Page 53 of Brine and Bone
Hadn't realized war had a distinct flavor, before she tasted it in the water.
The sharp tang of ozone preceding a storm ignited her nerves, scorching her gills. Making her gasp. Cringe against him. Even when his scales lifted in a prickling wave, venting searing heat that signaled his readiness for battle, she clung.
Dazed by the speed with which he’d turned from the placid king to the beast.
Without a word, bristling with possessive wrath, he shoved her behind him. Pressing her to the coral with the weight of his tail.
She stilled.
Submitting, for this wasn’t the wrath the Shallow King inspired with such arrogant ease.
This was far older.
This had festered in his marrow.
Heart thundering against her ribs, Kore peered around his shoulder.
The throne loomed against the back wall of the antechamber—grown from that strange altar of black coral where she had once been caged. Where Nyxarion had kept her contained at the bottom of the trench, feeding her oxygenated water as she became something more.
But it was occupied.
And at first glance, she wasn’t sure if what she was seeing was real.
Dwarfing even Nyxarion’s colossal frame, she saw broad shoulders. Thick arms and corded muscle. Ancient scars that left pale ridges across obsidian scales. A being weathered by countless tides, carved from the depths of the deepest trenches.
And yet… one she recognized.
For carved into those angular features, she saw Nyxarion’s heavy jaw. The very same predatory beauty that made it hard to tear her eyes away, even when he was being monstrous. Black hair streaked with more silver, but framing a face dominated by the same molten silver glare.
Older. Ancient, maybe.
But unmistakable.
Her mind recoiled even as understanding crystallized in her chest.
Because she knew exactly who was coiled around the throne that had been her cage. As though he had every right to be there. Eating her sun clams.
The sovereign king of Threnakar. The king who’d exiled his own son for trying to return Sirens to the seas, and failing.
Nyxarion's father.
And those ancient silver eyes were fixed on Kore.
CHAPTER 12
Father.
The word curdled in Nyxarion's chest as he looked upon the only other living Korrides.
Nyxaroth.
Sovereign king of Threnakar.
Lounging inVorynthar'sthrone, tail coiled throughout the remains of what had once been Kore's cradle. The seat of power Nyx had shaped from bone and reef, now violated by the king who had always insisted the Black Sea was an uninhabitable waste.
Untamable.
The male who'd exiled him. Who'd watched Nyxarion's first bride drown, laughing at his failure, then used her misshapen corpse as evidence for the tribunal that had made his only son an outcast.
