Page 3 of Death’s Kiss (The Order of the Tide Raiders #1)

Skelm’s steely voice slices through my reverie. “I think eight is appropriate today. One for each of those little transgressions under your charge, and an additional one for the clear lack of proper control being held over your own godsdamned crew, Captain. ” He hurls my title like a curse.

I don’t talk back as I might once have done.

Rather, I begin silently removing the jacket of my uniform and untucking the thin summer shirt beneath before tugging it over my head without complaint.

My startlingly white hair is twisted neatly around a golden pin and back into a low knot—a gift from my chosen second for my promotion to captaincy.

Skelm motions for me to turn around, and it’s a struggle to tear my eyes away from the distraction of the windows. Of course he would take even that small relief away.

Our Grand Preceptor’s affinity gives him the advantage of sensing a person’s greatest fears in the form of pain. And, by default, anything that might lessen that pain. He holds out the item he’d been searching his desk for earlier: a roll of leather .

I take the offer without a word. No need to break a tooth just to prove a point. Well, not again.

I slide the roll between my lips and focus my thoughts on the future. It’s so close now I can just about taste it. The day we finish the eighth level. Before, it seemed so unlikely. But now, it’s only a mere year away.

Skelm doesn’t bother warning me before pressing that searing hot poker of his into the sprawling affinity mark along my backside. I bite down on the leather strap hard.

No matter how many times, I never become immune to the pain of this. It never seems to lessen. Which is also precisely why this is the chosen method of discipline for me. I work to ignore the fiery agony and think about the day we might be chosen to sail under a TideLord’s fleet instead.

I focus on the beautiful possibility of leaving the Cardinal North at long last. The next brand sears into me even hotter than the first.

I think about what it would be like to have the wind at my back and open water before me as far as the eye can see. I remember the untethered excitement in Kerau’s electric-blue eyes just before he left. I can almost feel that yearning ache from watching him stride onto TideLord Raimbaut’s ship.

He never looked back.

Skelm’s third burning stamp makes me cry out in extreme pain through the leather. The sound of my torment is followed by his chuckle.

I think, if I try hard enough, I can hear the ocean thrashing about somewhere far below. My imaginings turn to how it might feel to captain under a TideLord myself. To take on assignments and earn our own spoils.

The fourth and fifth strikes blind me with fresh pain. My legs give out, and I’m forced down into a kneeling position. Sweat slides down my temples, and my shoulders begin to shake.

I focus on my crew. The sacred eight. I imagine how it would be to live a life with them, out on the open tides. All of us safely far away from this hellish place .

Skelm makes sure to press the last three brands deep into the planes of my already ruined back.

My screams come out clear through the leather. The shrill pitch of them pierces the air and travels all the way out to the newly scattering seabirds flying up and away from the tides beyond my sight.

Black spots pulse and grow along the edges of my vision until the world fades out of view entirely. All the while, I hold onto the thought of never, ever being forced to separate from my affinity again.

Scents of lavender and chamomile swirl through the air and tickle my nose, reeling my unconscious self back to the surface.

My vision is blurry when I first try fluttering my eyelids open. It feels as though a haze of algae has been wrapped around my corneas.

“Wha—” I begin to say, or rather moan, pushing up with arms that are now apparently beneath me. Pain laces up my back, so fresh it’s blinding. I think I let out a shout. Maybe it’s another scream.

“Hey—whoa, now don’t get up. Come on—lay back down,” coos a familiar voice.

From the sound of the quickly approaching footfalls, the owner of said familiar voice is heading toward me. Wherever that is. I continue struggling upwards and curse viciously at the pure agony now known as my back.

“I’m serious, Merena!” snaps the voice, now right beside me.

So much for soothing .

I drop my arms and huff out a breath as my chest thuds back onto the cushioned cot beneath me.

My hands raise slowly to rub the blurriness from my eyes before finally peering up at the golden-maned girl currently frowning down at me.

The bronze dusting of freckles splattered across her nose is all the more prominent under the sickbay’s orb lights.

“Hi, Vi,” I mumble.

Davina’s frown deepens, and her eyebrows knit together in concern. “So they went through with it, then?” Her question is blunt, her mouth pursed into a line of barely concealed outrage.

I do my best to nod in my current position. “It would seem so.” I let out a sigh. “You’re the only one to miss out on all the fun.”

Davina is the only member of my crew who wasn’t down there on the shore, actively disobeying the Order’s rule. She shakes her head, her hazel eyes a kaleidoscope of hidden thoughts, constantly changing and morphing from one to the other. Blue to green to brown to gold.

“I was with the other leeches at the ceremony,” she explains, before turning and heading for one of the many sun-stained tables that frame the back part of the sickbay. I observe her as she begins pulling down various bottles and herbs from the cabinets above her workstation.

“I know. I figured they would’ve pulled you for it. Is that why Leech Vitasan isn’t here?”

Davina turns around from where she’s now begun steeping a silver ball into a pot of steaming hot water. “Yeah, she’s still down there. Big catch this year. Over forty of them in total. The Sons and Daughters seem to think it’s auspicious.”

“They always think it’s auspicious,” I snort.

My mind begins wandering to the unsettling image of the ocean-worshipping cult members and their hollow eye sockets. A disturbing chill spiders down my spine at the memory, and I force my train of thought to pick a different track.

“Were any of them—” I start.

The inquiry is one Davina knows is coming.

“No,” she cuts me off with the answer to my unfinished question. “None of them were anything like you. I inspected each one myself, promise.”

I sense that her normally sharp tongue is trying to be gentle.

I hate that.

Turning my head away from where she works, I instead face the wall of glass that looks out into the bay belonging to our northern isle. I watch the many fish who pass by the glass in curious silence. Their colorful scales, glimmering under the orb lights, are somewhat soothing.

I’ve spent more time in the sickbay than probably just about any raider here. Particularly during levels one through four.

I knew this Sál Moon wouldn’t be any different. I knew the likelihood of any of those poor kids who washed up last night looking anything like me was a long shot. Yet still, every year without fail, I somehow get my hopes up.

I can’t help it. I look for any trace of who I am in every single stranger I meet. The slope of their nose, the shade of their irises, even the pout in their lips. Suffice to say, I’ve yet to come across anyone that might be a familial relation.

“Here,” Vi offers, returning to my cot at last with a low black ceramic dish in her hands. It’s filled with half an inch of hot, scented water, and I prop myself on my elbows to take it from her.

The liquid tastes like peppermint and burns nearly as hot as Skelm’s poker while sliding down my throat.

I close my eyes and shudder in response to the sensation before slumping with the intense relief of reconnecting to my affinity.

An icy breeze flits about the room from a small burst of power, and Vi tightens the jacket of her leech’s uniform.

“Thank you,” I manage to croak out, relishing the comforting chill blooming into every inch of me. Apart from the devastation on my back, that is.

It’s silent for a beat before Vi whispers, “I’m so sorry, Merena.”

My eyes reopen, and I look up through thick lashes to find guilt coloring her face .

Davina swallows thickly and walks away again before I can say anything in return. She begins crushing something or another with a jade mortar and pestle. The constant sound of her angry mixing is the only thing to break the room’s silence.

“I’m sure Kleio has her reasons,” I comment after a few minutes of the stifling quiet.

Vi doesn’t reply, and I close my eyes. Lingering, searing pain is the only reason I’m not drifting off to sleep right now. A few more minutes, and a cooling paste is dolloped along my back.

My eyes snap open in a moment of agony, and I inhale a steady breath through my nose to a count of four, as we’ve been taught. The ointment is then generously spread over my wounds, and I hold my breath for another four before exhaling on the same count.

Preceptor Darood would be proud.

I do this repeatedly until the paste is no longer painful and is instead a blissfully cold antidote to the heated wounds. I count the fish who swim past and stop to watch me as the miracle salve, blessed with Davina’s affinity, sinks into the brands.

In an hour or so, there will only be thin white scars left. In a day or less, they will have vanished entirely to the outside eye. Only I alone will remember the pain of them.

I am marked with countless invisible scars.

Once finished, Vi quietly watches me pull back on the top half of my uniform, re-strap the buttons, and adjust my hair so it’s tightly coiled around the golden pin once more.

“I’ll see you at the cabin?” I ask.

Unlike the other members of my crew, Davina’s schedule revolves around the leeches, not the raiders.

She nods, her kaleidoscope eyes churning with the track of her thoughts. I give her a suppressed smile, which she doesn’t return, before passing through the familiar archway and leaving the sickbay at last.