Page 66 of The Princesses of Ruin (The Princesses of Ruin #5)

S unlight warms me through to the core. I inhale its glow, siphoning brightness into my blood even as my body begins to warp. To contort. To reduce.

I change for her. So that I may be palatable to her fragile, surface-born sensibilities.

Bitterness flowers in my mantle like dawn-blooming coral. It clings to me, thorned and luminous, even as the sun arcs above, its heat soaking into the root of my helplessness.

I was chosen.

I should be honored to serve Broodfather Vek’ihr.

But I am not.

My frame convulses—flesh cinching, limbs receding, eyes retreating into the narrow sphere of a bulbous skull. My vision will fade in spectrum. No more ultraviolet symphonies. No more dancing pulses in the current.

I will see only what she sees.

Hear only what she hears.

Feel only what she feels .

So that my exceptionality will not shame her.

I have been sentenced to the land. To wither, dying a thousand sensory deaths before Nol’Ther claims me.

Broodfather Vek’ihr swims into my vision.

He extends his flesh, scored from his own body.

I accept it, pushing the piece of my father into my mouth.

My radula shreds his offering, and his thoughts spill through my neural gills.

The taste is heavy with yearning, sweetened by pride, laced with the ache of love.

He loves the Ki’ah Ohn queen and her selkie mate. Fiercely. Honorably.

But the flavor shifts. There is a distinction—one he does not name, but that the blood names for him.

He loves me differently.

Deeper. Protective. Bound by lineage and purpose.

My broodfather loves me.

I swallow, and in that act, I burn the bitterness from my stomach. Negative feelings of my impending nuptials will no longer take hold in me. I am serenity. I am pliability. I am chosen. I will take the landbound path. I will seal this bond for my people, so that they may rise closer to the sun.

She is Ki’ah Ohn. She is selkie. She is fragile, and strange, and hideous to behold.

But I am the bridge.

And I will bind our empires.

Forever.