Page 95 of Queen of Tempests and Sin

‘You’re safe,’ I murmured, holding the bubble steady with a flicker of power.

Then the shadows came. Long, sleek bodies cut through the water around us—my mermen. Scaled tails flashed silver and green, their movements fluid and deadly, tridents clutched in strong hands.

Cordelia’s eyes went wide, her mouth parting. ‘Holy shit. Actual mermen. Do they all look like… that?’ Her gaze flicked over their bare torsos, the rippling muscle, the ink curling across their skin. Then she shot me a sideways look, lips quirking. ‘Well, damn. You didn’t tell me Genesion came with eye candy.’ She leaned closer, stage-whispering as if it was some grand secret. ‘If this whole god-of-the-sea thing doesn’t work out, you could make a fortune selling merman calendars.’

Despite the fury burning in my veins, a rough laugh caught in my chest. Gods, only she would ogle my soldiers at a time like this.

The hunting party circled us, guiding us wordlessly through the depths. We followed them towards the surface breach, to the factory ship poisoning my domain.

The hull came into view first—an iron leviathan squatting on the sea as if it owned her. A hundred and seventy-nine meters long, over twenty-six thousand tons of steel and greed. A floating slaughterhouse, capable of processing six hundred tons of fish a day and housing a crew for months at a time. Nothing but a machine built for ruin.

Beside me, Cordelia’s breath hitched. Her hand pressed lightly to the bubble wall, eyes wide as the enormity of it sank in. ‘That thing’s a city,’ she whispered. ‘A city built to kill.’

Her words sharpened the fury in my chest. These vessels were more than ships—they were parasites, stripping life from the water until nothing remained but silence and bones.

I raised a hand to the mermen circling us, a gesture of thanks. They inclined their heads, eyes gleaming with pride, before they vanished into the depths.

Then I caught Cordelia’s hand, and with a twist of power, we stood on steel. The deck of the factory ship shuddered beneath our feet, men freezing where they stood as I grew to my true godly size, my trident coalescing in my grasp—long, gold, dangerous, humming with the promise of wrath.

Their eyes widened. Their courage failed; they knew who stood among them.

‘You flout my laws,’ I thundered, voice carrying like a storm across the sea. ‘You poison my waters. You strip life from my domain with your factory ships, your nets that take more than the sea can give. I forbade the supertrawlers. I forbade the slaughter of the endangered. I decreed limits, so the ocean might endure… but you defy me. You take without care, without balance. Mercy is gone, and the punishment for breaking my law… is death.’

The men quaked where they stood, pale and trembling.

I slammed the trident against the deck, and the ocean answered with a roar. From the abyss, shadows stirred, vast and terrible. A great shape broke the surface—serpentine, scaled, its maw lined with teeth the length of a house. A monster born of my will and the sea’s fury.

The ship bucked beneath us as waves reared high, salt spray cutting through the air like knives. Cordelia stumbled, and instinct took hold. I lowered my godly bulk, and in a heartbeat drove the trident down once more. The water obeyed—rising, swirling upward in a coiling column that caught us in its grasp.

The sea lifted us clear of the deck, a spiralling fountain of living water that bore us high above the chaos. Beneath us, the crew screamed as the beast coiled around the hull, scales glinting bronze and green beneath the fractured light, squeezing, dragging, lifting the factory ship as if it were nothing but driftwood. Metal shrieked, snapping like bones, and with a single devastating lunge, it swallowed the factory ship whole, dragging it into the abyss as though it had never existed, and not a drop of oil touched the water.

Cordelia clung to me, her eyes wide with shock. And then, with a flicker of thought, I pulled us away.

We reformed on a secluded beach, far from the stench of men and machines. The surf broke softly against the sand, as though the sea itself sighed in relief.

She rounded on me, breathless. ‘What the actual fuck was that?’

‘A drákon,’ I said, my voice still rough with power. The word thrummed in the air, old as the tides. ‘A sea dragon. Serpentine and ancient… one of the few still bound to me.’

She blinked, staring at the place where the ocean had already gone calm again, as if nothing had happened. Then she looked back at me, half-shocked, half-thrilled. ‘You’re telling me you’ve got pet sea dragons stashed down there like guard dogs?’

Despite the storm still burning in me, a smile tugged at my mouth. ‘Not pets, Little Red. Allies. And they do not answer to anyone else.’

She dragged a hand through her wet hair, then glanced back at me, eyes too bright. ‘Remind me never to get on your bad side, Poseidon.’

Her words were snark, but I caught the tremor underneath, the unease she was trying to mask.

I reached for her, cupping her jaw, forcing her gaze to mine. ‘They will never harm you,’ I said, steady and certain. ‘Neither will I. You are mine, Cordelia. My kardia. Whatever monsters answer to me, whatever storms I call, they will only ever protect you.’

Her breath caught, that spark of fear easing just a fraction under the weight of my words.

I turned to survey one of my most treasured places. I’d seen more landscapes than I could count, but nothing hit me like the west coast of my private island. Sheer cliffs dropped into the Pacific, their ridges knifing down into hidden beaches below. Waterfalls tore down the rock face in white torrents, vanishing into sea caves before bursting free again, their roar swallowed by the pounding surf.

It was fierce, untamed, shaped by storm and time into something savage and breath-taking. But when I turned back to Cordelia, she’d slipped off her garment and stood in nothing but a bikini. Even that wild beauty of this coastline was nothing compared to her. She was rawer, sharper—fire to the sea, and gods help me, I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted the ocean itself.

I stepped closer, my voice rough, scraped raw by need. ‘Undress for me, Little Red.’

Her smirk softened, but the spark of wilfulness lingered in her eyes, her breath catching. We stood in the shadow of the cliffs, the crash of the Pacific behind us, the air charged like the moment before a cloudburst breaks. Slowly, she hooked her thumbs beneath the thin straps of her bikini top, sliding it up and over her head. The scrap of fabric fell to the sand, baring her to me, her nipples peaked from the chill breeze—or maybe from the way my gaze devoured her.