Chapter 7
The pressure in the throne room condensed around her.
Nyx.
His snarl reverberated through the current, through her marrow and the jelly behind her eyes. Inside her skull.
Fumbling with a clam, heart hammering at the base of her throat, in her gills, Kore's eyes went wide. Rimmed in white. Utterly bewildered by the tension boiling between kings.
Behind her, Nyx had gone rigid. His every fin spread wide, spines fully exposed. Bioluminescent bacteria living in the grooves between his scales agitated, blazing a brilliant, electric blue.
“Nyx,” she whispered, fingers finding his forearm, pressing her digits into the dense muscle. Beseeching. Urging him to peace. Trying to anchor him, even as the electric scent of murder perfumed the current.
This was worse than the battle in the Crucible of Bone.
This was wrath.
Because Thalos had offered his venom to save her baby.
Her hand dropped to her belly, cupping the dainty, gentle swell where light pulsed beneath her skin in slow, shifting waves.
Gold bleeding into violet and deep, ocean blue.
Her baby moved against her palm.
A squirm she felt inside. One that felt… lazy.
Weak.
"Thalos' venom," she said, voice cutting through the tension. And then, turning liquid eyes back, she scanned the edge of Nyxarion's jaw, where the muscle was bunched, before she looked to Thalos. “It could help?”
Head tilted, Thalos watched her with a measured, glacial composure. But when his eyes landed on her belly, she saw a crack. Something greedy and ravenous blazing to life behind that polar gaze.
A predator tracking bleeding, wounded prey.
Her.
And, as if unaffected, he shrugged. "You were bred before your transformation was complete," Thalos murmured.
"Impregnated before your life as a Siren had truly begun.
Your very skin," he murmured, eyes reflecting her colors, "pulses with the evidence of both of us. Korrides and Asterion, regardless of the child’s sire.
Of the Deep and the Shallows. Opposites.
" Tail flicking, he shrugged. "A controlled dose of my venom may tip the balance, give the child's physiology a chance to—"
"No."
The single syllable carried enough weight to force the tension to boil between them.
Nyxarion's arm didn't move from beneath Kore's grip, but every muscle along his torso locked into combat tension. Fins spread wide enough to cast shadows across the dais. He snatched the clam from her fingers and crushed it with a low, vicious snarl before opening his fist and passed it back.
Watching for a moment as she picked the succulent flesh from the wreckage.
And then, "You will not put your venom inside my bride again."
Mouth watering, helpless before that scent, she groaned. Even as the fingers of her free hand grew tight on his forearm. The scales beneath her palm running hot—feverish with the rage she could feel in her gills.
But she couldn’t help it. The way she reacted to that flavor.
Swallowing the succulent meat, she searched his face. Shifting on the dais, she turned. The scales scattered along her ribs gleamed with a fractured sunset. "Why?"
Jaw working, silver eyes dropped to the elegant fingers wrapped around his forearm. Tracking down to the luminous swell of her abdomen, where their child was pulsing with a lazy rhythm.
As if the clams had sedated it. Fed it something she’d been missing. Offered some nutrient she hadn’t been able to find in the abyss.
But when he spoke, Nyxarion's voice was gruff. Jaw working around a vicious snarl he could scarcely contain, he offered a low rumble meant for her, but felt by all. "Thalos has no intention of helping the child," he said, each word forced between his teeth. "He means to claim it."
The scholars shifted.
Their discomfort loud enough that even Kore could feel it.
And issuing a sound of protest, the closest opened his mouth, but a single flick of Thalos' silver fluke was enough to enforce a weighted silence.
Tipping a single claw beneath her chin, Nyx forced her gaze back to his.
"To Pelagorn," he murmured, explaining, "venom is lineage, just as much as seed.
Every dose leaves a claim. A mark. That is how I made you.
" A tremor passed through his throat, those scarred, delicate filaments flushing crimson with a measured exhale.
"It's what he wanted when he invoked the Spiral.
" On massive hand moved to cup her face, thumb sweeping back to trace the blade of her cheekbone. "To usurp my claim. Corrupt it."
Scales lifting, Kore shivered.
And, as if to condemn her, the colors of both lineages skated through her scales.
Thrumming, letting his purr rattle her ribs, Nyx threaded his claws through her hair.
Anchoring her. "To feed you more of his venom now," he murmured, "while the babe grows?
" He shook his head, silver eyes heavy with something she couldn't name.
Had never seen in him before. "It is to ensure the child develops Asterion traits. "
And then, Nyx turned that molten silver glare up. Pinning Thalos in place with a low snarl. Lips peeled back to expose the points of his canines.
Silence pooled between them.
And then, "Have another sun clam, Kore," Thalos crooned, a low song meant to coax.
Turning, she looked at the Shallow King. Confused. But she followed his gaze down, to the bag of mollusks clenched in her fingers.
"Sun clams," Thalos explained, a frosty gleam reflecting in his gaze. "A delicacy for pregnant Virelii," he murmured, heedless of Nyxarion's warning thrum. "Thalassari females crave them when they're gravid…" he murmured, voice careful and low as he trailed off. “Only Thalassari females.”
Horrified understanding flushed through her veins, and Kore's eyes widened.
The helpless way she'd gulped the meat down. Crooning high at the back of her throat as the flavor exploded on her tongue.
A trap.
The sun clams were a test. One she had failed and passed with a single, desperate swallow of succulent indulgence.
And then her hand slid from Nyx's forearm to her belly.
Both palms, now. The bag of sun clams dangling from the tip of one finger. Pressing flat against the taut little curve, where violet light chased gold in a lazy, relentless spiral.
As if to acknowledge Thalos' gift, the child squirmed. Stronger now.
Throat growing tight, Kore swallowed. Tasting that tender flesh. "Nyx…" she whispered. "It… it's too late," she said, pressing her lips together.
Saying it.
The part neither of them wanted to voice.
Nyx flinched.
A full-body contraction.
She turned into his heat. His strength.
Clinging.
Because she knew.
"It's too late," she said again, holding his gaze, refusing to let the words drift into the current.
"My scales… the colors. It's too late. You know it's true.
" The biolume along her veins brightened, tracing electric cyan and silver-violet in competing rivers beneath her skin.
Colors so different than those that ran through Nyx's scales.
"What if refusing his venom now is what puts the baby at risk? What if starving it of one—"
She couldn't finish.
The possibility, the looming catastrophe, hooked behind her ribs. Barbs setting deep.
Tearing at something vital.
At the edge of the dais, Thalos exhaled. A long, measured breath through his gills that stirred the water between the scholars. His polar blue eyes softened—brows drawing together, mouth pressing into a line that almost resembled concern.
Almost resembled grief.
If she hadn’t seen the effort it cost to wear that mask.
"She's right." Two words. Gentle. Delivered with the careful grace of one unaccustomed to delivering hard news. "It would be the height of cruelty," Thalos drawled, his voice a careful, regretful hum, "to starve the child of Asterion venom at this stage. And only for the sake of your ego."
A pause.
Silver hair drifted around his perfect face when his chin dipped. But Thalos' eyes didn't drop. Fixed to Nyxarion's. Gleaming. "The neglect could be… catastrophic."
She caught it. Something bright, scarcely contained as it flickered through glacial blue eyes.
Triumph dressed as sympathy.
"I understand your fear," Thalos crooned, drifting closer as his gaze settled on her. "Any mother would feel the same."
But the words sank into Kore's chest and took root.
"You spineless cunt," Nyxarion snarled, massive round pupils constricting to tiny dots of furious, murderous wrath.
Fixed on Thalos with the kind of focus that preceded killing.
"Using an unborn child as leverage against its mother—threading your poison into her marrow.
Scaring her so she'll beg you to sink your fangs into her again. "
One massive hand landed on the throne, that strange, twisting cradle where she had once been imprisoned. Incubated. Claws gouging furrows into the coral, the shriek of chitin against the calcified reef screeched through the water.
Lips peeled back in a vicious snarl, Nyxarion wasn't done. "You think I don't see what you are? What you've always been? A parasite wearing a crown, feeding on whatever you can trick into holding still long enough—"
Pushing at the weight of his heavy coils, Kore tried to stop him from slaughtering the Shallow King. From starting a war. "Nyxarion—"
"Threnakar's scholars are coming," Nyx spat, flexing his coil, freeing it from the dais in a single violent motion. "My father's court. She will be examined properly. Abyssari scholars will determine what she needs. Not you, not your bought-and-paid sycophants with their convenient diagnoses."
Thalos only smiled. Composed. Regal. Opalescent scales catching Vorynthar's stuttering glow and scattering it in pale rainbows across the chamber walls. His features schooled into something that was patient, almost… pitying.
And then, "How many tides?" Thalos crooned. Soft. Measured. The cadence of a question already answered. "How many tides until they arrive, Korrides?"
Nyx's jaw locked. Teeth clicking shut.
"Already the first trimester draws to an end.
" Thalos lifted one webbed hand, fingers spreading in a gesture of helpless inevitability.
"Neural pathways, gill architecture, pressure-organ development," he struck them off on long, pale digits.
"These fundamental structures form now. Once that window closes, what has been malformed cannot be repaired.
Not by Abyssari scholars. Nor Thalassari. Not by the ocean itself."
Hands pressing harder against her belly, Kore gasped.
Horrified all over again.
No matter that she knew what Thalos was doing.
Knew the shape of manipulation, for she'd been born to serve it. Sold to a sun god, given to the priests.
Traded to slavers.
Then stolen by the sea.
And still.
Still.
Terror sank its teeth into her chest and refused to release that deadly bite. Because beneath the manipulation, beneath the calculated softness laced in Thalos' words… there was a truth she couldn't deny.
A world where pride and loyalty could cost her child something irreplaceable. Something structural. Permanent.
Eyes filled with dread, sun clams dangling from her finger as the child squirmed beneath her navel, Kore looked to Nyx.
Waiting for his answer.
For the number. How many tides, how long until his father's scholars could reach the Black Sea and offer a second opinion.
A different diagnosis.
Nyxarion's lips opened.
Closed.
Absolute silence filled the space, sudden and suffocating.
Molten silver eyes found hers across the dim space, and in them she saw the thing he would never say aloud.
He didn't know.