Page 56 of Brine and Bone
A feral light flashed in eyes swallowed by the inky dark of ballooning pupils. The silver irises reduced to a thin, seething band, and Nyxarion tilted his head.
Slow.
Calculated.
The action of a predator who had long ago stopped pretending to be anything else.
"Look around you," he murmured. "This sea, this poisoned tideanswers to me, Father. Every current. Every creature andpolyp that should not be here. Each and every breath you take exists because I willed it into being." His fingers tightened around Kore's wrist.
And then, tugging her free of his shadow, he pulled her forward despite the way she'd gone stiff and reluctant.
She blazed in the dark.
Sunset scales caught the antechamber's dull, blue glow and scattered it.
"I am certain the ‘nothing’you speak of cannot be her," Nyx purred, his tone dropping to something reverent as Kore curled tight against his side. "Even your faded eyes cannot look upon her and see an abomination," he crooned, nosing at the edge of her jaw. Scenting the beguiling flavor of his tiny, gravid queen. "My glorious bride is the most magnificent creature in all seven seas," Nyx murmured, tossing each syllable with deliberate care.
A gauntlet thrown.
And for a moment, he indulged. Admired the way Kore's scales rippled with violet and gold, shifting wildly to storm-glass green before flirting with frosty silvers. Obsessing over grey-gold eyes that lifted to meet the ancient glare of Threnakar's fossilized king.
And did not flinch.
Nyxaroth's sneer deepened, carving fresh lines into a face weathered by centuries of stagnant rule. For one fractured heartbeat, something else flickered in his gaze. A thing that might have been recognition. An ancient predator acknowledging another's successful hunt.
But the contempt gushed in too fast to be sure.
"Impressive?" he hissed, bitter and acerbic. "You break the Accord—the very law thatsavedour kind from annihilation—and you want accolades for it?" Jabbing one gnarled finger toward Kore's luminous form, he bared his fangs. "Praise? Forthat?" Gills flaring crimson, clouding the water between themwith the scent of his disgust, Nyxaroth’s composure crumbled. “Another Siren," he seethed, scales lifting to purge the heat of battle the ancient hadn’t felt for longer than Kore had been alive. "Anotherheresy. And for what? To risk war over a tight human cunt?"
It was crude.
A reduction of the argument Nyx had never stopped having with his father.
One he did not care to continue now, with Kore clinging to his scales. The aroma of her fear lay heavy in his gills, bleeding through his lungs in jagged pulses.
Palm landing on the small of her back, pressing her close to his skin, he steadied her and refused the bait. Denying his father the satisfaction of watching him bristle.
In its place… a smile.
Something born of the dark. Forged in a poisoned tide, tempered by the heat of a divine flame.
“You think I tamed the Black Sea and risked the wrath of Caelith Mare for her body?” he drawled, head tilted to inspect the elder Korrides from slitted glare.
Nyxaroth spread his fins. Shrugging, letting the silence speak for him.
And then, shaking his head, a huff of laughter escaped Nyx’s gills. “How disappointingly…shallow,” he drawled, drinking in the way his father's eyes narrowed at the coy insult. “That you continue to mistake consequence for cause? At your age?” Tongue clicking, Nyx sucked his teeth. “Pathetic. Truly.”
“You insolent?—”
But Nyx wasn’t finished. Hadn’t even truly begun. “Your repulsive submission to Caelith Mare was never preservation,” he said, lacing his words with a strange, toxic sort of kindness. “Just as Sirens did not cause the Great War, and the Accord was never intended to save the Abyssari.” Lip curling, Nyxarion senthis claws through Kore’s hair, stroking that glorious heat just to watch the sunset blaze beneath her skin. “They fed you a taste extinction and laughed when you called it peace,” he rumbled, molten eyes flicking up. Pinning Threnakar's envoys with the weight of his bottomless disgust. "Our ancient lines are dying. The trenches so depleted of resources we could barely sustain our young, much less produce more."
Nyxaroth's gills flared, his eyes flashing with a mirror of what burned in Nyx’s own chest, but no rebuttal emerged.
Because there was nothing to say.
"Eons," Nyx growled, voice a dangerous hiss. "That is what you surrendered. Generations of our kind left to rot. Diminished. While you watched our bloodlines thin and fade away.” Dragging his claws down Kore’s spine, tracing her elegant lines, Nyxarion sneered. “I summoned the Deep Court,” he said, “because my bride carries a child the sea has not seen in three generations. New blood, sorely needed. Becausesheasked for information.”
It was a twisted version of the situation, certainly.
