The Obsidian Order Boxed Set

by martinez, katerina

  The walls were already shifting with pearlescent light, and when Siren’s ghostly form manifested, the radiance from her magically created body made the room sparkle all around me. Before I could figure out what was going on, Draven had moved slowly down a small set of steps and submerged the lower half of my body into a pool of warm water that made my skin feel like it was being kissed by angels all over.

  It also made me wake the hell back up.

  My eyes shot open as the immediately comfortable, warm sensation turned to pain, the sudden change in temperature aggravating my injuries. “Siren, the healing powder—dump it into the pool.”

  “Yes, Draven,” came Siren’s ethereal reply, and magically, a jar filled with sparkling green powder floated over from a shelf and emptied itself into the pool. The powder quickly spread through the water like a bath bomb, turning it green.

  “Get me more,” Draven said, “And a healing salve. Now.”

  Siren nodded, then disappeared, her ghostly form breaking off into a cloud of green mist and lines of light.

  “You got my clothes wet,” I managed to croak.

  Draven looked at me. “You’re alive…”

  I looked up at him, trembling from the pain shooting through me. Glancing at the pool, I could see the water slowly turning deep red. “Am I? I can’t tell.”

  “You’ve been badly injured. Here.” He dipped his hand into the water and ran it through my hair. I wasn’t sure if it was the water’s healing properties, or just the fact that he was touching me, but my entire body started tingling as he kept dipping his hand into the water and letting it fall through my hair.

  Siren returned, bursting to life in a flash and somehow holding another two jars; one filled with powder, another with that salve the prospects were given after training sessions and trials. She was a ghost, a being without a physical body, but those things she was carrying were real; some serious magic was at work there. “Give me the salve,” Draven said, “Then drop more powder in the pool and cycle the water.”

  “Yes, Draven,” Siren said, and by her will, the jar filled with powder floated into the pool, where it dipped past the rim allowing its contents to spread into the water.

  The other jar landed gently next to Draven, who had already started unclipping my tactical harness. Given that some of the straps were already cut to shreds, the harness slipped off me easily enough and then sank slowly into the pool. Shuffling me into a more comfortable position, my back rested against his chest, my legs stretched and floating in the water, arms laying limply at my side, Draven dipped his fingertips into the healing salve and, gently, applied some of it directly to my face.

  I winced at the feel of his touch, and wondered how badly mangled my face was. I shut my eyes in response to the pain, but then all I could see in my mind was my skin crisscrossed with lines of split skin, ripped tissue, and blood. I licked my lips and got the taste of copper on my tongue.

  “You’re going to be alright,” Draven said, “Just hold still.”

  “It’s good you said that,” I said between harsh breaths, “Because I was going to get up and start tap-dancing.”

  “Do you tap dance?”

  “Do you have a sense of humor?”

  “I do.”

  He applied another line of salve against my cheek, this time closer to my jaw. It stung like all hell, but I was able to keep myself from moaning.

  “Really?” I croaked, “Because I haven’t seen it yet. You’re always so tightly wound, I’d be surprised if you’ve laughed a day in your life.”

  A pause. “You realize I’m tending to your wounds, right?”

  “Yes. And?”

  “I could stop.”

  “Don’t…” I whimpered.

  Draven took a deep breath. “Siren, a mirror.”

  Siren, who hadn’t left Draven’s side, waved her hand and a square mirror hooked onto the wall just above the sink lifted itself up and floated down until it was level with me. For the first time I saw myself, and I almost couldn’t bear it. Only the crown of my hair was white, the rest was matted red, and my face looked like a whole school of inexperienced children had gone ice-skating on it… but it was getting better.

  I could’ve looked away, but I found myself compelled to watch as the worst of the wounds were slowly healing, leaving nothing behind except clean, unblemished skin. Draven would occasionally dip his hand into the water and let it fall down the sides of my face, washing the blood and the salve off to reveal me, undamaged and intact. I breathed a deep sigh of relief, but that sent a whole new bolt of pain through my chest.

  My hand flew up to my collar in response, my heart rapidly pounding as the pain got worse; doubly so when my fingers brushed against it.

  “Your collar,” he said, “May I?”

  I was biting my lip and staring at not only myself, but also at him in the mirror’s reflection. The tips of his hair were wet and he too had dropped himself into the pool without taking off any clothes. Like my own face, his was cut up pretty bad, but he hadn’t spared a second to heal his own wounds. He had instead gone straight to helping me.

  He still was, even now.

  I nodded, and gently, Draven tugged on the zipper by my neck. He then slowly pulled at my collar and slid the jumpsuit over my shoulders. When the line of my jumpsuit reached my breasts, he stopped. Already I could see the gash along my collar. It was deep, and red, and bleeding way too much for me to keep looking at it directly, but there were more cuts further down.

  Gently, I pulled my jumpsuit down beyond my breasts, covering them with my arms.

  Swallowing, I turned my eyes up just as Draven scooped a little healing salve out of the jar and applied it delicately to the wound on my collar. He rubbed his fingertips along my flesh, covering as much of the cut as he could. I had to grind my teeth against the sensation, groaning as the injury throbbed and pulsated, praying in my mind that it would end soon.

  Using one hand to cover myself, and the other to collect a palmful of healing salve, I applied it to my more delicate places. Hot blood flushed to my face, adding to the blood already there. I was a mess, he was a mess, and yet I couldn’t ignore just how… intimate this was. I swallowed hard, my lips parted, my heart raced.

  I was floating in a tub, in Draven’s arms, and more physically exposed than I’d ever been.

  It took minutes, or maybe hours, I couldn’t tell, but eventually the pain subsided. Draven scooped water into the now almost entirely empty jar of healing salve and then poured it over my chest. I watched, dumbstruck, as the deepest wound I’d received began to vanish; though not without a trace.

  I pulled my jumpsuit up a little more and then sat upright, resting my hands on his thighs for balance—amazed that I could move at all. I stared at myself in the mirror, stretching my neck to get a better view.

  There was a scar, there; a line of damaged tissue that crawled over the collarbone and reached my shoulder. I ran my fingertips along it, but felt no pain.

  “I’m sorry,” Draven said, “I don’t think that one will heal any further.”

  “Don’t be…” I said, my voice soft. “Scars are badass.”

  I could’ve been wrong, but I could swear I caught the hint of a grin forming on his lips, the corner of his mouth tugging slightly. “Indeed, they are…”

  I turned my head to look at him. I was still sore, moving was difficult, but I was in much better shape than when I’d first been brought into the room. “Thank you… Draven.”

  He nodded. “You are welcome.”

  I angled my head. “Why didn’t you take me to the infirmary?”

  “Your wounds were severe. It would have taken longer for them to heal with direct magic.”

  “You say that like you know. Are you a doctor?”

  “No, but I may have some recent, personal experience.”

  Swallowing hard, I turned around so I was kneeling on the step before him, though still submerged. I cupped both of my hands, pooling water between the
m, and then presented them to him. Draven, breathing deeply and dragging the moment so much it made my heart start to pound, slowly pushed his face into my hands.

  Relieved, I massaged his cheeks as best I could, my fingers occasionally brushing against his lips, stopping occasionally to draw more water from the pool up to his face. Slowly, much slower than mine did, the cuts on his skin started to seal—the magic in the pool must’ve already been almost spent.

  “Siren,” Draven said, “I need you to go to the infirmary. Someone new has been brought to the fortress. Ensure that person does not leave the confines of the infirmary, and make sure there is an Enforcer posted at the door at all times.”

  “As you wish, Draven,” Siren said, an instant before bursting apart into green clouds and smoke.

  Silence fell between us, then, as around us a shifting display of rainbow colors danced on the walls. Already I could feel the water inside the pool begin to bubble, the deep brown color it had turned to quickly lightening to a clear turquoise that smelled like flowers on a warm, spring morning.

  Draven stood and stepped out of the bath. Once outside, grabbed a towel and a robe, he set the robe on a counter, and he waited for me to exit the bath with the towel held wide. Biting my lower lip, I slowly shrugged out of the jumpsuit and everything else I was wearing underneath in the water. Draven turned away as I stepped out of the tub.

  I wrapped myself in the towel, dried off as quickly as I could, and then slid into the robe.

  “At the risk of overstepping,” I said, “Do you want to talk about what just happened?”

  “Do you?” Draven asked as he dried his face and hair. “Do you feel like you can, I mean.”

  “I could go for a big slice of New York pizza right about now…”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “… with pepperoni, and extra cheese… huh? Yes. I am, but you pretty much just brought me back from the brink, so I figure we should talk about that.”

  There was a pause, maybe while Draven figured out exactly what to say. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel… fine. I mean, holding onto that stone sucked, but I’m glad we were able to put it away. At least no one else will get it.”

  “I’m impressed you were able to contain it’s power like that, though it’s obviously not the first time you’ve done that.”

  I shook my head. “No, but that stone… it didn’t feel the same to the first one. The first one had a positive kind of energy to it… even though it almost detonated and killed an unspeakable amount of people. This one felt angry, violent. It’s crazy, I know. Stones can’t be violent. But this one…”

  Draven’s black eyes narrowed. “Yes?”

  “It’s like I could hear people.”

  “People?”

  “You said you heard screaming, right? The stone didn’t sing, it basically just screamed?”

  “That’s what I experienced, yes.”

  I shook my head. “Not me. I heard voices speaking into my mind, some were clear enough that I could even make out what language they were using.”

  “Language? What language?”

  “Ours.”

  Draven didn’t say anything for a time, so I stared at him, replaying all that had happened in my mind until finally he untangled whatever he’d been considering. “There are many myths surrounding the stones,” he said, “I have dedicated the last month or so to finding real facts, but there are very few. This is because the stones are almost impossible to handle. You are the only person I am aware of who has ever come into contact with these stones and survived.”

  He was technically right. The first stone had been stored inside of Fate, but Bastet had encased the stone in a powerful spell first. That spell kept the stone from directly touching her, so it didn’t kill her, but it made her physical health degrade much more than normal.

  “Yeah, well, when doing magic makes you feel like you’ve been run down by a truck,” I said, “You kinda want to avoid using magic at any cost.”

  “No, it’s more than that. There’s something about you that… almost works with the stones. Twice you have been able to contain their power.”

  “Look, I think I know what you’re trying to say, but I’m not, like, the stone whisperer or anything like that. That stone almost killed me today. Another couple of seconds and it might have. I didn’t contain anything, I just gave it a target to focus on, and that target was me. What I want to know is why I could hear someone speaking Aevian in my mind while I was holding it.”

  “That is a mystery to me also.”

  “And what was it with that hunter? Zeppelin, or something?”

  “Corax,” Draven said, correcting my pronunciation. “He is on our list.”

  “List?”

  “Our most dangerous persons list. That man is notorious and highly revered within his own Order. He is even seen by some as the second coming of their false God. He has personally hunted down and killed more of the people on our list than we have, and he has the trophies to show for it. Now he marked us…”

  “You think he’ll come after us?”

  Draven turned his grave eyes toward me. “I’m sure of it. Especially as he knows we have the stone.”

  I took a breath. “I don’t like the timing,” I said. “You guys show up last night, and then he’s there all of a sudden? And what was with that guy they had with them?”

  “I do not know who he is, but I trust Crag is keeping him under close watch.”

  “They were going to kill him.”

  “Perhaps they wanted him to retrieve the stone for them and he refused, in which case he was no longer useful to them… though I have not heard of hunters utilizing their prey like that. It would be like a basketball player asking his ball to order him a sandwich from a deli. I will interrogate him if he recovers.”

  “If? You don’t think he will?”

  “I’m not holding my breath. In any case, I have to prepare the fortress against a possible attack. They may not attempt a direct strike, they may not even strike at all, but we must be ready.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “Not right now, but if it should come to it, perhaps some of the mothers we rescued can be taught to use a sword.”

  “You’re not serious…” I said, “Those people can’t fight.”

  “They must, and if I need to declare an emergency to get them to do so, I will.”

  “Draven, please… don’t be that person again. Not when I feel like I’m starting to get you.”

  “We need soldiers, Seline. We are at war, and right now we have been marked by the Crimson Hunters.”

  “I get that, but there’s no need to force a sword into an unwilling hand just yet. Set up your fortifications, get ready for an attack, you know the prospects will do what we can to help, but don’t throw innocent, untrained bodies at the door just to keep it shut when the wolves come.”

  Draven’s jaw tightened. I could tell he didn’t like arguing with me, though this had been a little different from the last couple of times. That he actually bothered to argue with me at all was unbelievable to begin with. I was just a prospect, and prospects were beneath him in the Order’s hierarchy; way beneath him. Yet he gave me the time of day from time to time… and maybe he was even starting to listen to me now.

  “I should go,” I said, “You have a lot to take care of.”

  “Get to the infirmary first,” he said, “Have the doctor check you and declare you fit for duty. Your trials will continue as normal… for now.”

  “I saw that coming…” I shook my head. “Thank you… for saving me.”

  He nodded.

  I turned around, and headed for the door without saying another word. I made a mental note to go and find Fate to see how her trial went, but first I needed to slip through the Fortress undetected and get some real clothes on.

  I opened my eyes slowly, blinking the sleep out of my eyes and stretching to greet the morning. Three days had passed since the bathtub incident
, and I still woke up with it heavy on my mind. Fell asleep with it in my mind, too.

  Something heavy rolled between my legs, then scrambled, and righted itself. It was Rey, the talking silver tabby. He’d been sitting on me; sleeping on me, in fact. The cat stretched, giving me a clear view of his butthole, then shook the daze off before craning his neck around to glare at me.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Could you get that thing out of my face?” I asked.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t like my manners? I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.”

  “You’re quoting the Big Sleep again, aren’t you?”

  Rey turned around and settled down, then proceeded to lick his front paw. “What of it?” Ever since he’d been told he kinda sounded like Humphrey Bogart, had gone to great lengths memorize and some of the actual actor’s most iconic phrases. It was entertaining… for a time.

  I sighed, then sat up straight and rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. It still bothered me that the bed next to mine was empty. It had been over a week since Felice and I had been roommates, and… I almost missed the company, the sound of another person breathing softly next to me. Rey was a cat, and while his presence wasn’t totally unwelcome, it wasn’t the same.

  “What brings you to my room?” I asked, “I haven’t seen you in, like, four days.”

  “You have only yourself to blame for that,” he said, switching to nibbling at one of his back paws. “Ever since you introduced me to that crazy cat-lady friend of yours and her many, many little friends I’ve been making regular trips into the city and back.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Rey turned his big blue eyes up. “I don’t ask you who you share your bed with, do I?”

  “I share it with you sometimes. And also, ew. Do not tell me you and Bastet…”

  “Gods, no! She’s human, and I’m… not. You have a twisted mind.”

  “So, what, are you telling me you’re going into the city to sleep with all the females around there? What’s the matter, not enough action in the Fortress?”