Page 27 of Brine and Bone
Each word placed with delicate precision.
Tugging the pouch free from his hip, Thalos let the heavy bag dangle from his fingertip. "A gift," he murmured, extending it to Kore. Watching her face for a hint that she'd caught the scent of what lay inside. "Sun clams. A delicacy," he added, but didn't tell her towhom. Didn’t mention the significance.
Spines shuddering, Nyxarion's gills flushed with shocked rage.
But Kore reached.
Opened the pouch with delicate little fingers.
And her breath caught.
The scent of what lay inside made her pupils bloom. Yawning wide and inky dark. Fingers trembling, she plucked a lustrious shell from the bag, inspecting it. Lips parted as she drew the water over her palate. Tasting it.
"What… What is this?"
Eyes gleaming, Thalos reached. Plucking it from her fingers, only to slip a claw between the shells. Cracking it for her.
She snatched it back.
Gulping the soft meat down with a scattered little groan. Her colors rippling with helpless pleasure.
Perfection.
Thalos' teeth flashed, even as he flicked his tail and retreated once more. Watching Nyxarion's spines as Kore tried to openanother clam. "To ensure the child develops properly," he said, voice a careful, measured drone, "perhaps she needs regular dosing frombothstrains of venom?"
For a moment, there was only the sounds of Kore struggling with the clams. Her flimsy Siren claws not sharp enough to separate the shells.
But every male present in that chamber knew the significance.
Knew just what Thalos had proven with little but a bag full of mollusks that only grew whereThalassarilived. Only craved by pregnantVireliiofhiscourt.
"My gift," he said, and his eyes shone, flashing with the intensity of a predator watching prey flail. "To ensure whatever Asterion architecture that exists within the child continues to develop, rather than wither."
The offer hung in the water between them.
Generous.
Reasonable.
And laced with the quiet poison of indentured dependency.
Onhim.
Nyxarion moved.
The massive tail uncoiled a single loop from around Kore, and the Abyssari king leaned forward until the silver of his eyes burned inches from Thalos's face. Every bioluminescent line beneath his obsidian scales blazed electric blue, and the snarl that left his throat was edged with the promise of a savage death. "Manipulative, spinelesscur."
Thalos’ smile didn't waver.
CHAPTER 7
The pressure in the throne room condensed around her.
Nyx.
His snarl reverberated through the current, through her marrow and the jelly behind her eyes. Inside her skull.
Fumbling with a clam, heart hammering at the base of her throat, in her gills, Kore's eyes went wide. Rimmed in white. Utterly bewildered by the tension boiling between kings.
