Page 60 of Blood from the Marrow
“Hey, I’m right here.” Elena gestured at her naked body and its objective perfection.
“Do you think she got those muscles before she became a vampire?” Marisol asked, expression somewhere between smitten and lecherous.
“And are we thinking she’s always a top, or sometimes a switch?” Zuri asked, drunk on the flames of possessive jealousy cracking in Elena’s eyes. “God, I’d let her?—”
Elena cut Zuri off with a furrowed brow and a tense jaw. “She’s not coming back with us. Lib has until we leave for the airport tonight to?—”
“Oh, no.” Zuri shook her head. “You’re not doing that to her?—”
“Holy shit, were Lib and Hel a thing?” Marisol sat up, crossing her legs and pulling the sheet over her lap. “There was so much going on last night, but they had such a vibe.”
“Majorly a thing,” Zuri said, finding herself excited to root for Librada’s love life. Fuck. She was going so soft it was embarrassing.
Elena relented after an annoying amount of prodding and told Marisol the story. She shared more details about how heartbroken Librada had been. How badly she’d wanted it to work, but neither she nor Hel had known how to cope with what they’d been through.
And here they were, thrust into battle again.Could it be a fire-fights-fire thing? Could the same thing that broke them bring them back?Damn it if Zuri didn’t hope so.
“I thought Librada had moved on, but I guess there’s no getting over a love like that,” Elena muttered.
Zuri sighed.I know that stupid-ass feeling.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ghosts may not be lingeringaround The Order’s grounds, but they sure felt like they were following Elena around her Venetian home. While Zuri and Marisol slept into the afternoon, Elena drifted through the halls. Room after room seemed to mock her with their covered furniture. To ridicule her with an emptiness material things couldn’t fill.
She hadn’t planned on going back to the drawing room. Hadn’t thought about the painting of Cleopatra until she pulled its dusty cover off and sat in the armchair across from it.
Rendered in oil, Cleopatra and her lover were both lying sideways on a chaise lounge and facing their audience of one. The red velvet fabric was so rich in the painting. The lover’s desire was subtle; slightly parted lips and half-lidded eyes and her head tipped to the side to expose her neck. Behind her, Cleopatra’s hunger was unmistakable. Mouth open and fangs exposed, she looked directly at Elena as if asking how she should ravage the woman’s skin. Asking how deeply she should drink when she finally sliced into her carotid and filled her mouth with fresh blood.
The artist—a human lover Francisca had taken when they’d returned to Spain for a spring after a particularly lucrative sugarcane harvest—had been fascinated by their kind. She’d wanted to learn every drop of legend and mythology Francisca knew. She’d studied so well that she managed to capture the agony of thirst the moment before it was sated. Elena could never look at the painting without her mouth watering. Without her fangs aching to break free.
Elena couldn’t help but wonder what Francisca would say if she were sitting next to her. Couldn’t stop thinking about how different life would’ve been if she never asked Francisca for a sister.
Tired, she allowed herself to think of her birth parents. It had taken Elena less than a decade to return home to Cádiz, but it had been too late. A smallpox outbreak had taken her mother and father three winters earlier.
If she’d known the morning she snuck out of her house, heart freshly broken by Catalina’s cowardice, that it was the last time she’d see them… Would she have said goodbye? Would she have left? Could living a small life be worth it to avoid the constant pain of loss?
At the sound of familiar footsteps, Elena closed her eyes. Moments later, a soft voice scared away the phantoms clouding Elena’s mind. Chased Elena out of the past she couldn’t change.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Elena asked without turning her head toward the open door.
“Not without you,” Marisol replied so sweetly, the words dripped like honey over Elena’s sore chest.
Elena couldn’t stop her lip from twitching into a smile. Marisol offered her love and affection so easily. It was hard for Elena to believe she deserved it after all the ways she’d failed.
“This looks like it should be hanging in a museum somewhere,” Marisol said when she approached.
Elena’s chuckle rumbled in her throat. Her life felt like a fucking museum. A collection of all the things that had once been.
Marisol stood, wearing nothing but Zuri's T-shirt, messy hair tossed to one side. Illuminated by the sun glowing around the edges of the covered windows, she was angelic even without her wings. Instead of getting up, Elena extended her hand and invited Marisol to sit in her lap.
Marisol slid onto her lap without hesitation. Like maybe that’s where she’d been planning to sit all along.
The weight of Marisol was immediately soothing. She rested one arm around Elena’s shoulders and turned her attention to the painting. “I took art history in college,” Marisol said with a little grin. “Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten a B- if we were studying things like this.”
Elena wrapped her arms around Marisol’s waist and found the hem of her shirt with her thumb. “And what would you have told your instructor about this work?” She tried to make her voice professorial, even if she didn’t have the desire to role-play.
“You first,” she replied, eyes bright.
