Page 11 of Brine and Bone
But to bring them back was to undo the same laws he'd spent his life upholding. His father had hunted them to extinction before his birth. Written the Accord of Nisyros to subjugate the Abyssari. A law Caelith Mare had been using to prosper for longer than Thalos had been alive.
Thalos' smile grew wide. Toothy.
For with her final breath, Nerissa had ensured the king who had exterminated Sirens, would be succeeded by the one who resurrected them.
Nerissa had knownexactlywhat she was doing, the crafty little minx.
He would have to be exceptional.
Careful.
Every action planned. Each word layered with deliberate intention. Meticulous.
Weaving the art he excelled at—cultivating inevitability.
Because Kore was pregnant.
And he had a claim.
The memory of it, those grey-gold eyes sparkling with violet light, the way she'd arched when he'd buried his knot inside her…
Exhaling through his teeth, a careful hiss of bubbles leaked from his gills.
Arrogance had cost him dearly.
Because then he'd gone and lost the Spiral, failed to take the creature from Nyxarion's monstrous claws.
But she'd been bred by both—seeded and growing ripe, she was marked by the venom of two kings. And Thalos would not leave a child marked by Asterion gifts to rot in the Deep.
Light.
Pulsing and distant, but impossibly bright.
Thalos opened his eyes.
Vorynthar.
The heretical reef had ignited.
Not the dreary muted blue of deep-sea vermin.
No. This was a riot of color—blue and violet and searing gold erupting from the Deep in a column of radiance that lit the black waters with enough force to reach him, even in the shallows. And for a moment, just one breathtaking instant, it outshone even the sun with its brilliance.
Liquid flames.
Painting his opalescent scales in the glow of a flickering sunset.
Beneath him, the Thalassari reef breakers stopped.
Kore.
She was a beacon. Summoning his curiosity with a lure he couldn't possibly resist.
Pressing one hand to the scars lodged beneath his ribs, Thalos looked. Entranced as that molten fire pulsed again.
And again.
Frantic. A desperate, obscene throb that painted a slow, lewd grin across Thalos' lips, for he remembered that particular cadence. The persistent flutter broadcasting Nyxarion's claim across every poisonous fathom of black water.
