Heart of Obsidian

aftershave that held a hint of pine.
    Since Kaleb had left the door open, she decided it wasn’t off-limits and continued deeper inside, placing the book on the bed while she explored. Barren of anything but the bed and a small bedside table, the closet built into the wall opposite the sliding doors that led out onto the terrace, the room was military neat, not a single piece of clothing or other ephemera scattered around.
    The bathroom was the same, Kaleb’s personal grooming gear stored efficiently inside the mirrored cabinet above the granite countertop that housed the sink. Fascinated, she picked up his aftershave, drew in the scent that made her skin ache, then examined the slick black device he used to shave, unable to imagine the ice-edged man who considered her his doing such an intimate act.
    Touching her hand to her own jaw, she thought back to when he’d leaned over her in the kitchen. It had taken every ounce of her will not to brush her fingers over the hard angles of his face.
    It had been so long.
    She shook off the bone-piercing thought, knowing it to be a creation of her damaged mind. A cardinal Tk would have had no reason to be in the circumference of her life as a girl—NightStar was famously insular, and Tks were trained in special schools for reasons of safety. No, she had never touched Kaleb Krychek, regardless of what might be termed the birth of a dangerously obsessive compulsion toward the man who was effectively her jailer.
    Putting the shaver back in its spot, her fingers lingering longer than they should have, she closed the cabinet doors . . . and looked at who she’d become. At sixteen, she’d had a little more fat in her cheeks, a softer curve to her jaw. Right now, she was all bone. Her increased calorie intake would ensure a return to a healthier appearance—but not to the extent that she’d carry the baby fat in her cheeks again. The finer line of her face was a natural result of adulthood and she liked it.
    Her hair, however . . .
    Taking a tangled hunk, she brought it to her nose, caught the scent of citrus and something softer. So, she hadn’t imagined taking a shower and scrubbing her hair three times over. Clean though it was, it was also knotted to the point of making her appear a madwoman—
    “That was the goal.” The labyrinth had been only part of her plan to hide herself from those who would turn her into a trained animal poised to perform on command. “It’s not necessary any longer,” she whispered and clawed back another piece of herself.

Chapter 6

    IT TOOK SERIOUS concentration, her arms aching by the end, but her hair hung straight and thick down her back an hour later, as she made her way through the house again. Peeking inside the large room situated right beside the main doors to the terrace, she saw Kaleb sitting at a desk. In front of him was a transparent—from her point of view—computer screen apparently functioning in comm mode.
    Steel—platinum?—cuff links at his wrists and a tie of chrome blue at his throat now, a sharp contrast to his white shirt, he was focused on someone on the other side of the screen, but he curled his fingers to her in a “come in” motion. Drawn toward him on a level that threatened to overpower her ability to reason, until it felt as if they were connected by an invisible thread, she walked in.
    His desk was a hunk of highly polished wood, the edges jagged, as if the roots of a forest giant had been cut in slices then smoothed, the flowing lines within telling the story of centuries past. It was beautiful, and not what she might have expected of him . . . but there was something in the primal nature of the choice that suited him. As did the bitterly clean surface of the desk, unmarred by even a single pen or piece of paper.
    The walls opposite that desk held shelves that housed a number of expensive hard-copy books on a myriad of subjects, from changeling society to physics to construction manuals and geological research, with a number of separate volumes dealing with earthquakes and volcanoes.
    She could understand the eclectic collection compiled by an intelligent mind, could even comprehend the reason a cardinal Tk might be interested in the movement of the tectonic plates—though the idea that he might have that much power made her heart stutter—but here and there on the shelves sat things jarring in their incongruity. Like a polished blue pebble beside the book on South American volcanoes. Lapis