Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You’re an asshole. You know that, right?” Zuri poured herself a glass of wine without offering any to Elena and sat in the armchair next to her. Eyes closed and head tossed back, Elena didn’t need heightened senses to know she was reaching a breaking point.
“I liked it better when you called me baby,” she replied, her entire left side throbbing with pain from her excursion. Without the adrenaline of accusations, she was only left with agony.
“Forget I told you about that,” Zuri shot back, eyes still closed and energy flagging. “You’re never hearing that shit again.”
Watching her, Elena’s chest tightened. They’d been ready to promise each other forever once. After too many lifetimes of heartbreaks, Elena never expected to want to hand her heart to anyone else for smashing. Certainly not a mortal, but she’d done it despite her better judgment. Despite the cruel truth that love was never hers to keep.
When Zuri finally turned her head and looked at her, her beautiful brown eyes were a tempest. A mix of emotions bound together with hurt and disappointment. Elena much preferred her anger. Anger didn’t make her want to tear out her own useless heart.
“You seriously think I’d ever hurt you?”
The hairline crack in Zuri’s voice was a pain more excruciating than the one in Elena’s body. Clenching her jaw to stop herself from reaching out, Elena shook her head. “People have the undesirable habit of changing.”
Zuri took a long sip from her glass. “Yeah, well, we don’t all have the luxury of being fuckboys our entire, eternal existence.”
“What’s a?—”
“I’m not your Google,” Zuri snapped. “You can’t accuse me of trying to murder you and then ask me to be your fucking urban dictionary.”
I know , she admitted in her mind, but couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. “Something is happening to me. Something… not normal.” She considered another possibility. “What if someone put something in your blood without you knowing? Drinking from you… It’s the last thing I remember doing, Zuri.”
“Someone like who?” Anger was a pulsing red aura swirling around Zuri.
“Who knew you were coming to see me?”
Zuri drained her wine and all but slammed the glass on the small table between the two armchairs. “Candela and Avani. I trust them as much as I trust myself, and witches don’t give a shit about vampires.”
Elena offered a lopsided smile. “Well, that’s not a universal truth.”
Annoyance came off Zuri in tantalizing waves. The woman had never half-felt an emotion in her life. Everything was full color, full throated, full blooded. If an emotion was worth feeling, Zuri felt it in its entirety.
“So you think two witches, for no appreciable reason, poisoned me. Not just that, but without my knowledge,” she added with an incredibly pointed eyebrow flick that shouldn’t have turned Elena on all things considered, but there she was anyway. “With some mysterious substance that didn’t do a single thing to me, but somehow nearly killed you.” She raised both eyebrows instead of calling Elena an idiot outright.
Without warning, Zuri stood and positioned herself in front of her. “Go on, compel me.”
The offer was cold water dousing a flame. Jaw tight, Elena flicked her gaze up at her. “Zuri, I have never compelled you?—”
“Yeah, I know.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Let’s go. Do it. You’ll be able to forget this stupid theory and move on to an actual suspect.”
Elena stared at Zuri, her heart an icy knot in her chest. She’d never compelled someone she loved, never used her power to violate the trust that bound them together. But the doubt, the fear, it gnawed at her, a relentless beast that demanded satisfaction.
“Look at me,” Elena commanded, her voice low and steady, her gaze unwavering.
Zuri met her eyes, her expression a mixture of defiance and resignation. Knowing that she couldn’t resist Elena’s power and actually being under its effect was a very different thing. Elena’s gaze intensified, her fangs lengthening. A subtle but undeniable threat.
“Did you poison me?” she asked, the words a rasp against the silence. Even as she spoke, nausea roiled in her belly. The thought of doubting Zuri, of violating her trust, making her hate herself more than she already did.
Zuri’s eyes glazed over, her pupils dilating, her body stiffening as Elena’s power wrapped around her mind, a silken but unbreakable collar. She opened her mouth, her voice a hollow echo of its usual vibrancy.
“No,” she replied, completely monotone. “I would never hurt you.”
Elena held her gaze, searching for any flicker of deception, any hint of a lie. But there was nothing. Only the truth, stark and undeniable, reflected in Zuri’s vacant eyes.
With a sigh, Elena released her hold.
Zuri blinked, her gaze regaining its focus. “Satisfied?” she snapped.
Swallowing the unusual bile in her throat, Elena nodded. It was impossible to maintain eye contact when Zuri’s hurt was simmering beneath the surface. When it was accusing her of betrayal.
Watching her like she was dissecting her under a microscope, Zuri’s anger returned like a boomeranging tornado. “You’re still fucking doubting me. You’re unbelievable, Elena.”
She wanted to make herself say something. To lie. But she didn’t.
Zuri watched Elena, her expression a changing canvas of emotions. Not a single one positive. Then, without warning, she reached out, her hand extended towards Elena. “Give me your hand,” she demanded.
Furrowing her brow, Elena was about to ask why, but Zuri’s rage was a sonic blast.
She reached out instead, placing her hand in Zuri’s. Her grip was firm, her fingers warm against Elena’s cool skin. The touch was intimate, reminding her of centuries of loss.
And then, Zuri did something she’d never done before. She opened her mind to Elena, letting her into the labyrinth of her memories, her thoughts, her emotions. Elena gasped, a flood of images, sensations, and feelings washing over her, overwhelming her senses.
It was a foreign experience, completely disorienting and more than a little terrifying. Severed from her body, she was a guest in Zuri’s most sacred space. Herself.
She saw Zuri, pacing her apartment, her phone clutched in her hand, her heart a tangled mess of worry and anger. She heard Zuri’s thoughts, a bitter symphony of resentment and longing, of the pain she’d tried so hard to bury. And she felt Zuri’s emotions, raw and unfiltered, the love, the fear, the despair. They spun around her, impossible to catch.
Elena forced herself to regain control. To learn fast and act faster. The moment she took a breath, it was forced out of her. The worry Zuri carried for the future of her coven was a thick, choking smoke. It filled Elena’s nostrils, her throat, her chest.
She’d been alone in her apartment and Elena couldn’t sense anything amiss in Zuri’s body. And then there was the moment she’d swallowed her pride, her anger, her feelings, and decided to reach out to Elena for help. There was desperation in Zuri’s eyes, the vulnerability she’d tried so hard to conceal.
Before Elena could settle into her surroundings or sort the memories she had of the little apartment where she’d spent so many nights, she was spinning again.
And then, Elena saw herself through Zuri’s eyes. Merged into her memory to feel Zuri’s emotions in her own body.
Pulse racing, Zuri had stopped breathing when she’d walked into Elena’s office. The surroundings melted away. Useless longing sliced into Elena’s heart like glass.
Zuri’s chest ached with the same yearning, the same hunger, that Elena had felt. The same undeniable pull that had drawn them together all those years ago.
When Zuri pulled away, knocking her back to the present and pain, Elena was breathless. “Baby?—”
“Don’t,” Zuri warned, eyes dark and glistening with the same emotion ravaging Elena’s chest.
Elana tried to stand, but pain seized her muscles, sending her back down. “We?—”
“No.” Zuri was resolute despite the truth, stark and undeniable, hanging between them. “I’m serious, Elena. I shared that so you would wake the fuck up and realize that I have nothing to do with this.” She gestured at Elena’s body. “And the fact that I even had to do that at all is?—”
“I know,” Elena admitted. “I’m sorry.” The words felt foreign on her tongue, but the raw vulnerability in Zuri’s eyes stripped away her defenses, leaving her exposed and off balance.
Elena stared at her, reeling. In Zuri’s memories, the depth of her lingering feelings had slammed into Elena with the force of a wrecking ball. She’d convinced herself that Zuri had moved on, that time had scabbed over the wounds Elena had left on her heart. But she’d been wrong. So very wrong.
Zuri closed her eyes, her sigh heavy with exhaustion. When she opened them again, the tempest had subsided, replaced by the familiar shield of controlled emotions. Elena felt a pang of loss, wishing she could will their connection back, but it was gone and Elena was sure she hadn’t deserved it in the first place.
It had been so long since Elena had felt afraid. She’d forgotten the contours of it. Forgotten the cold, sickening pit it opened in her gut. “I’ve never been like this. Weak. Vulnerable. Dependent.”
Zuri’s gaze softened, a flicker of empathy in her dark eyes. She didn’t speak, but she sat down again.
“Do you think you can help Marisol?” Elena asked, her voice laced with a desperation she couldn’t conceal. “Help her understand her power? I need to heal, Zuri. I need to get back to myself. Or I’ll lose everything. And that’s worse than death.”
Zuri hesitated, her gaze drifting towards the bed where Marisol slept. “I don’t know. I’ve never encountered anyone like her before.” After a long time, she said, “I’ll try.”
Elena nodded, a wave of gratitude washing over her. It was a small hope, a fragile lifeline in a sea of uncertainty. But it was all she had. And without Zuri and Marisol, she’d have nothing.