Page 55 of Incoronate
“That’s what the sisters said.” I set the bread down on the edge of my plate. The mention of it had stolen what little appetite I had managed to recover. “It’s not really a question of if but of when.”
Jaqueline’s gaze stayed on me for a long beat, her expression unreadable in a way that put me on guard before I could stop it. I knew that look. It was the one she wore right before she said something I wasn’t going to want to hear.
“I have to ask,” she said, her cold eyes assessing me as she spoke. Whatever warmth had been there earlier had iced over. “Are you sure you’re making the right choice here? You’re putting yourself in the Order’s crosshairs, fighting the Horsemen, risking everything. All of it to protect a child that is not yours.”
Tessa’s head snapped up as the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees in the space of a single breath.
“As opposed to what?” I asked, my voice gone deceptively soft. “Killing him?”
“No.” Her gaze didn’t waver. “Stepping aside. Letting events unfold as they were always meant to without your interference.”
“Are you serious right now?” snapped Tessa, her tone sharp enough to draw blood.
I felt my chest warm, just barely, at my sister standing beside me like that. Standing up for the baby. It hadn’t been so long ago that she’d assumed the same position as our mother. I couldn’t help but feel proud of her.
Still, I had to jump in before Tessa could really get going. The last thing I wanted to do was have her upset herself and the baby she was carrying.
“That’s basically the same thing as killing him,” I reminded Jackie. I could feel the heat climbing up my throat, but I kept my voice level. Barely. “Either way the baby dies. Doing nothing is being complicit in his murder.”
“It’s allowing fate to take its natural course,” countered Jaqueline, her voice infuriatingly composed. “Without you putting yourself between it and him.”
“You must not know your daughter very well,” said Dominic from across the table, his voice dipping into that lower register that always meant trouble for whoever was on the receiving end of it. “If you think for a single moment that she is capable of standing aside while a child is slaughtered, then I would suggest you have a great deal of catching up to do.”
“It would destroy her, and we sure as hell aren’t going to sit by and watch her do that to herself,” said Trace, his jaw muscle working furiously. “So if that’s where this conversation is going, it can stop right there.”
Jaqueline didn’t even flinch. She was a Revenant. Two more of them in the same room weren’t going to scare her into silence.
“I am not suggesting it because I do not care, Jemma,” she said, her gaze never leaving mine. “I am suggesting it because you have come within a hair’s breadth of dying twice in thelast month alone. And the next time the compulsion comes for you, your anchors may not be enough to hold it back. There are easier ways to keep yourself alive. Less costly ones.”
“Easier isn’t the same as right,” I shot back. I set my spoon down with more care than the moment really called for, the metal clicking against the rim of the bowl in the silence she’d carved out. “That baby shares the same bloodline I do. The same curse. The same assumption hanging over his head about what he’s going to become because of whose blood is in his veins. Every single person who’s ever looked at me has seen Lucifer’s daughter first. They saw something that needed to be destroyed before it had a chance to do any damage. That’s the only reason any of this is happening to me. Because of what they decided I was before I ever had a chance to prove them otherwise.”
Jaqueline was completely still.
“But I get to choose who I become,” I continued, my voice climbing an octave despite my best efforts. “Every single day, I make that choice. And that baby deserves the same chance. He doesn’t get one if we don’t give it to him.”
The kitchen had gone so still I could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator from across the room.
“So no, I’m not going to step aside,” I said, holding her gaze without blinking. “Not now. Not ever. So long as I’m breathing and have a say in any of this, I will never let them do to him what they tried to do to me. Because if I do that, then I’m no better than the people who wanted me dead before they even knew my name.”
Jaqueline’s expression didn’t change, but I saw the concession in her eyes. Not that she bothered saying it out loud. After a long moment, she inclined her head and said, “Fair enough. I was only looking out for your best interests.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” said Trace, his voice hard.
And with that, the conversation was over. Feeling the weight lift off my shoulders, I picked up my spoon again and took another small bite of soup.
“Now that we’ve cleared that up, perhaps we can move on to the rather pressing matter of what we are actually going to do about it,” suggested Dominic as he lifted his glass again with all the casual ease of a man who had not just verbally drawn a knife across the kitchen table.
“Agreed,” said Gabriel as he shifted his focus back to me. “What’s the plan moving forward?”
It was a fair question, and also one I didn’t exactly have an answer for yet. I opened my mouth to say so when a voice cut through the kitchen from the doorway, smooth and entirely unbothered, the way only a Roderick sister could ever sound walking into a house she had no business being inside of.
“The plan is ensuring the anchoring holds long enough for Jemma to repay her debt.”
Every head in the room turned toward the entrance.
Anita stood in the doorway with one shoulder braced against the frame, her red hair pulled back from her face in a long, sleek braid. She looked completely at ease, as though she’d just stepped in from the hallway of her own home and not breezed into ours unannounced. Apparently, we’d moved past basic courtesies like doorbells and invitations and gone straight to walking into people’s houses uninvited.
I dropped my spoon into my bowl with a clatter.
