Page 95 of Brine and Bone
Sera pinned her king with a look that spoke volumes.
"If she is not tended properly,” she said, and her tone was deadly soft, “if she is left to fast while your territorial idiocy consumes you, Kore will give everything she has to that child." She blinked. Once. Gills spreading as she drew a slow breath between her lips. "Everything, Nyxarion. Do you understand?”
He did.
The ultimate sacrifice.
Surrender at the bottom of the world, piece by piece, until the life he’d put inside her consumed her.
"Yes,” he rasped, holding Sera’s gaze without ire. "Yes. I understand."
A flash of silver in the dark was his only warning before Thalos moved, pale fingers working against the tie keeping the pouch of mollusks at his hip.
Without a word, Thalos passed the bag to Nyxarion.
He took it.
Cracking their shells, Nyx slipped that succulent flesh between Kore's lips and watched her take it.
Watching her throat work as she swallowed, he held his breath and waited for the color to return to her pale cheeks.
It didn’t.
For beyond the nest, the antechamber had gone completely white. The corridor beyond was the same. And beyond that, faint and growing fainter, the keening of his people carried through halls that no longer glowed.
Vorynthar was synchronizing with its queen.
The entire reef surrendered, echoing dreadful solidarity to match the woman at its heart.
But in the warm dark of her den, Kore's belly pulsed with the only color left in the dark.
CHAPTER 22
Tides bled one into another.
Time that yawned in an endless blur of vigilance.
Kore did not wake. Not truly.
She stirred when food was pressed against her lips. Hummed when seeking warmth, and shifted occasionally only to burrow deeper into her nest.
But that was all.
Nyxarion held his vigil. Counting every flicker of her gills. Obsessing over each pulse of light across her belly where the child grew. All the while watching something irreplaceable dim by excruciating degrees.
And the Trident never left his grip.
He couldn’t help the need for it. The way his palm ached without it, or the instinct that screamed that if he set it down, even for a moment, disaster would strike. Annihilation would rob him of everything he cherished.
Vorynthar was a tomb. Glowing with a nauseating pale hum that felt wrong, diseased, the reef was still. Mirroringher.Barely eating, the Raskoril was still, as if frozen. No longer growing at the reef breakers' commands, it was a silent skeleton of the glorious kingdom he had built for her.
Coiled at the mouth of the den, his back to the throne room, Nyxarion waited. Trident at the ready.
Silent. Awaiting anything bold enough to test his fragmented patience.
Only Thalos dared.
Swimming between the surface and the trench, Thalos moved with a restlessness that hinted at something dark. Mania. Relentless travel, ceaseless movement. He was gone only long enough to return with pouches of sun clams bursting at the seams. Hunted krill and brought shimmering roe in jiggling bunches.
