Page 94 of Death’s Kiss (The Order of the Tide Raiders #1)
A gni and I journey the rest of the way to the heart in an eerily comfortable silence.
Both of us are pensive and exhausted and spun out on just about every emotion you can possibly think of.
The vault was basically a hafgufa. It had swallowed me whole and then spat me back out by my bones.
I’d been put through a whirlpool of so many extreme feelings and realizations that I was most definitely not prepared for.
There’s a deep sort of fatigue setting in that I'm sure I’ve never felt before.
I think I could sleep for a week straight.
Dawn is well and truly rising above us as we make it to the last stretch before reaching Captain Agni's mooring. Once again, anxiety and unease swell up inside, but I grip my thumb and breathe deeply through the bitter urge to suppress them.
It was getting easier.
I look up to find Agni giving me a knowing smirk as he turns around and begins walking cockily backwards in the direction of our waiting crews .
“Good girl,” he says in response to my use of his method. The praise was a bit offhanded, but once he’s said it, something flexes in his jaw, heats in his eyes, and he swallows as that smirk turns sinful. “Oh, I could get very used to this little teacher-student dynamic between us.”
My hand grips onto my middle finger, and I breathe in and out deeply.
“Impressive,” Agni comments, brows high.
His expression then turns insufferably arrogant.
“I could teach you lots of things you know. About your powers, about your element. We could play some games to try and answer your questions about our shared past. I have lots of games we could play, in fact. Some of them might even allow for clothing.” He shoots me a wink while continuing his backwards swaggering.
My hand grips my middle finger even tighter while exhaling the words, “Insufferable asshole.”
“Don’t you mean— excruciating ?” Agni taunts with a provoking flash of his brows.
The ground tremors slightly in response, but I otherwise manage to ride the wave of his absolutely agonizing fucking personality. He chuckles darkly while giving me a nod of real approval as we reach the end of the tunnel before spinning back around.
“Now, as I promised—” Agni begins, taking a step out of the tunnel and into the circular mooring dock. “Your lovely little crew is all perfectly safe, and—” he halts abruptly in order to choke on a horrified gasp of profound disbelief.
My heart thunders with reckless abandon as I shove Agni out of my way and step into the heart. I quickly scour the scene to find seven tied-up raiders, each with a locked and loaded crossbow aimed directly over their hearts.
But they are not mine.
The grin that forms along my mouth is almost painfully wide while devouring the absolutely delectable scene that’s been laid out for me. This is almost as good as winning the fucking vault itself .
Captain Agni’s crew of mongrels are tied up securely in a very tight ring.
Each one of them is in various states of undress, with hair indecently mussy and their lips undeniably reddened.
They also all appear to be seething with rage in response to having their own weapons pointed directly against their own shirtless chests by one of my crew members.
My eyes find Kleio’s immediately, and for a moment I’m only able to stare, speechless, in complete amazement. Then I lock eyes with the six others of my crew, each one mercifully alive and well, and also in a fair bit of damning disarray.
“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?” Captain Agni bellows, absolutely furious.
My grin widens further.
“WE WERE BEWITCHED CAPTAIN—THEY FUCKING BEWITCHED US!” Vagar Ophios bellows right back, unbelievably outraged.
"Oh, please, you practically crawled on your knees and begged me to touch you,” Herse refutes with a snort of cool amusement from where she currently points the end of an iron-tipped arrow right over his heart. My entire crew, myself included, break into fits of pealing laughter.
Raider Ophios flushes crimson before glaring murderously at my third with a face full of ire.
“ Bene. Ophios fuit amissa causa aliquamdiu nunc quae excusatio tua, Uthra? ” Agni fumes in that foreign tongue. His accusing voice is now directed towards his third, Adiram Uthra, whose warm upturned haughty features and jade-colored eyes look towards his captain incredulously.
“ Vide eam! ” He snaps before staring daggers at Kleio, currently holding him hostage.
“ Quum femina sicut gloriosus sicut illud, ostendit tibi etiam exigua de studium vos have ut pounce! Mea Deos—non est mea culpa quod illa est unus opus artis! ” Adiram shakes his head of shorn onyx hair in heated exasperation.
I look over to my second with a bit of awe at how uncharacteristically riled Captain Agni's third is. “What did you do to him?” I ask, inspired.
Kleio shares with me one of her most mischievous grins. “I winked . ”
My mouth drops fully open at her unnerving skill before I begin laughing so hard that it sets my entire crew off in another wave of amusement. The southern captain and his mongrels are left more furious than I’ve ever seen.
Agni begins rubbing his hands up and down the sides of his face with a long outward groan. Vagar responds by stating accusingly, “You claimed there would be no problem without their captain! These are not normal females—these are sirens, ” he forces the last word through enraged, clenched teeth.
Something about that word triggers me to look closer at my crew. All seven of them were already very pretty girls before, but now that I really take another look… Their natural features appear to have been heightened to become startlingly, hauntingly, gorgeous .
It’s as if all the things I love about them have been thrust right up to the surface for everyone else to see.
There’s a kind of ethereal glow about them too.
It’s subtle, glimmering just beneath their skin, but it’s there.
The white tythe-tokens shimmering in their hair now provide the illusion of real moonlight shining down on them.
Now the entire Order—no — all of Pontus can see just exactly why I picked each and every one of them for my crew. They’ll be forced to, whether they like it or not.
It’s some sort of added boon from the drowned gods. A second blessing, giving my crew an even deadlier power of protection for those times I can’t be with them to stand as the rock between whatever the storm is.
Kleio begins eyeing me strangely and I give her a quizzical look.
“You’re kind of different now,” she says.
“You look like you. But you're like… glowing . Like it’s physically hurting my brain a little bit right now to comprehend how beautiful you are.” My second narrows her eyes and cocks her head to one side in confusion.
Brows furrowing, I fish out the tail-end of my long plate still miraculously held in that new golden cuff to find that it is a tad luminous.
My hair now very subtly glows in that same shimmering opalescent white as Mama’s did in those few unlocked memories I now possess.
It’s beautiful but also a bit chilling. Like some sort of beacon in the dark.
“You didn’t think to tell me that I was now glowing ?” I turn towards Agni in surprise after having just spent this entire walk back with him.
“ What? ” Agni retorts snappishly, looking back over at me in complete annoyance, still seething from how poorly he’s just been bested. “You are always glowing. Don’t start back up with me right now,” he warns before returning his scorching scowl of irritation to his crew members.
“ Quid ego docui tibi de continentia? One fucking wink, and she takes you down?” Agni snorts in visible disbelief before running a hand through his maddening hair.
“You’re practically hellhounds! But all it takes from these lovely little females is to bat their pretty eyes at you, and you all roll over like lovesick puppies!
” he berates before scoffing at his mongrels in disgust.
Such a sore loser.
I begin studying Agni’s crew closer and discover whatever sort of second blessing that has clearly been placed on their captain has made its way over to the crew.
Each of his mongrels was already stupidly bronze, tall, and quite ruthless to begin with.
But now they appeared even bigger and stronger and glowed just a bit with that strange golden hue.
They individually appear to be lethal weapons of destruction in their own right. Not quite to the extreme as their insufferable captain, but close. Had I known that this was the pack of males my crew was detained with, I would’ve let Agni have The Vault and come running to find them immediately.
Then I notice, as Vagar is currently shirtless, that a golden branch of lightning has been branded into his skin and flares across the breadth of his chest. I check the other six to find they’ve all branded that same golden branch of lightning right across their hearts. The same one marring Agni's face.
They were tythed.
Tythed by the very thing that secretly haunted their captain so terribly. They must have completed the sacred rite at some point before tonight’s events began, like we had done. Their chosen tokens just aren’t ones of such outward obvious expression as my crew’s. So no one had even known.
I begin biting down on my lip in thought as another alarm bell rings loudly in my head. Another very formidable gate is currently being skillfully breached by the prick. This time, however, it is completely unintentional. Which only makes it all the more horrifying.
Shit.
Agni begins pacing the spot before me quite heatedly.
“ What have I been telling you all repeatedly, this entire time, all-godsdamned-year? Non potes permittere puellam valde splendidam a pari calliditate et calliditate monstri, quod sub superficie iacebat, te avocare . It will be your all’s death, I fucking swear it! ”