And Sera.
Stoic, unflinching Serakh.
He couldn't wait to watch her face when he described it—Nyxaroth, the great untouchable ancient king of Threnakar, shocked into silence by a tiny, pregnant Siren.
It was going to be glorious.
There'd be hymns written, even if he sang them into being himself.
Kore sagged against him, her bioluminescent light guttering out as the exhaustion swept in.
It was nothing to pull her back. Cradle her against his chest, and tuck her face into the hollow beneath his jaw. Guiding her breaths, he kept her even. "There she is," he murmured, crooning for her. Fingers tangled in the hair at her nape. Kneading the tense muscle until it went slack. "My sweet queen. Such a good girl, defending our babe. Taking what you want."
"Please," she whispered, reaching for him with fingers that trembled.
That single tiny plea. The trust that radiated through so small a gesture.
It triggered something primal in the back of his brain.
Something ancient and male.
Nyx turned without hesitation, sending a careless dismissal over his shoulder. "You heard her," he drawled without bothering to look upon the king of Threnakar again. "The Accord is null. You have nothing to uphold. And you," he hissed, rumbling deep in his chest, "are in her seat."
Rising, Nyxaroth pulled his length free of the throne without speaking.
The ancient king merely swept through the antechamber, flanked by his remaining scholar, and vanished into the corridors.
In his absence, Kore sighed. Eyes glassed and hooded. "Is… is he gone?"
Nyx nodded, sweeping her up. "Yes. Rest now, sweet thing. Peace."
Cradling her in the hush, he watched the Raskoril move. Keeping her cheek pressed to his collarbone. Shielding her as pale filaments unspooled from the living edge of the reef, reaching toward the corpse with blind, primitive hunger. Thousands of microscopic proboscises extended through the water toward the dead scholar.
It made contact.
Flesh dimpled.
Yielded.
Nyxarion had fed the reef from his own blood. His venom. Let it sup at his vitality and built loyalty into the deepest layers of the reef. He'd watched it grow, cleansing the detritus that drifted through the trench.
But there would always be something hypnotic in the act. The way the parasitic coral feasted. No rush or waste.
Just endless hunger and countless, sucking mouths.
The scholar’s face grew hollow and thin as the parasite spun barbs through meat and sinew. Liquefying tissue, slurping down nutrients that were precious and rare in the Deep.
There was a certain kind of symmetry in watching the reef pull minerals from Pelagorn flesh.
That the act wasn't singular.
He'd done this before, during those first desperate tides. When Nyxarion had been nothing but an exile with a humanbride and a reef that refused to thrive in water too devoid of life to support even him.
He'd let the Raskoril feast on one of Thalos' scouts, then.
Watched it consume and reuse what that hapless fool had no use for. Splayed ribs became the cradle that had kept his divine flame protected from the poisoned tide. Coiled vertebrae the foundation of the spine that now framed the throne's central support.
And now, as if guided, she had fed the reef again.