He savored how she tried to track his movements, too slow, too clumsy to be anything but a vessel.
A hole for Nyx’s cock.
"After I fill you with my seed," Thalos whispered, his voice soft, his cock growing thick and painful where it was imprisoned inside his vent, "the second trial will begin—the Chain of Breath." His lips curved into a cold smile as her eyes widened. "We'll drag you to the surface, where the beast from the trench will suffocate while I breathe the air with ease."
He let one claw trace her silhouette through the current, never quite making contact. "The law favors those born of the shallows here, too. Your precious Nyxarion will gasp and writhe while you are made mine by Pelagorn law. And then,” he breathed, twisting through the current, “it will be over.”
For a long moment, the creature only turned in place, using the webbing between her fingers to help her rotate. Thalos watched with clinical detachment, cataloging her clumsy movements, the graceless way she fought the current.
And then she laughed.
It startled him.
A broken, breathless sound, but a laugh all the same. It was a ripple of pure, cynical amusement that perfumed the current with a tangy, sour note.
“It doesn’t matter which of you wins,” she returned in a voice that foamed and danced between them. Delicate. Dissolving between one breath and the next. “You or him, the outcome is the same.”
Going still, Thalos’ flawless composure cracked. Disturbed by the curious reaction.
One he hadn’t been expecting, for it wasn’t fear or pleading.
It was…
She laughed again, teetering on the edge of hysteria. “Nyx will come for me,” she whispered, and then her eyes met his, and Thalos felt the interest bubbling behind his ribs boil over. “Like he did on the surface, wheneverythingtried to stop him.” Fins flaring, she spun in an elegant spiral, webbing between her fingers stretched wide as they might go. “Win this trial. Touch me first. It doesn’t matter. Nothing you do can stop him. Not the sun. The tides, or the gods themselves.” Lips curling, her voice dropped, intimate and haunted as those beguiling eyes gleamed with something approaching fanatical belief. “I’ve prayed to old gods and new, Thalos. But nothing…” she shook her head. Hair drifting around her in a cloud.
Her gaze grew hardened, then. And despite his disgust… Thalos found himself transfixed.
By the certainty.
The devotion Nyxarion had earned with his cock.
“Nothing will stop Nyxarion from coming for me,” she said again. “Not even you.”
It was a challenge.
A gauntlet thrown.
And then it was Thalos’ turn to laugh, head thrown back, delighted by the challenge. The refreshing scent of a battle to be won with skill and cunning.
“Oh, little Siren,” he crooned, leaning in. Close enough that his breath touched the fine hairs along her arms. “You think he is the only monster in the deep?”
The color along her edges fluttered—her biolume pulsing with her alarm.
Cymareth sang to life in his grip, and he ordered the currents to bind her. Tight enough that her pupils bled into the gold, dilating with something raw.
Terror.
“You will be mine,” he murmured. “For a brief moment, before you belong to the sea.”
Gills fluttering, her breath hitched.
He could feel it. The sound something that made the water shimmer beneath his scales.
“Nyxarionwillcome for you,” Thalos whispered, flicking his tail to coil around her without touching. Never touching. “And I’ll make him watch. Make him listen when you scream forme, little Siren. Not him.”
CHAPTER 11
From above, the piercing ring of a horn made Thalos flinch. Reeling back as if scalded.
