Page 59 of Tainted Blood
“My firebird demands blood,” he states, moving closer, a lingering scent of smoke and whiskey fanning across my face—churning up long-forgotten feelings deep inside me.
“Bardi,” I grit out, causing him to retreat again with a curse.
Truth is, I have no idea what I am anymore. The girl I was before is gone. I lost half of her in a maze, and the other half in a cellar.
Somehow, I need to rise up from the ashes of this.
The mattress ripples as he stands. “My doctors are happy with your progress, but you need to rest. We’ll talk more when you’re stronger.”
“Ella told me what happened,” I say, falteringly. “With the raid, my leg… I heard her talking when she thought I was asleep.”
There’s a pause. “Your sister hasn’t set foot in this apartment, Thalia.”
“You’re wrong. I heard her…” I trail off in confusion.
“I’m already straying close enough to your father’s bullets by insisting you stay here. There’s no way he’d allow your sister to cross state lines too.”
“Then who—?”
“I have business to attend to.” Soft light floods into the room as he opens the door. I catch a glimpse of his tall frame as he exits, before he’s plunging me back into darkness again.
I slide under the bedsheets, his words spinning cartwheels in my head. If it wasn’t Ella, then who held me? Comforted me? Bathed me? Made me feel their love when all I felt was numb?
The answer is as simple as it is bewildering.
My husband did.
Chapter Sixteen
Thalia
When I wake the next day, the neon skyline has dulled to a uniformed gray. Black clouds hang like dirty white lies over all the high-rises, and Santi’s floor-to-ceiling windows are dotted with rain.
I lie there, debating whether to accept this new day or to crawl back inside my mind. Eventually, tolerance wins out, and I’m so thankful when I find a familiar figure perched on the edge of my bed, watching me.
“It’s a shitty ‘welcome home’, am I right?” She gestures to the window with a sigh. “You can always count on New Jersey weather to make a bad situation worse.”
“Lola,” I whisper, caught between sleep and disbelief. “Oh my God. I never thought I’d see you again!”
“I keep waiting for the stupid lark to show up,” she blurts out, her face crumbling like an avalanche. “But he never does.”
To anyone else, her words would sound crazy. To me, they’re the sanest thing I’ve ever heard. Lola can’t move on, either. She’s stuck in her own motionless waters.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” she says, swiping at her tears with the back of her hand. “Ever since I’ve been home, I’ve been a mess.”
“Don’t be. You never, ever have to apologize for anything with me.”
We stare at each other, taking in each other’s scars, both the obvious ones and the hidden mutilations on the inside. She’s wearing a simple black dress with a high neckline, but I can still see the fading red welts slashed into the side of her neck. There are yellowing bruises on both cheekbones, and a couple of wicked-looking gashes on her arms.
She looks haunted and beautiful, but very much alive.
“How’s your leg?” she sniffs.
She doesn’t ask what happened to it. She doesn’t want to know, and I don’t blame her. She already has enough nightmare material from that place to last a lifetime.
“Better.”
“Thank God.”