It slid through the water. Slipped straight down his throat and flickered through his lungs. His veins.
Thalos’ lip curled.
That she existed at all was a crime—one Nyxarion would pay for in blood, for the Abyssari exile had wrought blasphemy in this daughter of the surface. An agent of chaos, she was an aberration given shape.
And she would know extinction, before she knew nothing at all.
Fingers grazing Cymareth’s hilt, Thalos soothed the bladeless, ancient weapon hanging from his hip—the living mother-of-pearl hilt hummed as if in silent question, for Thalos had dedicated his life to upholding order.
This creature was defiance of everything he’d vowed to be. The embodiment of everything he meant to extinguish.
Below, Nyxarion brought the creature closer to his chest. Fucking her before his court, showing them the obscene spread of human legs ill-suited to life in the sea. Rumbling some inane encouragement as the exile let her work for his seed.
Jaw flexing, Thalos sneered. Drifting closer still. Enough that he might see what had these Abyssari fools pledging allegiance to a doomed kingdom.
Nyxarion shifted, fins flicking as he neared his completion.
And Thalos saw what was impaled on his cock.
The Siren.
Her gills fluttered with a delicate, uneven rhythm, her head lolling against Nyxarion’s broad shoulder. Cheeks speckled with heat and sunset scales, he watched her fins flick and fan as she tried to balance against her maker. The primitive, almost vestigial fins quivering against ivory thighs.
And despite his discipline, the sight found an anchor behind Thalos’ breastbone. Hooking into something lowborn and primitive he couldn’t name, for it was beneath him.
Utterly.
A reminder of what he was. The rot he would seek and destroy.
It would be easy.
She couldn’t swim, not really. Not in the way of a trueborn Pelagorn. Doomed instead to drifting and kicking. Flailing through the dark, caged at the bottom of a trench that shouldn’t exist. Held prisoner—helpless—until Nyxarion felt the need to empty his balls.
Despicable.
Still…
Thalos watched the light along her hips flare at Nyxarion’s touch. Watched it grow brighter as she worked herself into a lather across his cock.
A pretty thing, if grotesque.
Kissed by sunlight.
Curiosity stirred beneath Thalos’ skin, then. Sharp. Ravenous. A hunger to see what she might do.
It was the scent.
Slick in the water.
Chemical desire battling with his ingrained disgust.
Fins flaring, he slowed his descent, but remained invisible. Hovering just beyond the vortex of celebrating Abyssari. Fingers tightening on Cymareth’s hilt, he felt the core thrum in response, awaiting his command—the Waveblade was eager to sharpen into being, thirsty for carnage.
A simple note would call it forth.
With a single flick of his wrist, he could sink into the heart of their grotesque orgy, right above Nyxarion and his repulsive bride, and the abomination and the exile would be gone with one pass of Cymareth’s edge.
But he lingered.
