Page 60 of Death’s Kiss (The Order of the Tide Raiders #1)
A gni’s fury is a tangible thing, like a familiar scorching rod pressed against my flesh.
“You want a question so bad? Fine .” He draws nearer, his features contorting into a sinister warning sign.
“Tell me then,” he practically growls. “How does it feel to know your own family disregarded your life so very easily? To know that they didn’t find you valuable enough to even consider the loss of your life a sacrifice ?”
My recoil is instant.
His laugh is sharp and vicious. “Do you wake up every morning wondering whether or not they could sense your worthlessness? Or have you come to the highly likely conclusion that you were just some insufferable abomination they simply hoped to rid themselves of as easily as possible?”
Nails dig themselves into my palm as he glares at me without an ounce of pity. “Due to the fact that you were pitched into the sea for fish food, I’d put money on the latter. But that’s just me. ”
“You are such an ass ,” I hiss before shoving him harshly with the intention of returning to my cabin, as I probably should have done in the first place. He catches me by both wrists, where my palms meet his chest in hands that feel like solid iron.
The pounding in my head only gets louder, making it harder for me to control my breathing.
“And you are a brat ,” he snarls, the insult grazing my face from his nearness. “You’re such a little tragedy, aren’t you? Oh poor Boreas, no memory, no family, no home. Just a lowly castaway who’s been so sheltered, she has no fucking clue what the world is like outside of her northern haven.”
“You know nothing of what my life has been like here.” I spit before yanking my hands out of his grasp. His look of utter indifference is so jarring that it incenses me to push him further. I want to delve my way beneath his skin as surely as he’s able to peel back mine.
“I don’t have a choice in my ignorance, but you do. You and your desperate need for any spec of power or leverage you can gain and then thwart over another living being is vile .”
Agni doesn’t so much as blink at my whetted barbs. The whiplash he’s given me these last few months with his drastic mood swings pushes me towards a bottomless spiral. I decide I might as well drag the perpetrator down with me.
“It disgusts me to see how you exploit and then discard anything and everything you don’t deem worthy of your highborn sacrifice and gods-given affinity. I’m sure maiming that kelpie of yours meant nothing, not to someone like you— right ?” My tone is scathing.
His responding chuckle is wry and removed. "It’s tamed now, isn’t it?”
The apathetic way in which he speaks of such a horrendous act is truly sickening. I feel the skin on my arms tighten, and goosebumps prickle from my wrists to my shoulders, as if my body is trying to erect a barrier between me and the haunting wail of that kelpie reverberating inside my mind .
Agni actually believes his heinous actions are trivial. I have no reasonable notion as to why, but the proof of his blatant disregard feels as sharp as any physical blow. I’m genuinely surprised that I don’t stagger back from the impact.
“Those kelpies—they were only colts —each of them barely older than foals,” I state while angry tremors ripple through my clenched fists. “They had just been separated from their mothers that very morning. For the first time since birth .”
This parcel of knowledge is one I’ve been holding onto for a while now. Ever since my debrief after our scoring with Preceptor Beldham. I practically crawled my way up to the nets afterward. I couldn't stomach being around those celebrating the first pillar's completion.
The truth was nearly devouring me whole until Kleio intervened.
Captain Agni brushes past without comment and begins traipsing back in the direction of their docked cardinal ship.
The horrible callousness of his attitude bothers me more than it should.
It paints me with a shade of anger I’ve never seen or felt before.
For the first time, I get the sense that there might be something worse lurking beyond that wall of unfaltering ice inside.
I stalk after him, one hand hovering over a concealed blade.
“They had no idea what was going on as your adoring TideLord Nero hauled them up here to perform.” My tone becomes more derisive with every step he takes away from me. “Only that they were desperate to get back to their mothers.”
I have no intention of relenting. I’ll shout at him all the way to his cardinal’s dock if I must.
“You were told to tame it, so then of course you had to blind and brand it.” I could choke on my own appall.
“Heating the bay waters so it had no other possibility of freedom but to attack from outside was obviously your only option. You were practically forced to poison it with your touch and destroy the rest of its life with your insufferable arrogance. It’s not as if that creature’s life is worth anything to someone like you . ”
Agni pauses his silent retreat in the middle of a patch of evergreens. Their tall, needle-filled branches rise up so far that they appear as if to stroke the midnight sky. I’m quick to take the opportunity and step before him again, quick to get in his face with my rage.
“I want to know why . Because it threw you into the docks? Because the kelpie—a wild and free creature by birthright—dared to rebuke your attempt at confining it?”
He turns his back on me once more in insult. And I let out a low laugh in mockery at his pointed slight. It’s a shame he can’t see just how potent the look of loathing is on my face.
"I should have known—it’s beneath you. Less-than, right?
Well then that should absolutely give you the right to punish it however you see fit.
You’re just so very fucking important, aren't you, highborn? So impossibly far above everyone and everything else. So important, in fact, that you were then given a ten. A fucking ten. After mutilating a confused and terrified foal.”
The months of despising him cling to each word, and I’m rewarded with his sharp recoil.
“Honestly, I can’t even begin to imagine how entertaining it must be—getting to commit whatever atrocities you want without any sort of consequence. After all, you’re just so bored here, right? None of it matters. It's all just a game to you—everything is a fucking game to you!”
I’m so furious at Agni’s complete lack of emotion that a horrifying prickling sensation begins forming at the base of my eyes. It does not, however, stop my assault. Nor does it slow me in forcing him to drink down the horrors I’ve kept so tightly bottled.
“They had to kill its mother afterward. Did you know that? The kelpie was sentenced to what will most likely be a very short existence of baiting in The Deep. Its mother was too enraged after seeing her maimed child to be deemed safe enough to remain alive .” I’m seething now.
Agni’s spine becomes rigid, but I hardly notice. The terrible sadness from that day begins bleeding into the present. A never-ending darkness bears down on my consciousness. It’s so familiar that I sometimes think I must have been born with it.
“But that’s no issue of yours,” I continue on in my rant. “After all, you tamed it. You— ”
“I—WAS—BLIND!” Agni snarls, whirling around to face me at last. His voice is like the sharp crack of a switch and its severity splinters the air between us.
Appearing suddenly like some sort of avenging star, the southern captain’s gaze brims with a real, vivid burning as he rounds himself on me. I stumble and nearly fall in my fast-moving backward steps. Real fear begins clawing at me from somewhere deep inside my chest.
“I—WASN’T—ABLE—TO— FUCKING —SEE!” he bellows.
The look on his face is that of a man on the brink as Agni backs me into one of the thick, moss-covered trunks. “I couldn’t even—I couldn’t even— HEAR!” he shouts the last word, and the space around me heats right through the shield of my affinity.
Agni’s eyes blaze furiously while his broad chest heaves from the effort it takes for him to breathe evenly and lower his voice.
“I heated the bay because it was a felsic breed of kelpie. They survive in only exceedingly hot waters. I was trying to coax it in not fucking torment it!” He pauses to inhale raggedly.
“Then it got spooked and blasted me into that dock. The lightning shot out both of my eardrums, half of my sight, and—and—and I didn’t know. ” Agni’s southern accent trills along each word of his lowered voice, thicker than I’ve ever heard.
His features manage to look somehow both stricken and enraged.
If he notices the chill in the air or white petals dropping from above, he doesn’t allude to it. It becomes impossible to swallow, and a sour taste begins working its way up my esophagus.
Yet Agni persists.
“The blood was everywhere . I was coated in it—my senses were coated in it. I thought maybe I could bridle it again. I didn’t know how close it was.
” He continues fuming. “My arm was snapped in fucking half and—I thought my aim was—I wasn’t trying to—I just—” Agni’s eyes shudder, and a facade I didn’t even realize he was wearing slips.
For a single heartbeat, I catch sight of something unexpectedly broken lurking beyond walls of solid iron. My pulse falters in response, and I physically retreat backwards without thought. Tree bark digs into my spine so hard that I have to bite my tongue to keep from yelping in pain.
Agni swallows tightly, and his next words are so distant that I’m not sure they’re truly meant for my ears.
“I had it sent to one of my familial estates in Andesite, it will have been accepted on my behalf. It will not be forced to bait. I made certain of it. That kelpie will live out the remainder of its long and well cared for life with its sire in the same lands that its mother originated from.”