Page 89 of Death’s Kiss (The Order of the Tide Raiders #1)

“Your footwork is decent, at least,” Agni notes offhandedly. “But overall, your movements aren’t fluid in the slightest. You’re much too rigid and tightly constrained for an elemental, especially one with your powers.”

“What is going on here?” I snap at last. “I do not recall The Vault requiring a combat lesson before entering.”

Agni’s thoughts lie hidden behind an iron gate. His eyes meet mine with brows coolly raised. “We’ve been over this already. I need my captain’s ring, which I know that you have. So kindly hand it back over.”

I hate how easy it is for him to return to this unfeeling persona. The frightening male before me now does not so much as even resemble the one who risked a hafgufa to get me that antidote. The one who so very recently kissed me with such intensity that I thought it really might kill me .

Maybe that kiss actually satiated whatever sort of intimate interest he once had in me.

Agni himself made it quite clear that there are never any sort of feelings involved in any of his exploits.

He's only in it for two things, nothing more.

That realization causes a twisting somewhere between my chest and my stomach.

Fucking pathetic .

I work hard to pulverize the utterly ridiculous feeling before sneering back up at him. “And what if I don’t have it on me?”

Agni gives me a knowing smirk before divulging, “We already searched your speeder.” His chuckle is dark in the face of my immediate doubt. “And your crew was not happy about it.”

That smirk turns smug as I study his face, searching for the bluff.

“See, now, that’s when I wondered where it was that you’d run off to.

None of your enchanting little crew members would say one single fucking peep to me or any of my boys about it.

I found their resistance to our interrogation methods quite impressive, actually. ”

My heart stops beating.

The grip on my sword tightens in panic-fueled indignation, and my knuckles turn about as white as my markings. I struggle to swallow while reading the sincerity on his face. Alarm and worry tie my insides into thickly corded knots.

I’d left them all behind. I left them exposed and vulnerable, and he had taken advantage of it.

How could I be so stupid?

“ Depths Boreas —your crew members have not been harmed in the slightest—they are currently just detained , that's it,” Agni discloses with a frustrated roll of his eyes, clearly having picked up on my visible distress. “Suffice to say I’m fairly certain you have it on your person… somewhere .”

The way those amber eyes scan up and down my body appraisingly, while taking several steps closer, makes a deep flush of betrayal sweep across my skin.

I feint to the left before spinning to the right and aiming for his legs, but Agni sees right through my ruse.

His hellish broadsword sweeps low, effortlessly knocking my feet out from under me.

I hit the ground hard , swearing as the impact knocks the wind from my lungs and the short sword skitters out of reach.

Scrambling back to my feet with one of my only remaining knives in hand proves futile, as the impossibly fast southern captain is already there with his broadsword pointed at my throat.

Agni forces the knife from my hand, and I brace myself for what’s about to happen next. But, instead of delivering the final blow I’m fully expecting, Agni presses the flat of his blade against my chest and pins me back flat against the golden wall of the temple.

I meet his stare, only to find that cocky smirk of his ghosting at the corners of his mouth.

My breathing hitches in mutiny as his face lowers down to mine and his lips press themselves against my ear.

“As much as I would deeply enjoy it if you gave me the go-ahead to search every inch of your person for my ring right now, Boreas—” Agni’s ashen words come out torturously intimate.

“We regrettably don’t have the time nor the privacy for me to properly show you just exactly how skilled and thorough that I am. ”

His lips remove themselves from my ear before his darkened, kesar-shaded eyes meet mine with meaning. My heart rate spikes concerningly, and a treasonous blush spills along my neck in response to the too-familiar heat now sifting the embers of his gaze.

“I’ll say this one more time. Give me back my ring,” he demands firmly.

My chin lifts while keeping hold of his painfully intent stare. “I told you already. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

The annoyance in his face is nearly tangible, and I catch his jaw flexing against it. Agni takes a quick scan of my expression before letting out an irate huff at my continued refusal to concede.

“Your crew is currently unharmed, but that can change Captain— if it has to,” He states darkly. “Do not force my hand on this one, Boreas. You will not like the cards that I’ll have to play. ”

A snarl of rage escapes me at his very real threat to my crew. Agni holds my now-seething form solidly against the gilded wall. His iron-masked expression remains ruthless and unwavering. He has me on this one, and we both know it.

I give him a look dripping with abhorrence before finally dipping my chin in surrender.

“Front right pocket.”

Agni’s brutal expression softens, just a touch, in response to my yield. His hand is surprisingly gentle when he reaches into the concealed compartment along the side of my waist before lightly fishing out his captaincy ring.

My eyes avoid him at all costs, and I begin studying the exposed sky above while chewing the inside of my cheek. A faint light can be seen nearing the horizon, transforming the midnight sky into a velvety shade of periwinkle. Dawn won’t be too terribly far off now.

“Now, second order of business,” Agni snaps, returning my eyes to meet his surprisingly very angry face. “Exactly whose life were you just off saving? What cardinal?”

“West,” I reply, meeting his gaze, and watch in surprise as his eyes blaze obsidian again.

“ Why? ” he demands.

I frown at his sudden change in mood. “Their speeder was in smithereens after trying to take on a whirlpool in the third checkpoint. The crew was stuck between half of their hull and one of the ledges while Captain Bedivere was trapped beneath the current and debris at the bottom.”

His eyes searching my face turn back to amber, and his breathing unexpectedly begins to quicken. “So you're telling me that you went down in there and got her out ?”

My brows rise at his alarming intensity before I confirm with a tight nod.

“I couldn’t just stand by and allow a raider crew to be forced to watch their captain die.

I do not wish to ever attend another of those terribly somber pyre-burning ceremonies.

As I already explained to my second, my duty as a captain in that moment was to Brisa’s crew— that is the code. ”

“And then what happened?” Agni pushes, continuing on in the interrogation.

Shaking my head at his strangeness, I explain further, “And then I had to drag her unconscious body over to a ledge and give her mouth-to-mouth. So, as I already said when you first asked, I was kissing another captain in order to save their life. It was a joke,” I snap, angry with his ceaseless questions.

Agni begins surveying my face fiercely. His eyes have the same unspoken war raging in them as they did in the grotto, but now it's somehow more intense. The tension in them makes me feel like he’s walking on some sort of knife edge, but I have no idea what it is he’s wavering between.

It’s maddening.

"Well, if you’re done interrogating me, then here’s your other ring, prick, ” I mutter angrily before holding up my right hand to reveal my index finger, currently laden with his ruby accessory.

My eyes return upwards as they start burning with the very real realization that Captain Agni is going to win The Vault.

“My other one? What do you mean, my other— oh sweet depths, ” Agni pauses in shock before he begins laughing in genuine surprise. The sound of it is startlingly real and mortifyingly stirring.

“ Deos meos —you took this one too, and I didn’t even realize.” He laughs again in freshly renewed amazement, and my pulse stumbles a beat. After a moment, Agni adds softly, “You know, I’d rather you kept that one, actually. I prefer the look of it on your hand much more than mine.”

My attention flickers back warily to his alarmingly handsome face now just inches away from my own. His amber eyes currently study the ruby ring on my hand, and I soon discover his mouth is curved into that incredibly rare, heart-stoppingly-crooked, dangerously-dark grin.

My pulse promptly falters before picking up speed in response .

“How are you so good at that?” Agni murmurs in a voice that now feels private, as his gaze flits back to mine in suspicion. That golden scar of his glistens under the waning starlight, and I find there’s a divine sort of beauty to it. I have the strangest desire to reach up and trace it.

Swallowing tightly, my eyes don’t leave his as I shake my head in silent response.

The lingering ghost of that crooked grin on his mouth makes it impossible for me to speak.

I watch as his eyes begin to walk that razor edge once more.

His breathing quickens while returning to that state of maddening deliberation.

He has his ring, he has my crew as collateral, and he has me physically pinned against the shiny wall of the godsdamned vault with a broadsword at my throat. What on all of Pontus could he be debating at this moment in time?

Unless—is it— possible ?

“ Non possum credere stupri hoc nunc fieri. ” Agni mutters, his gaze still intense, while his tone has turned angrily disbelieving.

I bite down on my lower lip in complete confusion, and Agni notes the movement. My eyes begin to burn intentionally as I allow just a touch of despair to run along my waterline. Then I watch in satisfaction as Agni finally teeters off the knife edge with the tight clench of his jaw.

“My death, I fucking swear it,” he growls angrily before his mouth comes crashing down against mine.

The feeling of his spice-laden lips injects me with an immediate thrill before his expert tongue makes it past my mouth in order to clash against my own, igniting something dangerously warm inside my core.

It’s over much too soon, as Agni then releases me abruptly from both his mouth and blade.

There’s a very deep scowl on his face while he next grabs me by the wrist and drags me towards The Vault’s intricately carved doors. I blink in astonishment as he then places my ring-adorned hand firmly on the holy doors of promise. There’s a pulse beneath my palm, like the ‘click’ of a lock.

My mouth parts as The Vault opens in response and I look to Agni in total bewilderment. I cannot believe my last ditch ploy actually worked .

He shakes his head at himself, anger still plain on his face. Yet I catch his lips twitching slightly in amusement towards my startled expression. I open my mouth to say something when the southern captain shocks me yet again by delivering his own strategic blow.

Agni yanks me into his arms with a cocky smirk stating "loophole" in explanation before slipping us both through The Vault’s opening. The monstrous doors shut behind us with a clang of finality.

And then we’re falling .

We’re falling through what appears to be nothing but waves and starlight.

Agni holds me tightly against his person, and my startled screams of terror are devoured by the firmness of his chest. An otherworldly hum of energy presses in on us from all sides.

Our bodies plunge down through layer after layer of every shade of tide that exists until I can barely even recount my own name. Until I no longer believe my own reality. Until my throat is raw from overuse. Until suddenly there is solid ground beneath me again.

There is no impact.

There is also, mysteriously, no more Agni.

I have to wonder if I might be dead.