Chapter 159 A Name

Chapter 159 A Name
VISCA -

The nursery hadn't held a fire in it since Savonnuh was a child and had needed a bigger room. For years neither Jules nor Visca could bring themselves to empty it.
Now it smelled of goat's milk and smoke.
Visca stood in the doorway and watched the flames move behind the iron gate. Morning light slipped through the tall windows, laying itself across the rug, the carved cradle, and the clean clothes near the hearth. Outside, the wind moved through the bare branches that stood over the garden.
Jules sat beside the fire with the baby held against her shoulder. Her hair was pinned neatly, but loose strands still framed her tired face. One hand moved with steady practice over the baby's back.
Anahi slept in a chair near the hearth, one arm tucked close to her injured hand. Someone had laid a blanket over her, even though she still wore her traveling gear.
Jules didn't look toward the doorway when she spoke. "If you mean to stand there like a ghost, close the door. She doesn't like the draft."
Visca stepped inside and closed the door.
"She's fed?" he asked.
"Twice." Jules adjusted the cloth under the baby's cheek. "Not nearly enough, but I worry too much will make her sick. She got angry when the milk was taken away."
He heard the first bit of humor in his wife's tone since before they were exiled, and his wolf lifted its head. "Good."
Jules glanced at him. "Good?"
"Anger means strength."
The corner of her mouth moved. "Then she may live forever if last night was any measure."
Visca crossed the room and stopped beside the cradle. It had been cleaned before dawn, and fresh blankets lined the inside as the old embroidered cover Jules had made for Savonnuh lay folded at the foot.
He must have looked at it for too long because Jules followed his gaze. "I almost had them take that away."
He kept quiet, not knowing what to say.
"I stood with it in my hands for a long while." Her fingers moved against the baby's back. "Then I thought perhaps she'd grow up liking her sister's blanket."
The word sister sent a shock through his fingers and an ache through his heart.
The baby shifted, turning her face toward Jules's neck. Her mouth opened against the blanket, and she gave a soft, offended sound before settling again.
Anahi stirred, then jerked upright. "I'm awake!"
"You were not," Jules said.
Anahi straightened too quickly and winced when her back complained. Still, her eyes moved to Jules. "My Lady, I didn't mean to sleep."
"You were half dead on your feet. Sleeping was the first sensible thing I've seen you do."
Anahi looked uncertain, as if she couldn't tell whether she had been scolded or not.
The baby fussed again, wrinkling her tiny face as if offended by every word spoken.
"She needs a name," Jules said timidly.
Visca's hand tightened on the cradle as Jules kept her eyes on the baby. "The servants keep lowering their voices whenever they call her the child. It sounds like a thing people are afraid of."
"A name is a claim," Visca said, nodding.
"Exactly."
Jules brushed her thumb along the baby's cheek. "She was left for... him."
Visca knew who she meant. The altar had belonged to the Vile God. His worship had outlived him, carried on by frightened hands still willing to obey old ways.
Jules continued, "She was left for a god that... Luna Eysa helped destroy. A girl we called Beastly."
Visca looked at her sharper now. They'd been terrible to Bea, and in the end, although Savonnuh had taken her life, Dax had told him that she had been the last kind thing in Savonnuh's life.
"I thought... maybe something close to what you say many called her? Bea, was it? Something that remembers why this child wasn't claimed by that altar."
The baby opened her blue eyes for a moment.
"I was thinking, maybe something like... Brea?"
The child made a small sound and Jules's face changed as if the baby had answered.
"Brea," Visca said.
The name didn't stir the same place Savonnuh had occupied, but it settled somewhere close. Somewhere small and newly made.
Jules looked down at the baby. "There. Now the servants may stop whispering as if you're a curse waiting to eat them."
For one quiet moment, the nursery held something close to peace.
Then duty returned.
"I must return to the Capitol," he said.
Anahi looked up at once.
Jules kept her hand moving over Brea's back. "To Alpha Dax?"
"Yes. He needs the report. The final shrine was destroyed, but several people and an entire village still need judgementThey need to know that fear is no longer law."
"And Brea?"
Visca looked at the child in her arms. "She's safe here, if you'll allow it." Jules' hand stilled. "If this house is too full of ghosts, I can ask Dax to place her somewhere else."
Jules lifted her head slowly, and the look she gave him was not gentle.
"This house is full of ghosts because of what we did," she said. "Perhaps it's time something living made noise in it again."
Visca couldn't answer. His throat was too full of lumps that he had to swallow past.
Jules looked back down at Brea. "Go answer your Alpha."
His fingers clenched at his sides. "Leaving her here feels too much like leaving."
"It's not the same." Jules' voice grew quiet and a little sad. "You're not sending her to a duty. You're leaving her protected while you go answer yours."
The words sliced through him with a pain so clean he almost stepped back from it.
Anahi rose from the chair. "I'm ready."
"You're barely standing," Jules said.
"I can ride."
Visca looked at her pale face and the stiffness in her injured hand. "Can you?"
She met his gaze and measured the truth within in her. "I can ride to the Capitol. After that, I need a healer to look at my hand, or I need to shift."
Jules made a sound under her breath. "At last, some sense."
Visca nodded. "Then we leave within the hour."
Anahi moved toward the door, but Visca stayed a moment longer.
Jules shifted Brea carefully, then looked at him over the child's head. "Don't make me regret this."
"I won't."
"I don't mean Brea."
He understood then, and lowered his head. "I will return sooner this time."
Jules looked away first, but not before he saw her eyes shine.
An hour later, Visca and Anahi rode through the estate gates toward the Capitol. The Southern road stretched ahead in pale morning light.
Before the road curved away, Visca looked back just once.
Jules stood in the nursery window with Brea held against her shoulder. The child was too small to understand the name or the house that had chosen her, but she was warm. She was fed. And she was alive.
Anahi saw them too, but she stayed silent even though her shoulders eased.
Visca turned back toward the road.
This time, the path ahead didn't feel like an exile. It felt like duty finally pointing in the right direction.