Kore drifted through the quagmire of sludge muddying her memories. Caught between the haze of dreams and the heavy, inexorable pull of the Deep.
Heat.
It crawled through her veins. Fluttered behind the corners of her jaw in frantic bursts. Built between her thighs until it burst from her center in a liquid pulse, and that warmth floated between her thighs.
The water had grown… thick. Honeyed and sluggish. Her every heartbeat echoed between her legs.
Another pulse of heat rolled through her muscles, forcing her fingers to curl into claws. Digging into the coral caging her in, she tried to find an anchor. Something to ground her against the storm.
Eyes fluttering open on an agonized whine that was little more than a cloud of bubbles, Kore fought to wake.
A voice thrummed through her skin, and her eyes snapped open.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Only the dark gleaming back at her.
Until her eyes adjusted and shapes emerged from the gloom. Silent, suspended in the endless dark, she noticed the flicker of colorful light tracing their bodies.
Dozens, at first.
Then hundreds.
Eyes shimmering, unblinking in every shade she could imagine—and several she couldn’t.
All of them fixed…
… to her.
A tremor seized her. “No,” she tried to hiss. But the sound was swallowed by the Deep.
“She’s… she’s real,” a voice murmured from behind, and she spun to find another like Nyxarion. Younger. His gills flaring wide as he pulled great, heaving breaths of water through his lips.
He was…
Tasting her.
Breathing in the flavor gushing from between her legs. Arousal forced his cock to burst from his slit, exactly the way she’d seen Nyxarion’s do.
Horrified, Kore tried to spin away and found herself surrounded.
On her right, another male circled closer until his fingers brushed at the bars of her cage—and sent Kore cringing back as far as she might. Eyes flicking around in search of the monster who’d done this to her.
Nyxarion.
And then Kore’s eyes caught on something she couldn’t quite believe.
Drifting closer, shrouded in a veil of luminescent filaments and ethereal, fluttering fins.
A creature not even the priests in the sun temple might have envisioned.
A female.
Breasts naked, proudly displayed for any who might look, she was elegance and beauty. Adorned in ghostly scales and gleaming, intricate jewelry, she was a vision.
Her scales glittered with a soft glow that made Kore’s breath trip at the back of her throat.
Awe.
