Page 26 of The Devil's Trials

“I’m not going to tell you anything about Camille,” she charges on, as if I haven’t spoken. “You’ve wasted your time and taken a risk the size of your ridiculous ego bringing me here.”

I ignore Blake’s chuckle, keeping my eyes on Harper as she stops a few feet away. Her dirty blond hair is tied back, and she’s wearing the all-black uniform of the hunters—a skin-tight jacket, leggings, and runners—so she was either coming from or going to training when Blake grabbed her.

“That’s not why I brought you here,” I tell her.

She narrows her eyes and scoffs, her posture rigid with distrust. The race of her pulse and the wisps of dark fear rippling off her call to the part of me she loathes the most. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

“While I want to know about Camille,” I offer, “the reason I brought you here is to learn aboutyou.”

She blinks at me, her lips parting silently. Then she clamps her jaw shut, swallowing hard. “Is this your idea of a reunion? Because I don’t give a fuck what your psychotic mother said. You and I arenotfamily.”

A tinge of discomfort spreads through my chest as her words land there. She has every right to feel that way. To resent and despise the blood we share.

Blake slips out of the room, offering us some privacy, though I’m sure he’s close enough to intervene if needed. Like if Harper attempts turning me to ash with the obsidian blade strapped to her thigh.

“Would it make a difference if I told you I had no idea what Lucia did to your parents?”

“Are you still a demon?” she shoots back, and I have my answer.

“Because of our father, I wasn’t completely.”

“Don’t,” she snaps, her voice pure venom. “Joshua Gilbert wasmyfather. Not yours.”

I lower my gaze for a moment, exhaling a breath. Perhaps bringing Harper here was a mistake. When I look at her again, my mouth drops into a frown at the shaky hand she now has hovering over her dagger. “I’m not going to hurt you, Harper, but I’m also not going to let you use that on me.”

“Fuck you.” Her jaw clenches when her voice breaks. She’s clinging to a mask of anger, but talking about her parents is clearly a pain point. Still, I’m surprised her fear has all but disappeared. So there must be some part of her that trusts I meant what I said about not hurting her.

Harper steps forward, pinning me with a glare. “If you didn’t exist, my parents would still be alive.”

A low growl rumbles in the back of my throat and I falter unreservedly toward violence in response to her accusation. Suddenly, I’m crossing the space between us, wrapping my fingers around her throat, and squeezing until she begs for air.

I blink to find Harper still staring at me from several feet away, her eyes brimming with malice, and I grit my teeth against the vision of attacking Harper, despite knowing it wasn’t real.

With a sigh, I say, “I can’t bring them back and I can’t tell you why my mother manipulated your father into giving her a human son. He was merely a pawn. Same as I’ve always been.”

She folds her arms over her chest. “Is that why you killed her?”

“It’s why I was determined to send her back to hell like we planned.” Holding her gaze, I continue, “I killed her to save Camille.”

“Ever the white knight,” she remarks in a mockingly dry tone. “You saved her only to leave her in the dark, driving her to flee the state.”

My brows tug closer at the tension unfurling in my chest. I can only think of one place she’d go. “She went to New York.”

Harper’s eyes narrow. “I told you I wasn’t going to tell you anything about Camille.”

I could point out that she just did, but I shrug, reigning in the thoughts that want to race around everything related to Camille. What she’s doing, where she’s staying, when she’s coming back.

“So, what’s your plan now?” Harper’s voice cuts in and pulls my attention back to her.

“That’s not an easy question to answer,” I say in lieu of giving her any real information. Because I know what comes next, but I won’t risk that getting back to the hunters. We may share blood, but there’s a good chance Harper and I will never trust each other. At least not fully.

Harper laughs, and that alone sounds like an insult. “Why don’t you do what’s best for everyone and turn yourself over to the organization?”

My brows lift. “To be slaughtered?”

There’s a pause where Harper appears conflicted by that, as if maybe she doesn’t want me to be killed. It’s gone in an instant, replaced with a hard mask of coldness as she shrugs.

Instead of pushing that point, I veer the conversation toward the two of us again. “You know,” I say in a casual tone, “I’ve always wanted a sibling.”

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