A split second of pause that saw him lit by the dim glow of the distant sun. A halo of silvery, watery light that showed him for what hereallywas.
And then her gaze was drawn away.
Rejecting what her eyes so clearly saw, she looked instead to the spear in his right hand.
For clutched in that mighty grip, she saw his spear and knew the truth. That what she had assumed was Hades’ mighty bident bore not two…
… butthreeprongs…
CHAPTER 4
Tangled in chains at the bottom of the river, Kore blinked.
Trying to deny what her eyes claimed to be true.
Eyes bulging from their sockets, hair floating in a dark mass around her face, she stared. Awestruck by the man… the…inhumanbeast commanding the very current that ruffled her rags and caressed cold flesh.
Without thinking, she let her fingers twist in an unfamiliar pattern.
Calling not on the lord who had forsaken her…
… but on his uncle.
Again.
Just as she had in the filthy hull of the trireme. Repeating the exact same betrayal of her sworn lord, for floating above her wasn’t a son of Zeus.
Or Hades.
But the son of Poseidon.
Triton.
In his right hand, a mighty, three-pronged trident gleamed in the dim light of the crescent moon. At his hip, a conch fastened in place with twisted weeds and braided shells.
But it was the demi-god himself who’d forced Kore’s jaws to grow slack in awe. Her lips parted on a gasp that died before it might even be born, for her lungs were full of… him. Still frozen and unable to draw breath.
Heavy bands of muscle laced an impossibly broad chest. Ridges and valleys sculpted by an endless battle with his natural element, he was a behemoth. Undeniably male, yet where her brain insisted there should be a narrow waist above his hips that blended with thickly muscled thighs, there was…
Something else.
Scales.
Glittering and hypnotic. A seamless blend between man and leviathan, his tail was…magnificent. Thick with power, longer than she was tall, and ridged in fins that flicked and shifted as he held his pose above her in the current.
Letting her look.
A sound moved through her, then.
Something born from the Deep, for it needed no breath to live. Felt through her blood, moving through her bone and sinew, it was impatience and hunger. Derision and eager thirst.
It washim.
His voice. It filled the waves and conquered the surf.
With a single sweep of that mighty fin, he flipped and plunged through the depths to reclaim her. Hand outstretched.
She couldn’t help but cringe.
