Page 101 of Incoronate
The question came out harsher than I’d intended, but I didn’t take it back. We’d danced around this since the moment she came back into my life and every day since. The sudden reappearance, the decades she’d been gone, the fact that she was a Revenant who’d chosen to leave rather than stay.
Jaqueline didn’t answer right away, her fingers folding together on the table in front of her. “My stubbornness, apparently. And my tendency to make the hardest choices at the worst possible times.”
“Is that what leaving was? A hard choice?”
“The hardest I’ve ever made.” Her eyes met mine, and for the first time since she’d come back, I saw something unvarnished there. Stripped of the careful distance she usually wore like armor. “You were so small, Jemma. Both of you were. And I knew. I knew that staying would only put you in more danger. I couldn’t risk them finding out what you were. I wanted you to have a chance at a real life and this was the only way I knew how to give it to you.”
“You didn’t have to disappear from our lives completely.”
“Maybe not.” Her jaw worked, tension radiating through her shoulders. “But I thought I had to. I couldn’t protect you as a Revenant. Not the way you needed. I knew Thomas could give you the life I couldn’t. A chance at something normal, even if it had to be built on lies and distance.”
The old anger tried to surface, but it felt tired now. Worn thin by everything else. “How’d that work out?”
The bitter edge in my voice made her flinch, but she didn’t look away.
“Not the way I hoped,” she admitted somberly. “But I meant what I said before, Jemma. Everything I did—leaving when you were little, staying away even after the Order set me free—it was all to protect you. To find the answers you needed and to keep you safe from all the things I feared could destroy you.”
Rain continued to streak down the window behind her, catching the light before disappearing into darkness.
“I’m not a perfect mother,” she said hoarsely, her voice rougher than usual. “And maybe I don’t deserve that title. Maybe I forfeited it the day I walked away. But I have never stopped loving you and Tessa in the only ways I knew how. Not for a second. Not when I walked away. Not when I convinced myself you’d be better off without me. I loved you enough to leave, even when it felt like it was tearing me in half.”
My throat ached around the swallow it took to keep myself together. “You don’t get to rewrite it like that,” I said, though there wasn’t much heat behind it. Just hurt.
“No,” she agreed. “I guess I don’t.” Her gaze stayed on the rain-streaked window for a beat. “I’m not asking for absolution. I only want the chance to be there for you now.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my daughter. Because I’m proud of the woman you’ve become, even if I didn’t have the courage to help raise her. You have more strength in your little finger than I ever did in my entire life. You fight when you’re afraid. You love when it would be easier to harden yourself, and you choose people, even when it costs you dearly.”
“That’s not strength,” I muttered. “That’s just…doing the right thing and trying to stay alive while doing it.”
“It’s courage and heart and the kind of humanity I never managed to keep hold of even before I made the decision to Turn.”
I swallowed hard, staring down at my fingernails. “Funny because I don’t feel any of those things right now. I feel like I’m drowning, and everyone I care about is going down with me.”
“That’s because you’re trying to carry all of it alone.” Her voice gentled. “The town’s safety. Your sister. That baby. The men who hold your heart and would follow you anywhere. You’ve put yourself at the center of a war and convinced yourself you’re the only one who can stand there.”
“Someone has to,” I whispered.
“Yes,” she said. “But not by yourself.”
The rain picked up briefly, tapping harder against the glass.
“I made my choices out of fear,” she continued. “Fear of what I was. Fear of what I might become. Fear that if I stayed, I would destroy the very things I was trying to protect. But you?” Her hand reached across the table, coming to rest over mine. “You make your choices out of love. Even when you’re angry. Even when you’re hurt. That is not weakness, Jemma. That is power.”
I huffed out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Well, it really doesn’t feel that way.”
Her grip firmed against mine. “Tomorrow, when you walk into that Temple, you’re going to be everything I tried to be and failed. You’re going to change things, Jemma. Not just for yourself or for Ares, but for every person who’s been crushed under the Order’s heel. You have the power to tear down something rotten and build something better in its place.”
“And if I can’t?” The question escaped before I could stop it. “What if I’m not strong enough?”
“You are,” she said with absolute certainty. “You’ve already proven that. Every choice you’ve made, every person you’ve saved, every time you’ve chosen to fight instead of run. That’s strength. That’s the kind of power that changes the world.”
Tears burned behind my eyes, and I didn’t bother trying to blink them away.
“I believe in you, Jemma. Sincerely. Maybe I should have said that years ago. Maybe I should have been there to tell you every day. But I’m saying it now. I know you can do this. I know you’re going to be everything I never had the courage to become and so much more.”
I let out a shaky breath, my vision blurring despite my efforts. “That makes one of us.”
