The Hunted

by Bethany-Kris

  She already knew.

  The first thing Arelle noticed when she entered the somber throne room where her father liked to waste away his days wasn’t any one person in particular, but rather the entire group. Not to mention, the scene they made.

  Her father, Zale, standing in front of his throne. Crown placed behind him on the seat as though the weight of it was currently too heavy for him to carry.

  His advisors spread around the room, gazes turned away from her or down to the floor.

  Her sister, Poe, standing half behind her mate who seemed to have finally returned safely from his hunting trip.

  Her mother wasn’t there.

  That wasn’t unusual.

  “Why?” her father asked.

  His voice boomed, carrying heavily through the water to stop Arelle in her tracks. His tense stance, fin flattened to the floor of the room and head tipped back, was a good indication to her that she was not welcomed to come any closer than she already had.

  Arelle’s gaze darted to Poe, who quickly looked away. “Why, what?”

  “Why disobey me? Why, when I have given you and your sisters everything, would you so blatantly disrespect the rules put forth for you, Arelle? And now look what it has caused.”

  Again, she looked to Poe.

  Her sister still wouldn’t look at her.

  What had she told their father? She didn’t have to wonder for very long just how her sister had spun the tale of their travels to the water orchard, and the forbidden lands.

  “Was the fruit worth your sister’s life?”

  She swallowed hard and let the words slide down her throat instead of slipping past her lips. Nothing she could or would say here would make any difference, not if Poe had taken the chance to spin her lies about what had happened before Arelle had even returned to the colony.

  Would it matter even if she had come back straight away?

  Probably not.

  She wasn’t the favored one.

  “Everyone knows,” Zale said, his tone staying just the same. “Now that not even my princesses can be trusted to obey me, and what do you have to show for it, Arelle?”

  Poe was still streaked with purple blood.

  Whom had she said it belonged to?

  “Arelle.”

  Her father’s shout snapped her attention back to him.

  There was a look in her father’s eye—a gleam she had only seen on a few occasions before this moment. One that said he was beyond care. It was a shame that was focused on her, but it told her a great many things in that moment.

  The story had already been told.

  A lie spun.

  He believed whatever he’d been told, and Arelle would be the sacrifice for his rage because of it.

  “Nothing,” she whispered. “I have nothing to show for it.”

  The bitterness she felt for Poe couldn’t be contained, but with her sister’s mate standing in front of her as a wall of protection, she couldn’t even see the contempt Arelle shot her way. Maybe that was for the better.

  “You put us all in danger by dragging not only yourself but your sisters to the forbidden lands,” her father said, turning to pick up his crown from the seat of the throne. “You never considered what it would mean to the colony—or to my reign. And it shows.”

  Arelle dragged in a lungful of water, ready to apologize even if this hadn’t been entirely her fault. Her father stopped her with a rising palm, saying only, “A lesson will be made out of you—you’ll spend the season of storms isolated from the colony. If you cannot think about them, you will not be with them.”

  What?

  Arelle moved an inch or two forward. “But—”

  “Word came in from a traveling messenger, as well. Your intended mate will not arrive as planned. Something is holding him that he will need to handle. You’re not needed this season, and it’ll do us all well to not have to see your face while we try to move on from the loss you’ve caused us.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Not a single word, Arelle.”

  A flick of his wrist was all it took for her guards to close the distance they’d been keeping since her arrival. Their grips tightened around her arms, pulling her backward and farther away from her father and the rest of the merpeople in the throne room.

  She knew better than to speak.

  Her father’s warning had been clear.

  And still, she dared to ask, “Will I be with Mother?”

  Zale’s laughter taunted her.

  She’d hear it for days.

  “Absolutely not.”

  FIVE

  Eryx

  EVERY BREATH Eryx dragged into his lungs ached deep inside his chest. Made harder by the blinding winds that cut off his air when he did try to breathe and sucked in water from the rain that pounded down from the stormy skies overhead. He was surprised that he was capable of breathing at all, really.

  Not to mention, the effort it took.

  The pain he felt.

  He didn’t guide his horse back to the estate where his father and the rest of the court were staying the night. Frankly, he didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything at all when he was barely able to stay atop his goddamn horse.

  No, the animal took them back on its own. Eryx simply focused on staying atop the beast because even that was a challenge.

  Not because of the raging storm, although it didn’t really help, but rather, everything else. The agony still ripping through his heart over the woman he’d been forced to leave behind and hadn’t even seen rise out of the waters after watching her fall into its depths.

  If that weren’t bad enough, the water had nearly taken him, too. As he’d tried to climb out of the sea, still looking over his shoulder to watch the spot where the red-headed mermaid with the violet eyes had been only seconds before—he would never forget her face, now—the waves had come rushing in higher. He’d lost his step and was dragged out to where he couldn’t even touch down in the sea. With the water churning so forcefully, he’d been sure he was about to drown much the same way he’d just witnessed his mother do.

  It’d taken every ounce of his effort to get back to the shore; never once had he been sure that he would even make it, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of water when he’d tried to suck in a breath of air. Yet, he somehow had, before promptly passing out on the side of the canal until the rising waters brought him back to consciousness. The threat of being pulled back out to sea was enough to get him up on shaky legs, struggling to find where he’d left his horse.

  “There it is,” he told the horse, seeing the gates leading to the estate finally taking form on top of the hill. “We’re almost there.”

  The horse snorted as though it could understand him and wanted to respond in some way. Who was Eryx to say the beast didn’t understand its human counterpart? The only thing he could manage to do in that moment was clutch tighter to the horse’s reins and hope that was enough to keep him upright.

  The horse did the rest of the work.

  How long had they been climbing the hill now?

  Too long.

  He shivered, the wind ripping against his bare skin. He knew the mermaid had destroyed his shirt, but he hadn’t even been able to find his cloak. Nothing protected him from the elements of the storm currently battering the land, and him.

  Each breath took more effort.

  It came harder.

  The muddy road ahead of him, and the clop-clop of the horse’s hooves seemed to turn fainter and fainter. Even as he tried to peel open his eyes, he had to fight to do it. Nothing seemed right, his vision turning sideways when the horse slipped past the opened gate leading into the estate. His neck had started throbbing back in the water when he’d kept swallowing it instead of air, but then it had only been uncomfortable.

  Now it was a painful pulsing that matched the beats of his heart. The sides of his neck felt as though they were extending with every pulse, although he didn’t have the first clue as to why.

/>   Was this death?

  He was pretty sure it was.

  “Help,” Eryx called out when they were beyond the gate.

  The yard was quiet. All the business of the day gone while the people and the court at the estate hunkered down for safety from the violent storms. He doubted anyone could even hear his calls.

  Still, he shouted.

  “Someone, help!”

  The rain pounded so hard to the ground that mud splashed up along the horse’s legs as the animal came to a stop.

  He thought he called for help again.

  Eryx couldn’t be sure.

  The last thing he saw before he fell from the horse was two young men rushing out from the stables at the west side of the property. Those young men leaned over him, moving in closer to hear whatever it was he tried to tell them.

  “My mother—she killed my mother.”

  Eryx didn’t even remember hitting the ground. All he thought about was how black the sky seemed. Or maybe that was just his mind.

  Because unlike his father and the rest of the people in his realm, Eryx didn’t believe in the Gods they revered faithfully. He believed when one died, the only thing that greeted them on the other side was absolute nothingness.

  Right then, nothing was all he saw; he liked that just fine. Now, it felt appropriate.

  • • •

  “Stop it.”

  Eryx didn’t even have to shout for his annoyance to be clear because the physician who was currently attempting to look at his neck was fast to step back. Why his father had even bothered to call these useless fools, he didn’t know. All they had wanted to do with him when they’d finally arrived—after Eryx had woken up and been feeling fine—was bleed him out.

  As though that would do any good.

  Then, he’d mentioned his neck.

  Knowing what they did about where he’d come from, the three physicians now wanted to take their time looking over the gills the bastards had sewn shut when he had been fresh from his mother’s womb.

  “Don’t touch me again,” Eryx warned the man. “I’m fine.”

  “Yes, but how?” the doctor asked, raising a thick, unruly white brow at the same time. “Because according to the stable boys who pulled you into the house, and the king, who directed them to which room you were using, you were all but dead, Prince.”

  And now?

  “Clearly not,” he said, waving at himself, “as you can see.”

  “It’s possible the water in your lungs is attempting to be expelled through the natural route, but given the procedure done when you were an infant … If you’d just remove the scarf and allow us a look at—”

  “Get out of my rooms.”

  “Your High—”

  “Get out!”

  He’d had enough of being the physicians’ test subject, considering they’d already had their go at trying every tincture and tonic they’d brought along. His shout was punctuated by the ornate vase he slammed to the floor from where it sat on the decorative table currently full of the physicians’ things. It wasn’t the first thing he’d broken in the room since waking up, and he doubted it would be the last, frankly.

  He was just in that sort of mood.

  The doctors didn’t even grab their belongings before fleeing the room. He wished that made him feel at least slightly pleased, but it didn’t. The things they brought along hadn’t helped him before, and it wouldn’t help him with what he felt now.

  Nothing would.

  His heart ached again.

  His mind went back to his mother again.

  “Fuck.”

  Thrusting his shaking hands into his hair, Eryx put his back to the opened doorway as he stared at the reflection in the mirror across from the bed. He should have recognized the man standing there in night clothes that belonged to him. He knew that face—watched it change day by day as he aged and turned from a child into a man.

  Yet, he didn’t know it now. He found no familiarity in it tonight.

  Disheveled. Pale. So fucking angry. In the eyes of the man staring back at him in the mirror, however, he found the thing that bothered him the most.

  There was nothing in his eyes. Deadness stared back.

  Eryx approached the mirror, his thoughts racing like the beats of his heart and the constant thud-thud-thud in his neck that still hurt each time. More so when he breathed, he noticed. He tugged the cotton scarf, trimmed with silk, away from his throat and finally got a good look at the faint scars on either side of the thick column of flesh and corded muscle.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  The scars expanded.

  Were the physicians correct? Was his body trying to expel what water was left? Had it saved him? Or might it had killed him because they’d taken away what would have allowed him safety in the water all those years ago?

  Those were questions Eryx didn’t have the answers to, and they were ones he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, honestly. Not that it mattered because he had more important things on his mind at the moment, and other issues he had to handle.

  The approaching footsteps outside the bedchambers had him quickly wrapping the scarf back around his throat. All his life, he’d been taught to hide what would remind the people that he came from a woman caught within the sea, and he wasn’t quite ready to drop the pretense yet.

  Especially not with that woman gone.

  Eryx turned sharply in just enough time to see his father step inside the room with Mattue close behind his heels. In the hallway, a guard stayed near the entry but didn’t attempt to enter when Misael nodded for his brother to close the door.

  “What were you thinking?” Misael demanded.

  Eryx swallowed the pain that accompanied his next words. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Being at the orchard. The storms have come. You’re not that foolish, Eryx, you know better. What on this earth possessed you to take a horse down there?”

  Ah.

  So the stable boys either hadn’t heard him when he spoken about his mother after falling from the horse, or they simply hadn’t understood what he’d been talking about.

  Perfect.

  “Anthia.”

  That was all he said.

  Not my mother.

  Or even your favored one, Father.

  No, just her name.

  Because even that hurt.

  Misael tipped his chin up. “What about the slave?”

  Gods.

  “She’s my mother.” He flinched, correcting himself out of spite of his heart because he wanted to say it right; to make this clear so he didn’t have to ever say it again. “Was. She was my mother—we were walking along the orchard, and one of the mermaids dropped from the trees.”

  Red hair.

  Violet eyes.

  Hissing.

  Fingernails slicing his skin.

  But the red and the purple … the face now seared into his memory bobbing along the dangerous waves … well, he wasn’t about to forget that, either. He couldn’t.

  Behind the king, Mattue cleared his throat but otherwise, stayed quiet. Misael, however, didn’t look away from his son. “We’ve discussed this. You know your place. And your favor toward that slave has never been acceptable.”

  “She was my mother.”

  “A vessel that brought you to me. It is me who made you a prince. It was her who doomed your legacy to a constant question by the people. They will forever wonder about who you are, Eryx. And never forget it.”

  Right.

  Because what was he, his father liked to ask, a human like them, or someone of the sea?

  He had to wonder if his father had ever questioned his brothers, born the same way he had been, although, by different slaves, the way Misael second-guessed him.

  He almost wanted to scoff.

  That would hurt, though.

  “To be fair, sire,” his advisor said, coming in a second too late to the conversation as far as Eryx was concerned, “you did allow Anthia a great
deal of freedom in her place. She often came and went without question where others would have been stripped and beaten in the square for the same actions. It’s not exactly surprising that Eryx was fond of her when you never forbid the two of them—”

  “Did I ask?” Misael uttered, jaw clenching. “You seem to be another one who constantly forgets your place, Mattue. You’re are not wearing a crown—you advise it.”

  Eryx bet that hit a nerve.

  His father was quite good at that.

  Mattue was quick to quiet. “My apologies.”

  He tipped his head down and said nothing else.

  Misael turned his attention back on Eryx. “I have had just about enough of trying to justify my only living son’s affections for the slaves of this realm. It seems you’ve forgotten your place, Eryx, or you don’t appreciate what you’ve been given. I can’t have the rest of my people seeing it. Because then, they will think it’s appropriate for them to follow the same path.”

  His affections?

  He’d only ever cared for his mother.

  Goddammit.

  He didn’t even love his father the way he loved his mother.

  Misael didn’t give him the chance to respond before his father said, “It’s time for you to learn exactly what I expect of you. Nothing else will be acceptable after this day, Eryx.”

  “What does that—”

  “Mattue—what we discussed, you may relay it to Eryx, as I no longer care to stand here and stare at his face. I’m sure you know why this is fitting for him, now more so than it was when we first discussed the option.”

  The king left the room in the same way he’d arrived. Without a word, without permission, and without a single care in the world that he was leaving behind his son, who had clearly lost something that meant more to him than even this kingdom did.

  Not that Misael cared.

  He never had.

  “Plans have changed,” Mattue said quietly, drawing in Eryx’s attention, “as your father decided while the physicians were in here with you.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You won’t return to court with the rest of us. Instead, you’ll remain here in the west. Banished to the House of Miller until the king says otherwise. Word will travel about what happened—that you were with the slave when she was killed.”