Her baby.
Seconds stretched. Endless. The current held its breath.
And then a flash of wicked teeth. "My precious living flame," he murmured through a grin, thumb tracing the edge of her jaw. "My sweet Siren queen. You will have your Thalassari scholars."
Kore's breath stuttered.
The words hung in the current. Shimmering before they settled behind her ribs and ignited.
But he wasn't finished. "And I will summon what remains of the Abyssari scholars, too." His voice dropped, spines flicking. "Those ancient bastards who still crawl through my father's crumbling kingdom in Threnakar."
Something shifted behind his eyes.
Kore felt it—a shadow passing across the sun. A cold current cutting through warm water. The words themselves were simple enough, but theweightof them pressed against her chest like a hand closing around her heart.
Threnakar.
His father's kingdom.
She knew the bare bones of that history. Exile. Banishment. A son punished for daring to believe the Abyssari might be saved from oblivion. But the way Nyxarion saidfather—the way his jaw clenched and his gills flared and his claws curled against her hip?—
There was more.
Old wounds. Still bleeding beneath scar tissue.
She didn't ask.
Couldn't. Not when his eyes had gone distant and dangerous. Not when every line of his body had coiled tight, as if bracing for a blow that hadn't yet landed.
Instead, Kore pressed her palm flat against his chest. Feeling the thunder of his heart beneath her fingertips.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Nyxarion didn't reply.
But his grip tightened.
And he dragged her closer in the dark.
CHAPTER 6
Tail flicking in lazy, effortless spirals, Thalos rode the current's edge. Eager for the coming fight. The delicious flavor of the battle he was quickly becoming addicted to. At his hip, a pouch. One filled with the gift he'd gathered with his own hands.
A prize for the Siren who shone with the hint of not one lineage… but two.
It was a test.
A trap.
He smiled.
Dragging warmth from above into the depths, the riptide pulled him down. Through the thermocline. Into the anoxic dark, flanked by three hunched figures whose ancient fins strained against the pull.
The scholars.
Pelagius was the first to voice his displeasure. Gills gaping wide and labored around every straining breath, his filaments had thinned to pale threads.
"The oxygen thins." Pelagius' voice was a brittle shard of ice. Cutting and sharp. "Another hundred meters and my gills will be thick with trench muck."