven had planned was failing, their leadership killing them. They weren’t projecting power—they were breeding stagnation.

Maybe they should have written some fucking term limits into the governing codes. To have thought about how to protect the triumvirate from itself.

Anger flashed in her body. She was on her feet and cursing the entire way to the small bathroom between the two bedrooms. It wasn’t time to start the long process of washing her hair, but she needed to do something with her body. She needed to feel clean. Purged.

I should start my own damn coven, she thought, standing under the shower and its annoyingly weak water pressure. Over time their coven had added so many rules and guidelines and bullshit, but really all she needed were three people, a piece of land to consecrate, and a powerful artifact.

It was the last element that made her chest heavy.Sure, I’ll just pop by the Goodwill and pick one of those right up. Fuck. She thought of the ancient anchor buried deep beneath the coven house. Salvaged from wreckage found off Cuba’s southeastern coast, it was strong enough to fuel generations of witches. Where the hell was she going to find something like that?

Annoyed, she applied a hydration mask to her hair and tried to think about something else. But her brain was intent on tormenting her. Trapped in the shower’s silence because she’dbeen too distracted to grab her phone so she could at least play some music, she slipped back to the cottage.

Why did everything have to be so fucking complicated? Elena hadn’t changed in any of the ways that counted. She still didn’t want to suffer another loss, and Zuri couldn’t blame her. Elena hid behind her bravado and status to pretend that nothing fazed her, but in her iron chest was a heart that limped more than it beat.

If she were Elena, she’d only look for love with another vampire. Wondering as she had before, Zuri considered the possibility that Elena was cursed somehow. Or that she hated herself so much, wanted to punish herself so badly, that she could only give her heart to people who couldn’t hold it through no fault of their own.

Resting her forehead against the warm tile, Zuri took a deep breath. If she could have given herself to Elena all those years ago, she would have. But she knew herself too well. Knew that if she traded her truest self—the witch blood that connected her to her grandmother and all the women who’d come before her—she’d spend the rest of her endless life resenting the choice. Resenting Elena. That was no life.

Elena could still have that with Marisol. Marisol didn’t even know what the hell being an Aglion even meant. She could make the trade. And she was so fucking alone. Her chest tightened and made it impossible to take another deep breath. The pain in that girl’s memories was suffocating, the weight of her isolation staggering. But it didn’t have to be that way. She could choose a life with Elena—if either of them wanted that. There was no reason for them to be alone.

Zuri’s mind leapt forward and played out the scenario in her mind. She couldn’t imagine Bambi as a vampire. The girl wouldn’t eat anything with a face. There was no way shewas going to drink blood. Although… there was always explicit consent. She’d like that.

Picturing Marisol with fangs nearly made her laugh. She was so bright, so annoyingly sweet. Zuri couldn’t imagine her ethereal wings replaced with the shadows that swirled around them when Elena drank.

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