Page 33 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

Chapter Twenty-Three

“We should leave now,” Elena said when they were back on the boat.

Her attention was on Hel, whom she had not invited to join them.

Librada trusted her, but that connection had not been tested in eighty years.

Elena remembered the expression on Librada’s stoic face.

No, not her face. The brilliant light she’d seen in her eyes the moment Hel stepped out of the shadows.

Fuck. Time alone had made her soft. She was letting a stranger into her circle when there were unseen arrows aimed straight at her heart.

And why? Because her blood daughter was still in love and Elena couldn’t find the will to snuff out the flame lighting her soul.

Not when Elena’s own love had brought her back from the brink.

A great comfort that will be when we’re all dead. One day, she told herself. She’d allow Librada one day in Hel and then they’d be on a flight back home without the cultist in her midst.

“We’re all tired,” Marisol said with her hand on Elena’s arm. “We should rest before we go.”

The touch was so soft, Elena had to fight the desire to flinch. Not because she didn’t want it, but because it still frightened her to know how much she needed it. Because it forced her to consider what she’d do if she lost it.

Elena covered Marisol’s hand with hers and turned it over, looking at her palm.

She’d smelled her blood the moment it spilled but Zuri hadn’t allowed her to race up the tower to see why.

Let her, she repeated to herself. Was she supposed to lead an army against Sayah when she allowed a witch to command her?

Her chest heaved. If her heart was only hers, it would surely have broken under the weight of her grief by now.

“What did she do?” Elena asked, trying to keep the harshness out of her tone.

“I think she made it so we could access her archive,” Marisol replied, attention jumping from Elena to Hel.

While Librada steered them out of the maze of watery hazards and through the blinding fog that made Elena want to crawl out of her skin to escape the sensory deprivation, Marisol told them what she’d learned in some hidden chamber in Sabina’s tower.

Elena didn’t know Sabina enough to trust her.

The vampire hadn’t left The Order since well before they took over the monastery.

She couldn’t decide whether it was a show of good faith that Sabina had given Marisol the key to her private space or whether it could have marked her as a target in some way.

Elena preferred to think about that than the horrors someone enshrined in ancient pots.

Music and conversation and motorized boats filled the night air as they approached Venice again. Elena’s anxiety settled against her will. She’d always loved this city. It had been her sanctuary after she’d lost Zuri and she hadn’t ever imagined returning with her.

“This is your house?” Marisol asked, eyes wide while she peered up at the detached villa on the canal. “It looks like a museum or...”

“It’s always felt more like the palazzo of a shamed, black-sheep aristocrat to me,” Zuri joked, standing when Librada steered the boat between the striped mooring posts in front of the house. “Like a marquis with a sex scandal.”

Elena followed Marisol’s gaze to the carved, pale stone facade rising from the water.

Four stories of high-arched windows and two stubby balconies that someone had probably spent months perfecting.

The kind of details that cost more than most people made in a lifetime, though Elena had stopped thinking about money in those terms decades ago.

In the end, it was just another place to sleep.

Somewhere to store her things between the stretches of years when she couldn’t bear to stay still.

For the first time in her second life, opulence seemed more like a waste than a display of power.

Unnecessary when the only things that mattered were crammed together in a small boat.

Sofia leapt onto the narrow platform, tying the rope to the post before pressing her thumb to the keypad to unlock the gate protecting the door.

Elena kept her eyes and ears trained on the canal.

There was little movement in the residential quarter and she was ready for the slightest change.

When everyone was safely inside, Elena followed.

“Jesus,” Marisol gasped, standing in the atrio because she hadn’t made it more than three steps from the doorway. “Are you freaking kidding me with this?”

Elena looked around the space. From intricately designed marble floors to layered tray ceilings circling the glass chandelier that had once hung in the Palace of Versailles, it was perfect. Had been perfect.

“Wait until you see this, Bambi.” Zuri slipped her hand in Marisol’s and led her away.

Elena’s chest tightened, skin warming. She knew exactly where Zuri was taking her and she was eager to follow, but she had something to do first.

“There’s probably a rather posh terrace somewhere around here,” Hel said when Elena started toward her daughters. “I’ll go find it.”

Librada and Sofia stood together near the elevator no one ever used.

“I explicitly told you to remain in Miami,” Elena said, voice as cold and brittle as she could make it. It was an impression of the disappointment she didn’t feel.

Sofia cast her gaze to her feet looking every bit the scolded child. The memory of her bleeding in an alleyway in Rome flashed in Elena’s mind. She’d always been a fearless girl, even at two hundred years old.

“Did you know about this?” Elena turned her question to Librada.

Librada replied with the quickest shake of her head. She didn’t want to betray her sister, but she didn’t want to disappoint Elena either.

“So you disobeyed me all on your own?” Elena rested her hands on her hips. “Decided, without consulting anyone but yourself, that you knew better than me.” She didn’t have the energy to pretend. “Looks like we’re lucky that you did.”

Sofia’s attention snapped up from the floor, her face wearing the same confusion as Librada’s.

“You were there to help your sister protect… everything that’s valuable to me.”

“We’re family,” Sofia said, attention darting to the archway Zuri had taken Marisol through.

Librada’s posture tightened, but Elena recognized her need to stifle emotion. The one she couldn’t get out of her eyes. “A family protects each other,” she echoed.

Elena struggled to take a full inhale. “Go on,” she said before her daughters saw her crying and lost complete faith in her. “We leave at sundown tomorrow. No excuses. And no leaving the house,” she said seriously, gaze on Sofia. “I will not have you alone—”

“I will not leave you,” Sofia vowed, confidence unwavering.

Elena nodded and left before she showed any more weakness.

By the time she’d crossed the great room and dining room, she had gathered herself just enough to stop the tremble in her fingers.

She shoved away the stink of blood and heartbreaking stench of Marisol’s fear, and focused on the fact that they were safe.

Together and safe, despite Sayah’s efforts to fuck with her.

“No way!” Marisol’s delighted shriek carried down the hall. “That’s not Elena!”

Standing in the drawing room where all the furniture was covered in thick, white sheets, Marisol was holding a frame in one hand and covering her mouth with the other.

“Is this really you?” Marisol’s hazel eyes were the mossy green of vibrant life.

Elena looked at Zuri carrying the sheet she’d pulled off a mantel. A mantel holding the few portraits and rare photos Elena had allowed herself to keep.

Illuminating the room with joy Elena never thought would warm her skin again, Marisol looked between Elena and the image she was holding. “But those curls.” She furrowed her brow. “How did you even get bangs to curl like that?”

Elena strode toward them, an involuntary smile trapped between her teeth. “I’ll have you know that was the apex of Regency fashion at the time.” She looked down at a version of herself she barely recognized.

If she closed her eyes, Elena could still smell the white roses pinned to her elaborate hairdo. The silk roses cascading down the back of her hand-sewn gown had looked so real to her then. The suffocating heat of sitting for the painter with a corset so tight she couldn’t breathe.

“When was that again?” Zuri teased.

“A long time ago,” Elena replied with a quirked brow.

“You looked gorgeous,” Marisol muttered to herself, gaze following the curve of the highly structured dress.

Elena’s chest warmed. What she would have given to have Marisol and Zuri with her then. What she wouldn’t trade to have spent every moment of her lives with them.

“I’m just disappointed there’s not a wayward polaroid of her with teased hair and shoulder pads from the eighties,” Zuri said with a chuckle, setting the sheet on top of a covered armchair in front of the cold fireplace. “You know she was giving full Nine-to-Five.”

Marisol’s energy was blindingly bright. “Were you?”

Elena couldn’t help but keep the game going. “Or I shaved my head into a spiked mohawk and followed The Ramones around for a few years,” she replied with a shrug even as she laughed.

Marisol picked up a small black-and-white photo of Francisca, the only photo of her blood mother Elena had. It was one more than she had of her birth mother. The photo was a blurry image of Francisca sitting on the porch of her country estate.

Elena had been standing under the shade of a sprawling royal poinciana tree, its flowers bright orange, watching the photographer work.

She’d made a joke she couldn’t remember, ruining Francisca’s stoic pose and the photograph.

Elena’s laughter withered in her dry throat while the memory of Francisca’s reverberated in her chest.

Elena had been so young then, she still believed in forever love.

She hadn’t learned that forever meant watching everyone she loved turn to ash.

Suddenly, the sheets meant to protect her useless things from dust looked like funeral shrouds.

Adornments in the beautiful prison she’d built to house her memories and her grief.

She’d tried so hard to guard herself against the inevitable march of death.

While Marisol and Zuri gleamed with life, it was Elena who’d been dying.

She was the ghost haunting her own existence, so terrified of losing them that she’d already started grieving while they were still here.

Still breathing. Still choosing her despite the risk.

After everything she’d done. All the ways she’d failed. Elena didn’t deserve them. Didn’t deserve the love she’d lose.

“Elena?” Marisol’s voice was soft, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

The question cracked something open in Elena’s chest. Something she’d been keeping locked away for weeks. Months. Maybe centuries.

“I can’t protect you.” The words tumbled out, broken and raw and revoltingly true. “I keep telling myself I can, but I can’t. Tonight proved that. You were alone up there with those vampires and I wasn’t—” Her voice shattered. “I’m going to be the reason you get killed. Both of you.”

Zuri moved closer, but Elena stepped back, hands shaking.

“Loving me is a fucking death sentence,” she said, confession pouring from her. “Everyone I’ve ever loved dies. Everyone who gets close to me—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Zuri lunged forward and caught Elena by the wrist. “Everyone dies sometime. You didn’t invent—”

“You don’t understand.” Elena saw everything with startling clarity.

“Sayah is coming for me, and she’ll use you to destroy me.

She’ll hurt you to hurt me and I may not be able to stop it.

” The intrusive image of watching Zuri and Marisol die the way she’d watched her sons die nearly knocked her to her knees.

A sob wracked her raw chest. “I’d die for you,” she vowed, hoping any gods left were still listening.

She nearly swore to Lilith as if she were watching from some celestial throne.

“I’d die for both of you, but that’s not enough. ”

“Then try living for us instead,” Zuri said before pulling Elena into a hug. “What the fuck good are you to anyone dead?”

Elena couldn’t stop her tears even when they streamed down her face and onto Zuri’s neck.

“You want to protect us?” Marisol hugged her from behind.

Elena should have felt crushed between Marisol and Zuri, but she only wanted them to press in more. To hold her tighter until she disappeared.

“Then stop running from us. Stop pushing us away because you’re scared.” Marisol’s voice was steady, sure. “We’re not going anywhere, Elena. We’re here. We chose you. And we keep choosing you every single day.”

Elena wanted to ask how that could be possible, but she couldn’t make herself speak. Couldn’t do anything but stop resisting.

“This is what love is,” Marisol muttered and kissed the back of her neck. “It’s not just the good parts. It’s choosing each other even when everything’s falling apart. It’s staying. Always.”

“Since when do you let yourself be defined by the things you’re afraid of?” Zuri held her almost tight enough. “You want to keep us safe from Sayah? Then you’re going to have to step the fuck up. Not run, not hide. Fight.”

Elena lifted her head to look at Zuri.

“That’s what we’re all doing here,” Zuri said, her own tears not changing the knife’s edge of her tone.

“We are fighting for you. For each other. And absolutely no one is going to take jack shit from any of us.” A staggering amount of power erupted from Zuri.

A strength of conviction that knocked the air from Elena’s lungs.

“Not without paying for it,” she added with a sneer.

Something in Elena’s chest thawed. The constant static of fear and self-doubt and grief quieted. The sharp edges of her panic dulled until all that remained was the warmth of Marisol’s arms around her and the strength of Zuri’s steady gaze.

Hope, Elena realized in a moment of disbelief, was the strongest motivation she’d experienced yet. She didn’t know whether Zuri and Marisol were right, but Elena was tired of being wrong lately. Wrong and isolated.

She couldn’t talk herself into following her own instincts. She was tired and wanted to trust with her heart what she didn’t believe with her mind. Her way hadn’t worked and what did she have to lose by trying? What did she have to lose but everything?