A wet, rattling thing that bloomed between them. Crimson threading through the black.
Blood.
Pelagorn ichor.
Curling in a plume of lazy spirals before the Raskoril stretched and reached. Sipping the Tide Mother's essence with a dull throb of light.
"The Crucible of Bone," Nerissa said, forcing the words through her lips. Wheezing in the wet way of things born with their lungs already filled. "The final trial."
Going still, Kore exhaled. Poised to listen. Desperate. Clinging to any scrap of information the ancient female might give.
"Pure combat," she murmured, her claws dimpling the taut flesh of her belly. "No weapons. No laws. Just a war for breeding rights, and Thalos"—her gills heaved—"enters handicapped."
Eyes widening, Kore's breath hummed through her teeth. "Why?"
At this, Nerissa grinned, and it sloughed aeons off her ancient face. "Because he violated Spiral law," she said, spines raised in a morbid wave. "Violated the ancient pact, just to knot you. To breed you before the right had been claimed.” Pulling a breath between her lips, Nerissa trembled. The shiver one that could be felt in the water between them. “The Deep... Nyxarion, he has demanded balance. As is his right. His fins," she whispered, voice fragile. "Thalos’ fins will be bound to his tail. He'll be stripped of the agility that makes him all but untouchable. Nyxarion has a chance," she added, and laughed. Bubbles fizzing through her straining gills. "A real one."
Something settled over Kore, then. A thing that might've been close to peace, if she could be trusted to know such a thing.
A reflection of exactly what she'd told Thalos.
That Nyxarion would come.
And nothing would stop him.
Not the tide. The sun. The Spiral. Not the old gods or new, and not Kore herself.
She nodded, for it was a fate she'd already tasted.
Chains she already knew, binding her to the abyss.
Her biolume pulsed that wicked shade of violet, just for a moment. As if reminding her that she was no longer helpless. No longerjustthe prize to be claimed.
She was the tempest brewing in the tide.
"You see it now," Nerissa breathed, and lifted her bulk. Flicking her fins, just once. Closing the distance between them, she pressed her forehead to Kore's. A deliberate, intimate action. A gesture that carried the weight of her ancient, unfathomable longing. "Sirens were never meant to obey," she whispered, bottomless eyes drifting closed. "You are built to change the tides. From your womb, Nyxarion means to birth his empire. Revive the Deep. Thalos," she laughed, breathless, "sees the power in your veins as a weapon to tame." Eyes fluttering openonce more, her pupils caught the flicker of color pulsing in Kore's veins. "Neither sees what you truly are."
The Raskoril thrummed, polyps reaching for some unseen sip of nutrients in the deep. Pumping oxygen into the cradle.
"The Crucible shall decide which king claims you," she murmured, voice dropping to a subsonic vibration that spoke directly to the base nature of the creature Kore had become. "But you? You shall be the force that shapes the sea itself."
Kore's breath caught. The edge of understanding whispering at the edge of her awareness.
And in her blood, the war of two kings.
Nyxarion's burning fury, the engine of the deep.
And Thalos' icy, blistering storm.
Fire and ice, fighting for dominance—and Kore, caught between. Remade in a cauldron of wrath. Awake, her blood thick with it. Layer upon layer of strata, a fury that outshone their paltry political games. Their posturing and scheming.
She'd been marked by both.
Teeth in her shoulder, knots locked inside her. Their venom rewriting her one brutal, possessive thrust at a time.
Nyxarion had drowned her. Remade her. Pumped her full of seed and demanded servitude for the gift—gratitude. Worship.
Thalos' icy control had crumbled down her throat, between her legs, but he was no less entitled. Just as greedy for her submission. That perfect control was little more than a mask for the ravenous hunger.
