OBSIDIAN GUARD BOOK 2

CHAPTER 3 THE IRON QUEEN

2 months after Alistair discovered the theft of his city's children.

POV Valeryen

I stood on my balcony, waiting for the blinding moment the sun would finally crest the volcanic peak. My boots were planted firm on the jagged black stone that gave my city its name.

Below me, Obsidian Guard was already bustling, its citizens and traders moving amidst a landscape of obscene, hard-earned wealth.

I took a deep breath. The air tasted of sulfur, coal dust, and cold metal. It was the smell of home. I let out a long, weary sigh of satisfaction. My muscles ached with a dull, familiar throb, the price of a night spent asserting my will.

I turned my head toward the shadows of my bedchamber. Scattered across the heavy velvet couch and sprawled at the foot of my massive bed were four of my pets.

They were young men and women, beautiful and currently dead to the world. They were exhausted, their breathing heavy and synchronized, victims of the session I had put them through overnight.

I had pushed them to their limits for my own satisfaction, though never against their desires; I used the pain to forge them into something stronger than they had been at sunset.

My gaze drifted to the corner of the room where my implements hung. The four tools, one for each pet, were crafted to my exact specifications. Each hilt was adorned with all five stones, arranged in a different order, size, and purity to match the unique resonance of the recipient.

These tools took blood and gave back invulnerability twofold. I loved to discover new ways of using the gems to create masterpieces, and I had found a forge master capable of bringing my darkest ideas to life.

Last night, each implement, whip, and flogger had drunk from its subject. With every strike, they returned that energy, increasing the person's strength and vitality through the weave. I had not figured out how to make these effects permanent yet, but while the weave held, it made my pets nearly indestructible.

Each had a mission coming up; they had begged for my tools to grace their skin, thanking me for every lash while I drank every whimper they offered.

In return for gifting them pain and enhancement, I found a sharp, intoxicating hunger satisfied in the act of inflicting the bite. I loved watching the way skin parted for the tool, letting the leather drink so it could gather power and return it, leaving a raised welt beside a bleeding wound as a memory of my favor.

Seeing them strapped against a cross to receive my gift, or struggling to hang on to any structure they could find to endure the weight of my hand, stirred a heat in me so intense it soaked through my undergarments.

My appetite only grew as they became indestructible. I tested the limits of their new reinforcement, striking harder than any mortal frame should survive, only to see the weave knit them back together.

I satiated them first, then fed my own cravings, taking exactly what I wanted from their reinforced bodies. They were crafted for my twisted requirements of blood and bone. No others could compare.

Three of them already bore my permanent mark: a crown-tattoo woven into their flesh above their hearts that permanently reinforced their frames. This was another of my creations, perfected by my royal tattoo artist.

The ink only granted this amplification when the recipient wanted it so badly that they would cry for the privilege. Most graduates of my Thane schools reached that point in their final year. I wanted all my Thanes and all my pets to carry that crown, yet one held out, never quite desperate enough to break. It frustrated me.

These four in my bedchamber were more than favorites; they were my most exquisite tools. They were the most capable spies I had, perfectly broken and willing to do anything to secure the information I required.

I told myself they were disposable, but after last night, I feared that was a lie. One in particular, I was failing to convince myself I could live without.

I had no "Family." I had no Syndicate of eleven siblings to hold up my sky. In Obsidian Guard, trust was a luxury that got you a knife between the ribs before you left childhood. I didn't want equals; I wanted steel tempered by fire until it knew no master but me.

I turned back to the view of the city, leaning my forearms on the cold stone railing. My hands were my pride, thick-knuckled and crisscrossed with the scars of a thousand brawls.

I held them up, watching the weak light catch the rings on every finger: Blood Rubies to enhance my ability to reinforce my body with my weave of impregnability, Obsidian to block attacks to my mind, Azure Lapis so I always know my way around, Amethyst to identify and utilize people's tells, and Jade for focus and enhancement of my own weave.

I tapped them against the stone, a symphony of clacking jewels. I was still the only one capable of wielding all five without death.

It irked me that I lacked the effortless, polished grace of the Ironspire elites, though. But they didn't have a city that the entire world wanted to take by force. I had the bloody-minded will to use every tool at my disposal until the world knelt and stayed that way.

I had spent forty years proving I had to be twice as brutal to be considered half as powerful, and it had paid off.

"Wake up, you lot," I called out, my voice raspy. I didn't look back. "The sun's up, the mines are humming, and I've got a city to run."

The silence was broken by the sound of footsteps. One came nearer. I knew the gait of every pet in my service, but this one... this one was my favorite.

A thin, pale figure detached itself from the shadows. He moved with a fragile, liquid grace, dropping to his knees beside me and bowing his head. The obsidian floor bit into his bare skin, his white frame looking like a ghost against the midnight rock.

He was willow-thin, his frame refusing to hold muscle, yet he was a marvel of endurance. Despite years of my training, he was the only one who had never broken to take my mark.

He had failed the Thane military schools, lacking the physical strength for the front lines, but he had found his place at my feet and in the shadows. I feasted on the fresh welts I had given him, a predatory hunger stirring in my gut. One day, I would find his limit and hear him beg for my mark.

"Report," I barked.

The pet kept his head bowed. "The shipments from the northern routes have stopped, My Queen. For two months, we have not been able to bring in any new recruits."

My jaw tightened. "Ironspire."

Twenty years ago, I realized our weakness. Our weavers were flickering candles that required gemstones just to stay lit. But Ironspire was a genetic goldmine.

I wasn't greedy; I only took the ones no one missed. The orphans. The runts in the gutters. I brought them here, fed them, and amplified them. My greatest success, a boy taken at five, was now twenty-five and could move objects with focus and accuracy like no other with his kinetic weave.

But now, my Thanes were disappearing. Alistair, the King of the Syndicate... a man who had it easy with his "Family" backing him up. He was finally pushing back.

"I need you to go there," I told the boy at my feet. "Slip through the cracks. Find out why the shipments have stopped. Do not be noticed, and do not die."

"Yes, My Queen," he whispered.

"Good pet," I smirked. "Now run along."

He began to crawl toward the exit on all fours. I watched his muscles ripple under the bruises. The itch to strike him one last time was a physical sting in my palm.

"Stop. Two for the road."

I stepped behind him and delivered two explosive slaps that echoed like gunshots. He let out a jagged breath, his voice thick with devotion. "Thank you, My Queen."

As he scrambled away, I turned back to the valley. Reports said Ironspire was becoming "light" and "soft."

If Alistair was turning his city into a peaceful garden, he was an i***t. Gardens were for picking. The children I'd already taken had adapted well to my schools; they hated Ironspire for the abuse they'd suffered there. They were easy to convince that Obsidian Guard was their true home.

I looked at my rings, the rubies pulsing like a heartbeat. I needed those children. Without their blood and spirit to fuel my Thanes, my military was a hollow shell, nothing more than a collection of men playing with pretty stones.