Page 24 of Blood from the Marrow
“You’re not in this alone.” Marisol wrapped her arm around Zuri’s waist and held her close, attention still fixed on Elena like she saw a patient. Like she wanted to heal Elena’s emotional fractures with her pretty wings. “I’m going to find my mother and whatever Aglion she has with her. I’m going to learn?—”
Zuri rested her arm over Marisol’s shoulders, drawing Marisol’s attention to her. “This isn’t the time to make snap decisions. We don’t even know what she wants yet. If she’s?—”
“Well, if she wants me, she’s going to have to help.” Marisol’s decisive tone set off a roar of pride in Zuri’s chest. “And if not, well, I’ll learn what I can and get stronger for whatever is coming next.”
Zuri couldn’t stop herself from kissing the top of Marisol’s head. From breathing in the scent of her hair and letting it cleanse the fatigue from her soul. Only one possibility materialized for her. “What better test for a new coven that I may or may not be able to start than an all-out vampire war,” she joked to stop herself from crumbling under the enormity of what lay ahead.
“This isn’t your fight,” Elena said, voice pleading. “You can’t?—”
“Tell me one more time what I can or cannot do and see what happens.” Zuri ran her hand through Elena’s blood-matted hair. “I love you, you dummy.”
She turned to face Marisol. Locked in her warm hazel gaze, Zuri said what she’d been feeling for longer than she wanted to admit. “I love you… and that means to the very fucking end.” She let herself bask in the intoxicating glow of breathing her feelings for them into life.
“I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.” Elena’s voice cracked with fear while her attention darted between them. “I’ve lived so many lives, but I can’t suffer this. I can’t endure losing?—”
“Then don’t lose us,” Marisol said simply. “The past is never coming back and tomorrow will never come.” She took Elena’s hand and pressed her lips to her palm. “All we have is now.” She leaned over and kissed Elena’s trembling lips. “And now.” She craned her head and kissed Zuri, infusing her body with newenergy from reserves Zuri didn’t know she had. It filled Zuri with enough to send her back to Georgia to tear Sayah and her lackeys apart with her bare hands. “And all I want is every now I can get with you both. The rest… we’ll figure out.”
“Now,” Zuri agreed like an oath before kissing Marisol. Agreed because what the hell else did they have but this?
Turning her attention to Elena, Zuri’s stomach churned. She wanted to see the same untenable mix of rage and love in Elena’s expression. To see the arrogance and confidence that she’d fallen in love with, the arrogance and confidence they needed.
Zuri leaned in and kissed Elena. “Now,” she whispered against Elena’s lips, desperate for her to respond in kind.
Elena still hadn’t spoken when Zuri leaned back. Her dark honey eyes, usually so sure, were distant. Like she was already retreating to some fortified place deep inside herself where Zuri and Marisol couldn’t follow. Like she was already gone.
“Now,” Elena finally breathed, but the word was hollow, devoid of the power that usually emanated from her, effortless and constant like gravity. Her voice was as weak as Zuri had ever heard it. Weaker than when she’d been paralyzed and defenseless.
Zuri’s skin was ice, her stunned heart plummeting. This wasn’t physical fragility. This was so much worse. This was Elena’s spirit unraveling.
Chapter Twelve
Elena once believedshe understood despair. Understood the concept of anguish. She thought she’d experienced both before when she’d been driven to the brink of a sadness so desperate, she would have traded anything to make it stop. Run anywhere to get away from it.
Alone in the shower, she remembered the vivid pain that had driven her to sneak aboard a ship bound for unknown lands. She didn’t need Zuri’s magic to take her back to the memories. In neither her first life nor her second had she been able to forget the taste of Catalina’s tear-stained lips.
On her skin, she could still feel the places where Catalina had clung to her. She could still hear Catalina’s sobs when she told her she’d been promised to a man like a mare sold for breeding, still smell the burning wax from the chapel candles where Catalina promised they’d find a way to be together. Promises that had turned to ash when Catalina was too afraid to run.
Elena’s throat burned when she held in the cry aching in her ribs. She gritted her teeth and choked it down. If she started now, there would be no stopping, and she wasn’t alone enough to fall apart.
No matter how hard Elena washed her skin in the scalding water, she couldn’t get clean. Couldn’t get rid of the rotting decay. She scrubbed harder. Scrubbed until she bled and healed and bled again. There was no erasing the narcotic taint consuming her skin.
All Elena could see was the corpse she should be. The woman who would have been broken and tamed and born natural children and died. The woman she would have been if she hadn’t cheated death. She should be nothing but decomposed bones long returned to the earth. Extending her life had paved a road of untold ruin.
With her forehead pressed to the shower glass, Elena accepted that she’d never known the complete absence of hope. The crush of abject failure and powerlessness.
She tried desperately to shut it all out. To break the surface of her drowning misery and take a single gasp of air. But the harder Elena resisted, the more it dragged her under. The shower’s steam turned to lead, shoving her to her knees when her body couldn’t bear the weight.
Hunched over on the hot tile, water pelting her back, Elena willed her senses to dull. All she needed was a moment of not processing everything at once. To shut out the sound of Librada’s unsteady heartbeat, still weak from blood loss despite Marisol’s healing. To forget the horrific sound of Sofia’s throat being crushed. Forget the death that nearly followed.
Even in the shower, it was all pushing in on her. The reek of pain and fear saturating the air hurt more than Sayah’s fangs tearing her flesh.
She closed her eyes to make it stop, only to be assaulted by the vivid memory of Narine’s body lying lifeless. The wet sounds of her sons’ heads hitting marble.
Her cruel mind assaulted her with more loss. She was back in a sprawling Havana mansion, holding her blood mother’s limpbody in her arms. Francisca had been so cold. So heavy in her pathetic arms. Elena had screamed until her throat was raw, begging her to wake up. To come back. Not to leave her alone.
Her heart lurched and the tears came in a violent rush that reminded her of vomiting over the side of a vessel crossing the Atlantic. She’d never even gotten to hold Robert’s broken body, his white clothes soaked through with blood. She’d led him straight to his death, too. So much death and it was all her fault.
Someone knocked at the door. The sound reverberated through Elena’s spine but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t answer. The scent of gardenias and smoke drifted under the door—Zuri. Her worry was a physical thing, pressing against Elena’s chest. Making it impossible to breathe even without her proximity.
