Chapter 14
Ozone laced with citrus and cooked flesh. Charred scales.
It was a disturbing flavor to find at the bottom of the Black Sea. One that clung to the back of his throat. Cloying and thick. Tacky.
Evidence of what his bride had wrought.
Eyes gleaming, Nyxarion could not stop looking at her.
This dainty, elegant thing standing before his father in rigid defiance. Chest heaving as her scales flitted with mythic colors. The corpse of her victim drifting in the lazy current, while every remaining set of abyssal eyes tracked her movement down the most miniscule flicker of her fins.
He watched as her hands petted her little belly, settling the child in her womb.
Watched when she swayed, strength beginning to wane after what she'd done.
He didn't blink.
None of them did.
The moment commanded respect.
And she had earned it.
Kore had reduced his father's entourage to toothless old guppies, obliterated centuries of Caelith Mare authority, and declared herself the author of a new tide.
Nyx didn't blink, but he didn't bother hiding his grin either.
Mine.
It was a possessive thought, laced with something savage and primitive. Something greedy that wanted her in a way he hadn't imagined possible. Selfish. Desperate.
This power is mine by right of claim. This tiny queen is mine.
His cock pressed against his seam, nudging her lower back where he held her. Pressed close to his chest.
Absurd. Inappropriate.
She had just committed an act that would reshape Pelagorn politics for generations, and all Nyxarion wanted was to drag her back to their chamber and breed her until she forgot everything but to coo and plead for him.
Beg for his seed.
His knot.
The unhinged glee bubbling behind his ribs made it hard to think of anything else but the tight grip of her cunt milking him dry. The way she let him own her.
Cried so pretty for her ruin.
Her scales flirted with that maddening Asterion Chromatic Camouflage, and Nyxarion's grin grew positively wicked.
Thalos.
The voltage she'd unleashed upon Threnakar's scholar dwarfed what she'd unleashed during the Gauntlet of Tides.
Thalos had only been staggered long enough to give Nyxarion the win.
But this?
This time she'd cooked an Abyssari male almost three times Thalos' length.
The only reason the Shallow King had survived her temper at all, was because Kore hadn't understood the truth of what was lurking inside her.
Spines twitching, elation making him buoyant, his scales lifted to vent some of the heated energy bubbling under his skin, for he meant to tell Thalos exactly that.
And Sera.
Stoic, unflinching Serakh.
He couldn't wait to watch her face when he described it—Nyxaroth, the great untouchable ancient king of Threnakar, shocked into silence by a tiny, pregnant Siren.
It was going to be glorious.
There'd be hymns written, even if he sang them into being himself.
Kore sagged against him, her bioluminescent light guttering out as the exhaustion swept in.
It was nothing to pull her back. Cradle her against his chest, and tuck her face into the hollow beneath his jaw.
Guiding her breaths, he kept her even. "There she is," he murmured, crooning for her.
Fingers tangled in the hair at her nape.
Kneading the tense muscle until it went slack.
"My sweet queen. Such a good girl, defending our babe. Taking what you want."
"Please," she whispered, reaching for him with fingers that trembled.
That single tiny plea. The trust that radiated through so small a gesture.
It triggered something primal in the back of his brain.
Something ancient and male.
Nyx turned without hesitation, sending a careless dismissal over his shoulder. "You heard her," he drawled without bothering to look upon the king of Threnakar again. "The Accord is null. You have nothing to uphold. And you," he hissed, rumbling deep in his chest, "are in her seat."
Rising, Nyxaroth pulled his length free of the throne without speaking.
The ancient king merely swept through the antechamber, flanked by his remaining scholar, and vanished into the corridors.
In his absence, Kore sighed. Eyes glassed and hooded. "Is… is he gone?"
Nyx nodded, sweeping her up. "Yes. Rest now, sweet thing. Peace."
Cradling her in the hush, he watched the Raskoril move.
Keeping her cheek pressed to his collarbone.
Shielding her as pale filaments unspooled from the living edge of the reef, reaching toward the corpse with blind, primitive hunger.
Thousands of microscopic proboscises extended through the water toward the dead scholar.
It made contact.
Flesh dimpled.
Yielded.
Nyxarion had fed the reef from his own blood. His venom. Let it sup at his vitality and built loyalty into the deepest layers of the reef. He'd watched it grow, cleansing the detritus that drifted through the trench.
But there would always be something hypnotic in the act. The way the parasitic coral feasted. No rush or waste.
Just endless hunger and countless, sucking mouths.
The scholar’s face grew hollow and thin as the parasite spun barbs through meat and sinew. Liquefying tissue, slurping down nutrients that were precious and rare in the Deep.
There was a certain kind of symmetry in watching the reef pull minerals from Pelagorn flesh.
That the act wasn't singular.
He'd done this before, during those first desperate tides. When Nyxarion had been nothing but an exile with a human bride and a reef that refused to thrive in water too devoid of life to support even him.
He'd let the Raskoril feast on one of Thalos' scouts, then.
Watched it consume and reuse what that hapless fool had no use for. Splayed ribs became the cradle that had kept his divine flame protected from the poisoned tide. Coiled vertebrae the foundation of the spine that now framed the throne's central support.
And now, as if guided, she had fed the reef again.
An Abyssari sacrifice, this time.
A matched set. Balance in a place that so sorely needed a foundation built upon deeper meaning.
And it was poetic, really. That the bones of a Thalassari scout had become Kore's throne. Now, from her gift, he would build his own seat from the remains of an Abyssari ancient.
"Everything you are," he whispered, petting her as she dozed in his arms, "everything you give, I shall return."
Stirring, a tiny sound bubble between her lips. Something soft. Feminine. Unaware of the significance of what she'd done, for his sweet Siren had shifted her focus toward what mattered and left the rest to him.
Humming low in his throat, Nyxarion left the reef to its macabre work.
Sweeping through the antechamber, he reclaimed what his father had tried to corrupt and settled in the calcified throne. Kore draped across his lap, her back pressed to his chest.
“Exhausted," he tsked, claws combing through silky hair. "Pretty thing, working so hard for me," he mused, grinning as his palms cupped the swell of her breasts.
“’M…” she hummed, head lolling back against his shoulder. “Hungry. I’m… I’m hungry.”
“Of course you are,” he agreed, and reached for the pouch of sun clams Thalos had brought. Three remaining. Iridescent shells gleaming in silent mockery.
Sliding his claw between the shells, breaking the seam with the tip of his claw, Nyx pried them apart. Hooked that tender flesh on the tip of one claw and set it to her lips. “Open,” he purred, tilting her head back. “Eat, little Queen.”
Obedient, she’d grown pliant in exhaustion. Docile in a way that made his heart stutter.
It was the violence.
The contrast between this tiny pregnant creature carrying his spawn, and the vengeful Siren who’d cast his father out.
The disparity between the meek hum of gratitude when he slipped savory flesh between her lips, watching her throat work around a swallow, and the flash of violet light still staining his every blink with the violence of her temper.
The stench of burnt scales yet lingering at the back of his throat, while the Raskoril stripped the fat from her victim.
Intoxicating.
Feeding her slowly, savoring each dainty bob of her elegant throat, Nyxarion watched her settle. The color returning to dance between her scales. Gold chasing indigo. Refusing to miss an instant until she cuddled deeper into his heat.
The Covenant of Twin Venoms.
There was a certain type of ring to it. The poetry he’d been hunting. A sense of prophecy, for both venoms lived in her. Unity between enemies, joined in a womb incubating the future.
His spines flicked.
Thalos would demand concessions, of course. Territory. Access. Rights before the courts of Caelith Mare.
But Nyxarion had his own demands.
Kore’s safety, of course—that the Hollow Court not only validate her, but acknowledge the child belonged to the Deep, first.
Vorynthar would be granted legal status, recognized as both sovereign and independent from Threnakar. The new seat of power over all Abyssari.
And Caelith Mare would replace the Accord with the Covenant.
As law.
His people would have the chance to flourish. After all this time. Because one glorious, perfect Siren willed it so.
Kore's fingers traced idle patterns against his forearm, her touch light and absent. Eyes closed. Content. Her belly full of surface delicacies, veins flooded with both courts.
“Sleep,” he crooned, tucking her tighter to his chest. Lips brushing at her temple.
It claimed her between breaths. The tension leeched from her limbs as she went boneless against him. As he watched, and didn’t miss a moment.
"My vicious queen," he murmured against her hair. "I'll return on the next tide."
She didn’t hear him, already lost to her dreams.
Laying her in the cradle he’d made to keep her, Nyxarion slipped out from under her.
Issuing a low hum. A summoning that danced through dark waters.
Sera materialized from the gloom. Fathomless eyes sweeping around the throne room, noting the corpse, the sleeping Siren, and her king. And then, humming, she asked, “What happened here?”
“General,” Nyxarion said, voice a low greeting, laced with droll amusement. Grinning, he said only, “Kore.”
Brows lifting, Sera’s fins flicked in surprise.
“Queen’s lightning,” he added, spined lifting with wicked, undisguised pride. “My bride has little tolerance for threats of harm to our child.”
Inclining her head, graceful even in that, Serakh absorbed it without a hint of fear. “Noted. And where are you going?”
“Business,” he said, but despite the chore ahead, his mood did not dim in the slightest. “With Asterion.” Flicking his fluke, Nyx shifted his weight and moved toward the corridor.
“Post sentries at every entrance. Nothing enters this chamber, Sera. Only you. And if she wakes before I return,” he said, pausing to look back, “be with her. Do not let her be alone."
Watching him without blinking, Sera nodded. Faintly amused as she snaked through the current to guard Vorynthar’s heart from harm.
"And Sera?” he said, casting a grin over his shoulder. “When I return? It'll be with a tale of destruction that will make your cold heart sing."
And then he was gone, slipping into the endless dark.