CHAPTER 8
All around her, the reef hummed. A pulse in the dark Kore could feel in her chest. Lodged behind her ribs. Speaking in a language she’d only just discovered, but one that whispered secrets she couldn’t begin to grasp.
Still.
She knew.
Nyxarion.
The depths of his rage shimmered in the reef. Poisoning the water with the acrid scent of so much impotent fury.
Nerissa made a sound in her throat. Fins unfurling in sheets of pale fire that caught the blue glow of Nyxarion’s fledgling kingdom.
And from a pouch slung at her hip, the Tide Mother drew a blade. Not forged, for such a thing was for mankind… but grown.
She could see it in the pearlescent sheen. The organic twist of the hilt, where Nerissa’s fingers fit snug in worn grooves.
Recoiling, Kore trilled a question.
“A bride’s blessing,” Nerissa replied without looking. “ForVirelii—females—it is the first cut. The mark of fertility, a promise of bloodlines. But for you…” Her voice dropped, lowand reverent. “It will be the first time the sea tastes what you are becoming.”
A shiver ran through Kore.
Dread, for she’d been raised in a temple. Knew just what a blade like that was meant to do.
Sacrifice.
The blade’s glow swallowed the shifting patterns cast by the reef, reflecting the Pelagorn's scales as their serpentine bodies slipped through the current all around them.
Her prison was a cathedral of light.
A melody began, then.
Not a song, it was… vibration. The notes coiled around her. Alien, and so achingly familiar.
“Yield.”
Kore hesitated.
But there was no whisper of argument lurking in Nerissa’s gaze, so Kore took a breath
And bent.
“The firstVireliiwere born of the sea’s own breath. Their blood was the first ink, their bones the coral. You,” she murmured, and the blade’s tip traced Kore’s collarbone, “arenotVirelii.” A slice slipped through her flesh, too fast to feel any hint of pain. “You are what comes after.”
Breath hitching, Kore watched the ancient female as the song swelled. As the shadows moved through the black waters.
“The Spiral demands balance,” Nerissa whispered. “Nyxarion gave you the Deep’s strength. Thalos will give you the Shallows’ grace. But this…” The blade mirrored the first cut, drawing another bead of blood in the second. One for each. “This is yours alone, child.”
Kore gasped as the edge dragged along her collarbones, shallow furrows welling crimson.
The pain was bright, clean—a contrast to the dull ache of need.
And she watched her blood curl through the current. Thick and dark before it thinned.
Claimed by the sea.
Nerissa’s song did not falter. Not once, even as ancient fingers followed the blade’s edge, tracing the path of each cut. Mapping Kore’s hips and ribs, the delicate skin above her pelvis, where her pubic bone dipped.
