She stilled.
Fins flicking in alarm.
Thalos
The Shallow King had been there.Inside her. She could taste his brine on the tide. Could feel the frost of his venom still curling through her veins, because his bite was still weeping at her nape.
And for one long, disorienting instant, Kore was stripped of sovereignty. Neither Siren nor queen.
Reduced.
To the priestess sacrificed to a deaf sun god, split asunder on an altar wetted by vestal blood.
A slave sold for a handful of drachmas, before she drowned in the Aegean Sea.
The chalice claimed and filled by a leviathan of the Deep, only to be passed between warring kings.
Reduced to little more than a creature of desperate, writhing need. For their touch. Their venom.
Their seed.
Chest rumbling against her cheek, Nyxarion began to purr. Soothing her. A low, decadent thrum that rattled the brine in her bones. Keeping her soft. Pliant. Pumping seed inside her with lethargic, gentle thrusts, he sluiced through all that was swollen and tender.
Held captive in his arms, thighs spread by greedy hands, she let him use her. Sedated by the song vibrating through her as she clawed her way back through the layers of chemical fog. Rebuilding herself in careful, measured fragments.
Remembering.
The way Thalos' pale fingers had left bruises on her hips. The frosty burn of his venom as it crawled through her blood. Nyx's jealous, desperate snarl as they fought over her.
And when her temper ignited, it ran hot and furious. Incandescent. Coming from deep inside, burning behind her ribs. An ember in tinder.
Weak at first, before it started to blaze.
Furious at both. At Thalos, with his poisoned gifts and calculated manipulation. At Nyxarion for taking her choicesandher body without hesitation. Livid at both for the war fought over her body, treating her womb as just another territory to be conquered.
Violet light crackled through her veins. Racing down her arms, it tracked the delicate column of her throat, dancing in her gills.
The Queen's Lightning.
She felt it threaten to surge. Pressing against her skin.
Drawing a sharp breath through his teeth, Nyx went still. Stiff. Buried inside her, hands possessive and clinging. But his purr stuttered into silence.
Good.
He would know what it was to burn. Helpless. His agency shoved aside for whatshewanted.
The lightning crackled.
Brighter.
Searing hot.
And then she felt it.
A flutter below her navel. Tiny. Movement that robbed her of breath and extinguished the cauldron of wrath before it might boil over.
Kore's attention shifted in. Hands moving between his body and hers, cupping the gentle swell of her belly.
