Nyxarion did not smile, despite the vicious pleasure the memory inspired.
"But," Thalos continued, silken and smooth, "shealsoboasts coveted Asterion camouflage. A secret of my bloodline,mychromatophores laced through her pretty scales." Pausing, tearing his gaze away from the Siren to meet Nyxarion's molten glare, Thalos did not blink when he said, "It is a secret that should have already been her death."
Nyx said nothing because the truth of it was etched into every inch of her glorious little body. Because there was nothing at all to dispute.
"Two kings," Thalos murmured, quiet. As if trying not to wake her. Not yet. "Two venoms stamped into her flesh. Signatures on a treaty neither of us meant to sign. But here we are."
"Here we are," Nyxarion returned.
Amusement kissed the edge of Thalos' lips. "I have a claim," he said, and something greedy flickered beneath that polished composure. "A stake in that child, whether it pleases you or not. And I swam through anoxic waters," he added, tone hardening with his resolve, "to wonder aloud, with the only other king in my position, what such a combination might inspire in a child still forming in the womb of a mother marked by influence such as ours."
Nyxarion's heart stuttered.
Claws dimpling cherished, female flesh.
Kore stirred. A weak sound escaped her throat as awareness tugged her up from oblivion.
The silence was weighted.
An anchor, until Thalos wrenched it up from the muck. "Queen's Lightning alone is… formidable," he admitted with atoothy grin. "Resurrected from the annals of long-dead Abyssari in your own line. But paired with adaptive camouflage?" Thalos sucked his teeth, tongue clicking as if in weary concern. "Our kingdoms have never cooperated."
Spines lifting in a slow, murderous fan of barbed keratin, Nyxarion let his lips peel back from his teeth. Issuing a sound of pure irritated wrath.
Because Thalos was circling the point. Orbiting it with that maddening evasivenothing.Manipulating. Doling out useless fragments in measured drips meant to keep a petitioner of his court reaching and desperate.
But this was the Black Sea. The seat of Nyxarion's power.
And he was no one's supplicant.
"Speak what you mean," Nyx snapped, commanding and blunt. His tone laced with irritation while his eyes slid to the Trident embedded in the seabed twelve body-lengths away. Tines pulsing in tune with the rising tide of his wrath. Accessible. But not close. "Or stop speaking."
Amusement flickered across the angles of Thalos' face. There and gone before his attention dropped to Kore once more.
The aurora across her belly had shifted while they spoke—gold fading to deep indigo, then flaring in a sudden wash of violet chased down her hip.
She was waking.
They could both see it.
Growing bold, Thalos drifted closer. Risking another body length of distance so he might watch as she surfaced from the haze of lazy satisfaction Nyx had worked so hard to put her into.
"There have been incidents," Thalos drawled, and did not lift his gaze from the cascade of rare colors shimmering across Kore's skin. "Skirmishes at the edge of the thermocline. Three Thalassari reef breakers wounded in a… disagreement about territory. An Abyssari youth who lost a fin."
Stalling.
Drawing it out, waiting for Kore to wake.
"Then leave," Nyx spat, voice low and dangerous. "Pull your outriders and your court. Take your wounded and swim back to Caelith Mare. The Black Sea doesn't answer to Thalassari law."
Laughing, his icy glare almost thawed. "Leave?" he sang, amused. Savoring the word rolling between his teeth. Tasting it. And then, with a pithy, exaggerated slowness, "No. I think not."
It was a poison, what hung between them. Unspoken.
Thalos' claim. Paternity. Staking territory, anchoring himself to the Black Sea until the child was born.
And with a clarity that made his scales ripple, venting heat, Nyx knew the Shallow King would not be made to move until he had his answer.
"It will be war," Nyx said, whisper-soft as the Trident hummed in his periphery. "Not even Caelith Mare will support you taking a child that belongs to another's bride."