Chapter 5
Agony sent him back to the deep.
His tail flicked at the surf, just once. A single powerful sweep of muscle and sinew that sent him down through the shallows. He drove forward into the great, crushing silence of the poisonous waters, muscles protesting with every heaving thrust.
Exhausted after the hard miles he’d invested in this girl. A broken slip of a human female. Disgusting creatures. Fragile and slow.
And yet, he’d towed her through hostile waters despite the cost or the risk. Wrestled rivers with currents strong enough to test even his resolve. And now, at last, she was marooned in the heart of the Black Sea.
Trapped.
He let the weight of the trident drag him down, his grip unrelenting while the rest of him went lax. Sinuous as he bled into the belly of the trench below.
It was a canyon. A crack in the sea floor yawning wide enough to swallow an entire human city. Deep enough to crush pretty surface things into a pulpy mist.
And totally anoxic.
Hostile to all life.
A tiny, eager smirk touched the edge of his lips.
Most life.
He prepared to fill his lungs with the last few breaths of oxygen-rich water as he dove into the poisonous layers.
Slowing his heart, readying himself to seal his gills against the searing, acidic waters he’d find at the bottom, he snaked past cliff walls that dropped sharp and jagged in the gloom.
Sheer black basalt dusted in silt, untouched for eons, for the current here was mild.
Cold.
Lifeless, to all but the untrained eye.
No kelp beds swayed here. Not a single flourishing reef teeming with life.
There were only volcanic vents chugging away into the gloom. Vomiting up noxious black clouds of boiling, mineral-rich water unfit for all but the most extreme forms of life.
Mats of festering bacteria, but little else.
It was hostile. Raw. Barren and unyielding. Hideous and uninhabitable. A place so toxic that his father had refused to colonize it and rejected every attempt to plan around it.
It was the closest thing he now had to a home.
Sweeping down, driving deeper into hostile waters, the ache in his joints eased.
Replaced by a blistering fury that warned of damage to his lungs that only grew with each heaving breath of brine he pulled over his gills.
Chest compressing the deeper he descended, he took as few breaths as he could stand and let the trident drag him down as he conserved his energy.
Dropping until he could see the bottom of that cursed basin.
He took his last breath and entered the deadly anoxic layer.
Fins flaring, he caught the current and twisted upright. Hovering for a moment, fins stabilizing his aggressive descent, he paused before striking the seabed with the butt of the trident, sending a shower of blinding blue sparks cascading into the oppressive dark.
The light died in a bronze twinkle.
Swallowed whole.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Silence.
And then…
The current lifted in foggy interest, deepest shadows curling and writhing awake in a sluggish, groggy pull. And there, at the edges of his awareness, the whisper of ancient life drawn to the flash of light.
He smiled, showing teeth.
Not so barren after all.
Just… waiting.
For a king.
Planting his hand against the basalt wall, he fought the burn in the heavy water. The hostile edge of a place that was never made to accept a ruler.
But he was Abyssari-born. Bred for the weight and cold of the deep long before his people had been contained there. His scales were thicker than the other Pelagorn species—his bones heavy and dense enough for depths few others could endure.
His spines flicked, wicked and deadly. Holding posture in the beating heart of the trench. In any other sea, it was a lure for the drifting scavengers of the abyss.
Predators that couldn’t endure here.
Not yet.
Still, he needed to be sure.
Thrumming low in his chest, he issued a summons.
It was a guttural hum, at first. Something beyond hearing, for it drummed in his chest. Using the dwindling oxygen reserved in his lungs, he made the water shimmer and the silt dance.
The Resonance.
A sub-audible purr.
In a rolling wave, his scales lifted. Venting heat from his coiled bulk.
And then he pulsed.
An intoxicating blue radiated from beneath his skin—the only shade of color the eyes of the deep could perceive in the anoxic dark.
Bioluminescence.
Symbiotic bacteria that nested in the grooves between his armored scales, bred in the dark, cultivated and fed on his heat. Agitated at his command.
It was the first of many specialized adaptations that set the Abyssari apart. Where his kind suffered in the open waters the Thalassari ruled, made vulnerable to disease in the warmth of rich shallows, the trench-born bloomed in the dark.
For a moment, the shadows retreated, recoiling from the new king twisting in the gloom, but that was all.
It was exactly as devoid of life as his father had always insisted.
A hollow court, waiting to be filled.
Pleased, he flicked his tail and shot through the ceiling of poison, and burst into a slightly less toxic layer. Pulling a few heaving breaths of burning brine over his gills, he floated in the seething dark.
Alone.
An abomination.
Exile.
The faces of his people flashed through his mind as he recovered his breath. Their disgust at his attempt to save them from extinction by crafting a siren from human flesh. And for his crimes—for mixing blood with a human—he’d been banished.
The verdict still echoed in his ears, as if they had not once done the same.
As if, long before his birth, the Abyssari kings hadn’t bred Sirens from mortal flesh.
It was a truth recorded in their bloodlines, sung into the marrow of every human consort who’d once kept the seas docile for sailors in exchange for safe passage.
Fools.
Without the Sirens, the Pelagorn reign would have suffered and died out long ago.
But now they shrieked of blasphemy and corruption. They’d wrapped his failure around his gills and dragged him to the edge of his father’s dwindling kingdom and cast him out.
Because he’d been careless.
Failed.
He’d chosen a human bride. Moved her toward a glorious conclusion that might’ve seen them escape the crushing authority of the Thalassari rule, and save his people from the brink.
But she’d died.
Drowned before he could set his knot, for he’d been too eager. Impatient. Overcome with the primal urge to breed, she’d been called to the sea before her rebirth had been complete.
It was a stain he’d carry in his marrow until redemption or death.
Lip curling, he flashed his teeth to the gloom.
He should let them choke, and the shallow king with them.
Filling his lungs with the burn, he returned to the void.
Because he had a new bride.
One he’d shape for this poisoned tide.
And from her womb, he would spawn a new breed of Pelagorn. One equal to the harshest conditions known to any of the seas.
He would not fail again.
This time, he would take his time. Obsess over every possible precaution and shape her pathetic, fragile body into something truly divine, no matter the cost to himself.
The trench pressed at him from every angle until his bones ached and his muscles strained against the weight.
Lips pulling into a vicious grin, he swept through the trench.
Let those dying fools reject him. This hollow pit, this crushing abyss would incubate his kingdom.
And she would crown it.
Tail lashing, he broke the currents and disturbed the silt, blending the layers of poisonous water for the first time in eons.
Chest aching with the sour burn, he cut through the gloom and unclipped the pouch lashed to his waist. Fingers working the knot until it came loose, and the polyps inside churned. Fed their first taste of the waters that would become their home.
The Raskoril.
A parasitic strain of coral, engineered to thrive in the choking cold. Meant to thrive without sunlight or warm, fertile currents.
This species was bred for the trench.
Colonized from parasites and fed from the veins of the last Abyssari king.
He’d stolen it. Cultivated the larva, starved the polyps of sunlight, and now? He’d feed the colony a steady diet of venom and blood.
Corrupting it. Coaxing it into something new. Until every outcropping of the budding colony bore his mark.
It was to be the seeds of his kingdom. The roots of his reef, upon which he would craft an empire enslaved to him alone.
Dipping his claws, he began the arduous task ahead and went to work. Seeding the trench.
Preparing the seabed, he used the trident to raise the tide, to wash away the silt cloaking the seabed in aeons of sediment.
With a snap of his tail, he drove upward once more, scattering the polyps into the open throat of the trench.
Letting them drift in the wake of his passing, where they would settle against the seabed.
Setting little anchors that would pierce deep into the basalt, filtering the fetid waters one tiny breath at a time.
And thus, the Raskoril Coral would oxygenate the deep.
His hand plunged into the pouch, again and again, each fling of his wrist cast a net that would bind the primitive shadows and allow life to breathe here, where no other had been able to endure.
With each pass, the water grew thicker. Pulsing with a slow hum as they set down roots, their glow fanning across sheer rock walls.
A reef, born in exile.
One that would endure. Grow where he commanded, and feast directly from his veins. Nurse at his spines and fill their tiny bellies with venom.
He could sense it already—the looming specter of a ghostly structure, a skeleton of what would rise. A cradle for his bride, it would house their brood when her body no longer belonged to the surface.
The thought was invasive. An urge he hadn’t expected, but one that dragged a snarl from his chest and sent him back through the layers as the first threads of blue shimmered across the basalt.
Gills flaring, his chest expanded, lungs filling with the poisoned current.
It wasn’t enough.
Elegant limbs flashed in his mind. Shattered bone wrapped in fragile flesh.
Heat coiled in muscles starved of oxygen, forcing him to ascend. Unable to resist the carnal pull he felt to return to the surface.
And now, there was time to indulge, for the trench had been sown. Tender roots threaded through the darkness needed time to incubate and spread.
Time he would use to initiate his bride with another dose. Feed her careful, measured sips of venom, a little at time, even as he obliterated her womb and prepared her for what he needed. Pumping her full of sperm until she was ready to take all of him.
All without repeating the mistakes of the past.
Denying himself the ecstasy of truly claiming her, for he would never be able to truly breed a human.
No, the knot at the base of his cock was meant to secure a mate, to hold his chosen female in place as they drifted through the current for long hours. An anchor set in place meant as a water-tight seal that would allow his seed to move deep enough that the sea could not simply wash it away.
No, he couldn’t breed a human.
But a Siren?
A Siren was meant to take all of him.
It would be a delicate balance. One slip, one moment of hazy control, and he would ruin her.
Propelling himself forward, the exiled prince left the fledgling reef behind.
The waters grew warmer as he swam through the layers of this poisoned chalice.
And his gills flushed vibrant red as he ascended too fast, blood fizzing with tiny, agonizing bubbles as he struggled to draw a single breath not laced with brutal acid.
Breaking through the ceiling of that final lethal layer, he emerged into the shallows and drew water over his gills that sent relief immediately bleeding through his system.
Reeling from the punishment, he paused in the rich, warm water until the ache subsided.
But the pain had only sharpened his resolve.
Reminded him of what was at stake.
Even now, he could smell her. His bride. Both foreign and intoxicating, hers was a scent that called to him to do heinous, wicked things. Vile acts that would have risked banishment from his father’s court.
But of course…
He was alone.
Unbound by the laws of the open-water king who’d condemned the trench-born to a long, slow death. Unmoored, he’d been freed from the judgment of those who’d rather wither in obscurity than fight the Thalassari king.
There was none who might block him.
Not a soul who could stop what he would unleash upon that dainty, fragile female marooned in the middle of an uninhabited ocean.
Here, in the Black Sea, Nyxarion Korrides was the law.
And he would have his bride, in whichever manner he chose.
Settling in the surf, still partially submerged, he allowed himself to pause. Recuperate. Flushing the brine from his gills, he blocked the only exit.
And smiled.
It was almost time to begin.