A mockery of the natural order, a violation condemned to a life between forms. Neither of the land nor the sea, she was abhorrent. Tragic.
Doomed.
Still… she reached for Nyxarion, her biolume pulsing a frantic pattern.
Spines flaring wide and deadly, Nyxarion snarled at her anguish but didn’t approach.
Despite the terror pulsing bright and obvious on her skin.
A cloud of bubbles stole her scream, and Kore floundered. Swimming against Thalos’ current. Up.Away. Thrashing against an impossible weight, feeble and frail.
Thalos laughed. “Pathetic,” he hummed, flicking his wrist to pull her back down. His judgement hung suspended in the dark waters, echoing with the careless cruelty he wore so beautifully, before glacial eyes slid down. Dismissive. “Look at it struggle. It is a parody with legs. Even its form is a betrayal that condemns it to suffering.”
With a snarl that shook the dark waters, Nyxarion surged up. The trident glowing white as the waters around its teeth began to boil and froth.
But Thalos merely lifted a hand. “The Hollow Court will bear witness to its fate.”
And then, as if obeying his every whim, the current shifted.
They came from above.
Emerging from the black, dozens of sleek, glittering forms slipped through the current. Liquid silver. Molten flames. Breathtaking blues and chilling purples. Silver and cerulean, coral-pink and mother-of-pearl white, they moved with unearthly grace, their scales catching and reflecting light until the black waters blazed with a brilliance Kore had never known before.
A constellation of beauty.
Their fins—elegant fans of translucent silk edged in crimson and gold—fluttered and trailed as they descended.
Jaws parting as she stared, Kore hung suspended. Eyes watering with awe, for this was not the Abyssari’s haunting glow.
This was radiance. Pure. Ethereal. Moonlight washed through stained glass.
Her chest ached just to look upon them.
“Stunning, aren’t they?” Thalos crooned, watching her with a cruel smirk, his voice curling through the water, intimate despite their growing audience. He gestured to his people the sort of casual pride that knew only victory. “The Thalassari. Refined. Elegant.”
He moved.
Faster than her eyes could track.
The tip of that invisible blade notched beneath her chin—she could feel the slicing edge slip through the first layers of her skin.
“Behold,” he murmured, watching her with hooded, icy eyes that did not blink, “what you can never be.”
A sound escaped her then, as he tilted her head back with that deadly point—the first sound since slits had erupted through her flesh and Nyxarion had drowned her.
A whimper.
Thalos’ lip curled. “You see now, don’t you? The Abyssari are trench crawlers. Feasting on filth and darkness.” Gesturing at his gathering court with his free hand, silver scales glinting as his fingers flicked, he shrugged. “You are born of rot and decay.”
His eyes raked over her body, then. Lingering on small, half-formed fins. The patches of emerging scales.
It was enough to see Kore fold in upon herself, trying to hide her grotesque form from their perfect beauty. Curling away from his invisible blade.
“Enough,” Nyxarion snarled from below, the timber of his voice deep enough that it brought a surge of slick gushing from her pussy. Igniting the need humming in her blood.
Shame flushed through her, hot and savage.
Because he could smell it.
