The intruder.
A young male, inexperienced in the wars of kings.
Something sinister flicked over Nyxarion’s face, then, and, sagging against the rock shelf, he feigned stillness. Watching the other circle, drifting in a cautious arc as he descended deeper into the cursed basin that shouldn’t exist. Entranced by the glimmer of life in a place notorious for brutal absence.
The fledgling reef carpeted the sea floor.
Pulsing and glowing.
Impossible.
The scavenger neared. Close enough that Nyx could see the brilliant color of his scales and knew him to beThalassari—ofthe warm, shallow seas and rich, easy living. Pretty and elegant, a creature of sunlit reaches. Ill-suited for the trench warfare he’d just floated into.
A halo of silver hair fell in silken waves over broad shoulders. Every unsure flick of his tail a fusion of opalescent silver and green. Color woven to catch the eye, and fins flared in a graceful spread. Wide and elegant, sailing on the sluggish current of toxic water.
Moving not to conquer, but to enchant.
Effortless seduction.
Eyes open wide to cling to every fragment of blue light, flicked with unease. Scanning the eternal black.
Nyx could taste his fear. More poisonous than the trench, it was a stink that singed his ravaged gills with a noxious fume.
Lips twisting, he watched the pretty fool gasp for every whisper of oxygen he could filter from the abyssal tide.
Waiting until he reached for a cluster of polyps that could be seen by even his weakThalassarieyes.
Ravenous filaments uncoiled, brushing outstretched claws. Light flashed in the gloom, as if in greeting.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Nyx hummed, making the otherPelagornwhirl with a hiss of exposed spines. “You’ve come far from home,Thalassari.These are… dangerous waters.”
The intruder ejected a plume of violet venom, emptying his venom sacs. “This—what you’ve done—it’s an abomination!”
Nyxarion laughed, tail flicking through the dense current. “This is progress, boy. This is survival.”
“This is—you can’t do this! No human brood are to be seeded after the Accord of Nisyros. Your own father stripped you of title for breaking the Accord. For risking Thalos’ wrath with your repulsive crimes. And you dare to?—”
“Dare?” Nyx hummed, unable to stop his spines from twitching. “This is the Black Sea, boy. I conquered it. Fed it. Yourevery breath here is a gift of my making. I darenothing. Because here, my whim is law.”
“Thalos—”
A vicious snarl erupted from between Nyx’s clenched teeth. “The open-water king has no dominion here.”
But the interloper would not be deterred. “I followed her scent! It’s in the current. Her perfume reaches all the way to the Dardanelles. It fouls the Bosphorus with the truth of what you’ve done here, Nyxarion Korrides. If Thalos hasn’t scented her yet, hewill. It will ride the next tide. Undeniable.”
Tattered scales lifting to vent the heat of his fury, Nyx said nothing. Choosing silence as the interloper drifted closer in all his righteous fury… closer as ravenous tendrils unfolded with delicate grace that his weak,Thalassarieyes couldn’t see.
“Look at you,” the intruder continued, oblivious, gesturing at Nyx, where he was coiled on the shelf. “Haggard. Scales flaking away with the tide. Sunburned. Pathetic the way only anAbyssarican manage,” he sneered, fins flicking a delicate dance. “Fucking trench-born. Can’t handle the surface. You were born for the dark, but still, you dare to take another bride after your abysmal failure with the first?” A sharp bark of laughter sliced through the dark, and his spines ejected another spurt of violet venom. Bright and beautiful and deadly. “Thalos marked your name, exile. He’ll come, just as I did. Drawn in by the putrid scent of your whore. And then he’ll tear this place apart.”
Not bothering himself to move, Nyx tilted his head. Watching as the interloper drifted much, much too close. “Is that so?”
“An example will be made,” he blathered on. “Her bones shall be used for decoration in the gleaming halls of Caelith Mare. Her flesh peeled to feed the tides as a reminder for all that the Accord of Nisyros is what allows you revolting detritus-eaters to continue on—at Thalos’ pleasure.”
The reef flared a warning too subtle forThalassarieyes to perceive, reacting to the wrath festering in Nyx’s veins. “She is mine,” he crooned, letting his voice carry the full weight of his station. “From her, I will reclaim what was stolen, and your pathetic accord will rot in tides that will remember a new sovereign.”
Grinning, Nyx flicked his spines and silently commanded the reef to strike without moving so much as a fin in the interloper’s direction.
Tiny filaments latched to pretty, glittering scales. Gentle at first, too soft for the other male to notice.
