Page 94 of Brine and Bone
Thalos drifted to his side, his mirror as they watched it spread.
And then, from somewhere deep in the outer corridors, an Abyssari voice echoed that shock.
Then another.
Before there were dozens of voices united in horror as Vorynthar took on its Queen’s ghostly shade. The dreadful absence of death. Abyssari song swelled through the trench as Nyxarion watched the spread. Helpless, utterly unable to do anything to slow the bleeding. To close a wound that wasn’t open.
Fingers landed on his forearm. Squeezed.
Nyxarion didn't shake it off. Didn’t look to see those pale fingers gripping him in some grotesque attempt to offer comfort.
He couldn’t tear his eyes from the grey woman staring at nothing. Couldn’t hear anything beyond the roaring static crashing against the inside of his skull.
The archway darkened.
Serakh hit the antechamber in a blur of black scales, braids streaming behind her, eyes sweeping the throne room as she processed the scene in a single sweep. And then, “Move,” she snapped, and dove between them.
One palm flat against his chest, she shoved Nyxarion back, and with the other, caught Thalos across the sternum. Shoving them both aside without regard for rank, for her eyes were locked on Kore.
Touching her gills, fingers moving absent any whisper of hesitation, Sera weighed the pulse fluttering in Kore’s throat.Mapped the swell of her belly, still flickering with the whisper of the child’s light.
And then, in a slow sweep, she straightened. Turning to face them, her eyes blazing with a glare that might have cost any other Pelagorn their fins, she said, “She isn't dying, you absolutefools."
Lips parting, Nyxarion’s throat worked around an aborted sound.
Hands sweeping toward the bleached coral, her scowl flicked between kings, lips peeling back to expose wicked teeth. "Kore isnesting."
Without waiting for permission or offering an explanation, she swept Kore into her embrace. Lifting her from the throne, she snaked past the throne and slid through the hidden crack beyond.
Where Nyxarion had built a nest, thinking himself clever. Prepared to tend his pregnant bride.
The sovereigns followed Sera without a word, slipping into that hidden den.
Heat bloomed bright around them, gushing from distant volcanic vents. Rich with minerals from the deep earth. A place lined with coral and fat, anemone fronds swaying in the thermal drifts, their tendrils trailing through the water. A small, intimate space filled with Raskoril blooming along the ceiling and walls in clusters of color. Petals lush and dense.
It was a den.
Vorynthar was a fortress built to contain exactlythis—its precious, beating heart. A place where Nyxarion had meant to worship his dynasty. Not bury it.
Sera lowered Kore onto the cushion-coral bed.
The moment her spine touched the surface, Kore eyes flickered open.
Hands that had been limp and taken by the current twitched before they moved. Her fingers, pale and ghostly, slipped through the flora, testing the textures. Issuing a tiny sound when something pleased her. Rejecting one, selecting another. She gathered a fistful of petals and pressed them against her lips before discarding them. Crooning when she reached for a patch nearest the vent.
Nyxarion watched, awe and terror braided together in his chest. Unblinking as he watched her settle in and anchor herself to the reef.
And it was Thalos who broke the tense silence. "This is… nothing like Thalassari nesting. But perhaps this is merely part of what we’ve written in venom?”
Sera glanced back, eyes narrowed as she looked between them. “She needs food. Constant nutrition. Anything and everything. Sun clams, trench roe, marrow kelp, thermal krill. I don't care if you strip the seabed and the shallows. She must eat. As much as she will take." Sera's jaw tightened, her fins tucked flat as she slipped from the tight confines of the nest.
Hesitating, before she added, “Nesting Virelii will redirect every nutrient in her body to the child. Every mineral. Every reserve of fat she has built over the last tides will be cannibalized. Muscle first, then marrow. And then she’ll sacrifice her organs, until there is nothing left to give.”
Nyxarion’s breath caught.
Hitching between his gills.
"The temperature will accelerate gestation." Sera gestured toward the floor, where thermal currents shimmered upward through the coral. "Warmth quickens development. The child will grow faster here than anywhere else, but it means the drain on Kore will be exceptional."
