Hands braced against rigid muscle, Kore nodded. "If you kill me now," she murmured, fingers tracing opalescent scales, "you'll never know if there might have been… more."
Something shifted in his frigid glare. Growing bunched and tight at the edge of his jaw. A tension that flexed in a tiny betrayal of his interest.
Voice dropping to a whisper, Kore said, "All that potential… all those secrets lurking in my blood… left to rot in the abyss."
His spines flared.
Barely a flick before the flinch was mastered. Tucked away too late.
"Intriguing," he murmured, frigid glare tracing her face. "Or it would be," he said, "if you could control it."
Head tilting, Kore looked up at him with a frown.
"It was a reflex," Thalos hummed in a voice that was almost… soft. Tender. "An accident." Thumb tracing the bow of her lip, he shrugged. "You cannot summon it, else you would have done it the moment I won the Chain of Breath. Defended yourself.Defied me. Used it to punish Nyxarion for abandoning you to my whims."
For a moment, Kore could only stare. Lips parted. Breath ragged. And then, "You're right," she admitted. "I'm desperate. Trying to convince you to think like a king and not a lowborn executioner.”
Grip growing cruel where it was anchored at her nape, Thalos wrenched her head back and made her look. "You wish to be a weapon?" he asked, and laughed, a sound utterly devoid of warmth. "Tell me, sweet Siren. What use is a weapon I cannot wield?"
Pulse beating in her gills, she said, "Let me show you," before she could second-guess herself.
Going still, Thalos' fins flared. Catching the current. Slowing to a stop. Drifting as he watched her with frigid, unblinking eyes. And then, "Show me what?"
"Why Nyxarion would bleed in the sun. Why he’d risk a war his people don't want." She swallowed, her throat working against his grip. "Why he'd defy every one of your precious laws, just to reclaim me for the Deep."
Chips of frigid ice narrowed on a glare. "You think me curious of the breeding habits of trench filth?"
"Yes," she said. Simply. Honest. "You've brought me here. Where no one might witness what you choose to do with your victory. One taste," she whispered. "One chance. Let me prove that I'm more than a womb, more than power you can't control."
Spines flaring, the current tousling their hair with gentle fingers, Thalos bristled.
But he remained.
And then he grinned. "Oh, sweet monster," he purred. "You have no idea what you've just given me."
CHAPTER 17
He let his fingers tighten just to feel her swallow against his palm.
To know she was trapped.
That she could break, if he chose it.
But the foolish little thing had offered herself as a prize. A sacrifice.
She was desperate to survive.
Admittedly so.
Her honesty was… refreshing.
Beguiling.
Something that had his pulse pounding behind his gills. Shocked by her innocence. Her audacity. The way she'd pleaded and offered him every deranged thing he wanted.
"Do you think submission will save you?" he murmured, letting his claws trace her ribs. The elegant line of scales pulsing with Abyssari patterning.
"Yes," she admitted, submitting beneath his grip, tilting her chin back to expose the long line of a delicate throat. Unconscious submission. An aphrodisiac. "Because you're curious. Because you want to know."
