Chapter 5
The Deep will surely kill it.
Gills flaring wide, Kore dragged a breath through her lips. Inhaling the anoxic dark. Poisoned waters her baby might not tolerate. Pressure that might… might have already…
Sediment swirled in agitated, angry spirals where Thalos had been. Where Nyx had displaced the water with his lunge, and nothing remained but the devastation left undulating in the current.
Horrified, she turned grey-gold eyes to Nyx as chaotic light sparkled beneath her skin. Erratic. Naked, animal fear that stripped her of every defense she'd earned in the Spiral.
"Nyx," she breathed, eyes liquid with unmitigated terror that writhed and pulsed behind her ribs. Both hands drifted down. Fingers splayed across the gentle slope of her belly. Cradling what lay beneath.
The child squirmed.
"I…" Jaw flexing, she searched that fathomless silver gaze. "I…"
She couldn't say it.
Couldn't lend voice to the dread Thalos had inspired.
She could only wrap protection around her belly, clinging to the tiny thing anchored inside her, as if she might save it through sheer force of will alone.
Returning to her, Trident blazing in a grip gone white and bloodless, Nyx snarled. "You will not listen to him." He dropped the Trident, fingers landing instead on her shoulders. "Thalos speaks poison. Manipulation. His words are meaningless."
But Kore could see it.
The muscles bunched tight at the corner of his jaw. Molten silver eyes flicking to her belly before he tore them away. That telling flash of crimson in gills flaring too wide. His every breath ragged and choppy.
Nyxarion Korrides, first sovereign king of Vorynthar, was scared.
Keening, high and fragile at the back of her throat, Kore's grip tightened around her belly.
"He is wrong," Nyx said, pulling her in. Tight. Wrapping her in a possessive cage of muscle and menace. "Cruel. A slippery, malicious bastard who enjoys the suffering he inspires. Do not listen."
His palm pressed her flat, eliminating every possible negative space between them. Forcing his heat to bleed into her skin. Her scales.
But Kore knew a prayer when it was whispered against her ear. Knew the flavor of what was simmering between them, growing ripe in the silence as they clung, one to the other.
Doubt.
The hum rose unbidden from her throat.
Low at first. A trembling note that caught the current and spun it into something soft.
Siren song.
A thing not heard in any ocean for longer than Kore might possibly know. It was a harmonic she spun around the fury coiled in Nyx's chest. A tether knotted and pulled. Feeding calm to the Beast the way Nerissa had once fed an altogether different melody to her.
Desperate.
Clumsy.
Laced with the truth of all that went unspoken between them. Dragging slow circles across the tension knotted at Nyxarion's nape, she tangled her fingers in his hair and clung. Letting the melody swell, haunting and sweet, woven through the current.
She sang.
Instinct.
Attuned to the gradual easing of tension as Nyx softened.
And then, against his chest, "I want to see them," she murmured, palm flattened over his heart, feeling the slow thunder pulse beneath her touch. "The scholars. When they arrive. I need to know."
Nyx went rigid. "No."
Liquid eyes sought those that were molten with wrath. "We need to know," she whispered, chin tilting back. "If my baby is—"
"No." Massive hands engulfed hers, pressing her palm tighter against his chest. As if he might gulp down her fear.
"Thalos is manipulating you. Pushing you toward reaction.
Polluting these waters with his poisonous manipulation.
" Chest expanding beneath her palms, he took a careful breath.
Gills whistling with the damage Thalos had wrought.
"And you are rushing to fill the role he's already cast for you, my sweet bride. "
Her voice cracked. "I am not—"
"You are." His grip tightened on her wrists.
Possessive. Desperate. "He whispers a miasma about the child, suggesting vile things you did not fear before he spoke.
And immediately you want to invite his spies into my kingdom?
Let them touch you?" Nyxarion shook his head, carding his claws through her hair.
"No Thalassari scholars will enter Vorynthar.
They will not lay hands upon you. On my child. "
Kore's jaw clenched.
But she scowled. Tilting her chin back, lips brushing the delicate hollow beneath his jaw, Kore pressed her face into the warmth of his throat. Where his skin was thinnest.
Peppering him with dainty kisses. Feathered across the ridged cartilage. Soft, lingering little touches. Deliberate.
Trying to appease.
Barter.
"We need it," she whispered against his pulse. Lingering at the junction between neck and shoulder. "Whatever information Thalos' scholars might offer."
Chest vibrating with a low warning, Nyxarion's spines flexed.
She ignored it.
Lips trailing higher, she found the ruined flesh where Thalos' claws had raked through tender filaments and left them ragged.
Still healing.
The wheeze of damaged tissue rattled against her lips when she kissed him there—tender, reverent, achingly gentle over each torn gill slit.
"Thalos is using knowledge as a weapon," she breathed against the wound. "And you want to hand him more power by staying blind?"
A warning prickled against her waist. Claws dimpling her skin and scale.
"He works in the light while we grope blindly in the dark.
" Her tongue traced the edge of a shredded gill.
"Refusing to listen doesn't shield us. It grants him the only weapon that really matters.
Traps us in ignorance. Makes us reactive instead of strategic.
" Pausing, pulling back to meet his alien glare, she touched the pillow of his bottom lip.
"Knowledge, Nyx. He's counting on your pride to keep you blind. "
Silence stretched taut between them.
Long and suffering.
And then, a rumble rolled through his chest.
Laughter.
Rich and dark and entirely unwilling, it was a sound that reverberated through her chest, shaking loose the terror that had wrapped a merciless fist about her throat and squeezed.
"You—" Grinning, his grip left her waist. And one clawed hand swept up to cradle the back of her skull. "You would argue strategy with me? Now? While I am trying to keep you safe?"
Grey-gold eyes held those that were molten silver. Defiant. "Who else?"
Another rumble escaped him. Something tender. Caught between fury and dangerous obsession. His thumb stroked down the column of her throat, pressing just hard enough to feel her pulse kick beneath the pad of his claw. "Dangerous little creature," Nyx breathed, and kissed her.
Deep.
Tongue sweeping between her lips, he exhaled a low, considering hum. Pushing it between her lips. Feeding her the weight of his breath.
And then, pulling back, head tilted as he looked upon her with a narrow, slitted glare, Nyx inspected her. "Manipulative," he murmured, edged with something that wasn't quite disapproval. "Kissing my wounds while you call me proud. Feeding me Siren song to get your way."
Teeth flashing, fins flicking, he paused.
"A baby shark," he said at length, thumb making another slow sweep across her throat. "Just learning it has teeth."
Kore pressed a smile against his throat. Letting him feel the curve of her lips, the smile she didn't bother hiding. "You like it."
A growl vibrated against her brow. Low. Resonant. Defeated and defiant all at once.
His answer, wordless and absolute.
Because he did like it. The challenge, her audacity and sharp edges. That she knew when to bend and when to turn his own instincts against him and make him grateful for the wound.
Then his tail flicked.
Displacing the black waters in a violent rush, Nyxarion gathered her against his chest and moved.
Slipping through the antechamber where he'd made a throne from the remains of what had once been her prison. Her cage. Deep inside the sheltered walls in Vorynthar's heart. Where she had thrashed and screamed, transformed into something new at the bottom of the Black Sea.
Now it was a seat of power.
Nyxarion didn't slow to admire the antechamber. Didn't stop to admire. He moved them away from Abyssari sentries, where sound traveled and secrets didn't exist.
Deeper.
Past the antechamber, through a narrow passage where the current was warm. Heavy.
Their den.
Nyxarion deposited her onto the bed of plush anemones. Where she slept, and no other current might reach her. Where she was cherished and secreted away.
Curling around her, fins locking around pillars created for exactly this, Nyxarion crowded her. Pressing close.
"The child is mine." Silver eyes found hers in the black. One palm moving to cover her belly, claws splayed wide across her scales, engulfing it. Resting against the shifting light.
Possessive and absolute.
"Whatever blood runs through it, whatever colors its scales, it is mine. Do you understand me, Kore?"
Kore's gills fluttered.
"I will not let Thalos or his scholars or his ancient laws take what belongs to me." His grip tightened, pulling her closer. "Say it," he breathed, forehead dropping to bump hers.
She nodded. Slow. "Ours," she said, correcting him. "Ours, Nyx. Whatever this child becomes, it belongs to us," she whispered and meant it.
And for a moment, there was nothing but the weight of a heavy silence between them.
Searching her eyes, Nyxarion held her gaze. Molten silver eyes traced the architecture of her face—the sharp angle of her jaw, the defiant tilt of her chin. Assessing. Weighing the steel in her spine against the fear still trembling beneath her scales.
Kore refused to look away.
Let him see it all. The terror she couldn't smother. All that bottomless fury that had replaced it. A clawing, desperate need to protect what grew inside her by any means necessary.
Her baby.
Seconds stretched. Endless. The current held its breath.
And then a flash of wicked teeth. "My precious living flame," he murmured through a grin, thumb tracing the edge of her jaw. "My sweet Siren queen. You will have your Thalassari scholars."
Kore's breath stuttered.
The words hung in the current. Shimmering before they settled behind her ribs and ignited.
But he wasn't finished. "And I will summon what remains of the Abyssari scholars, too." His voice dropped, spines flicking. "Those ancient bastards who still crawl through my father's crumbling kingdom in Threnakar."
Something shifted behind his eyes.
Kore felt it—a shadow passing across the sun. A cold current cutting through warm water. The words themselves were simple enough, but the weight of them pressed against her chest like a hand closing around her heart.
Threnakar.
His father's kingdom.
She knew the bare bones of that history. Exile. Banishment. A son punished for daring to believe the Abyssari might be saved from oblivion. But the way Nyxarion said father—the way his jaw clenched and his gills flared and his claws curled against her hip—
There was more.
Old wounds. Still bleeding beneath scar tissue.
She didn't ask.
Couldn't. Not when his eyes had gone distant and dangerous. Not when every line of his body had coiled tight, as if bracing for a blow that hadn't yet landed.
Instead, Kore pressed her palm flat against his chest. Feeling the thunder of his heart beneath her fingertips.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Nyxarion didn't reply.
But his grip tightened.
And he dragged her closer in the dark.