Chapter 22
The dark waters ran thick with the scent of blood.
Gills flaring as she watched the horrific display, Kore was aghast. Jaws hanging slack.
Bewildered by the violence, the sheer, baffling carnage of these males tearing each other to shreds.
At the gore spilling from gaping wounds she hadn't imagined possible, much less something that might be survivable.
Nyxarion's gills… they were shredded on one side. Torn and ragged. A grotesque wreckage where Thalos' claws had split them asunder. His every breath laced with a plume of red bleeding into the black.
And Thalos.
She couldn't look.
But couldn't stop seeing it.
Her every blink was poisoned with it. The shadow, an imprint of wicked spines lodged deep in his belly.
Glacial eyes wide, rimmed in the white of cold shock as he tried to comprehend the impossibility of Nyxarion's spines embedded under his ribs.
All of it.
For her.
Tearing pieces off each other for the privilege of breeding her.
Stomach churning with nausea, Kore's fingers grew tight on Nerissa's.
And then Nyxarion turned.
Molten silver eyes shining with a savage heat found her in the gloom. In an instant. He extended his working hand, and in a subaudible hum, said, "Kore."
It was a pitch that made the jelly behind her eyes shiver. Dancing with the promise of the violence he meant to claim from her flesh—the spoils of war.
A summoning.
She flinched.
A full body recoil.
Aged fingers anchored her, then. Nerissa's grip curled around her digits in a firm squeeze. "Make him work for it, child," she murmured, lips brushing at her ear. "Make him work to claim his prize."
It was spoken in a voice absent pity or judgement, a command from one female to the next.
A farewell.
Throat flexing on a thick swallow, Kore hesitated. Tearing her eyes from Nyxarion, ready to beg, plead with the ancient Virelii.
But Nerissa was smiling. Her milky eyes glassed and shining with something Kore had only read about in ancient texts. Only parsed in dusty tomes dedicated to silent gods.
Devotion.
Faith.
And then, in a blink, she understood. Intrinsically. Deeply.
This was sacrifice.
Ritual offering to a cause Nerissa believed to be greater than herself.
Anguish twisted behind Kore's ribs, then, but she banked her tears. Stowed her rage, and simply returned that beatific, serene smile. Embracing Nerissa's choice.
"Thank you," she whispered instead, and twisted her fingers in that ancient shape she'd used to summon a leviathan from the Deep.
From above, a crystalline note chimed through the deep.
Nyxarion.
He'd won.
The Abyssari filled the current with the deep hum of their glee. Guttural voices meant to haunt the currents and lift the tides. Meant to drive sailors to distraction and summon the very darkest things from the Deep.
It was a sound of victory.
Celebration.
Rebirth.
But in Kore?
It brought the flames of something timeless.
Rage.
Incandescent, liquid fury crackles beneath her flesh. Burning too hot in her bones, too bright. Instinctive, her scales lifted to vent the sudden, violent plume of heat.
No.
Why should she submit? Why should she obey yet another master? One who saw a chalice. Legacy and revival.
Who saw a divine living flame, but didn't see her.
She was Kore.
A woman.
Siren.
And she had teeth.
Trying to summon the violet lightning, Kore's scales flickered with a cascade of color. Once, twice more. And then a peculiar sort of frost spread across her skin.
The lightning was a blaze of glory. An explosion of heat both violent and vicious.
But this?
This was an all-consuming spread. A slow, unstoppable bleed of frigid edges. Heat dissolving at her edges, the frost crept in. And she watched, eyes wide and rimmed in white, as her body… vanished.
Until there was only the faint shimmer of the current moving around her. Solid but gone. A distortion moving through the tide.
With a roar of disbelief that mirrored her own, Nyxarion surged toward her.
But Kore was already sinking.
Crimson ribbons of sluggish gore trailing behind him, Nyxarion's functional arm swept through the space where she'd been. Reaching. His fingers careful yet desperate as his touch plunged through empty water.
A trophy refusing to be claimed, Kore let a slow smile touch her lips as she sank. Fins pressed flat to her skin. Letting the abyss take her.
Invisible.
Eyes fixed not to the massive bulk of the leviathan who meant to use her to breed an empire, but to Nerissa. Watching as the Tide Mother reached for Thalos. As a breathtaking song spilled over her lips. A melody both haunting and joyful as she spun it around Thalos' ravaged body.
She didn't kick or thrash. Wasn't trying to escape what she understood to be inevitable.
But the Sovereign of Vorynthar was going to work for his prize.
From above, the current shifted.
At first, it was a subtle change. A tiny tremor in the current that grew. The ripples of pressure spread through the abyss.
Coming from Nyxarion.
His Resonance.
The hunting song purred through the great barrel of his chest.
A sound below hearing. Pure vibration rolling through the dark waters, it was a melodic thrum. The dirge of the hunter.
Each throb sent a pulse rippling through the water.
And she knew he could read it. Feel the vibration, the energy of what his eyes couldn't see. It was the instinct of a deep-sea predator who needed to stalk what couldn't be seen.
Still, Kore didn't move. Her scales locked in the fragile mimicry of a vacant sea. Gills hardly daring to move as she sank.
Following, tail flicking in a lazy, confident spiral, he trailed her into the dark. Bleeding. Scales fluttering in his wake as the worst of the damage saw them sloughed away.
Yet he moved with the unconscious grace of a king.
His purr chased her into the Deep. Pupils blown wide enough to reduce the silver to a crackling ring of heat, he scanned what he couldn't see. Hair billowing back from his face, every sharp line a brutal kind of elegance.
He was a predator.
Vicious. Deadly.
And unbearably beautiful, this beast who'd drowned her. Shaped her into something more.
This ferocious, callous male who'd built her a kingdom before he'd even known her name.
Who'd curled around her, defiant before his people, and declared her his religion. Fought for the right to fill her with his seed. Claim her swollen belly as his own.
Throat working, Kore's jaw flexed.
Because her body ached. Her cunt slicked with the heat of betrayal.
For she would not be his broodmare.
Her feet kissed the silt at the bottom of the trench. Soft. Welcoming. The impact sent a puff of debris up around her ankles as Vorynthar welcomed her. The Raskoril reached for her heat. Drinking in her scent, even as the parasitical coral filtered the anoxic poison from the current.
Toes curling in the sediment, Kore didn't flee.
She lay back against the coral.
Let it embrace her.
Waiting.
Scales rippling to match the coral beneath her—pink through violet, blue to black—mimicking until she was all but indistinguishable from the body of the reef.
A living shadow sewn into breathing walls.
Waiting. Fingers trailing over the coral's ridges and hollows. Feeling the pulse of something alien hum through the water. It was the reef itself.
A dull, predatory curiosity far different than the hunt closing in on her from above. The Raskoril was simply drawn to her heat, to the promise of nutrients.
She petted the tender polyps.
Refusing to be prey.
Nyxarion thought himself the tide meant to drown the flesh of the sun.
But she?
She was the tempest that drove those tides.
The storm of change that would mark the start of a new era.
One of Sirens returned to the seas.
Gills flaring, filaments bright and warm, she took a breath. Eyes fixed to the serpentine grace of the male snaking closer.
She smiled, showing the point of teeth, for this body he'd remade was no longer his creation.
It was hers.
And she would not cower or beg.
She sprawled.
Arranged with deliberate grace, intending to entice, she positioned herself. Head tipped back, the long, delicate column of her throat left exposed. And her scales, shifting in a hypnotic pattern, were meant to lure him in.
The oppressive dark shifted.
Beneath her, the reef hummed.
And pressure rolled through the water around her. That deep sub-audible thrum.
He was almost upon her. That massive, brutalized body a patchwork of black and glowing blue, painted in shades. Seeping crimson from lacerations and wounds. Pain telegraphed in his every action, and yet…
Still one of the most devastating things she'd ever seen.
Scales flickering, Kore's control slipped.
Just for a second. Just once.
But it was enough.
Silver eyes found her lounging in the coral.
"Stop," she murmured, and did not blink, for it wasn't a plea. Not a desperate sound, but a command.
Going still, Nyxarion froze. Eyes wide, nostrils flared as he took a breath of what lay before him.
She let her fingers wander. Shameless. Deliberate. Exploring the curve of her breast. The dip between, where her ribs flared on a breath. Hand smoothing over the swell of her belly, where she was still swollen with Thalos' claim.
Silver eyes didn't miss a moment.
He tracked her every errant twitch. Fins flared to hold position above her.
And then she reached. Feet pushing off the bedrock. Webbed fingers catching the current, she floated before him. Meeting him.
She let her fingers connect. Delicate. Exploring the shredded, damaged tissue where his gills had been left to flutter in ragged strips. No longer bleeding, but horrible.
"This is the price?" she hummed, her voice no longer human. Not Pelagorn. It was something else. All hers. "The price of your bottomless arrogance," she hissed and let him see the point of dainty, clenched teeth.
Jaw flexing, tendons standing rigid where his neck met his shoulders, Nyxarion could only watch. Eyes wide.
Thumb tracing the pillow of his bottom lip, she continued. "You won," she murmured, grey-gold eyes gleaming in the glow of the reef. "Conquered the Spiral. But I am not your prize."
Beneath them, the reef pulsed.
Synced to her heartbeat, for she was the living flame. The heart of Vorynthar, and she would not yield. Not this time.
"On your back, Leviathan."
She forced him down. Made him watch as her thighs parted. Her scales pulsing with light as she moved to straddle his hips. Where his slit bulged with want. Tracing his vent, she hummed. Low at the back of her throat. Claiming her perch, Kore settled across her throne.
"I am not your prize," she said again, and let her fingers slide through the slick folds that had grown puffy with want.
"Not a trophy to be claimed. I am the tempest that lifts the tide.
And you," she crooned, spreading delicate petals with webbed fingers, "Nyxarion Korrides, shall be the tsunami that carries my legacy. "
A deep thrum started in his chest. Biolume flashing a deadly blue as his cock burst from his slit. His eyes fixed to her sex, where she held herself open and let him see the glistening pink. Where she clenched around nothing.
Where she was desperate and empty.
But he remained motionless. Still. Claws sunk into the coral as he sought an anchor, fought to listen. Obeyed. Breath coming faster. Watching her claim what should have been his victory.
She traced the base of her clit. Watching his pupils dilate as he tracked her every movement. "I claim you," she said, and let her hips cant forward. "Just as I claim every child you give me." Fins spreading in a slow press, she slid her fingers inside. "Every last one. Mine."
And for a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of Nyxarion's desperate thrum rumbling in his chest. Low and pleading.
And then, "My sweet, greedy Siren," he murmured, watching her from beneath hooded eyes. "You seek to claim the power of tides?" A grin creased his lips, and he leaned forward. "Then take it, Kore. Show me what you mean to do with it."