Page 24 of Brine and Bone
This was the bright, haunting lure of a Siren.
He could feel her. Knew she was close. That specific, particular displacement of a body that vibrated with something that didn’t quite belong.
Legs.
Churning water in a rhythm that was clumsy. Tasted like prey. Distinct. Utterly unmistakable.
Moving through the tight corridors, avoiding the Raskoril polyps reaching ghostly fingers toward them, he slipped through the shadowed corridors. Nosing through dark waters, following the scent of her perfume.
Anticipation coiling hot and liquid behind his ribs, Thalos led the way. Dragging the scholars along behind him, he followed the ribbon of slick threading through Vorynthar's twisting halls.
His every nerve alight with hunger as they drew closer.
Materializing from the dark, four Abyssari sentries peeled away from hidden alcoves.
Unseen until their dark scales broke away from the gloom. Each one easily twice Thalos's bulk, their massive bodies bred for the crushing weight of the deep.
The largest fixed Thalos with a glare that held all the warmth of volcanic glass. "Asterion," he said, absent any hint of respect. "Come."
Fingers tracing the secret edge of the pouch at his hip, lips flirting with the edge of a smile, Thalos filed the insult away and followed without a word.
Preserving his energy for the true battle.
The sentries led them deeper into Vorynthar's heart.
Where the city's outer chambers were vaulted and sprawling, the inner passages—those that led to the throne room—were compressed. Narrow. Every surface armored in dense Raskoril growth, the coral was darker here. Older. Its bioluminescence muted to a sullen amber hue.
It was a bunker.
The complete opposite of his seat in Caelith Mare, with its open sky and grand currents. The junction of tides. A place of power, where all seven ocean currents flowed tohimfrom every direction.
Vorynthar's heart was a fist.
Tight control of the dark waters.
When they exited one of the tunnels, it was to find themselves in an antechamber.
One already occupied.
Angler fish.
A pair of enormous females flanked the throne room. Each the size of a Thalassari war-mount. Their massive bodies swaying with the slow pendulum rhythm of creatures that knew nothing but the screaming ache of endless hunger.
Glowing lures dangling before their gaping jaws, their mouths hung open. Lined in rows of translucent needle teeth that curved in. Not in threat, but in the lazy, permanent gape of predators that never slept.
Fins flared, Pelagius stopped swimming, alarmed.
Thalos did not.
That there was life here, thriving in the poisoned tide, did not surprise him any longer.
The throne room opened before him, and there, lounging in the center of his fortress, Nyxarion waited.
But it wasn't the yards of obsidian muscle, nor the strange shape of the throne itself, but the slender figure partially obscured from view that caught Thalos' gaze.
Kore.
Legs tucked beneath her, cradled in the coil of Nyxarion's tail, the Siren's scales threw warm light across the dark plating of his coils.
