Page 94 of Reap the Night
Lorenzo smiled, charisma oozing from his pores. “Hello, all. Holly, you’re well?”
“I am,” Holly said. “Did you come to check on me?”
There was an uncharacteristic sharpness to her tone, and I tore my gaze from Lorenzo and fixed it on her.
Her jaw was tight, her fists clenched as if she was getting ready for a fight.
“Holly?” Merry nudged her.
She blinked and exhaled. “Sorry. Too much caffeine.”
“I came to see Orina,” Lorenzo said to her. “The blood results…” His gaze flicked back to me. “Is there somewhere we can speak in private?”
Private? He’d come all this way to deliver the results in private? A phone call on his secret line would have been private, but he’d made this trip. My scalp tightened.
“You can say whatever you have to say in front of my team. I’ll share it with them anyway.”
He seemed to consider this. “You trust them with your life.”
“I do.”
“Very well. I took it upon myself to supervise the analysis of your blood, and it was flagged by a code in our systems. Luckily, I was able to shut it down and pass it off as a glitch.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that there’s an alert for your kind of blood. I investigated further, and I’ve learned why. Orina, your blood holds a very rare, very specific genetic code. One that is only found in two bloodlines, Bloodmere and Rathmore.”
“I’ve…never heard of them.”
“You wouldn’t have. They live on an island beyond the Rim. But the issue we have is that there is a huge bounty set for anyone who can bring you in.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“The older you get, the stronger the power in your blood, and it will be detectable by these bounty hunters. You’ll be hunted and taken back to the isle.”
My head reeled. “You’re saying I have family on this isle?”
“Not just family, Orina…parents. You have parents on the isle.”
No… “That can’t be…my parents…they died, they?—”
“Couldn’t have been your real parents.”
The breath whooshed out of my lungs. “No. This is bullshit.”
“I assure you it is not.”
“My parents died in a fire. I was their miracle baby, I…” The look on his face, patient and understanding and… “They weren’t my biological parents?”
“No. They couldn’t have been.”
“Oh God…The Order…did they know?” My mind went to Ordell and Hemlock, but no, they may have set up the Order, but they didn’t run it. “Someone at the Order stole me from my parents?”
“Yes, and we don’t know why. Orina, there is a conspiracy going on, and it revolves around you. I’m not sure why the Order took you, and I don’t know how, but I do know what you mean to your real family. The seventh daughter of a seventh daughter provides offspring to carry on this valuable gene.”
“Seventh daughter of the what?” Padma asked.
“It’s a witch thing,” Edwin said in a hushed tone. “At least it was before they were wiped out.”
