by Kaitlyn Hoyt
Natalie, who’s hand I’m still holding, and Conner, who is standing behind me, both gasp as their parents walk into the room. Releasing my hand, Natalie runs toward her dad and jumps into his arms. Conner, on a much calmer scale, walks up to his mom and hugs her.
Turning toward the room, Tom shouts, “Can I have everyone’s attention?” All eyes in the room turn and look in our direction. Natalie walks back up and stands beside me. The rest of our group stands slightly behind. “You all know why you are here today. We need your help. Ryanne is back in the hands of the Gadramicks and we need to rescue her. Her protector, Liam, followed her there. ”
“How did she get captured again?” a girl asks from the back of the room. The tone of her voice says all I need to hear.
“Ryanne wasn’t captured again. She went with them to protect all of us,” I tell her. She smirks and looks down at the ground. “What is your name?” I ask her.
“Violet.”
I recognize her from somewhere. “Were you at the last fight with Dravin?” She nods at me. That’s where I’ve seen her. “You were the girl that Ryanne saved from Thomas.” When the color starts draining from her cheeks, I know the answer. Violet stares down at the ground again, but nods. “Then, you should understand what Ryanne’s like. She’ll do anything to protect others. If any of you were at that battle, Ryanne saved you all. Doesn’t she deserve that same courtesy too?
“You’ve all heard about the prophecy. Ryanne has proven to all of us multiple times that she’s truly the girl mentioned in it. There’s no refuting that once you’ve met her. She’s everything we need in a leader. She’s strong, fearless, and selfless. She puts the needs of everyone above her own. She’s the most strong-willed, determined and loyal person you’ll ever meet.
“Right now, that girl, my soulmate, is in the hands of the Gadramicks. She has her magic, but is way outnumbered. She’s not stupid, so she won’t fight her way out of it. She needs us, every last one of us, to help her. She won’t ask for any help, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need it. Now, I’m going to go to Dravin’s compound, with or without your help. However, we have a greater chance of being successful if you join us,” I finish and look over at Tom. The room is silent as everyone takes in my words.
Natalie squeezes my arm, reassuring me and pushing calming magic into me. Why is no one saying anything? No one even reacts. They all just stare. “You said all that you could,” she whispers to me. “The rest is up to them.”
Tom takes a step forward. “There’s one more thing you should know.” Mumbling fills the room. Everyone looks around the room, wondering what Tom could be referring to. He waits until everyone quiets again before continuing. “Dravin’s not in charge of the Gadramicks. They have someone more powerful calling all the shots.”
Everyone starts talking at once. “What are you talking about?”
“How is that possible?”
“It can’t be true. We’ve fought against him before!”
Tom shouts for everyone to be quiet. Hearing the harshness in his tone, the room falls silent. He doesn’t yell unless it’s absolutely necessary. “A mage named Zahtri is actually in charge of the Gadramicks. For some reason, he wants his identity to remain a secret until the most opportune moment. Ryanne had a vision about him and that’s why she told Dravin she would go with them. She was protecting us all. The only way we can stop all of this is if Ryanne is with us. She’s the only one powerful enough to go against Zahtri,” Tom pauses and looks around the room, making eye contact with as many people as possible. “Will you help us on our rescue mission?”
Chapter Fourteen
I can hear slight ruffling around me—the sound of fabric scratching and snagging against a hard rough surface. Pulling my knees up, I try to asses my surroundings before I open my eyes. My face is resting against a hard surface, but it isn’t hard enough to be the concrete flooring. Something is moving the ends of my hair. Not finding any immediate sources of danger, I open my eyes with hesitance and find that I’m lying in a cell in Dravin’s compound with my head in Liam’s lap and the rest of me sprawled on the cool, concrete flooring.
I push myself up into a seated position and attempt to stretch. There’s not a whole lot I can do though; my body is way too stiff from sleeping on the hard floor. As I move, Liam lets go of a strand of my hair. At my questioning look, he replies, “I understand Colton’s fascination with your hair.”
“His fascination?” I wasn’t aware that Colton had a fascination with my hair.
“Yeah, he loves your hair.” He says as he wraps another curl around his index finger, staring intently at the end of my hair.
“Well, he can have it. I was thinking about cutting it anyway. The longer it gets the curlier it becomes.”
“Don’t cut your hair,” Adam says as he enters our cell. He glances at me before giving Liam a glaring look which he returns. Honestly, if I didn’t know either of them, I’d be more afraid of Liam than Adam. Liam’s general appearance makes him more intimidating.
“Will you two stop being stupid? Adam, is there a reason why you barged into our lovely cell on what I’m assuming is a bright and shining morning?” I ask him politely. Liam releases the strand of hair and it bounces back into place. I catch a small smile from him at the movement, but he doesn’t take his eyes off of Adam.
“I’m supposed to make sure you didn’t escape during the night,” he tells me.
I stare at him blankly. “Couldn’t you have just done that through the window?” I say as I point to the small window in the door.
“Yes, I could have,” he says. But? He’s still glaring at Liam. What does he have that I don’t?
I look between Adam and Liam again. Adam is jealous of Liam? I bite my lip to keep from smiling. This just keeps getting better and better.
“Adam, will I get killed if I ask to go to the restroom?” He stares at me incredulously. “What? Has Dr. Arden found a way to cure the need for bathroom breaks or something? I could always pull the I’m on my period card.”
“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 thi
s 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.
“Your blood is an enigma. Your magic is concentrated in your blood stream, but you can push it out unlike most mages. There’s no way to extract it from the blood cells. It’s like a magnet, except there’s no way to pull the two apart.” He points to the glitter. “Your blood is overwhelmed with the magic. You have more magic in you than blood, but it’s not affecting you physically which is amazing. I don’t know what to think of it,” he tells me.
“So my blood is an anomaly?” I ask.
“Pretty much,” he tells me. While he’s looking down at his clipboard, I study him. As much as I hate to admit it, we do look a lot alike. We have to same dark curly hair and light eyes. We share the same straight nose and full lips. I watch as he scrunches his features when he’s concentrating. I know for a fact that I do because Colton can always tell when I’m over thinking something. Jedrek tears his eyes away from the clipboard and looks over at me.
I bite my lip and look away, bringing my eyes back to the papers in his hands. The bright lights shine off a piece of glossy paper clipped in the back. As I look closer, I realize that it’s actually a photograph. The familiar tingling sensation starts again in my stomach the longer I look at this photo. I need to know what it is. I reach forward and pull it out. A tiny white cat is staring back at me. Seeing the light blue eyes in the picture causes my stomach to tighten.
“What’s this?” I ask him while showing him the photo.
“Umm,” How much should I tell her?
“The truth.”
“I sometimes forget that you can read my mind.”
“Why do you have a picture of this cat?”
“After we started the magic extraction process, we needed to test to see if we could inject magic into other beings. If we couldn’t, the extraction would be useless. We didn’t want to just inject magic into anyone’s bloodstream, because we weren’t sure what the repercussions were going to be, so we started off with animals.”
“You mean you didn’t want to inject magic into anyone. Dravin doesn’t care about what happens to anyone but himself.”
She’s smart. “You’re correct. I didn’t want to cause any harm to anyone where it wasn’t necessary.”
“So you injected magic from mages into this cat?”
“Yes, but the results were inconclusive. The animals didn’t act any different. There were no identifiable results. They didn’t react to the foreign blood in their bloodstream.”
“So, you’re the reason why I can read her thoughts,” I mumble as I look back down at the small Polaroid.
“What?”
“This is my cat, Olive.”
“And you can read her thoughts?” I look back up at him. Now I’m the one who doesn’t know how much to tell. “Amazing.”
I open my mouth to tell him to keep it quiet when he stops me. “I’m not going to change anything. The results were still inconclusive, Ryanne.” I let out a sigh of relief. I don’t want them performing anymore tests on anyone else: animals or mages.
The room descends into silence. I hand the picture of Olive back to Jedrek. He clips it back under the stack of papers. She’s so beautiful. Reminds me of Maureen.
I flinch and bite my lip. I thought I could handle talking to him, but I can’t. I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes. “Ryanne, I wouldn’t have left if I knew about you. Maureen never told me she was pregnant,” he states.
“When did you find out about me?” I ask. I glance toward the door. Liam and Adam are standing on opposite ends of the hall. Both are trying to be discreet, but I know they are watching me. I look back to Jedrek.
He diverts his eyes and glances toward the door as well. Turning around, he leans against the counter and hugs the clipboard to his chest. “When you were two,” he answers honestly. He’s known about me for sixteen years and never once tried to contact me at all?
I can’t…I try to keep the tears at bay as I turn to leave the room.
“Ryanne, wait,” he reaches out and grabs my forearm. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it,” I yell. “Explain why you abandoned us. Explain why my mom had to raise me all by herself. Explain why I had to watch all the other kids grow up with a mom and a dad and always wonder why I didn’t have that. Why I thought there was something wrong with me because my family was different. Explain why you knew about me and still didn’t want me.”
He just stares at me. I can feel the tears streaming down my cheeks. Jedrek reaches forward to wipe them away, but I take a step back, not giving him the opportunity to comfort me. Sadness and confusion washes off of him, but he doesn’t say anything. There’s no excuse for what he did. I turn around and exit the lab, leaving him there to watch me walk away from him. I rush past Liam and Adam in the hall and go straight into my cell. I’m not hungry anymore and don’t care if I don’t get food anytime in the near future. I want to see Colton. I want to cry on his shoulder and feel him wrap his arms around me as he tries to comfort me, but that’s not possible. I don’t know if it will ever be possible again.
Liam walks into the cell and immediately pulls me to him. I go willingly, but it’s not the same as when Colton comforts me. “Ryanne, talk to me,
” Liam says. I shake my head and let my tears fall onto his shirt.
“I miss Colton,” I mumble. I hear the door close behind us, which either means that Adam is standing in the doorway or that he’s just outside of it.
“You’ll see him again, Ryanne.” I stand back and look up at him. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Adam standing in the doorway. He’s staring off in the distance, trying to look like he’s not listening, but his thoughts tell me otherwise.
“No, I won’t. Don’t you get that? They’re going to keep us here, so that the prophecy is never fulfilled. There’s nothing we can do about it. Someday Zahtri is going to decide that it’s pointless to keep me alive and he’ll kill me, which means that you’ll die as well because you gave me this stupid necklace. I’ve dragged you down with me,” I lean my head against his chest. “I’m so sorry, Liam.”
“Ryanne,” Liam states and leans back, moving me so that I’m looking straight at him. “Don’t you dare think like that. Ever.”
“Why? I’m thinking realistically, Liam. It’s about time you start doing it too.”
“Have faith in our family. Have faith in Colton.” A warm feeling spreads through me when I hear him mention our family.
“I don’t want to have faith in him. I don’t want him to come here, because despite them acting civil toward us, they won’t hesitate to kill him. They’ve killed him before and you were there to witness that. I’d rather stay here and rot than know that he died trying to rescue me, because at least he’d still be living.”
“Ryanne, everything will play out like it should. Don’t worry.”
“Worry is my middle name,” I mumble.
“I thought it was stubborn,” Liam says as he wipes the tears away from my face.
“I have two middle names.”