Page 149 of Incoronate
“I’m not brave,” I said, having a hard time meeting his eyes then.
“Yes, you are. The way you walk straight into the fire for the people you love, no matter the cost to you. You don’t even hesitate. I don’t know anyone else who could do that.”
“You do the same thing for me. I’m really not all that special.”
“The difference is I only do that for you.”
Something in my chest cracked open at that, warm and aching all at once.
“I feel bad dragging you into my fires with me. You shouldn’t have to carry the burden of my choices.”
“Hey.” He caught my jaw in one hand, tipping my face up. “I’m not here because I have to be. I’m here because there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than beside you, Jemma. Whatever happens, this right here is worth it,” he said, gesturing to the two of us. “You’ll always be worth it.”
Tears pricked under my lids and I had to blink them back to stop myself from crying.
“You say the most unfair things sometimes, you know that?”
“Do I?” The corner of his mouth tipped up, setting off his right dimple.
I moved to smack his chest, but he grabbed my wrist and tugged me against his chest. Without saying a word, he leaned down and pressed his lips to mine, slow and hot, kissing me just long enough to make my chest warm.
When he pulled back, he looked down at me for a few seconds more, as if he wanted to memorize something, and then he was gone too, slipping out of the study and down the corridor to the staircase and the low murmur of voices rising from the floor below.
I watched him disappear down the stairs and then waited a few beats, letting myself breathe before I rolled my shoulders back, lifted my chin, and let everything he’d said rise to the surface and harden into something I could use.
Everything depended on this working, on completing the transfer with my Alt. Because if it didn’t, there was no going back from this. No fallback, no contingency, no version of this where I got to try again. And no saving Tessa, Gabriel, and Ares from what was coming.
This was our one and only chance, and I had to get it right.
* * *
I knew which floorboards to avoid and which corners of the house swallowed sound. I knew the layout of the Blackburn Estate the way I knew my own heartbeat, and I knew exactly how the next fifteen minutes were going to unfold downstairs, because I’d already lived them.
My past self was downstairs right now, sitting across from Ben while he made his case for why she couldn’t leave him behind. She didn’t know yet what was coming for her tonight. What was going to come for all of us before morning. But she was going to stay down there and see it through, because that was what I had done, and I needed her to do the same. Every word, every argument, every minute of it playing out exactly as it had before.
So that the Order and Alford would move ahead with their plan tonight, believing they already had us right where they wanted us.
Closing the study door behind myself, I tiptoed down the corridor until I reached my old bedroom without making a sound. The door was shut and the hallway empty, just as it was supposed to be. Turning the knob, I slipped inside and pressed myself into the shadow behind the door.
And I waited.
Downstairs, the voices continued. Ben’s softer cadence, Trace’s shorter responses, my own voice somewhere underneath it all, not yet knowing what was coming. I listened to the rhythm of it and said nothing and did nothing and let it play out exactly as it had to.
Then I heard the conversation shift. The scrape of a chair. Footsteps on the stairs, light and unhurried as my past-me made her way upstairs, resigned to what had been decided. Oblivious to the horrors that were going to besiege her when she finally closed her eyes tonight.
I straightened.
The door swung open and my past self walked in, pulling her hair over one shoulder, her mind already somewhere else entirely. She made it three steps past the threshold before I pushed the door shut behind her.
She spun around.
Her hand went straight to the sword inside her jacket before her brain caught up with what she was looking at. She stared at me. I stared back. Her jaw tightened with an expression I knew intimately because it was mine, the one I wore every time the universe decided to stop making sense mid-sentence.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she ground out. “Not this again.”
“Nice to see you too,” I said dryly.
“What future is it this time?” She dropped her hand from the sword but didn’t relax. “And you better not tell me Trace still doesn’t make it after everything we went through.”
