Brine and Bone (Song of the Black Sea #3)

Chapter 1

She'd said she refused to burn in sacrifice to those who demanded her silence.

Sovereign.

That she was the tempest meant to lift the tide and remind the sea who shaped the storm. Her womb the vessel that invited rebirth. Transforming the tide with the heat of the pyre burning in the darkest waters.

She’d chosen to yield only so he might worship at the altar poised on the edge of a new era.

But knew her legacy was meant to inherit her fury.

And now Kore knew the weight of a crown and the pull of something growing beneath her ribs.

Her hands drifted to her belly, where she could feel a stirring beneath her skin. A flutter. A dainty little push. The child moved, squirming against her palm.

She was pregnant.

Cradling a tiny, budding life pressing at the edges of its world.

The delicate ripples sent pulses of bioluminescence skating across her abdomen, sunset hues that bled through her scales in waves of molten gold and violet.

Vorynthar pulsed in response.

The reef no longer glowing with that hypnotic, vibrant blue.

It had been replaced.

Transformed.

Sunset hues bled through the coral in waves of molten violet and burning gold. Awash in a rainbow of beguiling color. Coral branches flickered with amber light, hungry mouths sipping at the current. Drinking in the poisoned, toxic waters only to exchange it for that which was oxygenated and rich.

It was a kingdom in the Deep. One Nyxarion had built to contain her. One he'd created from inhospitable waters in tribute to his Siren bride. He'd conquered much to tame her.

The surface.

Her own human biology.

And The Spiral.

That ancient Pelagorn ritual Thalos had invoked in a bid to steal her away.

A challenge that had been bloody. Violent. Carnal.

And it had ended in death.

Nerissa.

The Tide Mother hadn't been meant for the Deep. Born of the shallows, ancient and wise, she'd sacrificed everything just to know a Siren lived in the seas of her youth.

Using the last of her strength to restore the Shallow King's life after he'd suffered mortal defeat, Nerissa had given herself in service to her sovereign. Forcing Thalos into a pact, she'd demanded an oath. A promise that he would return Sirens to the seas.

But Thalos was as selfish and cruel, as he was beautiful. More.

"Any child with Asterion blood belongs to Caelith Mare."

It was a declaration. Every syllable a chain wrapped tight about her throat, for the Shallow King had lost the Spiral—conceded his claim to her body, her future—but he'd refused to leave. Anchored himself in the Black Sea's anoxic current, his pale, perfect form a constant reminder.

That he'd broken Spiral law to breed her.

Planted his claim deep inside her womb.

Left his venom in her veins.

Desecrating that sacred feminine altar, he'd set his knot and pumped her full.

Refusing to leave the Black Sea until her child drew its first breath and the paternity became known.

Nyxarion's rage was a thing untethered.

Vibrating through Vorynthar's bones, his fury a living thing that made the coral shudder. The sovereign of Vorynthar was teetering on the edge of violence. Circling their chambers, coming unhinged. Reeking of possessive wrath. And in his fist, the Trident hummed with a constant need for bloodshed.

War.

Nyx spoke as if it were inevitable, as if the only solution to Thalos's claim was to make the dark waters run red with royal blood.

But both circled her in a relentless, greedy loop.

One far above, the other below.

Both convinced of his right to the life growing inside her.

Fingers dimpling her skin, where there was only the faint swell of what was to come, Kore's lip curled.

"No," she murmured, teeth flashing, and a spike of golden light rippled through the reef, making Vorynthar shiver.

She'd said she wasn't a prize to be claimed. Not a trophy for either throne. "You will not be their weapon," she whispered to the restless presence swimming behind her navel.

It was a promise.

A vow.

Devotion was the only thing Kore had ever really known.

A thing no longer given to a Deity who refused to answer.

Not offered to kings who answered and took too much.

Her worship was for the tiny thing squirming in the cradle between her hips.

Beloved.

Cherished.

Already.

The scent reached her first.

Metallic.

A sharp tang singing on her palate.

Rage.

Pure, festering wrath that bled through the water in heaving waves that left her gills singed with the flavor.

From their chamber's wide-open archways, Kore watched him circle. A predator nosing through dark waters, his massive form sliced through the current.

The Trident left the stench of ozone humming in his wake, the afterglow of that ancient weapon leaving streaks of pure white staining the gloom. Frothing for bloodshed as Nyx swept past their chamber for the hundredth time.

He'd been like this for days.

Circling. Prowling. Ready to tear Thalos apart with his bare hands.

The sovereign who'd once bred her relentlessly—claiming her body with desperate, obsessive hunger—hadn't so much as looked at her since Thalos had retreated to the shallows above.

Spines flared, moving ceaselessly in the way of Pelagorn, without sleep, Nyxarion bristled and postured. Taking up space. Patrolling and snarling at shadows.

He'd driven the Abyssari into defensive submission as they tended to the fledgling reef rising up from the gloom.

But he hadn't looked at her.

Not the way he used to—with that slow, predatory hunger that made her gills flutter and her thighs press together.

For more tides than she could count, he'd been consumed.

With Thalos.

Fins flaring with the weight of her irritation, Kore's biolume flickered.

Nyx made another pass.

Enough.

Pressing her palm flat against the coral, she watched him through the gap.

Timing her approach, she tracked the gleam of obsidian scales and muscle lashing through the dark.

Admiring the flutter of hair streaked with silver as it whipped behind him.

Fins flared wide and rigid. The bioluminescent veins beneath his scales pulsed in rapid, angry bursts.

Blue. Blue. Blue.

A heartbeat made visible.

He didn't look at her.

Not once.

That she craved the weight of his body, the obscene stretch of his cock, and the molten burn of venom flooding her veins? Pregnancy had only sharpened that hunger, made every nerve ending sing with desperate want.

But, lost in his fury, Nyxarion circled the abyss. A predator defending his territory.

Jaw tight, Kore watched.

Until she felt that peculiar squirming beneath her navel.

The reminder of a life that demanded attention.

Pushing off the chamber wall, webbed fingers slipping through the water as she kicked toward him, Kore moved to intercept.

A coordinated kick of legs that would never fuse into a tail.

Fins flared to catch the current, she adjusted her angle, using the translucent membranes along her calves to steer.

Clumsy compared to any Pelagorn born to sail through the ocean currents.

But she was adapting.

Nyxarion rounded the far column just as she cut across his path. "Nyx." Her voice rippled through the water, laced with the strange melody of a Siren.

The massive form slowed, silver eyes finding her in the darkness.

Pupils wide, flat disks that swallowed every spare molecule of light. Reflective. And then that predatory focus shifted, growing sharp. Deadly.

Fins flaring, spines lifting, Nyx reeled back to avoid her. Posturing as his scales flashed blue, he sent the Trident swinging wide, a sharp adjustment away from her face.

Kore was undeterred.

Catching his wrist, both hands wrapped around the dense muscle of his forearm, she held him fast. "Stop," she whispered, and she reached. Cupping his face, fingers brushing the hard line of his jaw, she traced the ridge of bone beneath midnight scales. "Please."

A growl rolled up from the bottom of his chest, making the water between them shiver and dance.

"It… it hurts," she whispered, her voice laden with that dual harmonic, human vowels threaded with something deeper. Tugging at his arm, drawing his knuckles down, toward her belly, she said, "Nyx. Please."

The current between them grew thick.

Citrus and ozone.

Lightning trapped in honey.

The Trident's hum faltered.

Nyxarion's pupils ballooned wide, nostrils flaring as he drank in her scent.

Slick.

It perfumed the water.

Unmistakable. Heavy with the scent of early pregnancy, it curled through the current in ribbons that demanded his service.

His eyes grew slitted, gills flaring wide as he pulled the black waters between his lips and groaned.

That obsidian mask, etched into hard lines of territorial wrath, cracked. Fracturing as something far, far older surged to the fore.

Something ravenous.

Something that made Kore's lips twitch even before she reached for his hand.

Before she guided him. Directing thick, clawed digits flat against the gentle, sloping curve of her belly. Pressing his palm flat, she bade them spread.

At his touch, her biolume flared in reckless greeting.

Gold bleeding into violet, before the light rippled out from the point of contact.

Going still, Nyxarion's breath caught.

Eyes wide, rimmed in white.

Every fin, every spine, every ridge of armored scale locked in place. All that territorial rage, and her apex predator was rendered motionless by the shiver of light that kissed his palm.

"Please," she whispered, fingers tightening on his wrist, before she dragged his hand… lower. Past the swell of her abdomen, past the delicate ridge of scales that traced her pubic bone, until his knuckles grazed the slick heat pooling between her thighs.

The sound that bubbled from his gills was guttural. Heavy.

A subsonic pulse laced with promise.

Beyond hearing, it rattled the coral and sent the nearest Abyssari fleeing into the dark.

Utterly absent shame, Kore didn't blink. "I need you," she whispered, and it was less a plea than a dark, insistent command. One he could taste, for as she guided his fingers, her slick perfumed the water. Thick and sweet. "Not vengeance or Thalos. You."

Silver eyes grew molten before they were swallowed by the black.

Flexing on a long, rough swallow, Nyx's throat worked. His ravaged gills hissing as he fought the command.

Resisting the pull of her scent.

"Please," she whispered again, and the word hummed in the current. "It hurts, Nyx. Everything hurts and you won't—you haven't—"

The current shifted.

His tail coiled around her legs.

The Trident hit the reef floor.

One arm banding around her waist, he dragged her flush against his chest. Squeezing the breath from her lungs in a rush of silver bubbles, and then his mouth was at her throat, pressing into the delicate filaments with a sound that vibrated through her bones.

"Forgive me."

The words ground out of him, rough and haggard, each syllable a concession torn from somewhere deep. His free hand found her thigh, massive fingers curling beneath the joint and spreading her open, guiding her legs around the narrowing taper of his hips where scale met skin.

Where man and Leviathan blended.

Kore's breath hitched. Webbed fingers digging into the ridged plates of his shoulders, clinging as the current swirled around them both.

"I left you wanting." A low croon rolled through his chest. Rumbling against her ribs, the plate of her sternum, teasing the fragile architecture of her gills. Sinking deeper before it settled into the base of her spine. "My bride. My sweet Siren bride, carrying my spawn, and I—"

His palm slid between her thighs.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Cupping the swollen heat with a possessiveness that made her vision blur. Thick fingers parted slick folds, stroking, he spread it in unhurried circles that sent golden light rippling through her scales.

"Nghh—" A groan escaped before she could catch it.

But Nyxarion's croon only deepened.

A subsonic purr that pulsed through the water and sang to the child shifting beneath her navel.

Thumb dragging across her clit with a wicked, agonizing precision, he grinned when Kore's spine bowed. Caught her around the nape when her head fell back. When she bared her throat in helpless, desperate submission.

"My sweet bride," he hummed. "You were right," he admitted, pressing the admission against her ear. Lips tracing the line of her jaw, teeth grazing the edge of a gill slit, he kissed her. "I've left you desperate. Needy."

Another stroke. Firmer. One that saw his fingers slip lower, teasing her slit without breaching it. He gathered slick and dragged it up in maddening repetition that made her groan low in her throat.

Desperate.

"I can taste it. In the water." Nyxarion's voice dropped to something deadly quiet. The croon shifted, darkened, and became the low territorial hum that made her breath hitch. "That I've neglected my bride and abandoned the one territory that matters."

His fingers pressed inside her. Stretching.

"This one."

Beneath her navel, felt deep in her ripening womb, the child squirmed.

Leaning in, Nyx claimed a handful of hair. Tilting her head back so he might set his lips to the hollow at the base of her throat. Peppering her with greedy little kisses.

And there, where none might see, Kore's lips creased around a something wicked—a trick of the light. A little splinter of darkness.

For her child would be born into chaos, but it would inherit something neither sovereign might expect.

Kore's refusal to break.

She smiled.

Just a tiny quirk of her lips that would have made any predator hesitate.

But then… there was no one watching…