Epilogue
Nyx rose.
He knifed through the toxic water, the current splitting around him. He savored his triumph.
The reef blazed where it sprawled through the trench, a testament to his effort. Proof that his course was righteous. Claiming her—brutal, yet just.
And her.
Kore.
His Siren bride.
She was flawless. Adapting to her new environment at a speed he hadn’t thought possible. She’d taken his knot and milked him dry. That clenching slit gulping down every gush pulse, he’d bred her placid. Kept her locked on his knot almost as long as he’d breed one of his own.
Half-curled around her belly, swaddled in Raskoril coral, Kore slept.
Not in the way of Pelagorn—who never truly rested—and no longer human. His Siren shimmered.
Dreaming.
Skin gleaming, veins of blue light traced her skin as her scales bloomed, and dainty, gossamer fins sprouted from her flesh. A mirror of her tainted Pelagorn blood. Almost vestigial, until her transformation was complete.
It sent a taboo thrill racing through his veins.
Eager to have her again when she woke, desperate. Addicted. Totally enslaved to his venom.
His seed.
His knot.
It was time.
Grinning, Nyx drew the conch from his belt, set it to his lips—and poured the black waters through those ancient spirals.
The call that burst forth rolled through the deep.
It was a summons.
To those still loyal to the lost Abyssari prince. Those who’d waited to see what he would make of his exile, and would rally behind him when they saw what he’d done to this human slip of a girl who thrived at the bottom of the Black Sea.
They would come.
Few, at first. Drawn in by the scent of a Siren. Eager for the scandal of that taboo creature who perfumed the currents from the Bosphorus to the Dardanelles—and beyond. A girl whose very existence broke the Accord of Nisyros, and promised war would come to the Black Sea.
But when they saw just what was growing in the deep, there would be many. An army of Abyssari would come to tend his reef as the heart of Vorynthar grew.
The call to arms quieted, and he turned back. Tucking his fins, he allowed himself to sink.
Ready for another taste of his bride.
Wakened by the conch, eyes wide and glittering with a delicious brand of fear, Kore floated in her cradle. Hands clutching the coral bars as a column of bubbles escaped her gills.
Mute, while she incubated.
Silent until she became fully his.
Nyxarion smiled, showing teeth. “There will be war,” he said, and his cock pressed at the backside of his seam. “My army will come to witness my bride. And you, my stolen flame, will birth a new tide.”
With a gesture, the coral wrapped her in a careful embrace. Holding her fast when his cock snaked free and readied her to service her king. Legs held open, bubbles escaping her plush lips, he slipped one hand through the bars and cupped her cheek.
“Soon,” he rumbled, coiling his tail around the base of her cradle to anchor himself before he pressed inside that divine sheath. “Soon you will sing for me. And the seas will know what I have done.”
Thalos would come.
Thalassari armies would flood the Black Sea.
But the high king would not find a meek and remorseful peasant pleading for safe harbor or leniency.
The birth of his dynasty had begun—and it would not come gently.
Pre-Orders for Books 2&3 Open Now
The sea remembers every sin.
The court has been summoned.
The open-ocean king is coming.