Page 104 of Blood from the Marrow
“I love you, Marisol.” Clara smiled as she cried. “You have made me so incredibly proud.”
“Mom?” Marisol surprised herself. She didn’t like the change in energy. Feared the resolute expression on Clara’s face.
Clara replied with a broad smile that looked entirely out of place in the hellscape of battle. “Live a long and happy life,” she said, before looking over her shoulder. “Come, give me what you can,” she called then turned back to Marisol. “I can’t change the past, baby. But I can make a different choice now.”
A trio of healers Marisol hadn’t noticed before materialized behind Clara. As if they’d practiced before, they dropped to their knees next to Clara and put their hands onher, not Elena.Not Elena?
“I love you more than anything,” Clara repeated and then clamped Marisol’s hands in a vice.
Tossing her head back, Clara’s wings surged with deafening energy. They brightened to blinding, and all Marisol could thinkof was Lilith in her vision or memory or whatever Zuri had shown her. It hurt to look at, but was impossible to look away from.
Warm and soothing, the light seemed to get brighter. To wrap around her and Elena and Zuri and hold them all close. As if Lilith herself was appearing like some celestial mother and pulling them into an embrace. It was too much, Clara was giving too much.
Marisol dug deeper into herself to give more. To give her everything. She’d trade with Elena. Give her life to save hers. And she’d do it with gratitude for having known love. Real love. Change your body chemistry, blow up your life and reshape it, there is no point of living without this love.
In a suspended moment, Clara’s body turned to pure light. Her mother. Her family. Defined not by blood, but by what she was willing to sacrifice.
“I love you, too,” Marisol managed despite her dry throat and disordered thoughts.
Clara exhaled like she’d been holding her breath nearly all her life. Deep and content.
And then Elena gasped like she had in the hospital. A moment later, Clara collapsed and Marisol dropped into the dirt.
Chapter Forty-Three
Shock wasall Zuri could register. She’d never seen violence like this. Never seen people dying by the hundreds. Never seen them burn alive until they choked on the flames. And then Clara had paid for Elena’s life with her own, and all Zuri could do was sit in the mud and cling to Marisol and Elena so tightly, she could barely breathe.
“I’m so sorry, Marisol,” Elena said, voice hoarse like she’d just fuckingdiedand come back to them. “I would never have accepted your mother’s sacrifice if I’d known?—”
“She didn’t ask your permission,” Zuri said, hand running up and down Elena’s back.
And I am so fucking grateful. I will build that woman an altar even bigger than my grandmother’s, she vowed to herself. She’d getClara is the World’s Best Mother-in-Lawtattooed on her chest. She’d have a dozen children just to name them all Clara. She’d offer her Aglion a place on her farm. Do everything in her power to honor the unbelievable gift she’d given them. She’d never forget Clara. Would love her right into the afterlife for loving her child more than she loved herself.
Marisol was still stunned. She was half curled into Elena, but her grip on Zuri’s free hand was tight enough to cut off herblood flow. Not that Zuri gave a single shit. She would give her the damn arm. She didn’t care as long as they were both in her grasp. Both breathing. They’d survived, and they were together, and nothing else mattered.
Marisol finally muttered, “I didn’t stop her,” so quietly that her words got tangled with the sound of Zuri’s racing pulse. “I knew, I think…” Zuri squeezed her hand. “I think I knew the whole time she was going to do that and I…” A sob shattered her voice and Zuri’s heart. “I let her… I wanted her to do it.”
“You didn’t ask her?—”
“I didn’t stop her,” Marisol repeated before Zuri could rationalize.
Zuri held back from trying to make Marisol feel better. Marisol had barely gotten to know the woman she’d yearned for most of her life. A woman who made her feel deeply complicated and conflicting feelings. A woman she’d finally allowed into the periphery of her life despite her fears and pain buried deep in her marrow. And now she was dead. Hermotherwas dead. Objective facts wouldn’t help with Marisol’s grief. It was going to suck, and all Zuri could do was support her through the suck.
Around them, anyone still breathing was weak and wounded. The Salem witches hadn’t exaggerated the impact of their potion magic. She looked for Librada, ready to shout for her. Lib had corralled Sofia before she kicked off a second skirmish. She wanted Lib to find the St. Augustine witches and make sure they were okay, but the thought evaporated.
Something was wrong. In the middle of the blood and wreckage of a war zone, some people looked pretty okay. Like they hadn’t just survived a meat grinder.
It was too much. Zuri was fatigued on such a deep level, her instincts were telling her something was wrong but her brain couldn’t piece it together. Not quickly enough. Not before she figured out what the too-clean vampires had in common.Not until after thirty vampires had grouped together and were starting for them.
“Now before this becomes a whole thing, sug, I think we can all agree there’s been enough vampire-on-vampire violence today.” Cordelia’s sugary-sweet accent left an acrid taste on Zuri’s tongue.
Zuri scrambled to her feet a moment before Elena and Marisol. Around them, the air stilled. Whether vampire, witch, or Aglion, everyone stopped to look at them. It was the imperceptible signal that animals picked up before a storm. The thing that made them know danger was on its way.
Cordelia tossed back her blonde hair and sighed. “Oh my, I really didn’t want to make a fuss.”
There was something unsettling about the mismatch between the friendly tone of Cordelia’s words and the tension in her shoulders. Of the three of them, Zuri was the least dismantled. She stepped out in front, blocking Elena and Marisol with her body.
Librada and Sofia were at Zuri’s side before Cordelia could shift her weight. A Sayah operative? But how? Elena vetted Cordelia herself, and Zuri had seen her fuck up plenty of Sayah’s forces. It didn’t make sense.
