Page 80 of Death’s Kiss (The Order of the Tide Raiders #1)

T he first few mouthfuls go down too quickly for my body to even react.

Then, on the fourth or fifth swallow, my system seems to register everything at once. The scream I omit is so loud that it startles even myself.

I’m on fire .

I’m burning alive from the inside out.

The weight of the heavy bowl in my hands is the only thing reminding me to drink. Meanwhile every ounce of my being is screaming at me to drop it. I’ve only just begun and I'm already terrified of the pain.

The deviant, reckless, willfulness of my youth steps up to stare down the internal fear. I drink another mouthful, and another, and another.

I drink until I've begun spiraling into an agony that’s unlike anything I've ever felt before. Simultaneously, an unbearable yet deeply familiar despair starts pressing in on me from all around. Tears I never allow for slide quickly down my face.

Gritting my teeth, I force myself to keep going .

I discover I’m suddenly twelve again, kneeling in Skelm’s office as he brands me for the very first time.

It's a small enough line, barely the size of my index finger, but I’d never felt anything like it before in my life.

The scream that erupts from me is so strenuous I’m afraid it’s going to snap a vocal cord.

But that brand didn’t stop me from rolling out of my bunk the next morning and throwing a punch at the first raider stupid enough to look my way.

So I drink again.

I’m thirteen now and Preceptor Ersatz is ironing my hands after I was caught stealing food past curfew. Vash Larceon had been putting sand in all my meals for the last week and I was starving. My cry is high-pitched in anguish, tears flow freely from my impossibly young and haunted eyes.

The next night, I snuck out of my cabin and smashed every single piece of valuable artwork on the entire main level of that dark fortress.

So I drink again.

I'm fourteen with freshly shorn hair, being forced to walk along a path of searing coals for three minutes.

One for each highborn life I took. Every time I fall down in pain, my tormentors restart the clock.

I feel stone crashing violently into my knees from another world as I endure the unendurable pain.

A week later was the first time I ever stole a speeder and found in it a reason to continue living.

So I drink again.

I drink, and I drink, and I drink until there’s nothing left.

I’ve just been made captain and I kneel once more before that most terrible hearth. Eight large brands, the biggest I’ve ever been given, are pressed into my back with maddening deliberation.

I grit through each and every one, willfully taking responsibility for and shielding those whom the torture is truly intended. As I will continue to do until my very last breath.

The world tilts backwards.

A clattering sound emanates from somewhere very far away .

I can do nothing but writhe in pain as flames lick over every inch of my person. A fire born of my own deviancy begins destroying me from the inside out.

I endure it.

Year.

After.

Year.

I endure it.

Until I’m freezing cold and don’t feel much of anything at all.

“Come on, drink—you have to— drink, ” someone pleads.

Their deep, commanding voice comes from somewhere far above. It reminds me of an old, familiar beam of halcyon light, penetrating through the frigid surface of my depthless misery. They sound both terrified and inconceivably exhausted.

“You have to drink, please— Merena— drink! ” that halcyon light demands, shouting down at me like the sun to the sea. Something about hearing their low sinful tenor saying my name reminds me exactly how to swallow.

The unmistakable sounds of my crew's laughter begins trickling down my throat. Voices that are the closest thing I have to a home drop one by one down to my core before slowly unraveling inside of me. Relief like I've never felt in my life starts to spread throughout my being .

“There you—go,” the very weary sun says, barreling through the last of my bitter cold until the world comes roaring back into existence. “You took it—like a—fucking— champ. ”

I gasp out in sudden keenness.

It feels like I’ve been stumbling around inside a midnight fog only to be yanked into a painfully bright high-noon. Sounds and colors are so vivid that my head might just burst from the intensity of it all. I think I groan out in pain.

“It’s s’okay now—you’re okay now—it’s over, you’re okay,” the sun mumbles from nearby, invoking in me the soothing image of dusk. His voice is soft, like the very last rays of light, just before stars begin winking into existence.

That’s my favorite time of day, I recall faintly.

The frightening roar of reality finally begins to dull and my senses start returning to their usual state. Blinking hard, I open my eyes at last to the dripstone ceiling above and surge upward onto my forearms in sudden remembrance.

The hafgufa.

The poison.

The gems.

I find Captain Agni lying across from me, soaking wet. His breathing comes in and out in deeply labored heaves. Scanning the waters, I’m startled to find the massive, man-slaughtering monster of old bobbing along the surface with tendrils of crimson pouring out from all sides.

He killed it. Without his affinity.

He killed it and then he—

“You gave me the antidote,” I rasp out. My throat is unbearably raw and I now remember screaming. Embarrassment colors my cheeks while I roughly wipe away all traces of tears.

He only manages a breathless nod in response.

Agni’s obsidian hair plastered about his brow exposes just how startlingly pale he is.

Something about the shine in his eyes studying my face strikes me then as wrong .

I look at him again, with a more shrewd gaze.

My assessment halts on the rust-colored spike laying just at the opposite end of his outstretched legs.

It’s got blood on it.

“Were you cut with that?” I ask, jolting to my knees.

He chuckles softly with another small dip of his chin by way of retort. A deadly blue tint has begun creeping into his lips and something inside of me tilts. I have the sudden urge to vomit.

My face scrunches itself up tight in confusion. He’s been poisoned. He had the antidote right there in his hand—and then he just—he just— gave it to me? It makes absolutely no sense.

I shake my head in angry frustration. Why? Why is he always doing this shit—it never, ever makes any sense.

Looking back to Agni, I find him watching me.

An idea comes to mind.

A terrible, horrible, self-destructive kind of idea.

But if he was correct and there really was a bit more than one dose of panacea, then—well— fuck . I suppose I have to at least try.

Not to mention that if he dies, our od will never be fulfilled, leaving my captaincy title sworn to it completely up to chance. This is what I tell myself when making the decision.

His quickly fading form watches me crawl to him with the ghost of a smirk on his lips and a hint of wickedness in his eyes. The kind that makes me want to punch him somewhere low for what I now have to do.

My face comes to hover a foot above his own, now laying back to study the ceiling. His eyes find mine and I watch as they flicker with an underlying wariness. The raging beat inside of me is just as brutal and savage, as if my affinity were released.

“The—our od isn’t finished—so—I can’t—I can’t let you die.” I stumble over the words in a rush to get them out of my mouth before he makes a comment that’s certain to make me regret this.

Something bitter flashes through Agni’s gaze and strains in his jaw but he doesn’t speak.

“The—there’s only one way I can think of to get you the antidote.” My eyes drift to his lips, now beginning to turn violet, before returning hesitantly to his eyes. “I—you gave me more than one dose and—panacea is quite potent so—I think—well, the—whatever is—I could—you know.”

Agni blinks at me, his expression utterly nonplussed, which only makes the thrashing inside that much harder to quell.

Gods, he is insufferable .

I huff a short breath to shake out the last of my nerves, then close my eyes tight and move down to press my lips against his. But an unexpectedly firm hand on my arm halts me no more than an inch from his face.

“No,” Agni states.

My eyes open wide to find the very last dregs of that arrogance playing about his features only mere centimeters from my own. The wickedness I glimpsed before in his gaze is now much much more than just a hint.

“ What ?” I sputter, bewildered.

He flashes one of his cruelest smiles yet. “Beg me.”

I stare at him, mouth open, both shocked and furious. Surely he cannot be serious? Unfortunately for me, he can.

Agni’s smile grows deeper and his face loses even more of its coloring while taking in my appalled reaction. “Beg me to kiss you, Boreas—or I will die—and I’ll take your captaincy right along with me,” he promises, his voice coming out uncharacteristically faint.

Outrage flares bright inside and I know he both sees and enjoys it. I study his face for another minute. It only reaffirms to me his sincerity. He would actually do it—die and take the od with him—just to spite me. His capacity for getting beneath my skin truly knows no bounds.

“Tik-tok,” Agni taunts weakly.

He’s becoming colder and colder beneath me with every passing moment. I clench my teeth, hating how even on the brink of death he continues to find ways to best me at every turn. His eyes watch mine intently and they flash fiendishly the instant I find my resolve.

Lowering myself back to his lips, I work hard to shove down the rising heat wave of humiliation. He’s saved my life thrice now. I could do this.

I have to.

“Please— please kiss me,” I whisper.

His answering voice is ashen. “Again.”

Growling low in pure frustration, my hand cups his jaw and I press my mouth to his once, twice. “ Please, ” I plead onto his stupidly cold lips. “Please—please kiss me ,” I implore again.

The jackass might as well be carved from marble for all the good it does.