Chapter 158 What He Brought Home

Chapter 158 What He Brought Home
VISCA -

The horses came through the estate gates with mud dried along their legs and their heads hanging low.
Visca road first, his cloak stiff with dust, ash, and days of road and wind. Anahi followed close behind, one arm wrapped beneath her cloak where the baby slept against her chest. Her face had gone pale from the long ride, and her shoulders dipped with each breath, but she kept herself upright until they reached the front steps.
Servants hurried out into the cold wind, stopping short when they saw the bundle Anahi carried.
Visca dismounted and handed his reins to the nearest stable hand. "Warm water. Milk. Clean cloths, and a fire in the front sitting room."
The servants scattered at his tone.
Anahi shifted in the saddle, trying to climb down without jostling the child. Visca reached up before she could refuse and took the baby from her arms.
The bundle settled against his chest with a small, living weight only a baby could own.
His arms stiffened first, then his hands adjusted without command. One supporting the head, and the other tucking the cloth beneath the baby's cheek. Warm breath pressed through the wrappings and touched the inside of his wrist.
Savonnuh used to feel just like this.
The memory cut clean and fast. Jules laughing softly beside their bed while a tiny fist caught his finger. His own voice, younger and proud, promising that no harm would ever reach his daughter while he still breathed.
Both his heart and his mind ached, while his wolf whined softly inside him.
The front doors opened before he could steady himself.
Jules stood in the entrance with one hand braced against the frame. Her hair was pinned loosely, as if she'd come down before her maid could finish.
The color drained from her face when her eyes fell to the child in his arms and the woman at his side.
Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
Visca walked up the steps slowly, and Anahi came up behind him, boots dragging once before she caught herself.
"Tell me that child is not yours." Jules said, her voice low.
"She's not mine by blood."
Her eyes moved from the baby to his face. Pain pursed her mouth before anger covered it. "Visca Destran... Do not stand in this house with someone else's child and look at me as if I should know what to do with her."
Visca stopped in the doorway. Heat from the hall slid into his bones, but it did nothing for the cold beneath his ribs.
"I was sent by Alpha Dax to destroy the forgotten shrines left to the Vile god," he said. "The last was an abandoned chapel beyond the old border road. The child was hidden under the altar, wrapped as an offering."
Jules's knuckles turned white around the doorframe.
"The mother is dead," he continued. "The brother left the baby there because he believed the child had killed his mother." He watched Jules's eyes harden with anger. "Someone taught him that if the child survived and the mother didn't, then it was marked and needed to be offered up."
Jules looked at the bundle again, and her throat moved. The baby shifted, turned toward the sound of voices.
"Our daughter died because she was offered up where she didn't want to go," Jules said.
Visca lowered his head as the hall went quiet around them. A servant stopped near the far wall with a stack of cloths in her hands. Anahi remained behind him, silent and still, like she didn't want Jules's ire to turn on her.
"Yes," Visca finally said, and the word scraped angrily on its way out.
He didn't lift his head because there was no answer that deserved to stand against that. No reason could soften the night Savonnuh died in a room far from them, wearing a dress she had never wanted to wear for a marriage she had never wanted to make.
Jules stepped down from the doorway. "You offered her up."
"Yes."
"And I helped you do it."
Visca lifted his eyes then.
Her face had changed. The anger was still there, but it had cracked around something older and more exhausted. She looked at the baby and then at her own hands, like she was remembering how empty they had been since Savonnuh's death.
Visca adjusted the baby when it made a weak sound.
"I gave one daughter to duty, and she died where I sent her." His throat went dry, but he forced the words through anyway. "I cannot undo that, but I will not stand over another child and call abandonment someone else's burden when my hands are covered in the same kind of blood."
Jules pressed her lips together until they whitened.
The baby fussed again, louder this time. Visca looked down, and the child's mouth moved against the edge of the cloth. Anahi stepped forward without thinking, but then caught herself.
Jules noticed and she tsked through her teeth before saying, "The child's hungry." Visca stood still. "And you're holding her head too low." Jules crossed the space between them and reached for the bundle, but stopped just before touching it. Her fingers hovered above the baby's cheek. They trembled once before curling back. "How long since the last feeding?"
"Several hours," Visca said. "We found milk on the road, but not enough."
Jules turned her head sharply toward the servants. "Why are you standing there? Warm the milk slowly, not hot, and bring soft linen and another blanket." The servant started to turn when she finished with, "And send someone to prepare the nursery."
The words landed in the hall so hard that one maid's eyes filled with tears.
Jules heard it too, and her shoulders stiffened, but she didn't take the order back.
She met Visca's eyes hard. "This child is not her," Jules said quietly.
"No." He shook his head softly.
"Good." Her eyes shone when she looked back up. "I couldn't bear it if we pretended."
Visca swallowed. "And we won't."
Only then did Jules hold out her arms. He placed the baby into them carefully, and she pulled the child fully against her chest, tucking the bundle with the practiced ease of a mother.
The baby quieted almost immediately.
Jules closed her eyes, and her face twisted in a silence that hurt to look at. When she opened them, she looked past Visca with wet eyes at Anahi.
"And you," Jules said, her voice hiding a tremor. "You look ready to drop where you stand."
Anahi straightened. "I'm fine, my Lady."
"You are not." Jules turned toward the sitting room with the baby held close. "Food for the girl too. Something hot. And a chair near the fire before she falls into it."
Anahi's eyes widened, but she followed when Jules moved.
Visca stayed in the hall a moment longer. The house hadn't changed. It was the same stairs and polished floor that carried the same memories. Yet the sound of Jules ordering the household with a voice roughened by grief but tinted with hope, moved through the air.
The house didn't heal because a child had entered it, but when Jules carried the baby toward the fire and Anahi followed on unsteady legs, Visca felt the first small thread of hope pull through the ruin inside him.