there. She couldn’t tell me.
“What does it mean? Aquarius said the exact same thing to me.”
She shook her head. “I should go.”
“No,” I argued. “You should elaborate.”
Kes stormed in.
I threw up my hands. “I’m decent, but thanks for asking before barging in!”
“Leave!” he barked at Helena.
She didn’t take his crap. She shoved past him and gritted, “Gladly,” as she stormed out of the room, disappearing in the doorway.
My heart thundered. “Kes, what are you keeping from me?”
He cursed and tried to calm himself down, raking his hands through his ashen hair.
“You said you were on my side,” I hissed.
“I am!”
“Then act like it! What are you hiding?”
Aries answered from the doorway. “He’s hiding what I asked him to.”
“Which is?” I asked, my eyes flicking between them both.
“Which is…what you are.”
My mouth gaped. “What I am?” I finally managed to say. I looked to my brother. “Kes? What am I?”
I was afraid to hear his answer, yet afraid he wouldn’t reveal it.
For a moment, he looked like he was in pain. “You are one of Taurus’s descendants.”
In shock, I stood still for a moment and allowed the ponderous words to echo and crash through my mind. That was impossible. I was as human as they came. I wasn’t like him. I was the exact opposite of him. I couldn’t be the descendant of that thing! How many generations had passed since they were put to sleep?
If this was true, it meant I was the offspring of one of his few children that he didn’t manage to hunt down and murder before Aries tricked Taurus into stepping inside the temple.
“Say something,” Kes said, watching me warily.
“That’s impossible,” I breathed, rubbing the heel of my palm over my heart.
“It’s true,” Aries said solidly. “Three of his children were still alive when I trapped them. They lived and had families, and their children had families, and so on until your father was born, and then you were.”
“So that must mean there are a lot of his descendants out there, right?”
“Only you and your father survive,” Aries answered. “He’s hunted and killed all the others. It was the first thing he did when he woke.”
The conversation with Helena resurfaced… a lineage of Taurean blood.
She and Aquarius both told me I was ‘so much more’; I just didn’t realize they meant that Taurus’s blood flowed through my veins.
“He wasn’t there to collect me,” I said, feeling hollow again. “He was there to kill me – at the cemetery.”
Kes gave a nod to confirm it.
“You knew,” I accused. “From the moment you took over Kestrel’s body.” My voice cracked.
“I’d lived many lifetimes and had never seen one of his. Until I saw you,” he rasped.
“And Helena’s known this whole time? All the Guardians know? All the Zodia?”
Aries nodded. “Yes.”
“No wonder you never trusted me with your secrets,” I told Kes. “I’m the enemy.”
“I trusted you more than anyone else,” he said imploringly.
I shook my head. “Then that’s not saying much, because you should have told me before he made that stupid pledge to me! You should’ve told me who I was and why it was so important that Aries protect me. You should’ve told me why Taurus was hunting me.” I whirled to face Aries. “And you should’ve told me that it wasn’t just because of a promise forced on you.”
How could they look me in the face for so long and lie?
“I couldn’t, Larken,” Kes said, his features contorting as if he were in pain. Then the look slid away and he stared vacantly at the floor. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know what to say, how to feel, or what to think. I just wanted the nightmare to end. “Can I really kill him?” I asked. “And not harm his people?”
“If you could manage it, yes. But then, you’d have to take his place,” Aries rasped.
It was too much.
“Get out.” I pointed at my door. Aries slowly walked out. Kes lingered, so I dragged Kes by the elbow toward it, shoving him out of my space and slamming the door. I sank down the length of the door, hugging myself and crying bitter tears.
I was a monster. Just like them.
An emotional mess of one, who looked and felt every ounce human, despite the blood in my veins. Blood that was poison to the one hunting me. Blood he desperately wanted to rid the world of.
None of them set foot in my room that night, though I knew at least one lurked outside it. What was a prison