Page 50 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Three more days of watching Clara circle Marisol like a fucking satellite was all Zuri could take.

So when the shade of a woman finally walked toward the three of them sitting at the kitchen counter, Zuri nearly pole-vaulted over the fucking thing to confront her.

To ask her why the fuck she thought it was okay to swoop back into Marisol’s life after being a ghost for thirty-two years and prompt the kindest person Zuri had ever met to cry in the fucking shower when she thought no one could hear her.

“I… um… I’m sorry to bother you.” The mealy-mouthed woman looked at her hands when she spoke.

At Zuri’s side, Marisol stiffened.

“Would you like to join us?” Elena asked, earning aggressive side-eye from Zuri.

“No. I don’t want to interrupt—”

“Seems a bit late for that—”

Elena kicked Zuri under the counter, and Zuri had to fight the real urge to hiss.

“Did you need something?” Marisol asked, her tone flat and unusually devoid of emotion.

Clara shifted her weight. “I suppose I just wanted to say thank you.” She looked up at them with watery hazel eyes that made Zuri’s chest ache with reflexive empathy. “For keeping my dau—for keeping Marisol safe.”

“It’s kind of hard to leave an innocent person out on their own when there are wolves—”

“The anger you have is justified,” Clara said softly.

“It shows me just how much you love Marisol.” Her forehead wrinkled and a sad smile sputtered momentarily to life on her thin lips.

“I know you have no reason to believe me.” She took a deep breath.

“Except you’ve seen how we live.” She was looking only at Marisol now.

Marisol, who was gripping her own thighs so hard her knuckles were bloodless.

“I wanted better for you, no matter the cost, and I’m just relieved that you got it. ”

Tears, fat and heartbreaking, streamed down Clara’s slim cheeks. Zuri scrambled to hang on to her justified anger. To make herself hard against open pain.

“Leaving you, Marisol, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” Her sob cracked loose and slammed Zuri square in the chest. “And I wish I could say differently, but I’d make the same choice again and again. You got to live a life—”

Another sob cut Clara short and Zuri found herself whipping her own tears. She doubted that her own mother would ever make such a heartfelt plea. Even if she was faking. Even if it was just a ploy to get money from Zuri’s grandmother.

“Why?” Marisol’s question was so soft, Zuri imagined her as a little girl asking her grandmother why her mother hadn’t loved her enough to stay.

It was a sledgehammer to the gut. “Why couldn’t you even tell your own mother—” She cut herself off and dried her face.

“She never stopped worrying about you. Never stopped—”

“I know.” Clara surged forward, fair skin flushed deep red.

“I didn’t know how to tell her I was okay without making you two targets.

” She shook her head. “Your father and I… We thought we could get away. That we could hide somewhere just the three of us.” She swallowed so loudly, the sound joined the thundering pulse in Zuri’s ears.

“I wasn’t even showing yet when he left and never came home.

” She looked down at her hands again like she wished they belonged to someone else.

“Before I ran, I made it look like I’d had a miscarriage.

” She took a deep breath as if it might relieve the shame choking the life out of her.

“I’d always told everyone my parents died when I was a child.

” She covered her face while she gathered herself.

“To keep you both safe, I turned you into ghosts.”

Zuri tried not to put herself in Clara’s place. To imagine the terror of Elena or Marisol having gone out and never coming back. How that agony might be doubled if she was carrying a child. Goddamn it.

“How do you know he was killed?” Elena asked sensibly while Zuri was trying very hard not to cry. “He may have—”

“I know,” she said with a certainty that meant please don’t make me say. “I wish there was a way I could show you how hard it was, Marisol. That I only did it to protect you. That it was like tearing out my own heart.”

“There is,” Elena said. Her eyes were too soft and Zuri was too weak to resist.

Zuri looked at Marisol. “It’s up to you, babe. You don’t have to—”

“Okay,” Marisol said with three decades of childhood hope shining in her eyes. “If you’re willing to do it?” She held Zuri in such an unsteady gaze.

Didn’t Marisol know that there was nothing she wouldn’t do for her? That she’d endure anything. Bear any weight if it helped Marisol heal what should be an unblemished heart. The enormity of her love burned at the back of Zuri’s throat.

Zuri stood so Clara could have her seat. “I swear to every god and angel and demon and spirit and entity that has ever existed. If you’re lying about a single word you’ve said”—she dried her eyes—“you will regret it.”

Clara didn’t so much as flinch when she sat down. Didn’t change her mind when Elena explained Zuri could go into her memories. That there would be nowhere to hide any half-truths or omissions.

“What do you need me to do?” Clara asked without an ounce of hesitation.

Zuri’s magic stirred deep in her belly but it didn’t come when called. She stood in front of Clara and took her hands. With a deep breath, Zuri acknowledged she was scared. That she desperately didn’t want Clara to be lying. That she didn’t want to have to break Marisol’s heart.

“Hold out your hands.” Zuri’s tattoo itched, her magic rising so slowly.

Clara rested her hands palm up in her lap.

Zuri took another long, slow breath and tried to block out Marisol’s eager energy. “Think about the day Marisol was born,” she said before sliding her hands over Clara’s. She wanted to see the woman’s heart on the day she abandoned her only child.

Clara nodded despite the pain that flashed in her eyes. The moment she conjured it, Zuri’s magic connected with Clara’s mind.

Rather than being pulled through a portal and dropped into Clara’s memory, Zuri closed her eyes and stepped cautiously into the darkness.

The power of her new coven gave her unbelievable control.

She walked down a lightless corridor. Odorless smoke thickened with every step she took until pale light streamed through in faint pockets.

The distant sound of beeping turned rhythmic as the hallway brightened.

Ambient noise filtered through the smoke, disembodied conversations and clattering metal and more beeping.

Pain like a snake started slithering around Zuri’s waist. The corridor turned institutional beige when fluorescent lights flickered to life above her.

Pain curved Zuri’s back, slowing her pace while she braced her midsection. Fuck. The scratchy material of her hospital gown scratched her forearm where she held herself.

“Ms. Blanco, wait,” a voice called behind Zuri.

Vision blurring, Zuri looked straight ahead and pretended not to hear her.

Blanco? From Clara’s memories, Zuri knew that the woman had given a false name at the hospital. She pushed on, pain intensifying. Zuri held the source of the pain and imagined a gaping wound where all her guts would spill out if she let go.

“You’re not supposed to be up yet,” a nurse said when she caught up with her.

“I need to see my baby,” Zuri replied in Clara’s voice. At the mention of a baby, she found renewed strength.

“Why didn’t you say so?” The nurse’s face was kind, but she didn’t spare her a second glance. “I’ll take you in a wheelchair. Moving is good, but you’re only three hours out of surgery. We don’t want to push too fast.” She paused. “Where is your catheter?”

For the first time, Zuri saw a memory within a memory.

Saw Clara minutes earlier bracing herself against the handrail in the bathroom and pulling out the catheter.

Her vision doubled again and she wanted more than anything to escape the agony packed into every part of Clara’s body.

It was the tightness in her chest Zuri was desperate to let go of, but she needed to see. Needed to know. She pushed on.

The nurse faded into the background when Clara’s focus returned to her goal on the other end of the hall. A sharp pain stabbed straight up her abdomen and triggered a nearly unstoppable wave of nausea. Zuri tumbled to her side where she grabbed the wall to keep from falling.

“Here, honey. Sit. I’ll take you,” the same nurse said.

Clara didn’t remember her face, but she remembered the overwhelming urge to cry. She remembered the bone-deep desire to shake her physical limitation and run. Not away, but toward.

The squeak in the wheelchair was all Zuri could hear.

The entire universe had narrowed to that high-pitched sound and the intense desire to throw up.

She was fading. Doubting herself. Thinking about giving up.

And then they stopped in front of a picture window.

The nursery, Zuri knew even before she lifted her head.

“Let me get the nurse to let you in—”

“No.” Clara’s voice was so weak and her pain so intense.

Why wasn’t she healing herself? The moment Zuri thought it, Clara’s mind seemed to answer. Clara didn’t believe she deserved a moment of relief. Could anyone really think they deserved this? Zuri remembered something else. Pain medication tossed in the toilet and flushed with trembling hands.

“It’ll only take a second to get the—”

“No,” Clara said more firmly. “I don’t want to go inside.”

The nurse hesitated. When she started speaking about postpartum hormones, Clara turned her out. She hauled herself up with a fingertip grip on the edge of the window.

And there she was. Zuri felt the connection like lightning striking her chest. Love, enormous and permeating, reconfigured every thought in Clara’s mind. Clara looked at a tiny sleeping Marisol and cemented her decision.

With her soul tearing in two, she let out a sob from a place so deep in her heart that it dropped her to the wheelchair again. When Clara cried, it was the animalistic mourn of unmitigated agony. It was the cruelty of complete devotion.

Around Clara there were only blurs of motion.

She held her empty belly, chest burning, and ached for the child that had been part of her.

For the child she’d never know. Mouth dry and eyes swollen, Clara asked the nurse for a notepad.

With trembling fingers she wrote down Marisol’s grandmother’s name and phone number.

And then Clara was taking off a necklace.

The Aglion pendent Marisol had gotten from her grandmother.

Her tears stained the ink and Zuri couldn’t take another breath in her wracked body.

Back in Narine’s kitchen, Zuri gasped as her consciousness snapped back into her own body. Her tattoo throbbed with residual magic that felt too big for her skin to contain. The intensity of Clara’s memory clung to her. Her mouth tasted of her own salty grief.

She blinked, trying to clear the emotional fog, and caught sight of Marisol. Hands pressed over her mouth, she obviously didn’t know what to do with Zuri and Clara’s crying.

Then Zuri looked at the withered husk that was left of Clara. Without a word, she lunged forward and embraced her with her entire body.

“I’m so sorry,” Zuri whispered.

When Clara hugged her back, it was like she was clinging to driftwood in the open ocean. Zuri held her like she might rewrite history. Like she could change the story for either of them. Like she might correct the original sin of Clara’s leaving if she just willed it hard enough.