Bilgewater Baptism

Caedes' grip tightened, the ironclad hold on her face unrelenting. His eyes narrowed, cold and unforgiving, as he watched her crumble. The pitiful whimpers, the tears streaming down her cheeks — each sign of her submission only stoked the fire of his frustration. She was weak, a frail shadow of what she could be, and it enraged him. But he didn’t know why.

“You can’t? Have you no rage, no resentment for the manner in which you are forced to survive?” The obsidian brute echoed, his voice a dangerous whisper, dripping with disdain. “Delaeni, even if I meant to kill you, you would offer your life to me freely.” He leaned closer, his breath hot against her trembling skin.

With a swift, forceful motion, he released her face, shoving her back. His fingers, once pressed to her lips, now dug into the rocky ground, the muscles of his fores rippling with barely contained fury. “No dignity. No will. But I suppose you can not turn a lamb into a lion.” He spat, his words cutting through the air like a blade. Not when the lamb was years old, and had never known anything else. Not when its mind was a torrent of conditioned responses and visceral reactions.

He took a step back, towering over her crumpled form. “Get out of my sight.” He commanded, his voice leaving no room for defiance, but then again he hardly even needed to be so firm with her. She was broken. His eyes bore into hers, a storm of anger and disappointment. “Go back to your keeper.” He bared his teeth, gesturing with a jerk of his skull for her to flee. He offered her only the loss of his emerald gaze, cast out against the ocean that he’d momentarily drowned her within.

His mind flashed with images of blood and the gleaming of saliva on wicked ivory, but he shoved it down with a guttural sound from his chest. Stupid girl. Even a child has more sense for survival than she.