I stood and extended my hand toward her. “Seal it with a shake.”
Cautious, careful, regarding my hand like it was a snake about to bite her, she slowly reached for me and shook. I smiled, turned around, and headed for the door but I didn’t leave. I cocked my head around my shoulder.
“You like to wear black, right?”
Six’s eyebrows both arched up. She scanned her clothes and then looked at me again. “I prefer white, these are just still dirty.”
I grinned. “I’ll be back for you in a little while.”
Leaving her alone, I ordered the guards to go and fetch her some food and a black jumpsuit in her size. “Just black; no bronze, silver, or gold collar.”
The guards grumbled about not being servants, I didn’t think they liked my bossing them around, but they both did as I asked. That meant when I left Six’s room, I left her alone and unguarded, her door unlocked. Every possible chance existed that when I came back, she’d have left the castle. I could only hope I’d gotten through to her.
Talking to Six had brought up a few things that I wanted to deal with before going into training with her. I decided to go and find Draven in his quarters. That was where he spent most of the hours of the day, since his eyes were sensitive to sunlight. That was one of the curses that belonged to the House of Night.
By all accounts he should be spending the daylight hours asleep, but it fell on his shoulders to keep the Order running smoothly. He basically lived in a constant state of discomfort, and that was something I could respect. When I reached the door to his room, I knocked a couple of times, and waited. He opened the door after a few seconds.
“Seline,” he said, looking… surprised to see me.
“Hey, I hope you’re not too busy,” I said.
He shook his head. “I’m getting a little work done, but it’s okay. Please, come in.”
Draven stepped aside and allowed me into his room. As always, it was dark in here. The only light that made it into his room were streams of sunlight that managed to find cracks in the blinds on his windows. The darkness made my chest tighten, but Draven went around lighting candles for me to feel a little more comfortable.
As the room brightened, I started to relax and I noticed what he was working on. There were tools on his workbench, and large pieces of metal he seemed to have been hammering into shape. I didn’t know what he was making, but it looked complicated.
When he was finished lighting candles, he walked over to his desk and threw a cloth over it.
“Top secret?” I asked.
“For now…” he said, “I have a thing about where and when I display my creations.”
“I get that.” I walked over to his bed, but didn’t sit down. Instead I hovered over it, awkwardly, until he gestured for me to sit. I did, and it was comfortable as all hell. Was it a feather bed? I didn’t know, but it felt like I was sitting on a firm cloud.
Draven, meanwhile, went back to his desk and sat at his chair. He turned to the side to look at me. “So, what can I do for you?”
I took a deep breath. “Well, things are quiet here for now, I’m working on my training, and I’ve even convinced Six to join me.”
“Join you?”
“I’m going to train her.”
Draven grinned, playfully. “Oh, so you’re an instructor now? I thought you were going to become an enforcer.”
“I’m definitely not an instructor, but it looks like she trusts me. She probably trusts me more than anyone else at the fortress. While she’s here, I guess she should feel like she’s part of something bigger than herself. It worked to bring me out of my shell, didn’t it?”
“I’m pretty sure that shell of yours hasn’t quite been fully shed yet.”
“Okay, probably not, but I’m doing better than when I arrived here.”
He nodded. “Yes, you are. When you got here, we were all assholes who had kidnapped you and taken you away from the only life you’d ever known.”
“That’s because you were totally kidnappers who’d taken me out of the only life I’d ever known. I was seriously happy where I was.”
Draven’s eyebrows arched together. “Happy?”
“Happy is probably a strong word. I was content. I had a home, I had my friend. I didn’t need anyone else, or anything else… at least, that’s what I thought. Thank you for not giving up on me.”
“I didn’t exactly give you many choices. I probably could’ve handled things a little better from the start.”
“Probably… but you were playing the part of alpha-male asshole. You did the job beautifully, by the way.”
“That sounded like a compliment, but it wasn’t, was it?”
I shook my head, smiling gleefully. “Nope.”
“Noted.” He paused, narrowed his eyes. “Did you need something?”
“I do… I want us to talk about trying to dive into our memories again.”
Draven’s body visibly tensed. He drew himself upright against his chair. “Why now?”
“Because, like I said, everything’s quiet… now is a good moment for us to do it, I think.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you understand what you’re asking.”
“Sure I do, I’m asking for us to learn more about our paths. You heard Romeo, he said he can help us. He probably would’ve if you hadn’t been so quick to try and get out of his presence.”
“Mages make me nervous.”
“I understand that, but we have a chance here to really unlock some memories. Why wouldn’t you want to do that?”
“Because not everyone’s ready for what’s in their heads. Too many memories too soon could be a shock to the system we won’t recover from. I’ve seen it happen before. Our memories are locked behind gates, and sometimes when those gates open, the flood that comes through becomes too much for the mind to stand. We crack.”
“I don’t think we’re all as weak as you think.”
“I didn’t use the word weak. You did.”
“I did, because that’s what I feel like you’re saying. Only the strong can remember.”
“Is this what you came to talk about?”
I paused. “I came to talk about us…”
His expression softened. “Us?”
“We’ve tried talking before, you said there wasn’t enough time.”
“Because there isn’t, Seline.”
“I know, we’re at war, you’ve got people to lead. I get it. But this is important, isn’t it?”
“It is…”
“Then why haven’t we tried to figure it out yet?”
Draven didn’t say anything to that. I watched him watching me, and wondered what was going through his head. So much had happened to us since I arrived here. You almost wouldn’t recognize us anymore if you were looking at us from the outside. I hated him at the start, really hated him. Now, I guess I kinda tolerated him.
Okay, maybe tolerate didn’t cut it either. I liked Draven. We were so different, not only culturally—in the past—but also now. I came from the streets, literally. Draven was a member of the elite, the head of an Order. But I liked him, and I had a feeling he liked me. Gods, it sounded so childish to say it like that, but it was the truth.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said.
I angled my head to the side. “I don’t?”
He shook his head. “You’re asking us to dive into the past… we don’t know what we’re going to find there.”
“This is important, Dr—”
“—Seline, I know this is important to you. It’s important to me too, you have to believe me. But right now, we have more critical things to deal with than trying to dive into the past.”
“Don’t,” I warned, “Don’t do that… why are you running away from this?”
Draven stood up. “I’m not running away from this, I’m choosing not to go down the road.” He walked over to me and took my hand, helping me up from the bed. I was too surprised by that to stop him. “The whole tim
e I’ve known you, you’ve always been someone who has looked forward. From the moment we met, all you cared about was finishing your trials, tomorrow, the future. I want to go forward, too.”
I swallowed hard. Maybe it was his proximity, maybe it was the fact that I could see myself reflected in his black eyes, maybe it was the way his thumbs were smoothing the backs of my hands. My heart had started racing. I found it difficult to concentrate, difficult to keep my convictions. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe diving into the past was a bad idea.
“I don’t know…” I said, “I mean, I thought I knew, but I don’t know anymore.”
“We have something here… don’t we?”
“I think so…”
“Do you want to see where it goes?”
I licked my lips. “I do.”
He wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled my lips to his. We locked into a deep kiss, then, as my heart continued to pound. He plunged his other hand into my hair, and I wrapped my hands around his neck. My fingers dug into his skin, pulling him even closer.
Right now, there was no Valoel, no stones, no rifts; only us. Every inch of me burned—craved—for more. In my mind, fantasies of throwing all the tools off the workbench and tossing him onto it played out. Never mind that there was a bed literally behind me. But it didn’t get to that.
We parted slowly, and I licked my lips again, tasting what was left of him on me. “You should go,” he said, his voice soft and low. “I don’t want you to go, but if you don’t, I’ll never finish what I have to finish—and I fear I don’t have long left.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Building something. You’ll find out in time.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to go.”
“Tonight… come back to my room tonight.”
I swallowed hard, but never broke eye contact. “Tonight,” I repeated. “You’d better not kick me out tonight, otherwise I’m not sure I’ll come back.”
“Believe me, I don’t plan on it.”
Nodding, I headed over to his bedroom door, opened it, and stepped through. Once again, I’d been denied. Once again, he’d skirted past the issue of diving into our pasts to try and learn the truth about me, about him, about us. It was infuriating, to say the least, and I wasn’t about to just sit on my hands and do nothing.
If he wasn’t going to come with me on my trip down memory lane, then I was going to go down it on my own.
Bastet had asked for a lock of my hair in exchange for her services. Romeo was a little harder to please. He’d asked for a drop of blood. I’d asked if he’d use that blood to hurt me or anyone else, and he’d sworn an oath that he wouldn’t. Apparently, mages were big on magical oaths. He’d made a little fanfare about it, so I decided to take him on his word.
By the time I returned to the fortress, evening had fallen. I was sure I hadn’t been missed, though. I’d asked Ness, Fate, and Felice to cover for me, to stall anyone who came looking for me. All the while, we were in communication using wing-charms.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Fate asked.
We were in my room. Ness was there too. Felice was guarding the door. Turned out they had a vested interest in finding out whether what Romeo had given me would work or not. Go figure.
I showed Fate the bag of powder; purple with splotches of gold. “It’s either going to work like Romeo thinks, or I’m going to lose my mind,” I said. “I’m willing to take the risk.”
“I think I can help with that part,” Ness said. She had a bowl in her hands with a syrupy liquid inside that looked like blood. Smelled like blood, too.
“Whose is that?” Fate asked.
“Relax, it’s not blood.”
“I’m sorry, but that looks like straight up blood,” I said. “What is it?”
“It’s actually a really potent mixture of roots and weeds. From home.”
“Home? Like, home, home?”
“Uh-huh.” She pressed the bowl into my hands. “Drink it.”
“Wait, how is it you have this?” Fate asked, “I mean, how did you get it?”
“I… grow it.”
“Grow it? But, where do you get the seeds from?”
“They grow on me. That’s about as specific as I’d like to get…”
I looked at Fate, and she looked back, eyebrows arched. I stared at the syrup in the bowl. “Ew…” I said. “Do I really have to?”
“You do if you want to have a chance at keeping your brain from flying away. The root acts as a kind of magic defense for your mind. It helps when people are trying to get into your head. The weeds are meant to give you more focus, keep your head clear. Eat it, please. It goes bad quickly, and if you have it once it’s gone bad, you’ll be stuck to the toilet for a week.”
I scooped some up with my fingers and stared at the way the paste dribbled back into the bowl. I shook my head and reminded myself, I’d probably eaten and drunk worst tasting things in my life. Without thinking too much about it, I stuck my fingers into my mouth and ate the paste. It was about as disgusting as I thought it would be, but strangely, it left no aftertaste; no lingering grossness in my mouth.
I finished the bowl while Fate prepared the powder the way I’d asked her to. “Can we all do this at the same time?” she asked.
I frowned. “You know… I didn’t ask him. He said I was supposed to burn it and inhale the fumes. I guess there’s no reason why we can’t all go under. Someone should stay in the here and now, though… make sure we don’t choke on our own tongues.”
“I’ll stay,” Ness said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
She nodded and smiled. “Yeah. I mean, I get to see home all the time through my dreams. It’s your turn.”
I returned her smile. “Thanks, Ness.”
“Just don’t die or go insane, okay? I don’t think I could deal with another roommate.”
“Got it.”
Fate had another bowl in her hands, one filled with twigs, dry leaves, and some paper. She narrowed her eyes, touched the paper with her fingertips, and muttered, “Kyro.” An instant later, a small flame burst to life in the center of the bowl, immediately catching on the paper and leaves.
“Ready?” she asked, glancing at me.
“Ready,” I said.
She opened the bag, and when the flames were large enough, she dumped half of the powder into the bowl. The fire turned purple, then gold, then back to purple. It smelled strangely like… cinnamon, and vinegar. It was the weirdest combination of smells that had ever touched my nose, though not the worst.
When you’ve lived on the streets of New York, your sense of smell never comes out the same.
It started with tingling fingertips. I stared at my hands like they were foreign objects, examining the lines, the patterns, trying to figure out if I’d always had ten digits or if maybe there’d been less before. That tingling feeling then moved through my hands and into my arms, my shoulders, then my chest.
My head lolled back, the world tilted with it, but I never hit the pillow. Instead I kept falling and falling. It was like I was moving away from my own mind, while at the same time hurtling deeper into it.
I shut my eyes and breathed in deep, trying to fight for clarity and focus that would never come. Instead, I could hear things. Voices, whisperings, the soft rush of wind. I thought I could hear Ness talking to me, but she sounded far away, like she was calling out to me from across the street and growing further away.
I kept slipping, kept sliding into myself and at the same time away from myself—away from my room, from the fortress, from the planet. It was disorienting. I didn’t know how much of it I could take. Romeo had told me to think of an anchor point, something to guide my mind to.
I thought of Draven as I fell, tried to picture him in my mind but his features kept fading to nothing. They were slippery, like trying to hold water in your fingers. I remembered Romeo telling me to let him know if it worked or not, if I was able to find any real
memories after going on this trip or if I just went insane.
I wondered how I’d be able to tell him I’d gone mad if I did.
Then I heard someone call my name, and my ears pricked up.
I opened my eyes but could see only brightness. I was groggy, and tired. I needed sleep, maybe something to eat, but it felt like morning; like I’d just woken up. I rubbed my eyes, fighting the brightness away, trying to gain a hold on my consciousness. The voices remained, whispering in the back of my mind, but the voice I’d heard had been loud and clear.
It had been Draven.
My vision returned, my eyes finally focusing on what was in front of me; and there he was. He looked younger; his face was cleanly shaven, his skin soft and perfect, his hair though—his hair was long and wavy. He had some of it held in a top-knot, the rest fell around his shoulders. And his eyes… they were his eyes, alright.
Black as the night and darker still.
“Are you alright?” he asked, a cheeky smile on his face, dimples out in all their glory.
I wasn’t alright. My head hurt. “I…” the words wouldn’t come, like I’d forgotten how to speak. I winced as pain shot through my skull. “Wh-what the h-hell?”
Draven’s eyes widened, and his smile turned into real mirth. “You hit your head on that wall and fell down the stairs. What happened?”
I turned my head and looked. It wasn’t bright out, we were indoors, but all I’d been able to see was the glow from a torch set into the wall near me. I blinked hard. “I think I just… blacked out for a moment.”
“Here, let me help.” He tucked his arms under my back and helped me to stand.
I could see my surroundings more clearly, now. We were in a narrow, stone hallway, with a single torch set into the wall. At one end of the hall, a set of stairs led up into the city proper. At the other end, the one closest to where I was standing, a small, open door led outside—into the night. The wind howled and tried to push through the opening, fanning the torch flames.
Draven walked over to the door and shut it; that’s when I noticed his wings.
He was wearing a black tunic, black pants, and he had his black wings on display. A small dagger hung by his waist, the hilt adorned with beautiful little gems. There were rings on his fingers, a silver necklace at his neck, and bangles at his wrists. I marveled at the way they caught what little light there was in this tight hallway, and as I huddled myself to fight off the cold gust fighting its way in, I realized.
The Obsidian Order Boxed Set Page 50