Chapter 4
Asnarl ripped through the water before reason might catch it.
Startled.
That the whoreson could enter his kingdom at a whim. Slip past sentries and scouts without a whisper of his passing.
Fury bled through his muscles.
And, arms cinching tight, Nyx dragged Kore flush. One hand splayed across her spine. The other locked to her hip, keeping her pinned tight against him. Sealed atop his knot. Saturated in his claim. The gentle slope of her belly was pressed to his abdomen.
Protected.
But trapped.
He could not throw her aside. Could not dislodge himself without causing her pain. Could not charge, or strike, or reach the trident and unleash the violence screaming through his veins without leaving her exposed to the enemy drifting through his current.
Thalos had chosen his moment well, the shining, arrogant prick.
"Asterion," he spat, fury thickening the syllables. Making them hiss, cutting and sharp. "Bold of you," he growled. "Slithering into my reef while I breed what's mine."
Inclining his head, the Shallow King acknowledged the transgression without apology or shame.
Gills flaring crimson, biolume surging electric cyan, Nyxarion's spines flared a furious warning. Flicking in a deadly fan as his glare traced the damage etched into Thalos' pale perfection.
And then a slow, pleased smile touched his lips as his eyes raked over Thalos' body. Memorizing every mark. Inspecting each and every scar shimmering in silver contrast.
Fins that were notched. Scales that had once gleamed with a mirror polish were sullied, bore silver seams where scale had been torn free and regrown a little… crooked.
And just there, tucked just beneath his frigid heart, scar tissue carved into his ribs where Nyxarion's barbed spines had punched through cartilage and lodged behind bone. Asymmetry. Muscle that had knit together wrong.
Tarnished.
Nyxarion's lips peeled back from his teeth.
"Look at you," he drawled, a low, droning hum laced with cruel amusement.
Dripping contempt. "The ocean's favorite son.
Marked up." Claws tightening on Kore's hip, his cock gushed another obscene pulse of sperm into her already over-full channel.
Drunk on the sight of his superior might.
"Not so perfect anymore, Asterion. You're looking a little… jagged, despite Nerissa's efforts."
Seemingly unbothered by the barb, Thalos' gaze skipped past the defensive flare of the very spines that had nearly ended him. Ignoring the territorial snarl and the callous jab against the revered Virelii who had died to save him.
Instead, frosty blue eyes traced Kore's edges. Gleaming with the reflection of the precious thing still draped across Nyx's chest.
"How is it? The child." It was an unhurried thing, his question. Polite to the point of inspiring nausea as the other folded his hands at his lower back and drifted above them. Fins flared to hold himself still in the sluggish, ancient current.
Calm.
As if he wasn't violating sovereign territory just by breathing the poisoned tide.
"She seems to be adjusting, for such a delicate little thing," he continued.
Measured and light. "Despite carrying such a prize in waters this hostile to life.
Tell me," he sang, head tilting, silvery hair floating around his perfect face, "does she eat well?
" The faintest hint of mockery curled at the edge of his lips.
"Or do you keep her too… occupied to concern yourself with matters so paltry as her health? "
A muscle in Nyxarion's jaw flexed. Bunching around the fury. The audacity of such a question.
But he said nothing.
Merely crushed Kore tighter to his chest, willed his knot to deflate, and did not look at the Trident.
She made a soft sound of protest. Something unconscious and muffled, a complaint pushed through her gills as she fought to wake. Perhaps sensing his fury through the tension vibrating through every coiled inch of his massive frame.
Trapped.
The reality was a shard of something colder than even the Shallow King himself, for Nyxarion could not defend her—them—from the predator poised to strike.
Not now, while he was pinned in place by the very creature he'd sacrificed everything to claim.
Did not mistake the Shallow King for a broken rival listing through the current, slinking away in wretched defeat.
Thalos was an apex predator, unmoored by restriction. Cymareth hanging idol at his hip, while the Trident was meters outside of Nyxarion's reach.
The Shallow King had very nearly won the Crucible. The evidence of that murky victory was still carved into Nyxarion's flesh, too. Bisecting his tattered gills that hissed with every breath. Every muscle in his left shoulder still thick and stiff, the range limited as the tendons worked to heal.
A victory that had been real, but narrow—measured in hapless luck. By spines that had struck true by good fortune of desperate rage more than skill.
And Thalos knew it.
They both did.
Nyxarion's jaw clenched until the tendons in his neck stood shadowed and rigid.
A storm of scarcely restrained violence pulsed through his blood.
Heating his temper with an impotent blade that wished for nothing more than to watch the light drain from those glacial, infuriating eyes.
And then, "You didn't swim through anoxic waters to ask after her appetite, Thalos. Carnal or not. What do you want?"
The question was flat, stripped of elegance and posturing, because cunning required room to maneuver. Leverage. And Nyxarion had none.
For a moment, Thalos was the embodiment of infuriating, aristocratic calm.
And then, "No," he admitted. "I didn't." Drifting closer, a slow, deliberate arc that telegraphed his intention, Thalos spread pale hands.
Shrugging. "Your bride is…" He paused, as if considering.
"An enigma. Fragile and volatile in equal measure.
" Silver hair shifted when he tilted his head, and Thalos' glacial eyes fell once more to the female clutched tight to Nyxarion's chest. "She harbors the Queen's Lightning," he said, and smiled.
Faint amusement flitting across his face. "It cost me the Gauntlet."
Nyxarion did not smile, despite the vicious pleasure the memory inspired.
"But," Thalos continued, silken and smooth, "she also boasts coveted Asterion camouflage.
A secret of my bloodline, my chromatophores laced through her pretty scales.
" Pausing, tearing his gaze away from the Siren to meet Nyxarion's molten glare, Thalos did not blink when he said, "It is a secret that should have already been her death. "
Nyx said nothing because the truth of it was etched into every inch of her glorious little body. Because there was nothing at all to dispute.
"Two kings," Thalos murmured, quiet. As if trying not to wake her. Not yet. "Two venoms stamped into her flesh. Signatures on a treaty neither of us meant to sign. But here we are."
"Here we are," Nyxarion returned.
Amusement kissed the edge of Thalos' lips.
"I have a claim," he said, and something greedy flickered beneath that polished composure.
"A stake in that child, whether it pleases you or not.
And I swam through anoxic waters," he added, tone hardening with his resolve, "to wonder aloud, with the only other king in my position, what such a combination might inspire in a child still forming in the womb of a mother marked by influence such as ours. "
Nyxarion's heart stuttered.
Claws dimpling cherished, female flesh.
Kore stirred. A weak sound escaped her throat as awareness tugged her up from oblivion.
The silence was weighted.
An anchor, until Thalos wrenched it up from the muck.
"Queen's Lightning alone is… formidable," he admitted with a toothy grin.
"Resurrected from the annals of long-dead Abyssari in your own line.
But paired with adaptive camouflage?" Thalos sucked his teeth, tongue clicking as if in weary concern. "Our kingdoms have never cooperated."
Spines lifting in a slow, murderous fan of barbed keratin, Nyxarion let his lips peel back from his teeth. Issuing a sound of pure irritated wrath.
Because Thalos was circling the point. Orbiting it with that maddening evasive nothing. Manipulating. Doling out useless fragments in measured drips meant to keep a petitioner of his court reaching and desperate.
But this was the Black Sea. The seat of Nyxarion's power.
And he was no one's supplicant.
"Speak what you mean," Nyx snapped, commanding and blunt. His tone laced with irritation while his eyes slid to the Trident embedded in the seabed twelve body-lengths away. Tines pulsing in tune with the rising tide of his wrath. Accessible. But not close. "Or stop speaking."
Amusement flickered across the angles of Thalos' face. There and gone before his attention dropped to Kore once more.
The aurora across her belly had shifted while they spoke—gold fading to deep indigo, then flaring in a sudden wash of violet chased down her hip.
She was waking.
They could both see it.
Growing bold, Thalos drifted closer. Risking another body length of distance so he might watch as she surfaced from the haze of lazy satisfaction Nyx had worked so hard to put her into.
"There have been incidents," Thalos drawled, and did not lift his gaze from the cascade of rare colors shimmering across Kore's skin. "Skirmishes at the edge of the thermocline. Three Thalassari reef breakers wounded in a… disagreement about territory. An Abyssari youth who lost a fin."
Stalling.
Drawing it out, waiting for Kore to wake.
"Then leave," Nyx spat, voice low and dangerous. "Pull your outriders and your court. Take your wounded and swim back to Caelith Mare. The Black Sea doesn't answer to Thalassari law."
Laughing, his icy glare almost thawed. "Leave?" he sang, amused. Savoring the word rolling between his teeth. Tasting it. And then, with a pithy, exaggerated slowness, "No. I think not."
It was a poison, what hung between them. Unspoken.
Thalos' claim. Paternity. Staking territory, anchoring himself to the Black Sea until the child was born.
And with a clarity that made his scales ripple, venting heat, Nyx knew the Shallow King would not be made to move until he had his answer.
"It will be war," Nyx said, whisper-soft as the Trident hummed in his periphery. "Not even Caelith Mare will support you taking a child that belongs to another's bride."
Humming, fins fanning, it was Thalos' turn to embrace the quiet.
And he did so until a soft sound drew them both back.
Kore murmured something formless, squirming against his grip, before she pressed her face to Nyxarion's chest. Arching, her spine flexing in a ripple of sinew and muscle, she groaned. Dragged back from the depths of satiation.
Waking.
Color exploded across her scales. Her skin.
Violet cascaded down the ladder of her ribs.
Dancing in the hollows between bone, only for gold to ignite in the shadows.
Kissing the bowl of her hips with a stain of indigo and molten blue.
Shades between moonlight and sun fire chased each other across the swell of her belly in lazy, rippling currents.
A tiny, fluttering heartbeat that echoed beneath translucent scales.
Both Pelagorn went still.
Entranced.
Utterly.
She was exquisite.
A creature forged from ruin and rebirth. A body he'd engineered, thriving in waters that should have extinguished that divine flame.
And across the current, Thalos' eyes gleamed with that same helpless fascination—and for one unguarded heartbeat, the mask slipped.
Eyes wide, lips parted, fins flared in unconscious display, Thalos postured for a creature they had both bred.
It was a wretched thought. One that soured something in Nyxarion's belly.
Beneath the fury and leagues of possessive heat boiling in his veins, he felt it. The gradual easing of a seal starting to slip. A slow deflation, easing inch by inch.
His knot.
Growing soft.
The swollen base of his cock was beginning to release. Freedom creeping closer. Mere heartbeats before the wet slide of pure sensation let go, and twelve body-lengths became crossable.
His muscles coiled tight, calculating distance and drag.
Thalos noticed.
Of course he did.
Drawing back, Thalos straightened and said, "The scholars of Caelith Mare arrive on the next tide."
Nyx went rigid in the same moment that Kore's breathing changed. Gills flaring wide, a gasp against his collarbone. Awake. Listening.
Pitching his voice to carry, Thalos added, "They arrive on the next tide. To examine her. Confirm its health. Ensure the child is healthy, and that it might continue to gestate without"—a pause as weighted as it was cruel—"catastrophic complications."
"There are no complications, you silver-tongued wretch," Nyx snarled, and his knot slipped another tiny fraction.
Hands spread, Thalos smiled. Humming in something approaching empathy, if the glittering pest might feel such a thing.
"I wish I could share your casual indifference," Thalos hummed.
"But we don't know who the sire is, Korrides.
Or if the child can even tolerate these poisoned waters without coming to harm. "
Turning, Kore's eyes were wide as she stared up at the Shallow King. Her gaze flooded with horror. Dainty little fingers flattened against Nyxarion's chest.
"A child conceived of my line?" he said, each syllable a barb thrown with deadly precision. "With lungs built for oxygen-rich currents? Intolerant of the Deep and this anoxic trench?" Tongue clicking, Thalos hummed. "The Deep will surely kill it."
The knot released.
Nyxarion lunged.
But Thalos was already gone. A streak of opalescent scales swallowed by dark water.
Leaving nothing behind but the echo of something cruel that would twist and fester long after he'd gone.