Page 39 of Brine and Bone
Because he understood.
Because he'd tasted a Siren. Her power. The ungainly, delicate thing with her grotesque, alien legs and delicate fins. The Queen's Lightning humming in her veins. And his own Chromatic Camouflage.
Gifts from the Shallows and the Deep.
Both present in her strange physiology.
"You see it, don't you?" Thalos whispered, lit by the ambient glow from Vorynthar far below. "What we've done inside her.Together."
But Nyx wasn't looking at him.
The Sovereign King of Vorynthar was looking into the dark. As if he could see the cathedral of black coral from this great distance.
He couldn't.
But he didn't need to see the sweeping, fledgling arches and towers to see that the reef glowed in sunset colors. Patterns that mirrored the chromatic display rippling across Kore's dainty, pregnant belly.
Her colors.
Not his.
The heretical reef Nyxarion had built from his own blood now wore his bride's signature brighter than his own.
Watching Nyxarion process that, Thalos was still. Quiet.
And then Nyx nodded.
Once.
A single dip of his chin, the muscles along his jaw bunched tight as Nyxarion acknowledged Thalos' claim.
Exhaling, gills flushing crimson, Thalos said, "She's yours," in a careful hum. A voice laced with the dulcet tones of truth. "Yours by law. But the child?" His lips quirked, but he didn't dare smile.
Not now.
Not while he was so close.
"It's as much mine as it is yours," he said, quiet. Careful. "You can see it, written in every inch of her," he murmured, letting his words drag through the current.
Drifting, letting himself sink below Nyxarion and Kore, just a little, appealing to the beast's base nature, making himself less than, Thalos forced his fins flat.
Yielding.
And then, "It will need both of us to survive," he murmured, meeting Nyx's molten glare without blinking. "You know I'm right."
He let Nyx sit with it, just for a moment.
The risk.
A malformed child.
Stillbirth in the trench that should have been a triumph. A celebration.
Kore's delicate body tearing itself apart trying to support something precious that was starving.
The Beast's teeth flashed—every serrated row bared in a grimace that might have been rage or agony. Dorsal spines flared wide, translucent violet-black blades fanning outward until Nyxarion's silhouette doubled in size, every spine trembled with the effort ofnotdriving them through Thalos's throat.
"Enough of your pretty speeches, Asterion," Nyxarion spat, voice ragged. Stripped of pretense. "Give it to her."
