Heart of Obsidian

HE GLANCED UP, a lock of hair falling across his forehead, midnight dark against his golden skin. For a fleeting instant, she saw the boy he’d once been, all silky hair and quiet eyes, and she knew the memory was true. Her and Kaleb, whatever it was that tied them together, it had begun long before she was thirteen, begun when they were both children.

“Hurry,” she whispered, helpless as her other hand rose to push that errant lock off his forehead.

He didn’t move away, didn’t repudiate her touch. “Eighteen.” A second charm appeared between his fingers.

She twisted her head this way and that to try to see what it was as he hooked it into place, but he deliberately blocked her sight. She saw the reason why when he straightened. “An unsheathed blade.” What he had become the day she vanished.

“Nineteen.” He began to hook the charm on before she saw the telekinetic fetch.

A small home.

The rock that was her heart grew heavier. “Twenty.”

“Twenty.” This one, he let her see.

A tiny heart formed of a deep blue stone, so very beautiful it made her breath release in a sigh. “Sapphire?”

“Tanzanite.” His eyes met hers. “Rare. Unique.”

A frozen heart, she thought, her wonder swirled with a haunting sorrow. His heart or hers?

“Twenty-one.”

An hourglass.

“Twenty-two.”

A fragment of jagged obsidian, edges smoothed only enough not to cut her skin.

“Twenty-three.”

A single, perfect star.

Frowning, she looked up at him. “I don’t understand.”

He hooked the charm into place. “Only this star matters.” His thumb brushing over her inner wrist. “Should it be erased, no other has the right to live.”

“I’d line the streets with bodies before I’d ever hurt you.”

A wave of black rushed through her in a nightmare of understanding. “What’s twenty-four?” she managed to ask through the roar, curling her wrist close to her chest.

“As yet undecided.”

“I know what I want.” This battle was one she had to win, not only for the future of the world, but for herself, for Kaleb, for what they might have been . . . what they could be.

A waiting silence from the man who would’ve annihilated an entire civilization in vengeance for her, ending the lives of millions, innocents and sinners alike.

“A sheath for the blade,” she whispered.

The stars faded into black. “That might not be possible.”

It can’t be too late, she thought again. She refused to let it be too late, refused to believe he was forever gone, the damage permanent. “I want jewels on the sheath, bright and colorful.” And hopeful.

“It’ll require considerable work,” he said softly, the obsidian of his gaze holding her own, “might even be an impossible task.”

“Are you surrendering, then?” It was a question as soft. “Walking away?”

Kaleb’s response held a possessiveness that might yet keep her a prisoner. “I will never walk away from you.”



*



KALEB didn’t go to bed after Sahara left his office following an interaction he hadn’t ever thought would come to pass, not given what she’d learned of him, and the injuries done to her in the years of captivity. He should’ve known not to attempt to predict or judge her—Sahara Kyriakus had always had an unexpected and stubborn will. No other woman could’ve survived seven years in hell and come out of it with the strength to challenge Kaleb.

He waited an hour to give her time to fall into deep sleep, before getting up and rolling down the sleeves of his shirt to do up the cuffs. Picking up his jacket from where it hung behind the study door, he shrugged into it. His choice of clothing was another mask—it gave people a certain impression of him, an impression he intended to use tonight to ensure Sahara’s future safety.

No one was ever again taking her from him.

Ready, he discovered himself unable to leave before making dead certain she was safe and undisturbed in her rest. If he lost her now, after she’d returned to him at last, eyes of midnight blue holding a fragile trust he’d never again expected to see, there would no longer be any question about his sanity or lack of it. The world had no knowledge of the delicate hands that held its fate.

He made sure to position himself in the shadows by the door when he teleported into her room, not wanting to scare her if she wasn’t lost in sleep. Fear in Sahara’s eyes, he’d learned when she’d run from him earlier, burned worse than any acid Santano had poured on him when he’d been a boy. It was dangerous, that pain, could drown the world in blood, but Sahara had been the first, would always be the deepest, fracture in his conditioning.