Chapter 13
Adrop of crimson twisted through the water.
Blood.
Oozing from the creature's nape, where Nyxarion had marked it with his bite, the fool. Thalos tracked that ribbon of ichor with a cold detachment.
"Pretty," he said, head tilting to watch it dissipate. "In the way of something corrupt before the rot festers."
Panting, Nyxarion's chest heaved as he luxuriated in the effort of restraining himself. Sluicing through the mess he'd made between his creature's legs.
Thalos' lip curled. Noting the tremor in the exile's hands. The way Nyx's gills stretched and flared, filaments labouring bright red.
The price of refusing to set his knot. To obey the law of the Spiral. The cost of rising through the layers of the Gauntlet at such a speed.
Repulsive.
Shameful—a king reduced to rutting a half-formed creature.
But it wasn't Nyxarion's possessive display.
Not the Siren's grotesque and swollen belly.
It was the heat.
The pressure building behind his own vent. Where he ached. Swollen with the want of a Siren.
Fingers going bloodless around Cymareth's hilt, Thalos fought for calm. Resisting the urge to carve that lazy, smug grin off Nyxarion's face.
Because the fool didn't seem to understand the gravity of what had just happened. Not truly.
Drunk on conquest, enthralled by the pleasure of emptying his balls inside his wretched pet, Nyxarion was oblivious to the truth of what his creature had become.
That Thalos hadn't merely lost the Gauntlet.
He'd been blindsided.
Utterly.
By an Abyssari trait thought lost to the annals of history.
Queen's lightning.
Power straight from Nyxarion's own Korrides bloodline, a thing not seen in three generations…
… until it had erupted from her.
Unmistakable.
Violet fire.
Lightning crackling through the water.
Carefully blank, Thalos watched as Nyxarion stroked the Siren's distended belly. Cooing praise against her gills as she leaked thick globs of seed where his knot wasn't. Pleased with himself. Oblivious.
The fool.
Reckless fucking trench scum.
He'd gone and created something far, far more dangerous than a broodmare.
Heavy pressure pulsed behind his vent, and Thalos' lip curled. Furious. Disgusted at himself.
Aroused.
His body reacting to what was otherwise rejected. To the scent… the power.
Her.
Forcing his gaze away from the obscene coupling, Thalos looked up.
To Nerissa.
The Tide Mother floated apart, ancient fins spread wide as she clung to the current. Her expression carefully blank.
But her eyes… they gleamed with what he could only call shock.
A bark of smug laughter rumbled through the current. "My pretty little monster," Nyx crooned, stroking her distended belly. Greedy for the skin stretched taut and grotesque. "Mine."
He gestured, then. Summoning the Abyssari forward to touch. To pet and pay homage, pressing reverent palms against swollen flesh. Murmuring praise and prayers in their deep voices.
"Packed so full she can barely breathe," an ancient male thrummed, before he twisted away.
A youth nosed the current, drifting too close when his fingers splayed across the creature's belly. "She took every drop."
The Siren whimpered, trying to twist. To hide her shame against Nyx's chest.
But Nyxarion wanted her seen. "Come, Thalos," he drawled, catching her throat in his overlarge fist. Petting her pretty face, stroking her jaw.
"Surely you're curious?" Shifting the girl in his grip, tilting her toward Thalos, Nyxarion grinned over her shoulder.
Drunk on the victory he hadn't earned—for it had been handed to him.
By her. "Touch her," he said, mocking. "See for yourself what my perfect girl can do when handled by a true sovereign. "
Jaw bunching at the corner, Thalos' grip grew murderous on Cymareth's hilt. And there, behind his vent, where his cock throbbed with traitorous heat, pressure. The drive to win. Compete.
Nyxarion's grin grew sharp. Predatory. And then, "It's alright to be frightened. Wouldn't want her to singe those pretty fins of yours. Again."
Thalos ignored the taunt. Letting it slip by him, uncontested.
Instead, his eyes drifted to… her. Noting every tremor. Every involuntary flex of webbed digits, where they clutched at Nyxarion's forearm. The way her delicate throat worked too hard, sending water gushing over delicate gills.
That she was leaking.
Slick and cum.
Nyxarion's seed oozed between overstretched lips, pulsing out in sticky globs, where his knot wasn't. Belly ripe and grotesque, inflated beyond any distant hope of dignity, beyond shame, pumped full of Abyssari seed.
And just there… beneath her skin… power. The shimmer of violet lightning, ebbing and growing dim without fading. Her veins a map of something forbidden stretched between her ribs. In the marks stretched across her breasts. The glitter of flexing thighs, so alien to what he'd known.
She'd been ruined.
Debased.
Magnificent.
The thought came unbidden. Making his fins flick, spread wide with his alarm. Spines exposed, he went rigid.
And his cock throbbed behind his slit. Pressure building in his vent as his gaze traced the long lines of her body. The way her strange eyes had grown half-lidded. As if she were… sleepy. Dazed. Fucked full and pliant.
Beautiful.
She was… beautiful, like this.
"Mine," Nyxarion whispered again, mouth curving against the creature's temple. His eyes fixed to Thalos' face as if reading the Shallow King's thoughts.
As if he knew.
And as Thalos watched, the last of the Queen's lightning faded. Extinguished as the Siren's lids drooped. Her exhaustion etched in her every line in the way no Pelagorn could possibly understand.
Working his shoulders loose, rolling the muscle, Thalos let Cymareth drift. Affecting an air of boredom for the spectacle before him, trying to hide his seething, bottomless greed. And then, at length, he murmured, "For now."
Nyxarion's grin only grew more wicked. Challenging.
But Thalos wasn't concerned with the graceless brute. No, his gaze drifted over the creature's body, one final time. Drinking in the grotesque way her cunt was stretched around his cock.
Her distended belly.
And then the current… shifted.
Subtle, at first. A barely noticeable shift in temperature. The black waters refreshed, sending the scent of citrus and lightning back. Filling Thalos' gills with the flavor of slick spoiled by his competition.
The current pulled, turning back on itself as the tide reversed. An inexorable turn older than any being could possibly remember.
Nyxarion stiffened.
A delicious jolt of awareness. Panic.
And it was Thalos' turn to grin.
All teeth—absent any whisper of diplomacy. "Time's up," he sang, slipping closer, moving against the tide. His fins spread. "Your claim on the creature has expired."
Arms banding tight around her middle, Nyxarion clutched her tighter to his chest.
But Thalos pressed closer still. "The Chain of Breath begins on the next tide," he said, head tilting to the side. "I do hope the unfortunate creature has had her fill of breathing underwater."
He paused then, taking a breath of water perfumed by the flavor of something exotic. Hating the way his vent pulsed. That he sent another breath over his gills, just to claim another taste.
"Gills won't save her where we're going," he drawled, letting Cymareth's blade sing as he lifted it anew. And then, "Separate them," he ordered. Voice ringing with the full weight of his authority.
For a moment, there was silence.
Calm.
And then Nyxarion snarled, his roar of subsonic fury enough to lift the current. Sending the youths scattering into the dark, while the Siren's eyes snapped open. Terror shining in those beguiling depths. Delicious.
"What—" she gasped, dainty fins flicking as she tried to press back against Nyxarion. "No! I… I need…"
Grip growing tight, Nyxarion's fingers dimpled her skin. "Touch her, and I'll—"
"You'll what?" Nerissa hummed, her aged voice cutting through the tension. Sharp. A single decisive blow that saw Nyxarion's spines flick. Cold. Heavy with frost. "Violate Spiral law? Here? Before both courts?"
The Abyssari king went utterly still, then.
"Go back to your heretical kingdom," Nerissa murmured, ancient fins fluttering as she floated down to his level. To Kore. "Or finish your threat. Give me a reason, Korrides. Just one, and I'll end this charade and your bride will belong to the Hollow Court by the lifting of the next tide."
For a long moment, Nyxarion did nothing. Said nothing as he watched Nerissa from beneath a furious scowl. And then, tucking his fins, the Abyssari exile let himself drop.
"No—" The creature twisted, reaching for him with tiny webbed fingers. "Please… I can't… I need…"
"Take her back," Thalos said with a callous flick of his fingers. "Let her recover. She'll need the strength."
Already moving, gentle hands working to soothe the Siren's frantic pleas, Nerissa propelled her forward with a flick of her tail. "Hush," she sang, petting fins that were too frail. Scales that were too thin. "It is the law, sweetling. It shall be obeyed. Come now, hush."
Thalos caught Nerissa's elbow as they passed. His voice tight. Clipped. Too low to carry to any but her when he said, "Not a word, Nerissa."
Pale eyes flicked to his. Milky with age, yet rich with understanding.
The Queen's Lightning.
Nerissa had seen it. Recognized what that flash of violet light meant. And with an elegant nod, she murmured, "Understood," before she was gone. Guiding the trembling Siren into the depths.
Eyes chips of calculating frost, Thalos watched as the gloom swallowed them both. The Siren's biolume lingered long after the pair had vanished.
But the memory of what she'd done?
With his fingers a breath from claiming her?
His bones ached where the violence had been etched in his marrow. Written in his sinew with a pen forged of pure, unadulterated power. From a creature unfit to so much as understand what she'd done. A thing made to take Abyssari cock, in possession of Queen's Lightning?
It was… a marvel.
A violation.
Fingers flexing, knuckles blanched white under the weight of his grip, Thalos clenched Cymareth's hilt and called the waveblade into being once more. Letting the ancient blade anchor him.
It's song soothing his nerves.
He'd been expecting to put down some… twisted, half-formed beast forged by Nyxarion's cock.
Thought he'd arrived to deliver mercy upon a creature not meant to exist, even as he pulled evidence for their grotesque nature from the wreckage of its corpse.
Proof that Sirens were abomination, not salvation.
But this creature?
Kore.
She wasn't merely adapting.
Wasn't simply evolving.
The girl was thriving.
Claiming rights to power long thought extinct by the scholars who'd kept the knowledge.
Her transformation had been ferried along by venom. Nyxarion's essence had driven her toward this preposterous ledge.
But then…
Thalos had called the Spiral. Set his venom to work alongside the exile's.
He'd helped.
Pushed her.
Reshaped her into something… else. A creature neither court had anticipated.
Unwanted pressure built inside his vent. Dangerous and damned inconvenient, because it wasn't merely arousal.
It was hunger.
For the potential she represented.
For if a creature built from trench-born venom could best the king of the Hollow Court by accident…
what dormant gifts might she recover from the Asterion line?
What ancient power had been lost that her curious, repulsive body might recover, if she were fed enough Asterion venom to adapt to his line, too?
Jaw bunching at the corners, Thalos stared into the dark long after his people had retreated to the warmer waters above.
Alone.
Imagining it.
The way her belly had bulged. Stretched taut and shiny around Nyxarion's torrent of wretched sperm.
Cock thickening in a rush, a total, humiliating lack of control, it burst from his slit before he could stop it. Already bloated. Obscene. Thick and ridged, pulsing where it nosed the current in search of the cunt weeping that damnable scent.
Eyes flicking through the dark, Thalos fought the wave of shame that danced in his scales. Lifting them in a ripple of self-loathing, when the fist not wrapped around Cymareth's hilt…
… found an anchor on his cock.
His fingers tightened.
Knuckles white.
He pumped.
Skin tightening, he flexed his scales and let his camouflage ripple over his skin. Cold. Shifting from visible to not so he could indulge such a shame without being seen.
It wasn't the way she'd writhed in Nyxarion's cruel grip. Not the way he'd pumped her full and made her heavy. And neither was it the scream that had torn from her lungs as Nyx wrung an orgasm from her pathetic cunt.
It was the lancing agony of purple flames.
The electric shock of… of losing.
To her.
Fins trembling as they unfurled to their limit, his cock grew bloated and thick.
Throbbing as he worked his shaft. Stroking his length in an ever-increasing blur, as he imagined those beguiling, grey-gold eyes.
Picturing the way they'd roll white for him.
The way she'd scream for him when he filled her to bursting and locked his knot behind her pubic bone.
Thalos' breath hitched.
High, at the back of his throat.
Filaments flaring a deep, blood-red crimson as ecstasy coiled tight in his lower back. Balls tucked away in his vent lifted. Flexed.
It… consumed him. Just for a moment.
Just long enough for the flash of violet light to pulse behind his eyes.
The electric thrill.
With a violent shudder, Thalos erupted. Sending jet after jet of hot sperm into the black waters. Seed clouding the current with the sheer abundance of what he'd meant to stuff inside her womb.
Panting, he glanced at his treacherous body.
"Pathetic."