Page 28 of Blood from the Marrow
“Bullshit.” Zuri stepped closer, refusing to let Elena push her away. “You want to talk about making people vulnerable? What do you think you’re doing right now?”
“Keeping you safe. All of you.” Elena’s mask slipped, showing the raw devastation underneath. “The farther you are from me, the safer you’ll be.”
“That’s not how this works.” Marisol moved forward, and Elena flinched like she was bracing for Sayah’s fangs. ButMarisol just reached for her hand, held on even when Elena tried to pull away. “We’re not safer apart. We’re just alone. Hurting.”
“Better hurt than dead,” Elena said in a tone so dry it sounded wrong.
“Better together than whatever the fuck this is,” Zuri countered. “You think you’re protecting us? Look at Bambi. Really look at her.”
Elena’s eyes flickered to Marisol, taking in the shadows under her eyes, the way exhaustion had hollowed her cheeks. Something cracked in her expression. A flicker of the real her burning through the facade.
“I can’t—” Elena wore the weight of all her lifetimes in the fracture in her voice. “I can’t watch her hurt you again. Either of you. I can’t be the reason?—”
“Then don’t be,” Zuri snapped. “Be the reason we survive this. Be the reason we’re strong enough to fight back.”
Elena tried to pull away from Marisol again, but Zuri reached for her free hand. “I’m not strong enough?—”
“You are.” Zuri forced the words past the tightness in her throat. “But not like this. Not alone.”
“Neither of you can possibly imagine what the hell we’re up against now.” She jerked away from both of them. “We’re going to be saved by the power of fluttering feelings.” She pushed off the desk. “This is war. And I’m not going to pretend everything’s fine just because you can’t handle reality.”
“Elena, please don’t—” Marisol’s cry was unbearable.
“You want to know what’s real?” Elena’s voice dropped to something deadly quiet. “I’m not the person you think I am. I’m the shit leader too preoccupied playing house to see what’s right in front of me. I made myself weak?—”
“That’s not?—”
“Get out.” Elena turned her back on them, spine rigid. “Both of you. Now.”
Zuri stood in front of Elena with her back to Marisol, absorbing every lash Elena doled out. Every word that said more about her pain and fear than anything else.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
Elena’s eyes were brimming with tears when she nodded. When she couldn’t manage to form the lie.
“Great. Then we’re going to have to save you from yourself.” She waited for Elena to look at her with the pained expression that shattered her heart. The one that strengthened her resolve and convinced her that Elena would do the same for her if she were too broken to save herself.
“But if you think for a fucking second that we’re leaving you to destroy yourself”—she entwined her fingers with Marisol’s and couldn’t tell which of them was trembling—“you haven’t been paying very close attention.”
Chapter Fourteen
“How arewe supposed to do this without her?” Marisol asked when she stopped crying over Elena’s best effort to shove them away. An effort Zuri vowed would be unsuccessful while she let Marisol drench the collar of her shirt with tears.
Winter was nearly upon them and it made Zuri’s mini greenhouse pleasantly warm even in the mid-afternoon. Sitting in the armchair across from Marisol and surrounded by plants and herbs, Zuri took a deep breath. She imagined herself as the taproot of an old tree—pushing through packed soil and hard rock to anchor herself. To find water.
“Well, that’s simple, Bambi.” Zuri waited for Marisol to look at her, brows drawn together. “We do it for her.”
Marisol looked at her like she didn’t understand. Like she feared that Zuri had lost her mind at the most inconvenient moment.
“Simple?” She looked like she might laugh before thinking better of it. “What about this is simple?” Color rushed over Marisol’s elegant throat and Zuri was thrown back to a time when she was flushed for wildly better reasons. “Are we supposed to fight a vampire war?” Her eyes were wide with exasperation. “How?”
“One superficial cut at a time,” she replied with her healed hand up.
“Zuri—”
“I’m going to start where I can, Bambi, because I have to start somewhere.” She straightened. “I have to inaugurate my coven because there’s no way to convince my old one?—”
“Three witches against who knows how many vampires?” Marisol scooted to the edge of her seat, eyes wide with worry. “I believe in you. You’re badass, fearless, and incredible, but Sayah?—”
