With every breath dragged over his gills, her scent grew stronger. Bolder.
Closer.
She was there. Floundering at the surface, the poor thing. Unaware of the gift he’d given, of what she would become when she accepted his knot and sank into the role he’d crafted for her.
Surging through her wake, he grinned. She was close.
The sea moved around him, giving up its secrets. Mirroring the fever in his blood. Giddy at the memory of her mouth, the grip of her divine cleft.
He surfaced.
Fins catching the current, holding him still, he blinked against the slap of cool, night air. Massive pupils reflecting thedistant glimmer of stars and silvery blanket of moonlight as he searched for the girl he’d remade to suit his monstrous needs.
Wrapping him in ribbons of cold, the current sang through his gills.
But she was nowhere.
Her trail ended, as if she’d been dragged from the sea.
The realization sent a wave of frigid cold washing over him.
She was no longer in the water.
That glimmering trail of slick and blood ended, as if she’d been plucked from the waves.
As if she’d been claimed.
By another.
The moon hung heavy in the night sky, casting a silver glow upon the black waters. He scanned the horizon with eyes meant for the purest dark. A predator’s gaze.
Still, there was no sign of her.
No hint of anotherPelagorn—AbyssariorThalassari—in the water who might have stolen her away, for she’d been plucked from the waves.
By a human.
A scream rang out.
Not the delicious sounds he’d pulled from her throat in the cave.
This was something else altogether.
Wet and broken, a desperate cry carried on the wind, but unmistakable in its haunting beauty.
A Siren’s call.
Nyx shifted his grip on the trident, and he turned toward that glorious, devastating sound. And with a single, powerful stroke, he dove, propelling himself toward the distant shore.
It was the tide that betrayed him first.
Unnatural. A ripple where there should have been stillness. A shudder passed through the current, moving in the wrong direction.
She was there.
Bound in netting.
Bent over a log, her belly pressed to driftwood. Hair tangled and matted with sand that clung in clumps of soggy grit. Legs twisted together in a cruel mockery of a gloriousPelagorntail, he watched the shimmer of new scales as her flesh jolted and rippled with obscene impact.
