Page 58 of Blood from the Marrow (Lilith’s Legacy #2)

Marisol and Elena chuckled in unison, but Zuri knew it was only to leak the unbearable tension building between them.

Her gaze drifted between them and there was no doubt in her mind what she wanted.

“My grandmother always used to say love was sacrifice.” She took a deep breath.

“Probably because my grandpa was so useless he couldn’t even pick out his own clothes in the morning.

” She laughed to herself thinking about their constant—if not always endearing—bickering.

“But not a single moment has felt like a burden with you.” Zuri shifted her attention between them, wishing she could look both of them in the eyes at once.

“Love isn’t sacrifice. It’s willingly giving everything of yourself for the ones you love.

It’s doing anything to make them happy. To keep them safe.

To help them thrive.” She tried to hold it together but she was an engine rattling on the verge of breaking.

“You are the best parts of me. And I would be so fucking proud to be Zuri Durán from this breath until my last.”

Face flushed, Marisol didn’t even try to slow her tears.

“I’ve never felt what I have with you,” she said to both of them.

“I never could have imagined this life for myself. Would never have thought that I would ever feel so full. That it would take two people to give me all the love I’d never known.

” She chuckled. “I hadn’t really thought of myself as greedy before, but here I am.

Two incredible women who make me confident and brave.

Who let me love them. Since we decided to do this, to choose each other like this, I’ve been thinking about how hard this should be.

A two-person relationship can be so fraught, and that’s without all the other stuff.

I mean, some couples don’t survive a trip to IKEA, but everything we face makes us stronger.

” She gazed at them like she still couldn’t believe they were there.

“Every night I go to bed surrounded by love and it follows me through every step of my day. I could never have done any of this without you.” Her wings flickered to life behind her, just a moment of translucent light before they disappeared as if to show her incredible control.

“And it’s because it took loving you to understand myself.

It’s like… I couldn’t know myself until I was me.

” She furrowed her brow. “Until I realized that I was always destined to be Marisol Durán.”

Zuri dried her unstoppable tears with her forearm. “Now Bambi is fucking me up,” she muttered before leaning in to kiss her. Every time Zuri thought she couldn’t love Marisol more, she opened her mouth and proved Zuri was a fool.

“Before we do this, Bernice told me about this vampire ritual.” Elena dropped her arms and took a small step backward. “The tradition never made its way to me in Havana while it was en vogue, but the symbolism of it feels… right.”

Unsure of what Bernice would’ve taught Elena, Zuri tipped her head to the side. “What’s it about?”

“Blood?” Marisol guessed.

Elena nodded.

Zuri narrowed her gaze. “What is the impact of the ritual?”

“Well...” Elena hesitated.

Zuri couldn’t help but laugh at Elena’s attempt at sheepish. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Details were hazy,” she admitted. “But I think it’s mostly a symbolic joining.”

“I mean what else could it be?” Marisol’s expression made Zuri relax her shoulders. “We’re already binding our souls with very incomplete information about the fine print.”

“Bambi with the good points,” Zuri joked before shrugging. “Alright. We’ve got a new name. Let’s do some new blood thing, too. What the hell.”

“There are some words.” Elena pulled out a scrap of paper from her pocket like a semi-prepared groom. She read them to herself before shoving it back into her pocket.

Her eyes went from brown to black when she extended her fangs. “Blood as magic,” she said before pressing her thumb to her razor-sharp fang. A stream of blood flowed into the palm of her hand and Zuri recognized the sound of an incantation fueled by the power of blood magic. “Blood as life.”

Elena smeared the blood across her bottom lip. Before Zuri could say that they should stop and figure out the meaning of Bernice’s spell, Elena was kissing Marisol. Completing the spell by having her kiss the blood off her lips.

Well, fuck. Zuri wasn’t going to leave Marisol alone if some foreign bit of blood magic went bad. When Elena turned to Zuri and made a new streak of blood across her lip, Zuri held her breath and knew in her bones that she would face anything for them.

“Blood as covenant,” Elena said and kissed Zuri.

The metallic taste of Elena’s kiss made Zuri sigh in relief. There was only blood. Only the perfume of Marisol’s skin. No tingle of unintended magic.

With the night growing colder, Zuri didn’t linger in Elena’s kiss. It was time for one more symbol of their new family. One more signal to the world that they belonged to each other.

“Ready?” Zuri took a deep breath. Having run an emotional mile before starting hadn’t been wise. It was a struggle to focus her mind on the incantation she’d spent so many nights perfecting. One that would capture their intention.

Elena held the bowl for Zuri. She’d been so focused on getting the binding right, she hadn’t considered that she didn’t have a surface to put things on. Damn it.

“Each of you hold out your left arm,” she said, trying to keep her nerves at bay while she tried something incredibly important for the first time with an audience.

The ribbon in Zuri’s hand hummed like a jet engine. Everything she and her sisters did held so much power. She couldn’t imagine what her old coven could have done with power like this. She didn’t let her scattered thoughts roll away.

“Under moonlight, by salt, by sea.” Zuri wrapped the ribbon around Marisol’s wrist. “Engulfed by love that totals three.”

She motioned for Elena to put her arm wrist over Marisol’s. “Under moonlight, by salt, by sea.” She wrapped the ribbon around Elena’s wrist, tying the two of them together. “I offer my soul to bind with thee.”

Chest tightening, Zuri’s magic flowed from her unbidden.

It broke free from her control and curled around Elena and Zuri like a shimmering orb she could only see if she squinted.

It was the power of her ancestors, she realized.

It was the help of all the women who stood at the edges of her life ready to lend their strength even when she didn’t know she needed them.

She felt her grandmother at her side. Felt her embrace and pride and approval.

“Under moonlight…” Zuri choked out. “By salt.” It was hard to breathe. “By sea.” Her hands shook when she placed her wrist over Elena’s. “I accept the soul you offer me.”

Zuri struggled to make the knot that would close the spell. Before she panicked that she’d failed to account for only having one hand at her disposal, Elena and Marisol each took one end of the ribbon. With surprising ease, they worked together to tie it off.

Overwhelmed, Zuri made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “Well, who is going to light the match now?” She looked at the matchbox in the bowl Elena was holding.

Before she could imagine how stupid they’d look crab-walking to the house to get someone to help after Zuri had made a big deal about being alone for the ceremony, a blast of fire appeared from nowhere. The ribbon caught fire in a dramatic violet blaze.

Zuri turned toward the house just in time to watch Candela walk away with Avani at her side.

Had they been watching the entire time? Had they thought about the fault in her plan?

Had they been waiting to back her up if she needed it?

Her heart couldn’t handle anymore gratitude and love or it was going to implode.

“Should we put it in the water?” Marisol’s eyes were wide like she was scared of the fire spreading. But the spelled flames had only one job, and they would die when their work was finished. Not die. Transform.

Zuri took a deep breath and focused her intention on the binding. “Not yet.”

She repeated the incantation under her breath while the flames dancing around their bound wrists darkened.

Violet to purple to black. Each change in color calmed the flames, and every change was absorbed by the ribbon until it disappeared.

The shimmering energy around them fell away when all that was left of the fire and ribbon was sweet-smelling ash.

“Now,” Zuri said, holding Elena’s hand while Elena held Marisol’s beneath hers.

Eyes closed, Zuri’s skin detonated when it hit the water. The cold shock did nothing to ease the heat racing over her body. The power coursing from her veins made the coven tattoo on her forearm glow neon red in the dark.

When they pulled their arms from the ocean, there was a thin black line encircling their left wrists. A brand rather than a wedding ring. A permanent display of their bond.

“I always wanted a tattoo,” Elena said, looking down at her wrist.

Zuri laughed, relieved that the spell had worked. Or at least it hadn’t caused some obvious disaster. “Good luck covering up that bad boy if you change your mind,” she joked.

Elena grinned before pulling her into a kiss.

The touch of her lips elicited an even more intense response than it usually did.

Zuri felt her kiss in every part of her body.

In her pounding heart and tired muscles and empty stomach.

The binding, Zuri knew immediately, had just turned up the volume on a heavy metal show.

“I have yet to ever change my mind,” Elena whispered against Zuri’s tingling lips. “About either of you,” she added before kissing Marisol.

Zuri indulged in their moment of silence, of pure togetherness, for only a few seconds before the deafening sound of drums rang out into the night.

She froze, fearing it was a sign that Sayah had arrived.

It would be her luck that she wouldn’t even get a wedding night with her new brides.

But then the sound of laughter joined the beating of the drums and Zuri’s spiking nervous system took another nosedive.

“Looks like the party started without us,” Marisol said in a tone that sounded more like Elena.

Zuri looked down at the tattoo around her wrist and wondered whether binding also meant sharing parts of themselves. The notes didn’t warn her about that, but she’d known the risk of incomplete information when she’d chosen to bind her soul to theirs.

“We can’t leave our guests waiting,” Elena said with a youthful exuberance Marisol usually showed.

“Let’s get drunk,” Zuri decided in an effort to sound most like herself. “Fucking drunk,” she added for good measure.

Halfway up the path, the patio’s transformation stopped Zuri short.

Thousands of tiny floating candles covered the pool.

So many lights that would be insignificant on their own, that would drown in the darkness, seemed to rival the moon when gathered together.

It was the most magical-looking mundane thing she’d ever seen.

When Zuri’s sandy feet hit the stone deck, the rhythm of the drums vibrated through her skin like a racing heartbeat.

With vampires, witches, and Aglion packed around the pool, it took Zuri a moment to figure out where the music was coming from.

Unexpectedly, two different types of instruments made complimentary music.

Veil witches on tall conga-like drums and a handful of vampires banging on hourglass-shaped drums. Moments later, they were joined by a bunch of Aglion carrying buckets and sticks.

Joining together amplified the music so that it pounded in Zuri’s chest like it was playing over a wall of loudspeakers.

They weren’t just having a wedding reception or a party. It was a goddamn declaration. A defiant roar in the face of the crushing silence that had held them captive for weeks. It was hundreds of people deciding at once to scream: if you want me, come and fucking get me.

It was their real strength, Zuri realized like she’d been transported into an afterschool special.

Their connection to each other. Their willingness not just to stand together, but embrace each other.

Fucking dance together and laugh into the night together.

This was how you built an army capable of facing down a monster like Sayah.

This was how you gave people something to believe in, something to fight for beyond mere survival.

This was how you made them believe the impossible was achievable.

With this power, Zuri thought, fire igniting in her chest, they wouldn’t just hand Sayah her ass. They’d have enough fight left over to hunt down whoever was hunting the Aglion and burn their shit to the ground. Together, they were going to build something over the ashes.

When a line of people started to form, linking arm-in-arm in a simple circle dance that could have belonged to any of the varied cultures present, Marisol was the first to dart out and take a spot between a Canadian vampire and Avani.

It only took a few attempts to get several circles going at once.

To get feet stomping in rhythm with the drums. Even Bernice, in all her coolness, joined the largest outer ring when an Aglion who looked like he could spin a fucking car on his fingertip reached for her.

And then Bernice was calling for Elena and Zuri was left with her unmitigated hope.