Chapter 17 The Hand That Feeds
The smell of Isa’s cooking drew us out of Tessa’s room some time later.
My stomach growled in response, reminding me that the last thing I’d eaten had been a few spoonfuls of broth Isa had managed to coax into me, and that had been days ago at this point.
Tessa walked beside me, her steps slower than usual, her hand resting absently on her stomach in a way I was sure she didn’t even realize she was doing anymore.
We rounded the corner into the kitchen and I stopped short, my hand catching the door frame.
Jaqueline was sitting at the breakfast table.
Just sitting there, like she hadn’t spent the last week chained to a wall in our basement, lost to a bloodlust we hadn’t been sure she’d come back from. Like the world hadn’t tilted sideways for all of us in the time since I’d had a coherent conversation with her.
Despite all of that, she looked mostly like herself again.
Her dark hair pulled back into a neat bun at the base of her skull and her posture composed in that way only she could manage, but there was something fragile in the lines of her face.
Something hollowed out behind her eyes that hadn’t been there before.
The aftermath of being driven by something other than yourself.
Of doing things you’d never agreed to. I knew that look intimately. I had been wearing it myself for weeks.
My gaze flicked to Trace and Dominic, both of them already watching me from their seats at the table, gauging my reaction, ready to step in if it looked like I needed them to.
Gabriel, who’d been the one keeping watch over Jaqueline through the worst of it, sat at the head of the table with the kind of guarded posture that said he wasn’t quite ready to relax just yet.
As though some part of him were still waiting for the bottom to fall out a second time.
I stepped into the kitchen with Tessa right behind me.
“It’s good to see you back, Jackie,” I said, and was a little surprised by how much I meant it.
Jaqueline’s eyes lifted to mine, the careful composure cracking slightly at the edges. “Thank you, Jemma.” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I wasn’t sure that you would still want me here.”
The vulnerability in her voice was so far removed from the woman I knew that I almost didn’t recognize the cadence of it.
Jaqueline didn’t apologize. She didn’t ask for permission.
She marched into rooms and reorganized them to her liking and informed everyone of her decisions on the way out.
Tessa was a lot like her. But to see her sitting there now, waiting to find out whether she was still welcome at her own daughter’s table, hit me harder than I’d expected.
“You’re family,” I said simply, because that was the truth and the only one that mattered. “Of course you’re welcome here.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” added Tessa, her voice carrying an even note that surprised me. Coming from her, it was practically a vow. “You’re here now and that’s all that matters.”
Jaqueline’s eyes shifted to Tessa and something softer passed between them. A look that had history behind it. Whatever they’d talked about before I’d come downstairs, it had ended better than I’d dared to hope.
I crossed the rest of the way to the table and dropped into the empty seat beside Trace. His hand found my thigh under the table the second I sat down, his thumb tracing a slow line along the inseam of my jeans like he needed the contact to confirm I was still there.
Tessa hesitated for a beat before sliding into the chair across from me, next to Gabriel. He shifted his arm along the back of her chair without looking at her, the gesture so natural and unconscious that I knew neither one of them had noticed.
But I had.
I tucked the observation away for later and reached for the spoon Isa had set beside my bowl.
The soup was the kind that Isa made when one of us was recovering from something.
Rich, slow-simmered, the broth gold and faintly herbed.
There were half-sandwiches cut on the diagonal arranged around the rim of the plate and a small pile of fresh fruit in a porcelain bowl in the center of the table.
The whole spread was the closest thing to a love letter Isa knew how to write.
“Thank you, Isa,” I said as she set a glass of orange juice down in front of me. “It looks amazing.”
“Oh, it’s nothing.” She waved my compliment off like she hadn’t been the one keeping us all alive for the last several weeks, even as her entire face lit up at the praise. “Eat. You need it.”
I dug in immediately, the warmth of the broth spreading through my chest like medicine.
After days of barely being able to keep anything down, it felt good to actually want food again.
To be hungry in the simple, uncomplicated way bodies were meant to be hungry.
Not gnawed at from the inside by a force I couldn’t outrun.
It was the smallest thing. And somehow, it felt enormous.
I lifted my eyes in between swallows and bites and noticed Tessa was staring at her plate without touching it. Apparently, breaking the chokehold that gluttony had had over her also took her appetite right along with it.
Gabriel was watching her too, his expression mostly neutral but his eyes betrayed him. There was something almost desperate in the way he looked at her, like he wanted to reach out and make her eat. To fix whatever was broken. To take care of her the way he always had.
“You should try the soup,” I pushed her gently. “It’s really good.”
Tessa’s gaze flicked to mine for a beat before returning to her plate. She picked up her spoon slowly, like it was made of lead.
“Tess, you need to eat if you’re going to—”
“I’m eating,” she quickly cut in before I could finish, her eyes darting to our mother.
It took me a second to realize what was going on and remember that Jaqueline still didn’t know about Tessa’s pregnancy. Knowing this wasn’t the way my sister wanted her to find out, I pressed my lips together and dropped it.
Jaqueline, on the other hand, hadn’t taken her eyes off me from across the table since I sat down and started eating. I knew she had questions, but it felt like an eternity before she finally spoke.
“Gabriel mentioned the anchoring spell was successful,” she said, her tone careful in that way she got when she was trying not to push too hard too fast.
“It was.”
“And the anointment?”
The question dropped into the room like a brick onto glass.
I felt Trace shift beside me, his hand stilling against my thigh.
Across the table, Dominic’s gaze sharpened, his glass pausing halfway to his mouth before he set it back down on the table without taking the sip.
Even Tessa’s spoon paused halfway to her mouth before she set it back down without taking the bite.
“That’s a separate matter entirely,” answered Dominic before I could, his voice as smooth and composed as ever.
He set his tumbler aside and leaned back in his chair, his dark eyes finding mine across the table in that quiet way that always made me feel like he was right beside me whether he was or not.
“The anchoring is helping her carry the overload of power in her body so it doesn’t overwhelm her system.
It’s keeping her alive. But it has not broken the anointment, nor was it ever intended to. ”
“So the compulsion will still come,” surmised Jaqueline, her voice flat.
“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 the last 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.
Just what we needed.