A rejection of Thalos' claim, she'd flung him back. Sent him tumbling into the dark. That creature of perfect, crystalline arrogance, immaculate beauty. Cast aside like so much trash.
At her whim.
Flexing webbed fingers, Kore marvelled at the residual hum. Still there.
Just waiting for her to let it out.
Anchoring one trembling, webbed hand to the coral, Kore took a breath. Pulled the black waters through her lips and let the rough surface of the Raskoril bite into her skin.
"Come on," she murmured, and let her eyes drift closed. Toying with the memory of Thalos' cruel grin. The murderous sheen in his glacial eyes as he'd reached to claim.
Digging deep, beyond the exhaustion threaded through her blood, her aching muscles stretched taut around Nyxarion's sperm. Kore imagined the flash of violet light. The lancing barb of power when it had burst from her chest.
Breath quickening, pulse hammering at the back of her throat, she frowned. Straining. "Please," she hissed, a fine net of bubbles issuing forth from her gills.
But nothing happened.
The fires stayed as they were. Banked. Dormant and stubborn.
Teeth bared, jaw flexed as she tried to force it into being with the single-minded focus of a former priestess, Kore trembled under the strain.
But her skin merely pulsed with the glow of her bioluminescence. Nothing more. Utterly absent the electric fury that had thrown a king clear across the Gauntlet as if he was nothing.
Unreachable.
Utterly.
With a curse, she abandoned the effort. Eyes snapping open. Counting the beats of her heart. Inspecting her skin for something, anything, that would suggest she was close.
But there was nothing.
As if it had never been.
A cramp made her belly tighten and shift. Distended with seed, it was a reminder. That Nyxarion had claimed her. Fuckedher before the courts. Bred her as he bragged about it. Greedy and cruel. But he was the monster she knew.
The one who'd won, when Thalos had been so close.
Breath ragged in her gills, she smiled despite her failure to summon it, for she knew how to be helpless. That this… this lightning wasn’t hers to command. Not really.
It was a storm.
A thing built of spite, fed by fury. Meant to build until it hadn’t a choice but to break.
Groaning, voice a musical rasp that made Kore flinch, Nerissa stirred. Milky eyes flickering open, her chest lifting with shallow, laboured pulls.
Kore drifted closer. "Nerissa?"
But the ancient Virelii didn't respond. Eyes rolling white, her gills spreading slightly less than her fins, as she strained against the crush of the Deep.
Because the pressure in Vorynthar was all wrong for her. Too heavy. Brutal on her delicate system.
The abyss abhorred delicate things from the Hollow Court. Creatures meant for warmth and beauty.
And as Kore looked, a simple fact emerged in her mind.
Nerissa was going die.
"Please," Kore called into the abyss, frantic as the Tide Mother's head lolled in a sickening roll.
