Page 34 of Blood Ties (City of Blood #1)

Elina

Lying in bed next to Bash, I spend a few minutes in self reflection.

He is resting now, which means the sun must be coming up, though his room is as dark as any tomb in the City of the Dead.

Yesterday was beyond anything I could have imagined.

The riverboat with Bash, Sarah, and Ethan felt like, for the first time in my life, I have done something for myself.

No expectations. No need to be met or people to care for. Something for only me.

Being with Sarah and Ethan again, after all the time apart, was like fitting puzzle pieces back into place.

The grief that yawned between us when Ethan left was almost too much to bear, and we couldn’t even discuss the raw emotion of it.

Ethan wasn’t gone—he left. When our trio went from three to two, it left a wound that didn’t heal.

Now, we are a four-some, and it feels as comfortable as breathing. Bash slid right in and filled a hole we didn’t know we had. He is quickly becoming friends with Ethan, and he seems to care about and understand my co-dependent relationship with Sarah.

But today, I have to go home. I have been caught up in the lure of love, and wrapped in Bash so thoroughly, that I am forgetting that I have a home.

I haven’t been back since Grand-mere told me to go if I was going to continue having a relationship with Bash, I needed to do it elsewhere.

Now that the last few days have solidified my feelings for Bash, I have to face Grand-mere Celeste.

I realized yesterday that I do love Bash.

Not a little, not for now. I love Bash like I love to breathe, without even thinking about it.

I love him the way the stars love the night sky, timeless, inevitable, and forever.

I am hopelessly in love, my love is not a weakness and neither is my humanity.

I refuse to let the people around us control the narrative of our relationship any longer.

I stood up to a vampire principessa, and I will stand up to my grandmother.

I chose Bash. I choose him now, in the next life, and in the one after that.

I don’t stop to consider what that means for my humanity just yet.

I'm not ready, but I know there is no other option for me right now than to stay by his side.

We need to figure out how the rest of it fits together.

The carefree feeling of the riverboat still lingers in my mind.

My lips are still swollen from kissing Bash last night while he worshipped me in a way that I did not think possible.

The reverence in his actions are breathtaking.

There is a heaviness amongst the happiness though, a fear for what today will bring.

How will things change moving forward? I don’t yet fully understand what is going to happen, but I know it will be the right thing, for all of us.

Walking into the only place I have ever called home is like walking into a memory, it feels the same but far away.

This house has always been my refuge, my safe place, and now, in an apartment across town is an anchor I never knew I needed, and the light that calls me back.

My soul aches to be back next to his. I steel myself for the confrontation.

“Elina?”

One word full of sadness and defeat cracks my already tender heart open.

“Yes, Grand-mere Celeste, it’s me.” I walk into the kitchen where I know I will find her.

She sits at the table, a cup of coffee in front of her, looking older than I remember.

Maybe it was spending a week away, after a lifetime of seeing her everyday, or maybe she has always looked this way and I am only just noticing.

She looks at me with love and concern, as though she can’t figure out why I am here but glad all the same.

“Sit, I'll get you a cup.” She moves comfortably around her small kitchen as she has for sixty years.

Everything is the same here—it has never changed, even as things change around us.

I think I understand now, that Grand-mere loves me fiercely and worries for me.

She has deep rooted, but righteous, anger at the way things have happened here but I am not one of them.

The vampires deserve her ire, but I deserve her understanding and support.

“Have you been well? Are you staying with Sarah?” Her tone softens to one filled with her love for me.

“I’ve missed you, Elina.” She is trying to figure out what is happening, but is refusing to acknowledge the obstacle between us.

Bash is like a bomb in the room that she is tiptoeing around, and I decide to rip the band-aid off.

“I’m really good. I stay with Sarah sometimes, but I also stay with Bash a lot, too.” She flinches when I mention his name and I realize she was hoping that I was here because I had gotten over whatever it was with him.

I set my coffee cup down. “Grand-mere, he’s it for me.”

She goes completely still and her breath hitches.

“He is my future. I know this isn’t easy for you to hear, or maybe you don’t want to but I am choosing him.

” I sit up straighter in my resolution. “I need to be by his side. I don’t know what that will look like yet or how it will play out over the foreseeable and unforeseeable future. All I know is, he is it.”

“I can’t lose you too.” She takes a shuddering breath, clearly overcome and remembering something. I assume it's my mother. I reach for her hand, and after a brief pause, she lets me take it. “I want you to be happy. And if Bash makes you happy, then I guess you had better introduce us.”

A sharp exhale leaves my lips, a half breath, half laugh as the tension drains from my body. I envelop her in my arms, squeezing her aged frame against mine.

“Thank you, Grand-mere. This means more to me than you know. Would you like to meet at Sarah’s?

I’m off work today so we could do it tonight.

” I know she is still hesitating, the idea of sitting in a room with a vampire is almost too scary for her to fathom, but I think it’s better if we try and get it over with so we can figure out what happens next.

“Yes, I will come over before sun-down. Will someone bring me home?”

“Of course!”

After talking to Grand-mere, I head over to Sarah’s house.

“Sarah!” I bellow as I walk through the front door. Wandering through the house, I find her at her kitchen table, coffee in hand.

“Hey Lina. Please tell me all about mommy dearest—I can’t take the suspense any longer.” She laughs at, what I assume is, the horrified look on my face. “That bad?”

“Jesus, that fucking bad.” A sigh and run my hand through my hair.

“After she interrogated me about what a big responsibility being with her baby boy is, she gave me a teacup full of blood to watch my reaction.” In all my introspection today, I haven't stopped to even think about Vespera Malvani and what all of that means. It’s too much for one day, for one person.

“Blood? What the hell for?”

“She set up this elaborate macabre tea party, and instead of tea she served me blood. I thought Bash was going to lose it. He always lets me handle things though. I kind of love that about him. This time, though, I felt so outside of my depth. I think by the end though, I had earned at least begrudging respect from her.”

She pours me a cup of coffee and pushes it toward me, followed by the cream and sugar. “Well, thank goodness for that, or otherwise Bash might have realized his girlfriend wasn’t worth it,” she says with an eye roll so excessive, she rolls her head too.

“I didn’t say it mattered to him…it’s just that, I feel like it did.

He told me we would be fine without her approval but she’s his mother, you know?

There is no way that wasn’t important. Having her as an ally in the Malvani house feels like a turning point in our relationship.

Like we could never be what we wanted or deserved without it.

” I take a deep breath. “And so, we cleared the first big hurdle and are on to the next.”

“What’s that?”

“Grand-mere. I went and saw her today.”

“And what did our Celeste have to say for herself? After kicking her granddaughter out on the street because she didn’t like her boyfriend.”

“It wasn’t that simple and you know it. I explained. I told her that Bash is it for me. She has agreed to meet him.”

Sarah looks confused, unsure, and a little apprehensive. In short, she looks exactly how I feel.

“I was hoping they could meet here? She doesn’t want him in her house and she doesn’t travel to the Quarter after dark. This is close enough that she can walk here and be escorted back safely. Is that ok? I know I should have asked first but-”

“Of course it’s ok. As long as it’s ok with her that there will be 2 vampires here tonight.

I have work but I’ll call Rian and let her know.

” Oh yeah, Ethan. I had not even thought to mention that Ethan is living here now.

I’m not sure how she will take it, but at this point, I need to focus on what is happening with her and Bash.

I don’t have the energy to deal with Ethan’s presence too.

“I don’t care.” I shrug. “I guess she has to get used to it.” There has to be some lesson here about how the further away from a tragedy you are, the less impactful it is.

Sixty years after the Closing, and 25 years after the Guerra de Sang, and people my age are co-mingling with vampires like it is normal.

Yes, the damage to our collective psyche is still there. But fear fades with distance. I hope that I can make Bash see humanity as something worth saving. Not only mine and Sarahs, but all of ours. Yes, vampires need to eat—that isn’t going to change—but humans deserve to live.

We don’t need to die to sustain the vampires, so why do we?