The Hunted

by Bethany-Kris

  “I think I do.”

  “But maybe you want me to say it?”

  “Maybe,” he agreed.

  “For you. I never ran because of you.”

  So yes, he had known. He was just selfish enough to admit he liked that answer, too. Even if he shouldn’t.

  “Do you know why else I sang to you?” his mother asked. “When you were little, I mean.”

  “I don’t even remember it.”

  “Not here,” his mother said, pointing at her right ear and winking. Then, she pointed at her heart before also gesturing at her mind. “But in these places, you can’t forget them. The water songs—the siren’s calls, Eryx. It’s the thrall of the mermaids. Families hear them singing for miles. Mates, even farther. Through waters and storms and wars … we hear them inside. You hear them, too. Why did you think you came to find me here?”

  “I thought the songs were a way of warning …”

  Anthia grinned. “Or a way to call someone home.”

  The wind blew again, and this time, his mother sang with it, the melody twisting and curling with the breeze and through the trees. He stood right beside her, heard the song as clear as day, but it almost seemed to echo within him, too.

  Except when she stopped …

  Well, the song didn’t.

  But it wasn’t his mother singing anymore.

  Anthia’s head tipped up, and the paleness of her face became far more prominent when her eyes widened like the two moons beginning to peek through the heavy, dark clouds overhead. The song continued on, coming closer and … higher?

  Eryx looked upward into the fruit trees. “Who is sing—”

  His mother made an inhuman noise. “Run.”

  His stare snapped back to his mother. “What?”

  “You’re more like them than us, and that’s all the mermaids will see. Run, Eryx.”

  She didn’t give him the chance to argue about it. The singing in what seemed like the trees above them came louder with every passing second. Her hand locked around his wrist, and she darted back up the channel of high water fruit trees. She ran like the wind, but he was still faster. It didn’t matter because he stayed behind her as they weaved through the narrow trail beside the trees, avoiding low hanging branches that swung in the suddenly heavy winds.

  The storm had arrived. He should have listened to the rustling of the leaves. The creak of branches.

  He might have heard the mermaid when she dropped down on top of them. Except he didn’t. Not until it was too late.

  Red hair and violet eyes. Fingernails sharpened like claws that dug into his throat and teeth bared with a vicious hiss slipping past snarling lips. She was naked, shifted from her water form to walk on land although she attacked from the trees.

  Eryx’s mother’s screams pierced through the howling winds, but from which direction he couldn’t be sure. All he could see was violet eyes and fire-red hair intent on ripping the throat right out of his fucking neck.

  THREE

  Arelle

  “AND THEN WHAT happens?”

  Arelle sighed, willing her younger sister to focus on the last leg of their trip to the west side of Atlas, and less on things that didn’t concern her yet. “Has anyone told you that sometimes, you ask too many questions?”

  Coral skipped ahead of her in the water, her tail smacking the rough surface of the water to splash her sister before slipping over on her back with a grin. She skimmed along the choppy surface, all the while looking like she was quite proud of herself. “Actually, they do.”

  “Do you think that may be a hint, then?”

  “Never.”

  Arelle laughed because, really, what else could she do? “You’re asking me about things I can’t give you the answers to, Coral.”

  “But you’ve been there. You saw it.”

  “Last year, I saw some of the matings, yes.”

  Since witnesses to matings proved paired couples’ bonds beyond any doubt, it was quite common for the colony—but especially the royals—to go along and be a part of the traditions. Even if it was from afar.

  “And?”

  Arelle could see just how close to the west side of Atlas they were. Already past the safe band of the Atlas Islands, now was the time she knew they needed to be quiet and pay attention. To everything. She’d heard the tales of ships coming out of the fog—like ghosts appearing where they hadn’t been just a moment before. She remembered hearing stories from merpeople who had managed to escape about how the landwalkers would lay nets along openings in the bays or on the sea floor before drawing them up fast when they weren’t expecting it.

  Of course, Coral had never experienced those things, and being sheltered meant she hadn’t been around enough of their kind to hear those same stories that made Arelle wary and cautious.

  “Well,” Arelle told her sister, “if we manage to make it back to the colony alive tonight, then you should get all the answers to your questions soon enough. But if you keep talking so I can’t pay attention until we get to the water orchard, then we might not make it back at all.”

  The widening of Coral’s violet eyes and the way her pretty face fell almost made Arelle feel bad for her sharp tone and snarky words. She really couldn’t afford to sympathize when nothing she’d said was a lie.

  Yes, the sky was a swirling black mass. Yes, the winds were high, and the rain pouring down had turned rather cold and harsh. A storm had come in faster than it’d taken them to get from the band of islands to the shore of the mainland. The water was already choppy, a dark reflection of the clouds overhead, while lightning streaked through the tunneling clouds starting to reach down toward the sea below. The season of storms had finally arrived, which meant they were safe.

  Arelle didn’t trust that. It meant they should be safe. She would take no risks.

  “Come on, we’re almost there and I’m sure Poe is waiting,” Arelle told Coral. “And then I promise, when we get back, I will tell you all about what I saw last year and what you can expect this year. Okay?”

  Coral chirped happily in response, but it didn’t quite skip over the waves like it usually would. Maybe Arelle had been a little harsh, and besides, Coral was still forever curious. She couldn’t expect the girl to change just because she was now of age. She didn’t understand what was expected of her yet, and like the rest of them, would learn in time what she had to do.

  For herself.

  For their people.

  For their life.

  It all came with time.

  “Let’s hurry,” Arelle said, swimming ahead of Coral who had now flipped back to her belly on the surface of the waves. “Poe might have managed to leave court ahead of us, but she won’t start picking any fruit unless we’re there to help her carry it all home.”

  “Her mate must really like it for her to come here.”

  Ah, there it was.

  Arelle heard Coral’s wariness.

  Maybe it was because they were now so close to the orchard that they could see the waterways between each row of the fruit trees perfectly fine. There was no going back now; they were in landwalker territory.

  “It’s dark, the storm is here, and it’s the safest time for us to be out,” Arelle assured, heading for one of the waterways. She’d sing for her sister, and no doubt, Poe would call back, so they could easily find each other in the large orchard. “Don’t worry, okay? We just have to be fast and careful, that’s all.”

  Glancing back at her little sister, Arelle saw Coral’s nod and figured that was good enough. They were here. What would be the point in turning back now? It wouldn’t be worth very much, especially if their father found out that they disobeyed him, tricked their guards, and came to the forbidden lands.

  Slipping into the mouth of one waterway canal, Arelle listened in the wind, ready to call for her sister. Before she could even open her mouth, a noise whipping through the trees had her perking her head higher. The water in the canals was maybe six feet or a little deeper—certa
inly not enough for her to stand straight with her fin to the canal floor and still have her head above water.

  “Coral, wait,” Arelle snapped, still trying to come higher out of the water to hear that sound better. “Listen.”

  “What?”

  Coral spun a fast circle in the water, making more noise than she needed to. Because of course. Arelle said nothing. She simply waited. It would come again, that noise, if it was what she thought it was.

  And then there it came, with the next rush of wind, as clear as day. It sounded familiar, and then it didn’t. Angry, scared, and violent. That’s what her sister’s call felt like. It had Arelle’s anxiety picking up with the fast beats of her heart and made her want to turn right around and leave.

  Was that—

  “Is someone here?” Coral asked.

  “Someone is here with Poe.”

  Because that’s what she could hear. Her sister, but something—someone—else, too. That was the only reason why Arelle decided to chase the sound. Poe was out there in the orchard, and she didn’t know what was happening to her. But something was. It would have to be for her sister to let out high-pitch shrieks like that.

  “Arelle!”

  Coral’s terrified shout echoed behind her, but Arelle kept moving forward through the waterway. She didn’t think she had time to stop and explain but she shouldn’t need to. Coral was just as capable of hearing the same thing she was. She could have told her sister to stay back, but instinct kept her swimming as fast as she could to get to the source of Poe’s screeching.

  The noise became louder to Arelle’s right, and when she had the chance, she slipped between an opening in the waterways for another canal. She hadn’t expected to be so close to the source of the noise, but when she broke the surface of the water … it was there that she found it.

  A mess.

  Chaos.

  It all happened so fast, and she didn’t have the time to react, even if she had been able to take in the sight before her. Of her sister’s hands wrapped tightly around the throat of a landwalker—a man—where she had him pinned to the ground. Maybe it was the shock of his position, but her sister was substantially smaller than the man, yet she didn’t give him an inch. The woman a few feet away edged closer, hands out to grab … something. The man, or her sister, Arelle didn’t know.

  It was the shriek the woman let loose, the violent familiar call of their people that had Arelle snapping back in the water. The violet eyes of the woman flashed before she sprang forward, barreling into the side of Poe and sending her older sister toppling off the man.

  Arelle’s heart jumped into her throat. “Poe!”

  “Help her!” Coral screeched.

  She would have.

  Except Arelle didn’t have time.

  The slapping, flailing arms and legs of her naked sister and the other woman—who had eyes like them and sounded like they did—tangled together before they slipped off the embankment and into the canal. Under the water they went, and Arelle followed just as fast.

  But not before looking up.

  Straight at the landwalker.

  She took a second; a single deep breath.

  He had hair like the darkest skies.

  Eyes so blue.

  A sea of blue.

  Even in his terror, scrambling to the side of the embankment with blood dribbling from his busted mouth, the strong lines of his face seared into her mind’s eye. He was, by far, one of the most handsome men she had ever seen in her life.

  She didn’t stop to appreciate it, but even under the water, she could still see his face. Even as she rushed through the murky water to find her sister and help Poe, she still saw the landwalker in her mind.

  The fight between the woman and Poe continued under the water with no sign of stopping when Arelle finally got the two in her sights. It was Coral rushing in beside her that stopped her from going any closer. She pushed her sister back, the warning hissing from her lips under the water, “Stay back.”

  Arelle looked over her shoulder in just enough time to see Poe push away from the woman whose cloak and green dress had tangled around her legs and arms. And then everything changed.

  Just as fast as before.

  Just as shocking.

  The woman dragged in water, her mouth opening to suck in like she was going to breathe, and her body changed. Those legs swirled with water, her eyes widening in fear as the familiar tail and fin of their kind took its place. The straps that had held sandals to her feet drifted to the floor of the canal, but Arelle was stuck staring at something else.

  Her tail.

  It was wrong.

  Ruined.

  The tips gone—jagged where it should have been sharp. A good chunk on either side of the woman’s tail was entirely missing.

  How?

  Who did that to her?

  The landwalkers?

  The sound that escaped Arelle matched the confusion that spilled from Coral.

  “What’s wrong with her? Why is she dressed like that? Help her.”

  In the water, Coral’s fearful questions came out as a high pitch in her fear. Her words slammed into Arelle one after another in their mother tongue. Poe floated backward, her own tail back in place of the legs she had been fighting with on the land. Her face was the same mask of shock that her sisters wore.

  Of course, they’d heard the stories. Yes, they knew what their people said.

  None of them had ever seen it firsthand, though. None of the sisters knew for sure that the warnings were true. That when the landwalkers were successful in their hunts of the merpeople, they kept them like slaves. Mutilated them to keep them from running, amongst many other horror stories that she didn’t even like to think about.

  “Help her!” Coral cried. “Look at her neck! She can’t breathe like that, Arelle!”

  What?

  Arelle did, horrified by the way the woman clawed at the heavy, thick band of metal encasing her throat. With her hair spilling out of the style it had been before she’d fallen into the water, it was hard to tell if that collar-like device went all the way around her throat, but given how white her face turned as she opened her mouth and tried to breathe …

  It did go all around.

  So tight, in fact, she couldn’t breathe.

  And like the landwalkers, without her gills able to expel the water from her lungs, she would drown.

  Die.

  “Help her!”

  “We have to get out of here,” Poe snapped, turning fast away from the woman who couldn’t swim well with her tail mutilated like it was, and still couldn’t breathe.

  Arelle couldn’t move.

  “Poe—”

  “We have to leave!”

  “But …” Coral swam around Arelle’s side, edging closer to the still-struggling woman whose violet eyes—eyes so much like theirs that it hurt—looked between her sisters. “We should help her, Poe.”

  “Let her die.”

  “Poe!”

  Arelle reached for Coral, ready to drag their younger sister back and away from the … well, she couldn’t quite call the helpless mermaid woman dangerous, could she? Not like she was. “Poe is right, we have to leave, Coral.”

  “No.”

  Poe had already turned to go down the canal. Arelle looked that way, peering through the dark murkiness of the water to call for her sister to wait.

  “Help me … to the sea … take me into the sea.”

  The words slithered through the water like an eel slipping along the sea floor. The merwoman’s voice so faint and painful that it made her flinch. And yet, she used their language, her pleas enough to make Arelle hesitate.

  A second too long.

  Long enough for Coral to grab the blade sharpened from the strongest of sea stones that Arelle kept strapped to her hip with a piece of leather wrapped in seaweed to keep it safe. Her little sister slipped out of her reach, heading for the merwoman just ten feet away in the water.

  “Coral!”<
br />
  It happened so fast.

  Too fast.

  Coral reached for the woman, only wanting to help because that’s who she was … sweet and curious and so foolish. Not at all scared, though she should be. Except when she extended that blade, ready to cut the contraption from the woman’s throat, purple exploded in the water.

  Blood.

  Their blood.

  Because the woman struck back, whether from fear that she was about to be killed or for some other reason that Arelle didn’t yet understand … she attacked. Grabbing the blade from Coral, she first slashed it across the younger girl’s face, and then plunged it deep into her chest.

  Violet all around.

  It swirled and danced.

  She could taste it in the water.

  Arelle screamed, darting forward in the water to help her sister when Poe finally came back. She cut past Arelle so fast that she was only a blur of shimmering scales and red hair. Terrified Poe might be the next to find herself on the wrong end of the blade the other woman now had, Arelle swam into the fray as well.

  Poe had her own knife, though. And hands that were fast with every strike. Their fight sent them farther down the canal, even as Arelle swam circles around the two women, trying to find that safe opening to help.

  “Poe, we have to help Coral—Poe!”

  Poe heard nothing.

  Every swing of her arm caused another slice.

  More purple in the water.

  It was all Arelle could see.

  “I want to die in the sea,” the dying woman whispered.

  Arelle couldn’t see Poe anymore.

  They were too far down the canal.

  “Please, let me die in the sea …”

  “Poe,” Arelle begged, “Poe, stop!”

  Even above the shrieks of her sister, her own cries, and the woman’s pleas, Arelle realized she could hear something else through the water.

  Something outside of the water.

  “Anthia!”

  Footsteps pounding against earth accompanied the painful calls.