Breeding her in an endless battle against Thalos’ influence, forgotten.
“Kore,” he said again, louder. Stopping just short of shaking her.
She didn’t react beyond a weak flutter of her gills. Action scarcely strong enough to move the current through her filaments. And as he watched, the gossamer veins ofbioluminescent tracing elegant, Abyssari patterns beneath her skin, grew dim. Flickering. Threatening to go dark right before his eyes.
“She needs a physic,” Thalos said, looking to the riptide. His eyes rimmed in white, voice tight with the same strain Nyxarion could feel thrumming bright and wild in his own chest. "We have to take her up. To the shallows. Syrathis left?—"
"No.” It was a single syllable. A stiff denial of Thalassari interference. “She stays in the Deep.” Pulling her close, inhaling the scent of her through his gills, Nyxarion lay one massive palm against her belly. Touching that vibrant pulse. “Did you not see it? Abyssari milk, Thalos. She’s mine. Still of the Deep.”
Thalos made a sound, circling too close. Too bold in his panic. “And she expresses Thalassar cravings, Nyx. We arebothin her veins. Both of us marked that child in a way no one ever has, and her body is—” A muscle bunched at the corner of Thalos’ jaw. Fins fanning in sharp, jagged ripples. “Look at her, Korrides.Look."
Nyxarion did.
That horrible grey had reached her collarbones. Left her skin and scales waxy. Translucent. It was spreading, staining scales that should have blazed with a brilliant sunset. The indigo of his lineage, the molten gold of her transformation, the violet and silver of Asterion's stain—all of it washed away.
Her eyes were open.
Grey-gold irises swallowed by blown, glassy pupils. Fixed on some middle distance that existed beyond the abyss, she was adrift. Looking where neither king might follow.
And her skin.
It was… cold against his. Wrong.
"Kore," he whispered, bumping his forehead to hers. Trying to force her eyes to focus on his own, he filled her vision. "Stay with me. Stay right here. With me."
Her lips parted, but nothing moved through her lips. No Siren song.
There was only a thin, reedy exhale that disturbed the faint cloud of blue milk still swirling around them. Perfuming the current with the flavor of something sweet, but already fading.
Both kings went still.
The argument died between them. Territorial posturing, venom claims, paternity—all of it rendered meaningless by the waxy, unnatural spread draining her of all life.
Reaching out, Thalos' fingers claimed Kore's wrist. And, frowning, the Shallow King measured her pulse. “Thready,” he said, scales flashing before his jaw flexed and he fought it back. “It’s too fast. I have physics at the surface, Nyx. Healers who can?—”
Her head rolled. Breaking from Nyxarion’s gaze, her eyes shifted.
Seeing neither of them, not the surface above or the cloud of blue milk, Kore looked…down.
Toward the black-throated abyss, where she’d been born in dark waters. Fed her first sip of breath from the poisoned tide.
They watched, silent, when her fins tucked tight to her body.
It was a tiny thing.
Instinct.
Something that told her to look into the dark and choose the Deep.
That was all Nyx needed.
Sweeping one arm beneath her knees, he looped the other around her shoulders and crushed her to his chest. Ignoring the garish way her neck rolled, the chill of waxy skin, he simply tucked her face into the hollow beneath his chin and dove into the riptide.
Descending in that gentle embrace, his eyes shifted to her face. Her gills.
They were scarcely fluttering.
The bleaching had touched her gills. Left the filaments pale and thin, as if they’d forgotten their purpose.
