Her body—violated. Rewritten. Displayed and exposed.
Nerissa pulled her close.
Collapsing, Kore clung to the female, the ancientVireliiwhose skin carried the scent of deep time.
The gathered Pelagorn watched in silence.
Thalassari from above.
Abyssari from below.
Nerissa held her.
Humming a haunting melody as the girl who’d drowned twice wept for everything she’d lost.
Mourning the death of the girl she’d been.
CHAPTER 7
The descent into Vorynthar’s heart was agony. Liquid relief.
Blistering pain where she ached to be stretched and filled—a reprieve, when her fragile system was stitched back together by the pressure of the Deep.
The current carried them in tense silence. Nerissa’s hand firm on Kore’s wrist as the Tide Mother guided her through the watery depths, where the light was born of the reef below, and the cold claimed everything.
Kore didn’t resist.
Eyes fixed to the slash of a heaving fluke as Nyxarion led them through the dark.
Not once looking back to see Kore, where she clung to the Tide Mother. Every pump of his tail put more distance between them, his anger a lash of brutal pain Kore couldn’t understand. Until he vanished from sight.
Keening low in her throat, Kore tried to call to him. Reaching until she lost him in the dark, and all she could see was Vorynthar’s outline blooming beneath them.
A coral lattice pulsing and vibrant in the deep.
Nerissa gasped, whispering, “Tide preserve us—Nyxarion, what have you awakened in the old waters?”
Kore knew a prayer when she heard it, and she looked, twisting to see Nerissa as they swam.
Eyes wide and fathomless, the Tide Mother was staring into the abyss, shocked by what she saw in the dark. By what Nyxarion had built to cage his fragile Siren in the trench.
But she saw suffering, too. Noticed the way Nerissa’s gills fluttered and stretched. Flaring wide as she tried to fight the pressure and lack of oxygen as they descended.
The Abyssari swirled around them, shades in the gloom. Biolume pulsing in the silent language of the abyss—unhurried, effortless, they moved at Nerissa’s pace. Brushing against the Tide Mother, checking in. Issuing a net of bubbles to keep the water around her rich with oxygen.
And Kore clung.
Watching when an elder male—scales black as volcanic glass, eyes a bottomless inky, pitch—commanded the younger warriors to create a wedge. Breaking the current and easing their passage.
Kore felt it when they passed through the worst of the poisonous layers.
And, with a gasp, oxygen flooded through her gills. Dizzying. Sweet and clean. Filtered by the reef glowing in welcome below them.
It wasn’t enough.
Nerissa wheezed. Drifting, her fins issuing a weak flutter until their escort of Abyssari warriors delivered them to the cradle that had been Kore’s prison.
Willingly, Nerissa settled in the fist of coral. Gasping where the Raskoril was thickest—breathing in the very place that Kore had been entombed. Her eyes clenched shut as she fought to simply breathe against the weight of the Black Sea crushing down upon her.
