Page 13 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

Chapter Nine

“I don’t know what I was expecting for the Feast of Eternity.” Marisol tightened her grip around Elena’s fingers. “But this was not it.”

While Marisol was vibrating with excitement to walk through the entrance hidden behind a bookshelf in Sayah’s library, Zuri was ready to go back to their room, pack their things, and leave.

She hadn’t slept since Marisol told them about her mother.

Elena didn’t have to read her mind to know that she was bubbling with worry.

It was coming off her in suffocating waves.

Elena had already started formulating a plan to vet Clara and her intentions, but she hadn’t discussed it yet.

Marisol had been very clear about her desire not to think about the complexity of her mother’s resurgence and her connection to other Aglion.

Marisol wanted to put off the enormity of the revelation, and Elena couldn’t blame her.

Unlike Zuri, she was confident that not a soul in the world would take advantage of Marisol.

They’d never let anyone hurt her. Not even her own mother.

“Why are we going into underground tunnels when everyone else is feasting in the ballroom?” Zuri’s gaze narrowed on the open doorway.

Elena slipped her free arm around Zuri’s waist. “Sayah loves to show off. Loves the drama of a moment.” She kissed her cheek. “She wants to make sure I know how much she spent on this place.” She sighed. “For whatever reason, she seems to think I care.”

Down a small set of stairs, they left the bright library and descended into a candlelit wine cellar fit for a Tuscan castle. Zuri’s gaze bounced off the stone archways and walls lined with bottles as they walked.

“What in The Cask of Amontillado is going on here?” Zuri muttered when they crossed into the small chamber littered with half a dozen brown leather armchairs.

Narine and her sons, then Librada and Sofia, joined them shortly after they arrived.

Elena had settled into her seat, a vintage Bordeaux in her glass, when Sayah swept into the room.

At the sight of six female vampires behind her, Elena stiffened, but then Sayah smiled and raised her own glass and the women she’d brought with her melted into the small group.

Midnight black hair in Viking-style braids, Sayah’s blue eyes were vibrant against her dark makeup.

“I’d like to think Lilith would appreciate us honoring the night she breathed us into being with eight-thousand-dollar bottles.

” She took a deep breath and looked around their surroundings like she was seeing them for the first time.

Drama. “I rescued these stones from a Serbian monastery. A structure that had stood for centuries erased just like that to make room for something new.”

Unsure how long Sayah planned to monologue, Elena relaxed into the soft leather and sipped her wine. Seated on either side of her, Marisol was fascinated and Zuri was making a valiant attempt not to roll her eyes. Standing behind Elena, Librada had declined the wine and Sofia had taken two glasses.

“Sometimes we change things just to change them, don’t we?

” Sayah continued, gaze drifting over them like she’d practiced in the mirror.

“But sometimes the old ways are the best ways.” Her attention darted from Elena to Narine who was distracted, reading bottle labels by weak candle light. “Isn’t that right, Narine?”

“Sure,” she replied with a shrug. “Although I’m not in a hurry to give up my keratin treatments.” She pushed her long, glossy hair off her shoulder.

Sayah’s smile was a sword slipping out of its sheath. All at once, Elena noticed where her six vampires had positioned themselves around them. She was aware of the hidden door being closed. Of the tension pulling at her gut.

“Oh, Elena, don’t ruin this for me. I had a whole thing planned,” Sayah whined, eyes fixed on her and reading the unease tightening her chest.

“What’s going on?” Zuri whispered, but Elena couldn’t put her animal instincts into words. All she had was the overwhelming sense of wrongness. It was the charge in the air before an electrical storm. The eerie silence before an ambush.

“Lib—”

“Oh, fine. We’ll do it your way,” Sayah said with a wave of her hand. “But for the record, my plan was painfully poetic.” She turned to Narine. “Actually, darling, it might be a treat if you offer a tearful confession.”

Narine’s gaze flashed to her two sons seated across the room.

“Oh, they won’t help.” Sayah raised a single brow. “Haven’t you learned to stop putting all your poisonous little eggs in male baskets?” Her grin turned into a sneer. “Go on, tell the woman who treated you like a daughter what you did.”

“Adam,” Narine called for her eldest.

But Sayah flicked her brow and two of her soldiers appeared behind Narine’s sons. Before they’d even risen, their heads were removed from their necks with near surgical precision.

Narine’s agonized scream rang in Elena’s chest and echoed the sound she’d made all those months ago when she watched her own children cut down. The metallic stink of vampire blood choked the air, turning Elena’s stomach.

“Sayah, what the fuck are you doing?” Elena was on her feet, arms extended as if she could shield the beings she loved most in the world from the violence. As if she could will her heart not to rend at the sound of Marisol’s crying and Zuri’s disgust.

“Protecting you, my dear friend.” Sayah was completely relaxed when she turned to Narine again. “Are you really going to make me tell her?”

Narine’s eyes were so wide and pale with shock, Elena wasn’t sure she could hear Sayah speaking. Every part of Elena wanted to bound over to Narine. To wrap herself around her and ease her grief. But if she moved, Librada and Sofia would follow.

She forced her emotions aside and glanced over her shoulder.

With a look, she told Librada and Sofia to stay put.

To stay with Zuri and Marisol no matter what happened.

It was an arduous task, Elena knew. Her daughters were loaded guns ready to fire, but she needed them not to react until she understood the pieces on the board.

“Fine,” Sayah said with a sigh. “I’ll do it all myself.

Elena, darling, didn’t you find it odd that…

What was that creature’s name? Brandon, Brayden…

” She snapped her fingers as if she’d truly been searching the deepest recesses of her mind for the name.

“Baylor. That’s it. Didn’t you find it rather strange that he’d set his sights on you? ”

Elena shook her head. There was no way that what she was suggesting could be true.

“Now, if I’d been that waste of blood, I would have taken Narine out and claimed her territory.

She’s a much easier target, and the simplest plan is always the best. How did you sell that idiot on the suicide mission?

” She waited for Narine to respond, but she’d fallen to her knees on the floor.

“Well, I guess the problem with the simpler plan is, then how would you take Elena’s position and grant him legitimacy?

” She shrugged. “Maybe you had to do it your way.”

Elena couldn’t process what Sayah was saying. There was no way Narine had worked with Baylor. That she’d aided him. Elena had never given her any reason to foster betrayal.

“Actually…” Sayah exaggerated her realization. “Unless you were so duplicitous”—she covered her mouth—“you’d make it so Baylor’s bill never came due. How fortuitous that Elena discovered him just in time to tie your loose end.”

“Narine,” Elena thundered, blood and skin and heart turning to ice.

“She’s quiet now, isn’t she?” Sayah rested her hands on her hips.

“I have to say, I didn’t think that low rent poison they bought off some witches would work.

” She smiled at a stunned Elena like they were gossiping over wine.

“Don’t worry, I killed the coven. No need for other witches to get ideas about targeting vampires.

” Her gaze cut to Zuri over Elena’s shoulder and snapped Elena out of her shock.

“Narine, tell me she’s lying,” Elena demanded while doing her best to hide the tremble in her voice.

Narine, always elegant and poised, was a broken version of herself. Her fine clothes were dingy in the poorly lit cellar. Her beautiful body small where she was doubled over on the floor.

When she turned her head to look up at Elena, Narine’s eyes were black with rage.

“Do you know how often I hear about your charity?” She brought herself to her feet, mascara tears staining her face.

“How I would never have gotten any territory on my own? That I can’t do better than live on your scraps? ”

“I loved you,” Elena gasped through the unbearable pain in her chest. “Like my own daughter.”

Narine’s expression broke like a jigsaw puzzle being smashed apart. It was like she was trying to hold on to some justification, but it fell out of reach. She looked away without an answer. Without explaining how she could harbor so much greed in her heart.

“As soon as I set these events in motion,” Narine said without looking up from the floor. “The second it became real… I regretted it.”

Elena’s thoughts were spinning. “Regret?” She spit the word back at her, tears turning her lips to salt.

Disappointment, barbed and heavy, turning her heart into a stone sinking into her stomach.

“Regret?” The word was unbearably small for the enormity of her pain.

“Regret does not undo what you did,” she thundered, muscles trembling.

“Regret does not bring back my children.” She closed her eyes, but it was too late.

All Elena could see was Robert’s broken body covered in blood. All she could feel was the excruciating pain of loss. The incomparable severing that it was to lose her progeny.

She’d lived so long, witnessed countless horrors, endured unimaginable grief. But nothing, nothing, compared to the agonizing truth that Narine had tried to orchestrate her demise. That she had hurt so many who’d only ever loved her.

“I know,” Narine whispered. “I’m sorry,” she added with the desperation of a person with a knife at their throat. A person willing to say anything to escape with their lives. “If I could go back, I wouldn’t have—”

“I don’t believe you,” Elena managed, her chest raw and open and heaving. “You turned a bond deeper than blood—one based on devotion and choice and loyalty—and reduced it to ash.” She gritted her teeth to force herself to stop crying.

“And just imagine how shocked everyone will be,” Sayah started, tone like the swishing of a cat’s tail, “when they learn Narine used my sacred event to finish the job Baylor and his men couldn’t.

” She grinned. “Once I tell them how she murdered you in my own cellar, who could blame me for avenging my dear friend’s death? ”

Unthinkable betrayal took a backseat to Sayah’s threat to kill both Elena and Narine. Elena would have only one chance to get the people she loved out of there, and she had to play it exactly right.

With a look over her shoulder, she told Lib and Sofia not to make a single move without her order. They were vibrating with vengeance, ready to unleash hell on every beating heart in the room. She willed them to trust her. To obey despite their instincts to pay death with death.

Her gaze flickered to Marisol, then to Zuri in silent reassurance. She’d protect them at any cost, but she couldn’t let the fear in their eyes seep into her heart. Elena could only have a singular aim.

“It doesn’t have to go this way,” Elena said, attention back on Sayah. With every ounce of self-control she’d ever possessed, she made her face a mask when rage was roaring in her chest.

Sayah sighed, her shoulders relaxing. “I know,” she agreed.

“I expected you would’ve endorsed my idea of a meritocracy.

This cartel system is ridiculous. We’re neutering ourselves, aren’t we?

It’s always been survival of the fittest, not this…

everyone gets a piece of the pie bullshit.

” She pointed at Narine, who couldn’t stop staring at her sons’ mutilated bodies.

“Look how it’s confused the weak—thinking that they stand a chance.

That they might sneak into power. And it almost worked.

Imagine this pathetic creature trying to run a real territory.

” She laughed. “It’s a shame it ended up this way, but better this be finished than perfect.

” She spared Narine another glance. “Although she did me the favor of eliminating my competition for the throne. I doubt you wouldn’t have challenged me for it. ”

“What throne?” Narine managed.

Sayah grinned. “The one I’m going to build from blood and bones when I become the queen we fucking deserve.” She signaled to the vampire nearest Elena. “I hate to kill you, old friend, but don’t worry. Your pets are rather amusing. I’ll take good care of them.”

“Over my dead body,” Elena spit, any hope for talking her way out of the cellar gone.

“I’ve always liked it the hard way.” Sayah smiled, fangs exposed. “Remember?”