OBSIDIAN GUARD BOOK 2

CHAPTER 19 VOID AND VULTURES

POV Valeryen

The silence of the Obsidian Tower was no longer the silence of a ruler. It was the silence of a tomb.

I sat at my desk, the obsidian surface polished so brightly it reflected my crown back at me like a mockery. For two months, I had played the part. I had managed the expansion, reviewed the architecture for the new recruiting centers in the neighboring border towns, and signed off on the latest shipment of gems.

On paper, the Obsidian Guard was at the peak of its historical potential. My coffers were overflowing, my military was the envy of the continent, and my new orphanage initiative was thriving. I had started offering a "transition bounty" to parents, a sum of gold that could feed a family for a year in exchange for a child with potential. The desperate and the hungry were lining up. I was building an army of the elite, minds I could mold from the ground up, free of the "interference" of family loyalty or critical dissent.

I was winning. Every game, every trade war, every political maneuver. I had won it all. And yet, I found myself staring at the door.

In my daydreams, the ones I tried to forget, the door would burst open, and Gideon would be there, his face flushed with that beautiful, stupid rage I had grown to adore. He would have ignored my letter. He would have realized that "Valry" was worth coming to find, and he would have come back to the Tower to hunt her down.

In some versions of the dream, he finds out I am the Queen, and he roars, pinning me against the wall while Ollivander watches with that knowing, submissive smile.

In those dreams, Gideon's anger eventually turns into a different kind of heat. He realizes that as my King, he would have everything he ever wanted: the power, the "little flower," and the woman who finally made the noise in his head go quiet. We would rule from the heights, a trinity of iron and silk.

But the door never burst open. The soil in Ironspire must have been too rich with that "family" nonsense Alistaire peddled. They hadn't come back.

I leaned back, the silk of my chair feeling like sandpaper against my skin. I had never known loneliness before because I had never known its opposite. Before Gideon, I was the solo mountain, immovable, cold, and self-contained.

Now, I was a hollowed-out cave, and every memory of their moans of pleasure or the way their hands felt against my skin echoed in that emptiness until I wanted to scream.

"Those sweet, beautiful knuckleheads," I whispered to the empty room.

I shook my head, my crown shifting with a heavy clink. It felt heavier today. Everything did. I had work to do. I pulled a map of the southern trade routes toward me, but the ink seemed to blur into the shape of a river fork.

I found myself wondering if Gideon and Ollivander were eating well. If they were sleeping together. If they missed me, or if they were content with the chaotic noise of Ironspire.

I was The Queen. I had everything. And for the first time in my life, I was bored and tired to the point of madness.

A sharp knock at the door shattered the silence. General Varrick entered, his armor clanking with an urgency that used to fire my blood. Behind him stood Kaelen, his hand never far from his blade.

"Majesty," Varrick began, his voice tight.

"The Southern Coalition is moving again. They've moved three battalions to the neutral zone near the pass. They think we're distracted. They're planning a full-scale annexation of the mining district. We need to strike now, send the Thanes, let me lead them to crush their vanguard before they even cross the line."

In the past, I would have been on my feet before he finished the sentence. I would have felt the hum of the Tower's power in my veins, eager to obliterate anyone who dared to test my borders. I would have demanded their heads on pikes by sunset.

Now? I just felt... heavy. My stomach did a slow, nauseating roll, and a wave of exhaustion washed over me so suddenly I had to grip the edge of the desk.

"Kaelen," I said, my voice sounding flat and distant, even to my own ears.

Kaelen stepped forward immediately. "Yes, my Queen?"

"Figure it out," I whispered, waving a hand dismissively at the map and the General. "Take whatever units you need. Defend the pass, or don't. Just make sure they stop making so much noise."

Varrick's jaw dropped.

"But Majesty, they are targeting our primary gem source! If we don't respond with force, we look weak. The reports say there was another assassination attempt in the lower city this morning. We need to show them you are still the Queen of this Kingdom and won't tolerate any threat!"

"I don't care about the assassination attempt, it wasn't even nearly successful, Varrick," I snapped, though even my anger lacked its usual lethal edge.

"And I don't care about the Stupid Southern Coalition."

I stood up, and for a second, the room tilted. I felt a strange, deep-seated ache in my bones, a lethargy that made my limbs feel like they were made of lead.

I just wanted to close my eyes. I wanted to sleep for a hundred years.

"Kaelen, the General is in your hands. Deal with the invaders. Deal with the assassins. Deal with the world," I said, already turning toward my private chambers.

"I'm going for a nap. Do not wake me unless the Tower itself is falling."

I didn't wait to see their reactions. I didn't see Kaelen's eyes narrow with concern or Varrick's face turn pale with disbelief. I just walked away, the void-cape dragging behind me, feeling like a ghost in my own palace.

POV Kaelen

I watched her from the shadows of the council chamber's arched doorway. My hand rested on the hilt of my blade, my eyes tracing the slumped, unfamiliar line of her shoulders.

I had dreamed of being the Queen's shadow since I was a boy just starting at Thane school. I had worshiped her as a goddess, feared her as a master, and eventually, I had been hired into her service detail.

When Gideon and that pale brat Ollivander had disappeared, I thought my time had finally come. I was a good, strong, and a loyal Thane. I was everything those two were not.

But the woman I saw now wasn't the Queen who had saved me from the streets.

The spark was gone. It was like watching a fire go out in slow motion. A month ago, a merchant from the Southern Isles had accidentally interrupted her during a budget briefing. In the past, Valeryen would have used her weave to collapse his lungs until he turned blue, a silent, lethal lesson in etiquette.

Instead, she had simply closed her eyes, stood up, and walked out of the room. She hadn't even looked back to see the man's confusion.

She looked defeated. But by what?

The city's vultures had noticed the change, too. The number of assassination attempts had tripled. The rivals, the local gangs, and even some of our own disgruntled nobles thought they saw a weakness.

Two nights ago, a poisoned needle had been fired from the rafters during her evening promenade. I had caught the assassin and broken his neck before his body even hit the floor.

Valeryen hadn't even paused her stride. She hadn't asked who sent him. She hadn't ordered a retaliation or a mass interrogation.

She was oblivious to the world around her, lost in a fog that no gem could lift. It made my blood boil. It was an insult to the crown and an insult to the protection I offered her.

I hated those two. I hated Gideon for his brute clumsiness and Ollivander for his quiet, sniveling grace. They had done something to her. They had taken the sharp edge of her soul and blunted it with their sentimentality.

Ollivander hadn't sent any updates or reports for weeks now, but the Queen didn't care.

I stood in the hallway as the council meeting ended, watching the ministers scurry away like rats who knew the cat was sleeping. Valeryen came out last. Her crown was slightly crooked. Her eyes, usually so sharp they could draw blood, were glazed and distant.

"My Queen," I said, bowing low. "The guard shift is changing. Shall I escort you to the gardens?"

She looked at me, but I don't think she saw Kaelen. She saw a shape in a uniform. "No. I think I'll just... go to the tower. I'm tired."

Tired. That was a word for mortals, for the weak. Not for her.

I watched her walk away, her void-cape dragging on the obsidian floor. She didn't notice the bloodstain on the wall where I'd handled a spy an hour ago. She didn't notice the way Varrick looked at her with growing contempt. She didn't notice anything.

Something had happened during those days in the cell, or at that river fork meeting. Alistair of Ironspire had done something, or perhaps it was what Ollivander had whispered before he left.

I knew Ollivander better than most; we had grown up in the same training school until he was kicked out for failing too many times, but then got promoted into the Queen's service before I was.

He was a survivor, always finding a way to crawl into the graces of the powerful. He knew the Queen's rhythms better than I did, as much as it pained me to admit it.

If I wanted my Queen back, if I wanted the woman who could command the stars and break the earth, I needed to understand the poison they had left in her heart.

The Queen was oblivious. She wouldn't notice if I were gone for a few days; she barely noticed when I was in the room. I adjusted my cloak and checked my supplies.

Ironspire was a long ride, and the dampening gems I carried would make me a target if I wasn't careful, but I needed to see him. I needed to look Ollivander in the eye and find out what they had taken from her.

I was more than willing to kill the man at this point.

The journey to Ironspire was a descent into a world I despised.

As I crossed the border, the air changed. It lost the crisp, metallic scent of the Guard and became thick with the smell of salt, wet earth, and the chaotic, unrefined energy of thousands of weavers living without discipline.

It was loud. Even without a strong weave of my own, I could feel the vibrations of their power, undampened, messy, and absolutely everywhere.

I kept my hood up, my hand never far from my hidden daggers. I moved through the lower districts of the Spire, disgusted by the sight of children playing in the streets and people laughing in open markets. It reminded him of his childhood in these very streets where he had to scrounge food from trash bins and maybe get attacked for it.

There was no order here. No clarity. It was a riot of color and noise that set my teeth on edge.

I found the location of the Syndicate's primary residence, a sprawling estate that looked more like a fortress than a home, far outside the city.

I spent the first night watching from the treeline, my obsidian-laced armor keeping me hidden from their primitive sensory sweeps.

And then, I saw him.

Ollivander was in a garden, carrying a basket of some ridiculous mountain fruit. He looked... different. The pallor was gone from his cheeks, replaced by a healthy glow that looked wrong on him.

He wasn't wearing cuffs. He moved with a lightness that I had never seen in the Tower.

But it was the way he looked at the man beside him that made my stomach turn. Gideon was there, his massive arm draped over Ollivander's shoulders, laughing at something the boy said. They looked happy.

They looked like they had forgotten she existed.

While my Queen sat in a dark room staring at the wall, struggling to stay awake to rule her empire, they were playing house in the sunlight. While her enemies sharpened their knives because she no longer had the fire to crush them, these two were picking fruit.

I felt a surge of energy flare in my fingertips, a spark of pure, unadulterated rage.

I wouldn't just talk to Ollivander. I would remind him where he came from. I would remind him that you don't just walk away from the Queen of the Obsidian Guard and leave her to rot.

I was a Thane of the Guard, and I wasn't stupid enough to storm a fortress where the entire Syndicate resided. I would wait. I would wait for the betrayer to step out of the estate, away from his "family," and then I would ask him my questions.

And if the answers weren't enough to fix her, I would make sure he never smiled in the sun again.