Her own eyes burned as she said, “Izak was sobbing when I arrived yesterday, and he was so ashamed I’d seen him like that.” A knot in her throat she had to swallow repeatedly to speak around. “I told him there’s no shame in acknowledging pain, that I’ve cried when I’ve been hurt and been no less strong for it, but I don’t know if he believed me.”
Raphael ran his hand over her hair. “He’s a young boy at heart still and he adores you.” A kiss against her temple. “Speak to him about what he’ll have to do to prepare to be in your Guard. It’ll give him the reassurance he needs.”
“Should I tell him he’s about to be thrown into training with Dmitri and Illium? It might scare him.” Izak was a baby in comparison to the lethal men in the Seven.
“He may feel fear, but if my judgment of him is correct, it’ll also give him the impetus to fight through the agony to come so he can prove his claim to the position.”
Raphael’s prediction turned out to be right on the money. Izak went sheet white when she told him exactly how tough he’d have to become now that he was part of her Guard . . . then he took a deep breath and gave her an unexpectedly solemn, adult look. “Thank you. I thought perhaps you’d only agreed to offer me the position because you felt sorry for me.”
“I’m saving up the pity for when Galen arrives to take over your training.”
He winced. “I was hoping he’d remain at the Refuge.”
“If he does, you’ll be shipped there.” Forcing herself not to look at the raw red of his wounds, she kissed him on the forehead. “I’m sure he won’t beat you black-and-blue every day.”
“Ellie, I didn’t know you were so mean.”
Leaving him with a scowl on his face and a smile in his eyes, she visited with the others, all of whom she’d begun to know on a personal basis. It was hard, seeing so much hurt done to people who now belonged to her, but if they could bear the unfathomable pain, she could bear to stand with them through the journey.
When she finished speaking to the final conscious angel, she had an informal visit with an active squadron, then checked to see if her sister, Beth, had canceled their appointment. No. Taking a deep breath and aware there were no more excuses, she swept off the Tower to fly to a storage locker in Brooklyn. She hadn’t been there in weeks, not given everything that had been happening in the city . . . No, that had nothing to do with it; the truth was, she’d been avoiding it even before the Falling.
As she landed, she didn’t understand the reason for her resistance when she’d been so painfully happy to find Jeffrey hadn’t thrown out her mother’s belongings after all. She didn’t even know why she continued to keep everything in storage when there was plenty of space at the house for it. She hadn’t even taken the precious quilt her mother had stitched by hand.
“Ellie?” It was a wobbly sound.
Turning, Elena saw a sweetly curved strawberry blonde with eyes of translucent turquoise, her body covered in a flirty cherry-pink dress coat belted at the waist. She’d paired the flared coat with knee-high black boots that matched the jaunty beret on her unbound hair, the whole outfit topped off with a gorgeous handmade fabric rose pinned to the top left of her coat.
Her baby sister had always liked to dress up, even when they’d been kids. Belle had often treated her like a living doll, to Beth’s great delight, adorning her in necklaces and lace as they put on a fashion show for the rest of the family. “Calling me Ellie now?” she teased with a smile, those memories untainted by blood and death. “Don’t let Jeffrey catch you. It’s Elieanora.”
Beth stuck out her tongue, but the moment was fleeting, her face falling as she looked at the door of the storage space. “Mama’s stuff is really in there?”
“Yes.” Jeffrey had signed over everything to Elena.
Beth had been so young when Marguerite died that Elena didn’t blame her father for his decision—the items would have little meaning to Beth. But Elena knew the stories attached to each treasured piece and those stories were part of Beth’s legacy, too.
“Hey,” she said, cupping her sister’s wet-eyed face. “You don’t have to do this, Bethie, not if it makes you too sad.”
“I want to.” Hot tears running over Elena’s hands. “I want to remember . . . s-so I can tell the baby.”
Elena froze for several seconds. “Harrison?” she got out at last.
A shamefaced nod. “I know I threw him out and I meant it, too, but I love him, Ellie.” The tears kept coming. “Even though he didn’t wait for me to be accepted, too, before being Made, I still love him.” She swallowed, twisting her hands together. “I think he’s sorry for what he did now that he understands he’ll have to bury me one day, bury our baby, too.”
Elena didn’t like Harrison because, no matter his love for Beth, he’d demonstrably wanted immortality more. He hadn’t waited until Beth’s tests were completed, tests that had shown her sister wasn’t a viable Candidate; Beth would die horribly if she attempted to become a vampire. Elena wished she could alter that, but she couldn’t. It was a biological fact written in stone. As it appeared Harrison was now beginning to comprehend.
Still, Elena admitted begrudgingly, he wasn’t a total asshole; he had always treated Beth like a princess, including after she asked for a separation. Elena could almost believe he truly was sorry now that the consequences of his selfishness had begun to dawn.
“Are you mad?”
Drawing Beth into her arms at that trembling question, Elena kissed the top of her baby sister’s head—because Beth would always be that to her, Elena’s relationship with Eve independent of the one she had with the sister who’d toddled after her as a baby. “No, I’m not mad, sweetheart.” She squeezed her tight, Beth tucking her head against Elena’s chest as she’d done since childhood. “I’m happy for you.”
Beth’s shaky smile was as sweet as her heart when she drew back. “I’ll love this baby so much, Ellie. No one will ever hurt my kid’s feelings.”
In that instant, Elena knew Beth had been far more sensitive to the tensions in the Big House than she’d ever realized. “Come on.” Heart aching, she took her sister’s hand and unlocked the storage space.
Once inside, they shut the door, the temperature-controlled room lit up by a cool white bulb, and began to go through the boxes. “This was yours.” Laughing, Elena passed Beth a battered fire engine. “You wanted to be a fireman when you were little.”
“Me?” Squeaking with laughter, Beth ran her fingers over the wooden toy. “Can I keep it? For the baby?”
“Everything here belongs to both of us, Bethie.” She touched her sister gently on the cheek, unable to believe the family’s baby was going to have a baby of her own. “You don’t have to ask.”
They spent over two hours in the room and it wasn’t until the end that Elena took out the quilt her mother had given her on her fifth birthday. Seated on one of the crates, she tried to breathe past the sorrow in her heart as she smoothed her hands over the pretty, printed cotton. “Mama used to sit in her sewing room working on her quilts while we played in the corner, designing clothes for your dolls.”
Beth squeezed onto the same crate, cuddling close as she’d always done. “Suzy and Janey.” Soft words, her fingers reverent on the flowered panels. “Those were the names of my dolls.”
“Yes.” It surprised her that Beth remembered—her sister had locked her dolls permanently away in an act of childish grief and rage the day after Ari and Belle’s funeral. When Elena asked why, she’d said Suzy and Janey had been “mean,” that they’d said Ari and Belle wouldn’t ever come back.