Chapter 16
The sounds came first.
Tiny plips. Crackling pops that pattered against her eardrums.
Kore frowned. Eyes squeezed shut.
It was an irritating thing. A sound that threaded through the heavy pall of deep slumber and tugged her up from the fog. Insistent. Plinking and strange. Something she didn’t recognize beneath the usual symphony of tides and movement in the trench.
Groaning, she squirmed. Exhausted beyond anything she’d ever known. This wasn’t the ache of early pregnancy nor the bone-deep weariness of transformation.
It was worse.
Fatigue that reached all the way to her marrow.
As though every nerve in her body had fired at once and now lay spent, smoldering in the aftermath.
The plips continued.
Pattering and insistent. A rhythm of monotony she couldn’t ignore.
Sighing, she opened her eyes.
The throne room.
Nyxation’s father. That ancient, vengeful face carved from bottomless contempt. Threnakar’s scholars. Reaching, greedy hands. And the promise to harvest her baby. To tear it from her womb.
Dissect her body.
The fury reignited in her veins before she drew her next breath. Scales flaring hot, blazing with the heat of her temper. And in an instant, the irritating crinkle was forgotten.
Usurped by something new.
A crackle of electric rage.
Queen's lightning still lurked inside her. Waiting. Sparking and dying and sparking again across the smooth, rounded horizon of her belly where her baby squirmed in sleepy circles.
Looming in the dark, a shape emerged from the gloom.
Serakh.
The Abyssari general Nyx adored. Palms raised in supplication, fingers spread. The Virelii's lips parted, and a low, crooning song shivered in the throne room.
"Peace, sweet Siren," Serakh hummed, fins fluttering as she approached. "All is well. Your baby is safe. Nyxarion has left you well guarded."
Trembling, Kore made a sound as that melody settled into her chest. Warm and soft. Singing to the bottomless well of female rage boiling inside her. Startled that her muscles flinched, then relaxed. Soothed by the female voice crooning an ancient hymn of comfort.
One she hadn’t realized she needed, for it was a balm to a wound she hadn’t felt hemorrhaging until the antidote was thrust upon her.
Loneliness.
There was no other name for it.
That she’d been so utterly consumed by merely surviving Nyxarion and her transformation.
The endless, territorial posturing of kings.
By the precious, delicate baby growing inside her.
Absorbed by the weight she hadn’t realized was sinking her until Serakh’s aria had flooded through the cracks and forced her to feel it.
Grief.
The wretched, aching pain of loss.
Nerissa was dead.
The Tide Mother who had spoken to her in the low, conspiratorial murmur of women who understood what it meant to carry life inside a body that belonged to the Deep.
Sacrificed to the war Kore's existence had ignited.
And before Nerissa, the priestesses.
Sun-browned girls with bruised knees and hymns caught between their teeth. Her sisters in linen, who’d held Kore’s hands and laughed in quiet, smoky temples.
All of them, women she’d loved without knowing what it was called. Until the sea swallowed them all.
No one had sung to her since.
Not like this. In a female's voice. Delicate and quiet.
Kore let Serakh's song wash through her chest and settle.
Absorbing the warmth pooling behind her sternum as the lightning dimmed, and her wrath cooled. Appeased.
And then the plinking returned.
Wet crackling, it came from the floor beside the throne.
Kore turned.
Her eyes grew wide.
The Raskoril had consumed nearly everything.
Pale filaments of coral growth laced across what remained of the Abyssari scholar.
Her… victim.
The reef was feeding on him. Stripping sinew from bone with compelled efficiency. Each tiny pop was a morsel sucked down. The mouths of the polyps cinching and gulping. Devouring her crime with a thousand parched throats.
Until the skeleton gleamed white. Bleached of any hint of life.
Nauseous, Kore twisted away and so missed the hint of sameness. The mirror of the cradle she lounged inside. Eyes landing on Sera, she pressed her lips together, then said, “Where is Nyx?"
Lips quirked, something that might have been a smile replaced Sera’s song.
The general fell silent.
Letting the quiet breathe, fathomless eyes lingered when they landed on Kore’s body. “I don’t know,” she admitted with a shrug, but she was flush with the sort of hesitant warmth that belonged to one who rationed it.
Hesitant as if leery of upsetting her, Sera drifted closer.
Settling around the thone, she snaked through the strange structure. Fins and spines finding anchors, she nestled into Vorynthar’s seat of power. Near enough to touch. Taking no liberties.
And then, “He said only that he had business with Thalos,” she said, turning her gaze upon the Raskoril’s progress. “He left shortly after the Threnakar delegation, but didn’t want you to wake alone.”
Exhaling, hands moving to her belly, Kore nodded. Slow. “Business with Thalos,” she repeated, gills fluttering. Fins flicking in irritation. "Two barbarians circling each other in the dark, deciding which one gets to—"
She stopped, cheeks flushing a pretty shade of sunset pink.
Shamed, for the unspoken sentiment lived in the ache between her thighs. The ring of bruises left healing at her nape, where Thalos’ venom still tingled with cold. In the slick grease of Nyxarion’s seed still clinging to her walls. Coating her in his scent.
Both of them, claiming territory she’d never meant to surrender.
Head tilted, Sera watched. Absent judgment, for she had no understanding of shame. Instead, her gaze dropped to Kore’s belly. “How are you feeling?”
It was a reserved question. Whistful. An inquiry laced with something raw and hungry.
“I…” Kore swallowed, throat flexing. “I’m tired. Hungry. But… good. I feel good. Strong.”
Nodding, Sera shuffled closer. Predatory in that she forgot to blink. Her pupils yawning wide as she looked. “Forgive me. But… It's been a very long time," Serakh murmured, "since I've been around a pregnant Virelii."
Kore hesitated before she reached. Before her fingers landed upon the other’s wrist.
Spines twitching, the general went rigid.
She felt the tension in the Virelii, the ripple of surprise, and the undertow of danger.
But she pulled anyway.
Guiding Serakh to touch, she lay that clawed palm against the swell of her belly.
For a moment, there was only the warm press of flesh against flesh.
And then the child answered. Squirming. Pressing into the touch.
“It seems well,” Kore said when Sera’s eyes squeezed shut. As if it hurt to touch, but she couldn’t pull away. “Stronger, now. After Thalos’ venom.”
Humming, Sera’s brow lifted at the mention of the Shallow King.
But that was all, for her gaze was fixed to the shifting bands of dancing color flowing beneath Kore’s skin.
Fingers spreading, a tentative, gentle stroke, and Sera’s breath hitched.
Gills trembling as she fought to draw the current between her lips.
Neither spoke.
Content to sit in the moment. Still and silent, absorbed in something beyond either, as the Raskoril crackled and feasted in the gloom.
“Abyssari spawn,” Sera murmured at length.
“They grow more rare with every passing tide. Fewer Virelii quicken. Less than that survive to birth. And in those that do…” She paused, thumb tracing all that grew plump with new life.
“We’re losing the old gifts. None of them want to admit it,” she said, and a tiny, sad smile kissed the corner of her lips, “but the bloodlines grow weak. The Queen’s Lightning,” she said, “hasn’t manifested in…
generations. Longer than I’ve been alive. ”
It was Kore’s turn to gasp. Lips parting as she pulled a sip of brine between her teeth. She didn’t know how long that was, for Pelagorn measured time in tides and seasons, not days and years. But the weight of it was an anvil.
One Kore didn’t know how to lift. And wasn’t sure she could carry.
“They were traits that defined us,” Sera said, humming and low.
“Lost. Bred into oblivion in pools too shallow to carry them forward.” Retreating a little, she pulled her hand away from Kore’s belly, despite the way her gaze lingered.
“That is why,” she said, and met Kore’s gaze, “they circle you in the dark. Fighting over breeding rights. Your baby. Thalos might dress it territory claims or wounded pride, but beneath all their insufferable posturing?” She laughed, and it was bitter.
“Your baby is a talisman, Kore. A beacon to ward off what Pelagorn are losing. What is already lost.”
Looking away from that ancient pain, Kore’s gaze returned to the Abyssari scholar she’d killed and wondered. If he’d had some dormant trait. Some divinity lurking in his blood, waiting to be unlocked.
Something she’d extinguished.
“Extinction isn’t exclusive to the Deep,” Serakh continued, scales shifting against the throne.
“They won’t admit it, but…” she laughed.
A tight, wretched sound of aching despair.
“Their scholars arrived too fast. Too willing. Three elders of Caelith Mare? To examine an ‘abomination’ they’re supposed to destroy?
No.” Silver eyes grew flinty and hard. “No,” she said again. “They grow desperate. Just as we do.”
For a time, the proclamation drifted in still water. Shimmering as Kore mulled those words over. And in a moment, she knew in her delirium, in that blind haze of fury that had driven her to kill for her baby...
… she’d been right.
The Accord was a pox.
One she would destroy. Ferrying vigor back into stagnant pools that had once teemed with life.
Watching Kore’s face, as if searching for some glimpse of deeper understanding, Sera nodded. “Nyxarion,” she murmured, head tilting. “This is why he matters. Not just here, in Vorynthar, but to every Abyssari still drifting through the endless dark.”
“Because he broke the Accord,” Kore murmured, and it wasn’t a question.
“Because,” Sera said, tone laced with something fierce and desperate, “Nyxaroth, his father… he would watch our people grow dim. Watch us vanish over eons, before he’d risk provoking Caelith Mare.
” Jaw flexing, her gills flashed a brilliant, dangerous red.
“He calls it wisdom. Preservation,” she whispered, swallowing. “None dare speak its true name.”
“Cowardice,” Kore said without pause, for she had known plenty of men who ruled behind the veil of power, while they dressed in holy robes that stank of gutless fear.
Teeth flashing, Sera grinned. Bright and savage. “He won’t act.”
“But…” Kore’s fingers traced the swell where her baby squirmed. Pressing at her navel. “But Nyx… He will. Nyxarion will risk everything. For this,” she said, and her palm flattened over what he’d pumped inside and let it swell. “He already has.”
Gleaming in the hushed dark, Serakh smiled. “Then you understand. That we didn’t follow him into this poisoned tide simply because he called.” Unblinking, Sera’s gaze was burning and intense.
The current shifted between them, warmed by something Kore had never known before.
“We came for you.” Touching her, strong fingers heavy where they found an anchor on Kore’s shoulder, Sera squeezed.
Gentle. A hint of strength kept in check.
“A Siren. The promise of rebirth. Of bloodlines restored. The whisper of hope that our children might one day be born strong enough to lift what was lost. So we who remain aren’t left to watch them dissolve into nothing across a thousand empty tides. "
Fingers trembling, Sera touched the ritual scars marking her throat. “Every single Pelagorn in Vorynthar braved the poisoned tide and swore fealty to a disgraced prince because of you."