Raw.
Absolute.
The kind of terror that existed beneath sovereignty or defiance. Under every layer of transformation Nyxarion and Thalos had forced upon her.
It was the horror of a mother trying to protect an unborn child.
Thereit was.
Thalos watched it bloom across Kore's features—the way her jaw tightened, the way her fingers pressed harder into Nyxarion's wrist, knuckles blanching white. Tracking the way her bioluminescence along her belly stuttered and dimmed for half a heartbeat before resuming its slow chase of violet and cyan.
Raw, maternal terror.
The most honest thing he’d seen since the Spiral.
Exquisite.
This… This he could work with.
This he could use.
Turning, chin tilted toward the scholars, Thalos said, "You heard her," and the words were laced with an order. Wearing the flimsy skin of compassion. "The girl deserves to understand the risks. All of them."
A silence passed between him and the three elder Pelagorn—brief, weighted, fluent in a language that required no speech.
Pelagius' faded eyes met those that were glacial, polar blue, and something shifted behind those calcified features.
Understanding.
But Syrathis was the first to break the silence. His barbels shivered, retracting to curl against his jaw as though the information they'd tasted was bitter. "A Siren created with two strains of venom may present… considerable complications." Each word arrived measured, deliberate, stripped of the scholarly excitement that had colored his observations just moments ago. "Your body carries the suggestion of active traits from both the Korrides and Asterion bloodlines. The transformation itself was initiated by Korrides' venom, yes—but the Thalassari strain introduced during the Spiral has not remained passive. It has become you, girl," he murmured, and his voice quieted. Blind eyes tracking toward her when he added, "It has been woven into the child's gestational environment."
Pelagius picked up the thread without missing a beat, words low and grave. "Regardless of which sovereign sired the… offspring, the child is developing inside a body marked by competing venom. The clash between them? Could produce an environment unsuitable for life. Organ formation, gill differentiation, neural patterning—all of it occurs in early gestation."
Kore's knuckles whitened where they were anchored on Nyxarion's wrist. The sunset scales along her ribs flickered. Gold drowning in indigo, before surging back. "Could?" she repeated, voice a quiet, horrified little hum.
“Could,” Vorthane replied. Flat and unyielding. Harsh. "We cannot predict the future. Cannot know anything without continued observation. But the risk to the unborn spawn is… significant. You present with variables beyond anything in our records."
But it was Syrathis who struck her with the poisoned barb that would fester and spread… before handing Thalos everything he craved.
"In humans,” he rasped, reedy and thin, “Pelagorn venom is a transformative agent. During gestation," he murmured, barbles shivering with every syllable, "the spawn requires steady dosing of the sire's toxin to continue developing." He paused, then. Open disgust rippling across his ancient features before he added, "Historically, Sirens were created by one male. But in you? Displaying two lineages, and serviced byone?" With a click of his teeth, lip curled, Syrathis sneered.
Shrugging.
Silver eyes narrowed on the ancient, and Nyxarion went dangerously still. The kind of stillness that preceded earthquakes.
Scales flat, utterly still, Thalos let the silence following Syrathis' damnation do its work. Let the fear settle into Kore's bones, into the spaces between her ribs where the child's light pulsed.
Setting his hook as deep as it might go before he began to reel his prey in.
And then, "Surely the scholars of Caelith Mare can do better thanthat,"Thalos drawled, chastising his elders. Chromatophores shivering with a pulse of silver-white light when every eye shifted to him. "Surely there is a way to save the child? To spare it from undue suffering."
Kore's breath hitched. The sound was small, human, and utterly, perfectly devastating.
Fingers touching the pouch at his hip, where Cymareth usually hung, Thalos let his fins spread. A slow, beautiful sweep that let him drift closer toward the Abyssari king and his pregnant bride. "If she were mine," he murmured, slipping closer, fingers spread as if in supplication, "I would be breeding her regularly, as Nyxarion does. Injecting her with venom to ensure the child develops…properly."
Careful.
So careful.