Nyxarion lunged.
But Thalos was already gone. A streak of opalescent scales swallowed by dark water.
Leaving nothing behind but the echo of something cruel that would twist and fester long after he'd gone.
CHAPTER 5
The Deep will surely kill it.
Gills flaring wide, Kore dragged a breath through her lips. Inhaling the anoxic dark. Poisoned waters her baby might not tolerate. Pressure that might… might have already…
Sediment swirled in agitated, angry spirals where Thalos had been. Where Nyx had displaced the water with his lunge, and nothing remained but the devastation left undulating in the current.
Horrified, she turned grey-gold eyes to Nyx as chaotic light sparkled beneath her skin. Erratic. Naked, animal fear that stripped her of every defense she'd earned in the Spiral.
"Nyx," she breathed, eyes liquid with unmitigated terror that writhed and pulsed behind her ribs. Both hands drifted down. Fingers splayed across the gentle slope of her belly. Cradling what lay beneath.
The child squirmed.
"I…" Jaw flexing, she searched that fathomless silver gaze. "I…"
She couldn't say it.
Couldn't lend voice to the dread Thalos had inspired.
She could only wrap protection around her belly, clinging to the tiny thing anchored inside her, as if she might save it through sheer force of will alone.
Returning to her, Trident blazing in a grip gone white and bloodless, Nyx snarled. "You will not listen to him." He dropped the Trident, fingers landing instead on her shoulders. "Thalos speaks poison. Manipulation. His words are meaningless."
But Kore could see it.
The muscles bunched tight at the corner of his jaw. Molten silver eyes flicking to her belly before he tore them away. That telling flash of crimson in gills flaring too wide. His every breath ragged and choppy.
Nyxarion Korrides, first sovereign king of Vorynthar, was scared.
Keening, high and fragile at the back of her throat, Kore's grip tightened around her belly.
"He iswrong," Nyx said, pulling her in. Tight. Wrapping her in a possessive cage of muscle and menace. "Cruel. A slippery, malicious bastard who enjoys the suffering he inspires. Do not listen."
His palm pressed her flat, eliminating every possible negative space between them. Forcing his heat to bleed into her skin. Her scales.
But Kore knew a prayer when it was whispered against her ear. Knew the flavor of what was simmering between them, growing ripe in the silence as they clung, one to the other.
Doubt.
The hum rose unbidden from her throat.
Low at first. A trembling note that caught the current and spun it into something soft.
Siren song.
A thing not heard in any ocean for longer than Kore might possibly know. It was a harmonic she spun around the furycoiled in Nyx's chest. A tether knotted and pulled. Feeding calm to the Beast the way Nerissa had once fed an altogether different melody to her.
Desperate.
Clumsy.
Laced with the truth of all that went unspoken between them. Dragging slow circles across the tension knotted at Nyxarion's nape, she tangled her fingers in his hair and clung. Letting the melody swell, haunting and sweet, woven through the current.
