Chapter 4
He moved through the crushing dark. A ripple through the water. Skin mirroring the void until he was little more than a distortion. A smooth bend in the light the eyes of the abyss couldn’t see.
Invisible.
A skill unique to his line.
It allowed him to hunt in unfavorable conditions, to stalk his prey, and strike when the moment was perfect.
Drifting as he sank, using only the most conservative movements to propel himself deeper, Thalos followed the scent.
The reek of corruption.
Fury rippled through his system, threatening to unmask him.
It was an affront.
The Accord of Nisyros shattered for a second time.
By Nyxarion Korrides.
Spines flicking, temper clenched in a murderous fist, Thalos exhaled a steady stream through his teeth and worked his tail in a careful press that didn’t disturb the current.
This anoxic sea was teeming with life.
A thing he’d thought impossible, until he’d come to witness it with his own eyes.
But he was late.
The Abyssari were already here.
Hundreds gathered in an elegant vortex as they surrounded a breeding pair locked together.
Nyxarion and his mutant whore.
Lip curled, Thalos’ keen eyes caught the glint of massive shapes drifting through the gloom. Abyssari armored scales caught faint shards of light and sent it back to the surface in a dazzling display of glittering color.
Still, he drifted deeper. Unafraid of their size or numbers, for he was Thalos Asterion, open-water king of the shallows, from the coasts to the frigid Arctic waters.
And he was the law.
Keeping to the outer edge of their vortex, Thalos observed. Listening when the exiled prince spoke, Nyxarion’s voice laced with a Resonance so deep it made even Thalos’ bones ache.
And there, in the heart of it all, the creature.
Abomination.
He caught a glimpse.
The hint of a faint, weak biolume pulsing beneath her skin as her corrupted body tried to adapt to the abyss.
Tucked in Nyxarion’s thick arms, she was hidden from him.
Impaled, those grotesque legs spread wide where the exile held her in a possessive grip.
Splitting her open on his cock, poisoning the waters with the scent that had brought him in from afar.
Crushed citrus and ozone.
A mix of velvet human rot and something… else. Something illicit and tantalizing.
Corruption.
It slid through the water. Slipped straight down his throat and flickered through his lungs. His veins.
Thalos’ lip curled.
That she existed at all was a crime—one Nyxarion would pay for in blood, for the Abyssari exile had wrought blasphemy in this daughter of the surface. An agent of chaos, she was an aberration given shape.
And she would know extinction, before she knew nothing at all.
Fingers grazing Cymareth’s hilt, Thalos soothed the bladeless, ancient weapon hanging from his hip—the living mother-of-pearl hilt hummed as if in silent question, for Thalos had dedicated his life to upholding order.
This creature was defiance of everything he’d vowed to be. The embodiment of everything he meant to extinguish.
Below, Nyxarion brought the creature closer to his chest. Fucking her before his court, showing them the obscene spread of human legs ill-suited to life in the sea. Rumbling some inane encouragement as the exile let her work for his seed.
Jaw flexing, Thalos sneered. Drifting closer still. Enough that he might see what had these Abyssari fools pledging allegiance to a doomed kingdom.
Nyxarion shifted, fins flicking as he neared his completion.
And Thalos saw what was impaled on his cock.
The Siren.
Her gills fluttered with a delicate, uneven rhythm, her head lolling against Nyxarion’s broad shoulder. Cheeks speckled with heat and sunset scales, he watched her fins flick and fan as she tried to balance against her maker. The primitive, almost vestigial fins quivering against ivory thighs.
And despite his discipline, the sight found an anchor behind Thalos’ breastbone. Hooking into something lowborn and primitive he couldn’t name, for it was beneath him.
Utterly.
A reminder of what he was. The rot he would seek and destroy.
It would be easy.
She couldn’t swim, not really. Not in the way of a trueborn Pelagorn. Doomed instead to drifting and kicking. Flailing through the dark, caged at the bottom of a trench that shouldn’t exist. Held prisoner—helpless—until Nyxarion felt the need to empty his balls.
Despicable.
Still…
Thalos watched the light along her hips flare at Nyxarion’s touch. Watched it grow brighter as she worked herself into a lather across his cock.
A pretty thing, if grotesque.
Kissed by sunlight.
Curiosity stirred beneath Thalos’ skin, then. Sharp. Ravenous. A hunger to see what she might do.
It was the scent.
Slick in the water.
Chemical desire battling with his ingrained disgust.
Fins flaring, he slowed his descent, but remained invisible. Hovering just beyond the vortex of celebrating Abyssari. Fingers tightening on Cymareth’s hilt, he felt the core thrum in response, awaiting his command—the Waveblade was eager to sharpen into being, thirsty for carnage.
A simple note would call it forth.
With a single flick of his wrist, he could sink into the heart of their grotesque orgy, right above Nyxarion and his repulsive bride, and the abomination and the exile would be gone with one pass of Cymareth’s edge.
But he lingered.
Choosing instead to watch them fuck, distracted for a moment by the architecture of the reef carpeting the basin below.
It was… impressive.
Worthy of further exploration, before it was obliterated.
For the first time in its long, quiet history, the Black Sea breathed.
Siphons pulsing in tune with Nyxarion’s biolume, the lungs of this heretical kingdom dumped oxygen-rich water into the gloom.
He could taste it, even if it burned his Thalassari lungs.
And he knew just how well Nyxarion had played god in the dark.
A living Siren—at the bottom of one of the deepest trenches, no less—was evidence enough of that.
Steadying his breath, Thalos forced his focus back to the breeding pair edging closer to climax.
Arousal spiked through the Shallow King’s blood. Sudden. Unexpected. Enough that his cock pressed at the back of his seam, insistent with the need to rut.
Gaze lingering on the fragile curve of her neck, the sharp angles of limbs Virelii—Pelagorn females—simply did not possess, Thalos paused.
Hesitating. Distracted by the electric scent of slick, by the shimmer of delicate scales that hinted at her rebirth in the Shallows, where he was king and sunlight dictated the ebb and flow of life, not merely the tides.
And then Nyxarion’s voice rumbled through the Deep. “Don’t fight it, sweet Kore. Milk the seed from my balls. Work for my knot, so we might drift through the heart of Vorynthar together.”
Thalos’ spines flicked, his grip on the Waveblade’s hilt growing merciless as the exile revealed too much. The name of his kingdom. Her name.
Kore.
Cooing to her, making promises he wouldn’t be allowed to keep, Thalos listened as Nyxarion edged closer to climax.
No.
Thalos wouldn’t allow it.
Unafraid, he issued a single, piercing note. A thread of sound that made Cymareth sing. The Waveblade leapt into a solid state—deadly sharp. Weightless. At once a solid, gas, and liquid.
Reacting to that sound, Nyxarion froze, mid-thrust. Mad with possessive lust, his every brutal line carved from shadow and arrogance. Still buried inside the Siren, molten eyes scanned the currents. “Show yourself,” he snarled.
Light fracturing around him, Thalos let his scales lift. Dropping his cloak of chromatic camouflage, the King of Caelith Mare appeared as if by magic in the center of an Abyssari cyclone.
Opalescent scales gleaming, white-cast fins flaring, he was calm before them. Let them look upon their true sovereign—not some detritus-eating Abyssari imposter.
As one, the eyes of the trench turned toward him.
“Enough,” he said, voice ringing with calm authority.
Accustomed to being obeyed. “You’ve created an abomination and named it rebirth,” he sneered.
“Look at it. The pathetic creature. A disgusting imitation of a Virelii—legs in place of a tail. Fingers with gossamer webbing. Surely its fins are just for show.”
“And yet…” Showing teeth, Nyx tilted his head in a slow arc, his grin spreading. “She thrives in the Deep. Better that you can, Shallow King.”
Thalos flicked his wrist. Dismissive. “Cruelty,” he drawled, unfazed.
“You attempt to breed her, knowing she will likely break. And then, when you’ve failed with this one, as you failed with the last, you’ll flick your fins and swim back to the surface to claim a third?
” Laughing, low and vicious, Thalos delighted in the pain that flicked across the creature’s face.
“You’re not a king, Nyxarion Korrides. You’re an artisan polishing filth. ”
At that, the creature’s eyes grew liquid and pained. Wounded and confused.
But Nyxarion laughed. Dragging a sheet of bubbles from ill-formed gills when he twisted and drove deeper into his unfortunate pet, clouding the water with that tangy, electric scent. “Is that jealousy?”
The wave of illicit perfume hit Thalos’ blood, harder than it had, and it was through sheer force of will that he saw him cling to serenity.
Still, the exile’s grin grew wide enough to leer when he thrust back inside her, slower now. Deliberate. Sure to paint the current with silver threads of molten slick. “You came to preach restraint, but let’s see what you really think of my bride, hmm?”
Abyssari laughter dared to echo through the basin, low and unsure. But gaining strength.
Thalos remained untouched. “You mistake me, exile. What you’re sensing is disgust. A violent need to extinguish the existence of the unfortunate creature you insist upon violating with your low-born cock.”
Eyes growing slitted and narrow, Nyxarion stilled. “What’s done cannot be undone. I won’t allow it. This is the Black Sea, and you have no dominion here, Thalos.”
Cymareth vibrated in his grip, thirsty for retribution, and Thalos hummed, tempting the Waveblade to come fully awake.
Laughing, incredulous, Nyxarion flung his arms wide. “You think to take her from me? Here? In the Deep, where not even you can survive as long as my bride?”
“Perhaps not,” Thalos returned, and it was his turn to grin. And then, “I invoke the Spiral.”
Six little syllables, but they struck hard enough to make the Abyssari recoil as his declaration carried through the black waters. “I challenge you, Nyxarion Korrides, for that contemptible creature. For breeding rights that govern all Pelagorn, from the Shallows to the Deep.”
Cries of outrage clawed through the Abyssari. Disbelief and shock, for the Spiral had never been called over a mutant.
He knew that.
Lips twisting somewhere between a snarl and shock, Nyx recoiled with the rest of them. “You mean to claim her as your own? Fight for breeding rights? You? Thalos Asterion, the law keeper, come to rut with monsters?”
“I shall claim her,” Thalos said, and did not blink, “so I may set her free.”
Cymareth shimmered in his fist, the ancient blade humming at the prospect of bloodshed.
“I will win the Spiral,” he said, “and then I will slaughter your precious Siren.”
And then, with a flick of his ancient blade, Thalos commanded the current to tear them apart.