Evil - Tijan Page 0,38

like he’d been ready for this, waiting for this. When he didn’t move to us, we went to him. Fine. We’d give him that. We deserved answers that he was going to give.

Vespar growled, leading the way up to him. “Is it true? Did you come to watch us?”

Kellan’s eyes held mine, ignoring his brother. There was a dark promise in them. As a shiver went down my spine, I ignored it and lifted my face in a challenge. I warded off the chills and stepped around Vespar. “Are you really surprised by that? He’s been fixing your messes. I’m surprised he hasn’t always watched you, making sure you didn’t do something so stupid that you’d attract the arrival of messengers.”

Our sister gasped.

Vespar froze. His eyes snapped to mine.

Then Kellan narrowed his and asked, calm, quietly, “Is that what he said?”

“Among a lot of other stuff.” I glared at him and then looked to Vespar. “I’d run if I were you. You killed too many. You’ve done too much.” Then I looked at Gus and saw the guilt in her eyes. I wondered if she had even told him the magnitude of what she’d done, how many bodies there had been. “They’re coming, and they’re coming for you two. I was told that you ‘must pay.’”

Vespar scoffed, “Who told you that?”

“A messenger.”

The smirk vanished.

Then I smiled. “Maybe you should pack your bags.”

He scowled. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Giuseppa shifted uncomfortably beside him.

And then Kellan stepped around them so it was just me and him. His back was to them, effectively warding them from our conversation as he asked, “What else did he say?”

The way he moved, how sensual it was, how unperturbed he seemed to be, made me uneasy. I hesitated to ask what I really wanted to, but I murmured, with less heat than I’d had in the beginning, “You changed everything. Matt’s the same. Leah doesn’t know she had parents. Dylan’s alive…”

Gus gasped and jerked forward. “You did?” Her hand clamped on to Kellan’s arm, but he glared at her. Her hand jerked back in the next second, but she tried to act like that little exchange hadn’t happened. She smiled and shifted on her hip. “That’s great. I don’t—you did something to him?”

“I wiped his memory. I wiped all of their memories—every one of them.”

Vespar was quiet, which said a lot. I narrowed my eyes at him. “No thanks for your big brother?”

He lifted frosty eyes at me, but didn’t say anything.

Kellan frowned at me, but also didn’t say a word.

That told me everything I needed to know—they both knew Kellan wasn’t related to us. If he hadn’t insisted the other two would kill me if they realized my blood roots, I would’ve assumed that Vespar also knew about my messenger parentage. I wanted to say something, judge their responses, but I held my tongue. If they didn’t know, I wasn’t ready to fight my real brother and sister any time soon.

Kellan seemed to have been assessing me the whole time. He saw my surrender and swooped in to turn toward Gus and Vespar. “I’m sorry. I have been watching you, but only the last day. She’s right—you two did a lot of damage and they’re coming. I didn’t want to give them any more against you than they already have. I did what I could, but you still upset the balance. We’re not supposed to use our magic that much, and we’ve been using way too much. The consequences are coming our way.”

Then he looked at me with eyes that held a dark promise. It slithered down my body and wrapped tight inside. Kellan was furious, and he wasn’t going to be quiet. I only had a matter of time before he came to hash things out with me. I didn’t think he was going to back down how I had.

Vespar nodded, grave. “How long do we have?”

“They’ll come to talk first. They’ll find us, and they’ll inquire who did what. They’ll figure out who the leader is, etc. They’ll devise all of our roles, and then they’ll make a plan on how to handle us. If we fight them, they’ll fight back. They’ll swoop in and obliterate us all. If that happens…then we’ll have to see. We have some time.” He turned to leave.

Giuseppa asked, anxious, “What can we do before then?”

Kellan said darkly, “Get as strong as you can.” His eyes pierced mine for a second, and then he left. We stood behind, unsure of