Page 62 of Death’s Kiss (The Order of the Tide Raiders #1)

B lood thunders in my ears and my stomach turns in warning.

But nevertheless, I drag back up the memories I've worked hard to forget. Faces and names I’ve endeavored to keep buried deep down inside thrash around reluctantly while pulling them to the brutal light of the surface.

I find it marginally easier to control my voice by focusing on the shadow beneath Agni’s chin rather than meeting his intent gaze.

“His name was Iver. I was in level two, and he—he was in level four.”

Agni tuts once. “I thought that sounded pretty young to become a cold-blooded murderer. I’m impressed. Continue.” My lips pull themselves downward in disgust, whether it’s towards me or him, I’m not yet sure.

"Iver was talented. Brek . He had an affinity for archery like nothing I’ve ever seen,” I admit before stealing a short breath and working to flatten out the debased memory. “Level-two’s aren’t allowed to leave their cabin's past nightfall, but I used to wander in the dark most evenings. ”

His brow lifts as if to say, as you still continue to do. I roll my eyes at his pointed stare and resume.

“This night in particular, I went to walk my usual path. The one right along the tree-line leading back to the old docks. It’s pretty close to here actually, but—anyway, I found I wasn’t alone.” The sound of my exhale fills the air around us.

My brow creases as the repressed memories begin tangling themselves again.

“It was stupid. I should never have left my bunk, but I didn’t want to be there. I just—I just wanted to be anywhere else.” I don’t know why I’m explaining myself other than the fact that Agni requested the details and I would give them to him.

“There was a group of them. Coming back from the boneyard.”

The image of that night suddenly resurfaces in painful clarity. I can practically hear their loud shouting and the obnoxious way in which they bragged about recent oblation winnings. Even the midnight breeze can’t carry away their lurid scent, it still cloaks them so heavily in my mind.

I had just turned fourteen.

“They were all terribly drunk. This was before liquor was outlawed from the boneyard, obviously.” A provision I myself put into place the very evening of my promotion to captaincy.

“I thought I was pretty well hidden within the high grasses and stones. This group of level fours in particular had a certain reputation, ” I muse. “A true talent for cruelty.” My eyes flicker up to Agni’s to discover them uncharacteristically hard, his mouth has set in an unreadable line.

My lip curls. “I suppose you might have gotten along with them quite well."

A vein along his temple throbs visibly in response.

“I didn't realize the wind would cause my hair to lift like some damning white flag and give away my hiding spot.” Bitterness coats the back of my tongue and I internally spit on the gods for the extreme and unforgivable way in which they branded me. “That was my mistake. ”

Swallowing the acidity in my throat, I find the words to continue. “They sought me out, knowing just exactly who and what was hiding from them. They, like you, despised castaways and bastard-borns. I provided them with the unique opportunity of taking out their aggression on both.”

Drawing another rallying breath, I wonder idly when my hand grabbed for the small knife now twirling anxiously about my fingers.

“They found me. I tried to run, but they were faster and stronger. They had two more years of experience and training. Not to mention that, being a castaway, I obviously didn’t arrive here with any oblations.

Assuming the south operates in the same way—well, you know I wouldn’t have been allotted weapons without reaching level-six or earning them in a challenge. ”

I swallow. "That is to say, I had none, and they had many."

I’m not positive at what point Agni took a step back or when I took one forward and our roles reversed. But he wanted to hear the whole story. Every detail.

“They cut my hair off in terrible chunks and told me it was a mercy when I began to cry. Each of them, obviously highborn, explained to me in very putrid words that the color of it was a sign from the gods themselves that they were worth more than me. That they were above me by right. They claimed to be taking what was owed to them for allowing my existence here.”

Oddly enough, the beating inside my bones is nothing more than a dull thud, lost inside the echoes of time. I barely even notice how black the southern captain’s eyes have turned or how his fisted hands have whitened at the knuckles.

“They were quite descriptive with what they intended to do to me that night, how exactly they were going to show me my place.” I pause with another swallow, an ache has begun forming along my temples and jawline.

“So yes, the stories you've heard about me are true. When they started to cut away at my uniform with their blades, I let my power slip the leash.”

Captain Agni has dimmed into a darkness so absolute that he could be mistaken for the resting place between stars. I can almost forget his presence entirely .

“Iver was my first kill, but he was not the only kill I made that night.” Admittance to that fact is not a struggle and my lips lift slightly in the corners.

“He had it easy. All it took was one little frigid blast and he toppled right over the bluffs. You know how high the fall is and how sharp the rocks waiting at the bottom are. No amount of archery can save you from that, I'm afraid.” I try flattening my lips again, to no avail.

The corner of my mouth hooks ever upwards in recollection.

“Then went Chet. It was winter and as you can probably imagine, it was easy enough to craft an icicle, even having next to no affinity training at that point. Easier still to shove it in his eye socket until it pierced through the back of his skull.” The breathy laugh I huff is dark and cold.

“I’d like to claim I saved Byron for last on purpose but it was honestly more so that he got away while I was... distracted with Chet.” My eyes become unfocused for a moment.

“It didn’t take long to find him, the idiot ran back towards the boneyard instead of the north.

That was his mistake. His last mistake.” I chew the inside of my lip while deciding my next words.

“I found out about my frostbite ability that night. I found out a lot about myself that night.” My lips purse tight in remembrance.

“I couldn’t stop once I’d started. My affinity was damn near impossible to tame back then. Besides,” I shrug casually. “I was too enraged about the hair of mine he’d taken and tied around his belt as a trophy to even fathom halting.”

When I meet Agni's gaze again, I find it filled with flames, but not the ones I’m expecting. They do not narrow in judgment or glint in the promise of damnation. These flames are far more terrifying, dancing and swaying with pure obsidian rage .

His mouth moves as if carved from stone when speaking at last. “I heard it was four against one. ”

It’s not technically a question but I shake my head regardless. “I had to leave one of them alive, didn’t I? Had to ensure the message was received by anyone else thinking of going after me.”

“What was their name? The one left alive.” Agni’s words are clipped and severe.

My snort is faint. “What’s it to you?”

“I’ll count it as a question,” he offers darkly.

Rolling my eyes to the sky and back at his sudden strangeness, I answer in a tapered breath. “Maybe the worst of them all, funnily enough. He promised to take something else from me that night as a trophy. Something much more intimate than my hair. His name is Ferris Noll.”

Agni nods once and it’s almost mechanical in movement.

“Does that satisfy two debts, then?” I ask. “Or do you require even more details to satiate this obsessive need of yours to acerbate me? There are some exceptionally vile things they said to me—really creative, maybe you’d like—”

“ No .” He spits out the word like it’s coated in poison.

Reliving the memory has made it so I’m too remote to enjoy his riled state. I can’t even find it in myself to smirk at the way Agni’s sickening arrogance has completely abandoned him at last.

“It's safe to say that whatever other terrible rumors you’ve heard are probably true. I am a nightmare. A deviant, bastard-born, castaway nightmare.” The pronouncement sounds dead even to my own ears.

A chilling quiet falls between us for an unsettling moment.

Then, Agni lifts the quiet.

He says, "Oderint dum metuant ," offering the words to me like a gift.

His eyes remain fixed on my face as they continue dancing in that menacing obsidian. I don’t think he even realizes the statement was given in his southern tongue until my head tilts to one side in clear question.

“Let them hate, so long as they fear,” he states, explaining their meaning to my undying surprise. “It was my mother’s family maxim. Some people in the landmasses use them like a prayer. They say it helps. ”

It takes genuine effort to repress the shiver that beckons in response and keep my face impassive. The tingling sensation prickling at the base of my scalp stems from more than just my shock at Agni revealing his foreign words' significance for the first time.

Never in my life have more veracious words been spoken.

Never have I felt so completely exposed.

We stand there staring at each other for several more motionless minutes. Assessing one another anew. Reevaluating and remeasuring the enemy as any good raider would.

After a prolonged period of silent calculation, I conclude, “Well, that makes four.”

Making to turn back in aim for the northern fortress and my cabin within it, I hesitate.

We really aren’t so far from where the horror of that night occurred.

The knowledge sends a dark wave of unease crashing through me.

Dread curdles low in echoed response while I feel their ghosts begin to press about the air, as if summoned by the recount.

That was a long time ago, Boreas.

They’re dead now—get a grip.

I lock my jaw, straighten my spine, and resume the course with determination.

A haze of saffron and cedar and something else I don’t know the name for trails me every step of the way.

For the first time, the scent is not an entirely unwelcome presence.

Although I suppose any non-threatening presence would do so near that haunted path on a night as similar as this.

How Agni managed to slide himself into that mental category, I haven’t the faintest clue.

Just before slipping inside the black stone confinement, I pause to steal a backward glance.

The image of Agni’s towering shadow greets me as he watches silently from the other side of the open-air bridge. Releasing a low-lying cloud of smoke in my direction is the only sign of his farewell .

A strange surge of something dangerously thrilling heats my blood in response. I dismiss it briskly, with a sharp jerk of my head.

Giving Agni a flash of my captain-ring finger, I continue on inside, intending to head directly for my bunk. His deep chuckled response to my gesture accompanies me through the entrance.

I’m unnervingly aware of every movement I make under his searing gaze.

For some masochistic reason I don’t dare attempt to decipher, I find myself loitering in the hall minutes later, unable to continue on to my cabin.

Finally, moving as if no more than a shadow, I creep to one of the many carved-out niches along the hall.

My fingers, pale from the lack of sunlight, press against the gritty black wall as I risk another look.

Agni still lingers at the opposite end of the bridge.

Observing him while hidden behind the stone recess is a strange sort of relief.

My unfettered eyes are free to study his staggering form and all its dreadful beauty beneath the celestial light.

His broad muscular back leans casually against the stone.

His upturned chin displays the strength of his jaw, contrasting sharply with the soft outline of his lips as he finishes off the last of his spice.

I’ve never noticed before how soft his mouth looks. A hand rubs idly against my lower lip.

Moments later, Agni finally turns back around and disappears in the direction of their ship. A fresh wave of that concerning heat begins rolling into me again. It flushes across my chest and drops lower, raising skin as it goes.

Pushing away from the wall, I give myself a thorough shake before scoffing at my capacity for self-destruction. Depths. I’m no better than one of his adoring little fan club members that I so enjoy mocking.

Fucking pathetic.