Page 102 of Incoronate
“That’s okay. Then let me be the one to believe enough for the both of us,” she said with the smallest of smiles. “Until you can do it yourself.”
“Jems, will you please tell him to get off my dick about leaving town?” Ben’s voice cut through the moment as he appeared in the kitchen doorway, Trace walking in right behind him. “It’s not going to happen.”
Trace rolled his eyes, dragging a hand through his hair in exasperation as he dropped into the chair next to me. His arm draped loosely across the back of my chair, comforting me without even touching me. “I give up. He won’t listen to reason.”
“Reason?” Ben’s voice rose. “I’ve been with you guys since the beginning. Faced the worst of it with you. We faced Lucifer, for fuck’s sake. I’m not running now.”
I chose not to remind him that he’d been partially responsible for getting Taylor killed. That he’d pretty much fallen apart after that. No need to dig up the past when we had enough problems in the present.
“This is different, Ben. You know it is,” I said, my voice calmer than I felt. “Our plan depends on us staying small. Getting in and out without drawing attention. The more people we bring, the harder that becomes. You’d only be an extra liability or distraction we can’t afford.”
He looked genuinely offended. “I can fight. You know I can—”
“It’s not about fighting,” Trace cut in, his voice firm. “It’s about staying under the radar until we’re already inside. Every extra body increases the risk of getting caught before we even get through the door.”
“He’s right,” added Jaqueline. “The fewer people we have to worry about, the better chance of success.”
I turned to look at her. “I’m glad you agree because that includes you too.”
Jaqueline met my gaze without flinching. “No, it most certainly does not.”
“Jackie—”
“I’m a Revenant, Jemma. That means I’m faster, stronger, and considerably harder to kill,” she said, glancing at Ben before returning to me. “More importantly, I’m your mother. Protecting you is the only purpose I have left. The only thing that matters. I have no obligations beyond you and your sister. And if you don’t make it out of that Temple, I’ll have even less. So no, I’m not leaving. There are no circumstances under which that becomes an option.”
The certainty in her voice left no room for argument. I studied her face, searching for any crack in her resolve, but there was nothing. Just unwavering determination and a logic I couldn’t really dispute. She was right. As much as I hated it, she was right. She was a Revenant. She was my mother. And she literally had nothing to lose except me.
I couldn’t ask her to sit on the sidelines knowing that.
I exhaled slowly, resignation pressing down over me as I made peace with it. “Fine,” I said to her before turning back to Ben. “But you’re staying here.”
“What kind of sexist shit is this?” he asked aghast, his brown eyes bouncing between my mother and me, as though we were co-conspirators in this.
“Don’t even try that,” I warned, rolling my eyes at him. “Morgan and Carly don’t get to stay either,” I reminded him.
“Oh, you mean powerless Morgan and dying-to-be-human Carly? Yeah, I wonder why they’re not staying to help.”
“Then you see my point? Because unless you suddenly became a Revenant or developed Nephilim abilities overnight, you’re pretty much in the same boat as them.”
“That’s bullshit, Jem, and you know it.”
I shrugged. “Take it up with evolution.”
Ben held my gaze, his jaw working like he wanted to argue but couldn’t find the ammunition. Finally, he just shook his head and pointed his finger at me. “Let it be known to all that I’m against this. And really fucking offended too.”
“Consider it noted and filed,” I said, giving him a tight smile. “Feel free to complain about it when we get back.”
With that, the fight drained out of the room, leaving only the constant drum of rain against the window and the gravity of what tomorrow would bring. I’d managed to convince Ben to evacuate with the rest of our friends. To keep him safe from what was coming. But sitting there in this kitchen, surrounded by the people willing to walk into hell with me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that for the people who loved me, safety was just another word for survivor’s guilt.
And come tomorrow night, one of us was going to learn exactly what that felt like.
33. THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
I wiped my palm across the steam-clouded glass in one slow arc, and for a moment, all I could do was stand there in the smoky haze of the bathroom light, watching the condensation curl away from where I’d touched it. The face that emerged was mine—same gray eyes, same mouth, same constellation of small imperfections I’d catalogued a thousand times in a thousand other mirrors—but something in the tilt of my face had changed. Like a painting that had been retouched so subtly that you couldn’t really name the difference, only feel that it was different somewhere low and certain in your chest.
I stood there longer than I needed to, my towel wrapped around my chest, my hair dripping cold trails down the length of my back. Dusk had long since fallen over the house, bringing with it a stillness that closed in against the walls and made it feel like everything was consciously closing in on me. Like the clock was ticking faster than I could track and there wasn’t anything I could do to slow it down.
All I knew was that tomorrow, the wards at Temple would come down. Tomorrow, whatever we had been circling for months would finally stop circling and just arrive. I was going to walk into that damned place and do everything in my power to make sure the Order could never do to anyone else what they’d done to me. To my father. To Ares. I was going to tear down something rotten and make sure no other child grew up wondering why what made them beautiful and different also made them bad. Why it meant they would be hunted. Why the people who were supposed to protect them wanted them dead instead.
