Chapter 14
Veins flooded with the frigid embrace of the Deep, Kore's skin relaxed. Her scales pressed flat by the immense pressure of the crush. Belly distended with the obscene volume Nyxarion had pumped into her womb, Kore tried to breathe without rubbing her knees together.
"Nearly… nearly there," Nerissa hummed in her musical tone. Voice brittle and ragged as she worked to lift her fluke and drive them deeper.
Vorynthar yawned below them. Glowing lazy and blue, a beacon in the dark. Calling them in. Welcoming.
To the Abyssari.
But to a creature of the shallows? Even one as ancient as the Tide Mother?
Nerissa wheezed, a strange sound to hiss from lips meant to breathe only water, but there wasn't another word for it.
"Are you well?" Kore asked, concern lacing her words as she clung to Nerissa's hands.
"I will be, child," the Tide Mother returned, but Kore could hear the lie in the ragged whisper.
And when they collapsed in the plush cradle Nyxarion had made to contain her, Nerissa went limp with a sigh. Palms pressed to the coral flutes pumping oxygen into anoxic waters—gills flaring bright red as she dragged water over delicate filaments.
Belly cramping, heavy and bloated, Kore curled around her knees. Watching the Tide Mother struggle to exist in this place of deep, toxic dark. Left alone. To her own thoughts, long enough to actually think them.
The webbing between her fingers caught her eye. And she stared.
Still shocked.
Watching as the tremors faded. Tingling and alive. There was fire in her bones. An inferno living beneath her skin, embers banked and going dormant as she watched. Tracking the flicker of violet light lurking behind her skin. Her scales.
But it… it wasn't a flame.
Fire burned.
But this…
This… was raw power. One that didn’t scorched, hadn't consumed until there was nothing but ash. It lashed and struck. Coiled in her marrow, tight and violent. Powerful enough to strike when Thalos' fingers had stretched, reaching to claim.
Something primal had snapped.
An explosion of fury had burst from her skin. Deep inside her. A flash of molten power. Blinding and bright.
A rejection of Thalos' claim, she'd flung him back. Sent him tumbling into the dark. That creature of perfect, crystalline arrogance, immaculate beauty. Cast aside like so much trash.
At her whim.
Flexing webbed fingers, Kore marvelled at the residual hum. Still there.
Just waiting for her to let it out.
Anchoring one trembling, webbed hand to the coral, Kore took a breath. Pulled the black waters through her lips and let the rough surface of the Raskoril bite into her skin.
"Come on," she murmured, and let her eyes drift closed. Toying with the memory of Thalos' cruel grin. The murderous sheen in his glacial eyes as he'd reached to claim.
Digging deep, beyond the exhaustion threaded through her blood, her aching muscles stretched taut around Nyxarion's sperm. Kore imagined the flash of violet light. The lancing barb of power when it had burst from her chest.
Breath quickening, pulse hammering at the back of her throat, she frowned. Straining. "Please," she hissed, a fine net of bubbles issuing forth from her gills.
But nothing happened.
The fires stayed as they were. Banked. Dormant and stubborn.
Teeth bared, jaw flexed as she tried to force it into being with the single-minded focus of a former priestess, Kore trembled under the strain.
But her skin merely pulsed with the glow of her bioluminescence. Nothing more. Utterly absent the electric fury that had thrown a king clear across the Gauntlet as if he was nothing.
Unreachable.
Utterly.
With a curse, she abandoned the effort. Eyes snapping open. Counting the beats of her heart. Inspecting her skin for something, anything, that would suggest she was close.
But there was nothing.
As if it had never been.
A cramp made her belly tighten and shift. Distended with seed, it was a reminder. That Nyxarion had claimed her. Fucked her before the courts. Bred her as he bragged about it. Greedy and cruel. But he was the monster she knew.
The one who'd won, when Thalos had been so close.
Breath ragged in her gills, she smiled despite her failure to summon it, for she knew how to be helpless. That this… this lightning wasn’t hers to command. Not really.
It was a storm.
A thing built of spite, fed by fury. Meant to build until it hadn’t a choice but to break.
Groaning, voice a musical rasp that made Kore flinch, Nerissa stirred. Milky eyes flickering open, her chest lifting with shallow, laboured pulls.
Kore drifted closer. "Nerissa?"
But the ancient Virelii didn't respond. Eyes rolling white, her gills spreading slightly less than her fins, as she strained against the crush of the Deep.
Because the pressure in Vorynthar was all wrong for her. Too heavy. Brutal on her delicate system.
The abyss abhorred delicate things from the Hollow Court. Creatures meant for warmth and beauty.
And as Kore looked, a simple fact emerged in her mind.
Nerissa was going die.
"Please," Kore called into the abyss, frantic as the Tide Mother's head lolled in a sickening roll.
Movement.
A pulse of light flickering at Kore's periphery.
An Abyssari male floated in the gloom. Keeping his distance, watching from the edge of Kore's awareness. Posture rigid. Young. Staring with wide, luminous eyes.
Not at Nerissa… but at her.
"Please," Kore said again, reaching. Fins flicking against her forearm. "She… she needs help. Please, you have to—"
He didn't move. Didn't react. Just watched her with wide, terrified eyes until another male appeared behind him. Older. Scarred. Snarling at the youth in a voice laced with something she couldn't name.
He reeled back with a flick of his tail. There and gone. Fleeting. A sound escaped him she'd never heard before.
"No!" Kore cried. "Nerissa, she needs help. Please!”
But the elder merely turned to watch with that same fervor shining in his eyes…
One she recognized, a particular light she'd seen before.
Knew the weight of it. The disturbing stillness.
It was there, in the space between them. The distance and the unblinking stare. The stillness she’d only ever seen on pilgrims at an altar.
Kore blinked.
She knew the shape of devotion.
Remembered the ache in her knees that had spent years folded in dedication, learning to perfect the angles. Chin tipped, eyes downcast, hands folded in worship. The sun priests had taught her worship. Etched the obedience into her flesh under the lash when it was needed.
She knew the look of worship when she saw it.
And she did. It was there in the careful, slow orbits of the Pelagorn circling her at a distance.
In the way the young drifted too close, lingering as they twisted and slipped through the currents. Curious, until an elder issued a subsonic hum and sent them skittering back into the dark. Biolume pulsing in a panicked burst.
And she knew.
They weren't guarding a prisoner.
Not really.
They were tending a holy relic.
She watched them orbit. Noted the careful distance. The total lack of interest in Nerissa, even when Kore begged.
And then, the gifts. Trinkets sprinkled upon her. Tiny things she didn't know what to do with, things that wouldn't help Nerissa.
And she knew that too. Reverence. Tithes dropped in offer to something divine.
She'd died for divine love. Drowned. Given her maidenhead in sacrifice to a war she hadn't started. Knew just how devotion might bloom into something sick. That years of bruised knees and cracked, bleeding fingers would buy nothing but silence.
Because the devoted would die for the divine. Obey blindly. Find wisdom in the brutal, echoing silence of neglect and call it faith.
Kore flexed. Angry at the distance. Because she knew.
This wasn't love.
It was fear.
Of what she might become.
And that…
… That was something she could use.
"The second trial," she called, trying to summon one of her guards to drift closer.
But in an instant, his biolume flared bright. Panicked.
And he fled.
One heft of his fluke more than enough to send him spiralling back into Vorynthar's heart.
Lips parting on a blink, Kore gasped.
Turned.
Tried again, speaking to another. "The Chain of Breath," she said, voice a low, musical hum. "What—"
Gone.
Vanished with a flick of fins and a pulse of electric blue.
Snarling, she hissed. Fins flared wide. "Cowards," she spat, fists clenched where they were anchored in coral. Dragging water into her lungs, too fast. Shallow and hot.
And then she felt it.
The kiss of something violent.
A bubble of wrath where it stewed behind the bars of her sternum.
Eyes wide, her gaze dropped to her hands.
Where the tiny threads of violet light crackled beneath her skin.
Glowing. A pulse that thrummed in tune with her heart. Brighter with every ragged breath that spilled through her gills.
And then she knew. Understood the lightning she harboured wasn’t tied to her command… it was born of fury.
Wrath.
The helpless, frustrated rage born in a woman's heart.
A tiny smile kissed the corner of her lips, then. As she remembered. The way Thalos had reached. The moment her helpless, delicate terror had hardened. Bleeding into something… else. A violent, incandescent no. A refusal. To be claimed.
Fingers curling into claws, she watched as her rage grew more violent. Focused into a deadly point. Sharp and cutting where it sliced through her veins.
The storm wasn't hers to command.
Because she was the storm.
Nerissa's breath rattled.
Wet, even at the bottom of the Black Sea. Labored enough that Kore's eyes lifted from her revelation. Torn away from the violet pulse sewn beneath her skin.
The Tide Mother's eyes were open. Fixed on Kore. Watching in that ageless way as she flexed the fledgling power lurking inside her.
"Are you…" Kore swallowed, a tight flex of her throat. Reaching for the ancient Virelii. "Are you okay?"
For a moment, Nerissa merely watched. Lips parting around nothing.
And then, "There are histories. Things lost to our bloodlines for generations," she murmured. Her voice a pebble in the ocean. Tiny. Almost lost. "Things a Siren might recover, if given time to embrace what she was meant to be.”
Eyes widening as she listened, Kore's fingers curled into fists. And the violet light pulsed brighter as if in answer.
Nerissa didn't miss it.
The Tide Mother smiled, showing teeth. "The sea remembers," she breathed. "I look forward to seeing what you'll become."
Pulse hammering, shining in the glow of her biolume, Kore licked her lips. A human habit she didn't know she possessed. "The second trial," she said, threading her fingers through those that were gnarled with age. "The guards—they won't answer."
Gills spreading on a ragged breath, Nerissa hesitated. Pain flitting across her brow, etched in deep wrinkles. And then, "The Chain of Breath. It tests endurance. Both challenger and suitor will be lifted above the surface. And you, between them."
At this, Kore dared to smile. "Nyxarion came to me on the surface. Over and over again. He will win.”
But Nerissa shook her head. "Perhaps," she allowed.
"The Korrides line does display significant resilience to surface air.
But Thalos was born to it, child. He is the king of open water.
The sovereign of the shallows. Ruler of the blend between land and sea.
The Chain of Breath tests endurance no Abyssari can hope to fight.
I'm sorry," she whispered, and patted Kore's cheek.
"But Thalos will not lose the Chain of Breath. "
Something akin to panic flared in Kore's colors, then. And she touched the well of power bubbling behind her ribs. "I won't let him win," she replied in the way of something young and foolish.
Nerissa's smile was sad.
A little soft.
"The Queen's Lightning is a marvel," she whispered, and didn't blink. "But you haven't been above the surface since you drowned, child. You are the one who will bear the weight of this challenge. Not them. The Queen's Lightning cannot burn without breath."