Page 56 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Despite not having said a word to anyone, news of the impending nuptials spread like wildfire over the weeks leading up to the ceremony. Marisol had barely slept and suddenly her wedding night was just hours away.

It should probably feel scary, but all she could summon was exhilaration.

She wanted this. Wanted more than anything to be bonded with the two women who’d given her everything she’d wanted but never hoped to have.

Love. Family. Community. Safety. There would never be an emotion more profound than the intense affection Marisol held in her chest.

They’d decided to get ready separately. Well, Marisol had decided and Zuri and Elena had begrudgingly agreed.

Elena with her daughters and Zuri with her sisters.

Hel had offered to help Marisol get ready, but she’d declined.

Not because Elena’s gorgeous face had flared with jealousy while she made breakfast for her and Zuri.

That had been fun. But it would only feel lonelier with someone she wasn’t close to the way Zuri and Elena were with her people.

Lib and Avani had both tried to bully their way into her room, but Marisol had barred them all and threatened to call off the ceremony if they didn’t respect her wishes.

There was something right about getting ready on her own.

She’d done so much on her own, but this would be the last moment of solitude.

It felt symbolic or maybe even poetic, and for the first time since her grandmother died, she didn’t resent being alone.

She could play music at full blast and sing her heart out on the happiest day of her life so far.

Marisol had just come out of the shower in one of the small guesthouses when someone knocked at the front door.

She chuckled to herself and wondered who’d broken first: Zuri or Elena.

It was really fifty-fifty. Zuri might not be able to stand the idea of Marisol being alone, and Elena was terrible at following anyone’s rules but her own.

She ignored the door and pulled on the sweats and T-shirt she’d wear while she did her own hair and makeup. An unexpected voice followed another knock.

“Marisol, it’s, um… me… Clara.”

She froze in the small living room with the blow-dryer running in her hand.

“I’m sorry, I don’t want to bother you. I just wanted to give you something,” she called through the door. “I wanted to explain what it is, but I can just leave it on the front step here. Maybe it’s self-explanatory.”

Unsure if Clara could see her through the gap in the living room curtains she’d only haphazardly closed, Marisol didn’t move a muscle.

She stood there for several pounding heartbeats until she remembered Clara wasn’t a freaking bird of prey and Marisol wasn’t a field mouse.

She couldn’t avoid detection through stillness.

Deciding it was better to get any awkwardness over with, Marisol dropped the dryer on the couch and opened the door.

Clara stood on the other side, holding a small plastic planter that had once been a 2-liter soda bottle with a piece of wood coming out of the dirt.

A single bright green leaf had sprouted precariously at the top.

“I brought you something,” Clara repeated.

“A stick?” Marisol asked with a smile, hoping for a joke because her mood was still at meteoric heights.

Clara chuckled and Marisol was relieved that she’d heard the levity she tried to infuse in her tone.

“It’s a fig tree.” Clara looked down at her offering and back at Marisol. “Well, it will be a fig tree. Right now it’s a cutting.”

Marisol waited for more of the explanation locked behind Clara’s thin lips.

“We don’t have a ton of traditions,” Clara said. “But, um…”

“Do you want to come inside?” Marisol asked after a beat, surprising Clara as much as herself.

Watery hazel eyes stared back at her for several seconds until Clara nodded. Until Marisol stepped out of the way and showed Clara to the couch.

Sitting across from Marisol, Clara gripped the plastic vessel in her lap like it was a shield. A lifeline. “The way we live, we rarely get legally married,” she explained. “Some of us think paper trails matter. Others don’t.” She shrugged. “We always err on the side of caution.”

Marisol nodded, brow furrowed to match the tightening in her chest. The more she learned about the Aglion, the more she understood Clara had tried to spare her. Even if she’d never agree that it was better to be left behind, she couldn’t see it as a selfish, callous act anymore.

“So, we developed this way of commemorating unions.” She handed Marisol the plant.

“The tree with the deepest roots ever recorded was a wild fig. The internet also says that it represents peace and the cycle of life. I don’t know if that’s what it was meant to symbolize at first,” she rambled half to herself before meeting Marisol’s eyes again.

“But for us, now at least, it feels good to leave something that will take hold and won’t move.

When a couple—” Her eyes widened and her face flushed hard.

“When members of our little group want to join together as a family, they plant a fig tree somewhere it will thrive. Then it will establish the roots we can’t. ”

“That’s beautiful,” Marisol whispered around the lump in her throat. “Thank you.”

“I wish you all the very best, Marisol.” As if she didn’t know what to do with her empty hands, Clara clasped them together hard enough to turn her fingers white.

“I wish that for you with my entire heart. Once this is over, I hope you will have a long, beautiful life with the family of your choosing.”

The words peeled back too many layers of Marisol’s anger at once.

It exposed her heart too quickly. When Clara stood, Marisol couldn’t stop herself from whispering, “Wait.” She swallowed again, her mouth the driest it had ever been while sweat gathered at her palms. “Do you, um, want to stay? While I get ready?” She gripped the plastic container hard.

“I don’t want to have a weird wave at the back of my head because I couldn’t see it. ”

Clara hesitated as if waiting for Marisol to change her mind. To correct herself. When Marisol didn’t, she nodded emphatically.

Sitting in an armchair, Marisol tried to relax while Clara blowdried her hair straight.

Tried to imagine she was sitting in a salon.

That it was a stranger running a brush through her hair.

But she couldn’t do that either. Didn’t want to do it.

Stupid as it was, she wanted to know what it was like to have her mother help her get ready for something.

She wanted to indulge in the illusion of having the mom she’d always wanted. Maybe just this once.

“Your hair is just like mine,” Clara said while going over the same spot at the nape of her neck to force it into compliance. “Your grandma used to say it was easier if my hair would just curl.”

“Instead of just going limp after attacking it with a curling iron?”

“Your grandmother once made me wear those horrific foam curlers for a full twenty-four hours before we went to a neighbor’s wedding.” Clara chuckled. “I went from Shirley Temple to wet Maltese between the kitchen table and the car despite a whole can of hairspray. Your grandmother was so mad.”

Marisol laughed. It was easy to imagine her normally sweet grandma getting cranky over Clara’s hair. It was her temper’s Achilles’ heel. Like she took her hair’s texture as a personal attack.

“I just wanted to iron my hair for prom. It’s so much easier, but she had her heart set on this updo she saw in a magazine.” The pleasant memory warmed Marisol’s chest. “When I didn’t want to go to her hairdresser—”

“Rosita?”

“Yeah,” Marisol replied in open surprise. Of course Clara would know Rosita. They’d existed in the same world until Marisol was born. It was so strange to imagine Clara as the kid in her place in her memories. To imagine her tagging along to the old-lady salon Rosita ran out of her house.

“What? You didn’t want the Blue Hair Special for prom?”

“It might have been better than Abi spending an entire morning trying to make a miracle happen.” Marisol chuckled, fingers finding the edge of her T-shirt. “Long story short, I ended up with a very slicked back high ponytail.”

“Did you go with someone special? To prom?” Clara asked casually before freezing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s okay,” Marisol interrupted. “You can ask. I don’t mind.” She clenched the material in her clammy hands. “I went with friends, but, um, only because my someone special and I broke up before.”

Clara started moving again, as if she’d gotten beyond a deadly trap. “What happened?”

Marisol shrugged. “I don’t know. An angsty teenage argument.”

“And my mom.” Clara sounded like she was stepping out onto a tightrope. “She was okay with your someone special?”

Marisol smiled again, thinking of how sweet and accepting her grandmother had been. “Yep. She was a pretty cool old lady.”

Clara’s unclenching was audible, as if for the first time un-worrying that she’d left Marisol in bad hands. “Was it hard for you?” She put her hand on Marisol’s shoulder for the briefest moment. Marisol didn’t know whether she wanted it back or never wanted to have felt it at all. “Coming out?”

“No,” she replied. “Not really.” Grief was a ligature around her heart. “I wish she could be here today,” she muttered. “I think the trio of it all might be confusing at first.” She looked down at her lap. “But I think she’d really like Elena and Zuri.”

Clara didn’t immediately reply, and when she did, her voice matched the tremble in Marisol’s hands.

“She would love how fiercely they protect you,” she decided with confidence.

“She’d probably ask Elena a million questions about history.

My mother always had such a romanticized view of the pre-Castro Cuba of her childhood,” she added with more warmth in her voice.

“Right?” Marisol grinned. “That’s exactly what I thought too. I’m pretty sure Elena would leave out the unsavory bits.”

“I think she would have liked that,” Clara muttered as if in self-comfort.

For the first time, Marisol imagined Clara alone.

At least she and her grandmother had each other.

Who did Clara cling to? Who’d rubbed her back and eased her to sleep on bad nights?

She thought of Dutch and his gentle voice and hoped her mother had allowed herself some comfort.

A wave of regret crested at the back of Marisol’s throat.

Bile burning. The urge to apologize for rejecting Clara was so strong, but she didn’t know the words to say.

Didn’t know where to begin to honor her own hurt while forgiving Clara’s choices.

Choices that had obviously caused her a world of self-inflicted pain.

“Did she know?” Marisol asked instead.

“My mom?” Clara ran her fingers through Marisol’s hair to comb it back before taking another segment to straighten. Marisol let the touch soothe her nervous system. “About the Aglion, you mean?”

Marisol nodded.

“No,” she replied after a beat. “I don’t think so. How we inherit power is unpredictable. We think that’s what’s helped keep us alive. It skips around sometimes for several generations and can manifest more strongly in a child than their parent, just to completely pass by the next kid .”

“But she was so good at home remedies.”

“I think natural proclivities linger,” her mother explained. “Judith’s twin brother never came into his power, but he went on to be quite the decorated college wrestler.”

For the first time Marisol considered what happened if a person didn’t sprout their wings.

There would be no reason for them to live on the run.

It wasn’t just Marisol who’d lost time with their family.

Everyone in the caravan had probably cut themselves off from a parent or child or sibling as if to keep them free from contagion. To give them a chance at normalcy.

Clara finished ironing her hair straight, letting it fall just beyond Marisol’s shoulders, and asked, “What are you going to wear?”

“A simple white dress.” Marisol stood but didn’t move toward the bedroom where it hung behind the door.

“It’s kind of gauzy. Feels appropriate for a magical binding ceremony.

” She shifted her weight on bare feet. “It’s not like I found a guide online for what to do for this.

” She chuckled, nervous about what felt like the natural end to their time together.

Unsure that she was ready for it to end.

“Thank you,” Clara said, hazel eyes bright with her glossy emotion. “For letting me spend this time with you.”

“Do you want to see what it looks like?” Marisol blurted.

“I mean, we’re not exactly getting walked down an aisle…

I doubt there will be one of those,” she muttered to herself.

“And I mean, maybe that would be weird anyway, but if you wanted to help me get dressed or, I mean, you don’t have to. You already helped with my hair—”

“I’d love to,” she replied like she was trying desperately not to cry.

“Do you, um, the necklace.” Marisol reached behind herself.

“I think Abi would’ve wanted you to have it back.

” Before Clara could protest, Marisol barreled on.

“Zuri told me about the memory. About when you took it off.” She unhooked the clasp.

“It’s not mine to wear yet,” she decided before pulling it off and handing it to her mother.

Clara looked at the small pendant on a simple chain like it was the Hope Diamond. “It’s yours, I don’t want—”

“It should’ve been yours,” Marisol insisted. “Will you please take it back? Until it’s my turn again?”

Clara bit the inside of her cheek, but that didn’t stop the tears from streaming down her flushed face. She took the necklace carefully, closed her eyes and cried. Unable to stop herself, Marisol lunged forward and hugged her.