Reaching Retribution(48)

“She’s cooperated so far. Take her. Then get them some food afterwards. I need her today,” Dravin says as he passes our cell.

“That can’t be good,” I mumble as Dravin leaves. Adam glances down at me before turning around and leaving the room. I glance over my shoulder back at Liam who looks as worried as I feel.

“Are you guys coming? I wouldn’t expect this kindness from him for too long,” Adam yells from the hall. I grab Liam’s arm and pull him after me.

“What was that about?” Liam whispers to me.

“I’ll explain later.” Adam stops in front of a bathroom and opens the door. He walks in and once he determines that it’s empty. He signals for me to go inside. “You’d just walk inside of the girl’s restroom like that?”

“Ryanne, there’s literally only two other girls here, and one of them has you on the top of her hit list. Zahtri and Dravin need you alive right now. It’d mean my death if either one of them got to you.”

“I can take care of myself, thank you very much,” I say as I walk into the bathroom. I slam the door behind me. This is getting ridiculous. I quickly scan the room. There’s no way to exit other than the door I just came through. Dang. I take care of my business, wash my hands, and join Adam and Liam again. I don’t trust those two together for long.

I walk out and see Adam and Liam arguing. I was seriously gone for two minutes. What could they be arguing about?

“I’m her protector! It’s my job to protect her. Not yours.”

“If I weren’t here, she’d have been attacked already. None of these guys will hesitate if they see her. They either think that she a killer, standing in the way of the plan, or they think she’s hot. Any way will result in her getting hurt. Is that what you want? Your best bet is to let me help you guys.”

I lean back against the wall and wait for the guys to stop arguing. This could take a while. They haven’t even noticed I’m right here. I could stop them, but this is more interesting.

“Why the heck would you want to help? You’ve attacked her enough times yourself. I’ve had to see her wake up with cuts, bruises, and broken bones because of you. She had nightmares you were going to kill her. Is that how you want to protect her? By scaring her?”

“I’ve changed,” Adam says.

Liam obviously doesn’t like that answer. “You’ve changed?”

“Yeah, I have. I’m not the same guy that attacked her before.”

“I highly doubt that. It’s not possible to change that drastically overnight.”

I look down the hallway and spot Jedrek working in the lab room that I was in yesterday. I glance toward Liam and Adam. Neither of them are focusing on me, so I quietly move down the hallway, and pause in front of the glass doors. There’s no one in the lab with him. Yesterday, the room was bustling with people and now, it’s practically empty.

Soundlessly, I push open the door and walk in. I still don’t know how to regard this man. He’s my dad, yes, but he’s also the man that abandoned me before I was born. He wanted nothing to do with me, and every time I see him that thought is in the back of my mind.

He’s not aware that I’m here yet, so I clear my throat. Jumping slightly, he reorganizes the papers on his clipboard and looks over his shoulder. His startled expression calms when he sees me, but shortly afterwards, his eyes widen. His gaze moves past me and lands on Liam and Adam arguing in the hall. With his mouth set in a straight line and a shake of the head, he tells me, “You shouldn’t be walking around here alone, Ryanne. It’s not safe.”

“Did you get my blood results back?” The words come out of my mouth before I can stop them. Similarly, my feet take a few steps closer to him. He just stares at me as I move; this obviously wasn’t what he was expecting at my random appearance. I think he’s expecting me to yell and get mad at him.

“Yes,” he answers without looking away from me. Stopping beside him, I look down at the microscope he’s working on. There’s a drop of blood on the slide he’s examining.

“Is that mine?” With a nod, he steps back and gestures for me to examine it. I lean down and look into the microscope. I don’t really know what blood looks like under a microscope, but I don’t think this is normal. It looks like someone dumped glitter all over the slide. I have glittery blood. I bet fairies would have glittery blood…do fairies exist? I step back and look at him. “That’s not normal.”

“No, it’s not,” he tells me as he grabs a clipboard. He shows me a picture of a normal person’s blood. It just looks like a bunch of small reddish-pink circles. He walks to the opposite side of the room and unlocks a cabinet. He grabs a slide and walks back to me. The slide has a drop of blood from a mage. It looks more like mine than the humans, but mine contains more glittery specks.