Page 99 of Brine and Bone
Nyxarion's grip on the Trident ached, while Vorynthar hung suspended. Swallowed by a chasm, caught between slaughter and spectacle.
But Thalos squeezed his shoulder. Tugging him back, pressing his lips to Nyxarion’s ear, he whispered, “Look.”
In the mouth of the den, where a Siren was held in the merciless grip of a pale torpor, a single pearl of color speckled the wall of ghostly white.
Pink.
Faint, so delicate, that at first, he dismissed it as a trick of the competing biolumes battling in his throne room.
But another followed—pale gold bleeding through bleached white near the den's threshold. Then violet. And indigo.
Color.
For the first time since the nesting began.
And Nyxarion turned just in time to watch a new dawn rise at the bottom of the sea...
CHAPTER 23
Pain was the balast that dragged her up from the dark.
It was a fist closing around her spine, twisting until every vertebra screamed in exquisite agony. Until she arched, eyes snapping open on a strangled gasp. Pulling a ragged breath through her lips, her body went rigid.
Seizing around something enormous and utterly, terribly unstoppable.
There were voices.
Raised in anger, mocking and cruel.
It didn't matter.
Nothing did.
There was only the great pressure sawing her pelvis into pieces.
Her baby.
It was coming.
Anemones retracted in a unified wave, pulling their fronds tight against the volcanic rock. Soft corals that shifted to match her rhythm, the patterns of her contractions.
Kore's scales blazed.
White to violet, and gold, laced with a deep, furious indigo. Her chromatophores fired in a chaotic shower. Distress broadcasting the magnitude of her misery.
A shape moved through the narrow entrance of her den. One she recognized at a glance.
"Sera," Kore moaned, reaching. Fingers spread, webbing pulled taut as she tried to touch to the beautifulVirelii.Desperate to cling to something real.
Crooning that same, sublime song, Sera hummed her greeting. Tension etched around her eyes. "Big breath in, push it out through your gills," she said, filling the den with her presence. Pressing cool hands to Kore's belly. "The sea will help, if you let it."
"I don't—" A gasp carved the breath from Kore’s lungs. Robbing her of speech and language as another contraction bore down upon her. Fingers curled into claws, hunching around herself, Kore rode it out. Eyes squeezed shut until it eased. "I… I don't know what to do," she sobbed, eyes rimmed in terrified white. "Sera. What do I do?"
A smile kissed the edge of Sera's lips, then. And she stroked Kore’s hair back. Claws carding through the tangled tresses. "I think you're having a baby, sweet Siren. Full Pelagorn. Fins, gills, scales, and a tail." Hands stroking, Sera worked to gentle her. Petting in soothing, long sweeps. "Your body knows. All you must do is submit to it.”
Shaking her head, eyes wide and liquid, Kore squealed. “I… Ican’t. Sera, I can’t.”
"You will,” Sera sang, and shifted to position herself between Kore’s legs, pressing her knees apart with firm, clinical pressure. “It will happen fast. The sea’s mercy, for daughters she adopted."
