by Bethany-Kris
“The other one was,” Eryx echoed.
“Both redheads—I’ll need a better look at the one we have, but …”
“What?”
“Could be family—kin.”
Eryx glanced his way, looking the man over. He seemed in far better condition. Dressed, a cloak over his shoulders, and not any worse for wear. Not as though he’d almost died in the water.
“I’m surprised the other men on the ships didn’t look for the captain of ours. He runs the fleet, no?”
Corval chuckled, dry as it was. “Always save a hunter over the captain.”
“Mmm. Down with the ship, and all.”
The man shook his head, smirking. “No one wants to die, and so a captain going down with his ship only works until the water begins to fill his lungs. You save a hunter over a captain because one will only bitch about what was lost. The other only wants to get back out on the water.”
Eryx stared out over the sea and didn’t even bother to thank the man who brought over a second fur blanket for him to use. More than anything, he wanted to be back in those waters, but he didn’t think it was for the same reasons Corval did.
After all, the man wanted to be on a boat.
Eryx craved the water in his lungs.
Still, he murmured, “Well, Corval, you’re not wrong.”
“I rarely ever am.”
Right.
“So, the hunt …” the man said, trailing off with a glance in Eryx’s direction.
“Is still on.”
ELEVEN
Arelle
WHERE COULD Arelle go but home?
Though she knew what would be waiting for her there, she also didn’t have a choice. She certainly couldn’t run, although the fear of punishment terrified her to death. That was also part of the problem; death might very well be her punishment for this. Not just for her sister and what happened to Poe with the landwalkers. If her father ever found out that she had mated herself to a man of Atlas, well, that would certainly be a reason for him to end her life.
That didn’t change the fact she still had nowhere else to go. Arelle certainly couldn’t run, not when it would mean running for the rest of her life because her father would send guards to find her. The only way she would ever feel safe—an impossibility in itself—would be to constantly keep moving and running.
Not that it would make a difference. They would find her. She couldn’t take to land. Not here, anyway.
She had nothing. No one. No protection, no safe haven, and no one to ask for help. A true testament to how sheltered and controlled her entire life had been under the thumb of her father when the sad fact was, she had only a handful of friends … two of which had been her sisters, and none of the others were capable of helping her.
So, all that left her with, was going home. Even if that place didn’t feel like home.
Arelle fought with herself the entire way; a few strokes forward and a couple more back. A never-ending struggle until she finally reached the colony. Like the season before, she expected people to be waiting. She thought for sure she would hear the whispers, see their averted gazes, and know that the entire colony already knew exactly what had happened.
This time was different. No one waited. The grottos seemed empty and the streets were quiet. Arelle had never felt more alone.
Part of her struggle to keep moving forward had more to do with what was happening inside her very soul. The pull—like an invisible rope had been wrapped around her middle and was yanking her back toward the land of the forbidden. Back to where a man was waiting. One who she’d tied herself to, even though she’d known better.
She didn’t need to be told—didn’t need to ask—to know that the struggle would be lifelong. Bonds between mates lessened over the years in circumstances where they were forced apart, but it never went away. Not forever.
Eryx, she thought.
They called him Eryx.
But even as she thought that—even as her mind corrected her to use her mate’s name—Arelle didn’t want to. She wanted to pretend like it hadn’t happened at all, so it didn’t exist, because that would be easier. Because she had to … no one could ever know what she had done.
Arelle soon learned the reason why the people of the colony were not waiting on the streets. They waited at the palace, spilling out from the gates because there were so many. All of the colony, the few hundred that remained, somehow managed to squeeze themselves into the palace, the court, and a little beyond the walls.
The guards stood out front waiting for her. The same guards who’d stopped following her the day before, when she’d chased after Poe.
They said nothing, simply stepped aside to let her pass through. Although, this time around the people of her colony did look at her. They met her stare. Oh, they said nothing, but she wondered if that was because this time, they had nothing to say.
The throne room was still just as quiet and foreboding as it had always been. Zale, sitting on his throne, managed to loom over her from all the way across the room with his severe expression and impressive size remaining entirely still. Maybe she expected to see more anger on his face. The rage he had showed her when she arrived at the palace the season before much the same way, but without Coral.
This time, he simply looked resigned.
Mad, definitely.
But it was as though he had said all he wanted to say, thought all he needed to think, and spilled his anger before she had even ever come home.
Or perhaps, it was that he thought she wouldn’t come home.
She almost hadn’t.
Arelle gave her father a moment. A few brief seconds to look her over, and to see exactly what she knew she looked like in those moments.
Streaked with blood.
Scrapes over her tail and fin.
Bruises on her arms.
But it was the things that he couldn’t see—the war inside her mind—that she did her very best to hide. She didn’t care if he could bear witness to her physical injuries, or to the truth that told the story of yet another loss of a princess for their kingdom.
It was everything else he couldn’t know.
And she would do her best to make sure he didn’t.
“Speak,” her father demanded.
Arelle dragged in a lungful of water and then slowly exhaled. It allowed her a moment of calm. She wanted to ask where her mother was—ask if they’d told her yet. After all, he wouldn’t be sitting there looking at her the way he did, with all their people filling the palace and spilling out into the courtyard while others watched from the streets, if they didn’t already know.
Instead of voicing her thoughts, Arelle said, “I went after Poe. I couldn’t save her. But I tried. I tried.”
Zale tipped his head back, the clenching of his jaw acting as the only sign of his frustration and anger with her. Arelle expected an entirely different show. Rage and yelling. Her misdeeds and wrongs thrown at her feet. A punishment already prepared.
Oh, she suspected some of those things were still waiting for her. Right now, he simply stared at her.
“You went beyond the boundary line,” her father said, “and you broke my rules. Again.”
Arelle shook her head. “Poe did. I only followed—to bring her back.”
Poe wasn’t there but oh, she didn’t have a doubt that if her sister was there … Poe would not have had a problem with putting the blame on Arelle for all of this. After all, Poe had done exactly that the season before.
There was just one difference between the two …
Arelle would admit her own faults.
She accepted her wrongs.
“I followed Poe,” Arelle admitted, “and I knew that the guards would stop because they wouldn’t disobey their king, but I had to try. I had to try to bring her back, Father.”
Still, Zale stared hard.
Arelle waited her father out.
At this point, what else could she do?
She was all too aware of
the many, many eyes watching her. Yet, none of their people said a word. Perhaps they had been forewarned before she made her way to the palace, or even threatened to remain quiet.
It didn’t matter.
She felt their stares, and their judgment; she didn’t mind taking it for what it was.
When her father continued to say nothing Arelle wrung her sore fingers together. She twisted them, needing that distraction. She had only one thought to ask in that moment, one little soul to worry about. Everything else was a background thought.
“Where’s the baby? Poe’s daughter?”
Zale let out a heavy sigh. “With your mother.”
“Poe would want—”
“Well, it doesn’t matter what Poe would want, does it?”
Arelle flinched. “Yes. It does matter. She’s not dead; she’s simply—”
“Caught,” her father interjected sharply. “Caught, Arelle. A slave. Another of my daughters, gone. Do you know why we are all gathered here today?”
She hesitated.
Did he really want her to answer that?
Sometimes with her father, it was hard to tell. He asked a question like he intended to get an answer, but really it was just a trap. She played these games with him more than enough over the years of her life and she knew when to not engage. The only way not to lose a game was not to play the game.
Or to win.
And with Zale, a person could rarely win.
“I don’t,” she said.
If only because she knew she had no other choice.
Not only her father, but everyone else watching her, too, wanted an answer.
This was their life now.
The landwalkers.
The hunts.
Their missing.
All the pain.
“I gathered them,” her father said, rising from his throne with his crown dangling from his fingertips.
He took a moment, just long enough to set that crown atop his head, and to make a show out of glancing around the room. She didn’t bother to look at the other faces, of the people she would recognize, and others who came and went—people of their colony. People they were supposed to protect, people who were terrified all the time. Wondering if it would be them or theirs next.
Now, she supposed, this was the absolute worst situation for her father because he’d lost two daughters to the landwalkers. And how was he ever supposed to protect his people and the ones they loved when he couldn’t even protect his own?
Oh, Arelle didn’t wonder what her father was doing.
She already knew.
“I gathered them,” he repeated when his gaze finally came back to settle on her, “because up until the moment you were spotted returning, we had to assume you were both gone. I need to address that, but here you are. Again. Seems you’re my lucky one, are you not? Twice now, you’ve escaped the landwalkers. Twice you’ve managed to return alive but left behind someone dead.”
“Poe is not—”
His gaze darkened and he lifted a hand to silence her.
“We assume she is because as a slave, she will be. And that is the only thing they will do with her once they bleed her nearly dry for their trades.”
If only his gaze made her unsettled. She found, staring back at her father, that she wasn’t really that afraid of him or what he might do. He had already done it all, and right now, death might even be a gift.
She wouldn’t beg for it.
Certainly, wouldn’t tell him to do it.
But there was no denying that death would be an easy way out. For him, and for herself.
Maybe even for Eryx.
What had she done?
“You disobeyed me.”
Arelle swallowed hard, tilting her chin up, defiant. She had to be because she would not lie, not about what made all this happen. She was also not wrong in her truth.
“She is my sister,” Arelle whispered, “and even if she wronged me before, I would not leave her behind.”
“And yet … you had to do just that.”
That blow struck lower than her father could ever possibly know. Or maybe he did know it and that was exactly why he said it. It hurt, the ache ricocheting throughout her entire body and lingering long after his voice stopped echoing in the silent room. As if she didn’t feel enough pain between injuries on her body and the growing agony within her soul.
Neither of which she would lament to her father. It wasn’t as though Zale would care. A king only cared for himself. Or this king certainly did.
“If you’re going to punish me—”
“Oh,” a new voice said, “well, he certainly can’t do that, now can he?”
Arelle turned fast on the spot, surprised at the unknown person who dared to speak when the king was addressing someone. It didn’t matter that she was a princess, no one ever thought to speak over her father.
The man who parted the crowd near the entrance to the throne room with a staff firmly in his grip looked her way with a rueful smile. A large green gem rested atop the golden rod.
She might have smiled back on another day.
She might have even liked that smile, if not for the night before.
If not for the bond.
A few people trailed behind the man, staying close enough for others to note they were with him but still back far enough that they also understood they were not like him. His olive-toned complexion complimented the bright green of his scales down his tail, and the shimmering black of his fin. The same scales that spattered across his chest and temples.
Those that followed him said nothing but did not lower their heads the same way her father’s people did. Instead, they kept their gazes locked on the back of his head as he neared Arelle.
Muscular, handsome, and clearly confident if not a little arrogant given his introduction, he was everything that everyone had ever told her about him. She knew without needing to be told exactly who he was, although this was the first time she’d ever laid eyes on his face.
Mav of Emerald. Prince of the Emerald Lands. Heir to a realm that promised life in the sea and on the land. Her intended mate.
“He can’t punish you,” Mav said, his gaze slicing to where the king stood but had not yet moved again, “because if I understand correctly … well, with your sister now gone, who does that leave as the heir to the Blu Sea?”
Arelle trembled.
That was not a question she wanted to answer. It was not a title or position that had ever been hers, nor had she wanted it.
Mav’s gaze darted back to hers, and he smiled again. “Well, that would be you.”
Arelle looked back to her father, waiting.
The rage her father had been so careful to hide … the truth stared her in the face now. Blatant, and stinging.
“As you can see,” Zale said with a wave of his hand towards Mav, “the Prince of the Emerald Lands has arrived with his companions. We have a lot to discuss. And I’m sure you won’t mind taking to your rooms until we do that.”
Oh, Arelle had many things she wanted to ask.
Many things to say.
Her intended mate looked her way and nodded. A clear sign she should do as she was told, but the softness in his gaze as he looked her over slowly—checking her injuries in a way her father had not done, but also appraising—made her heart ache.
For Mav, because what he thought he would find here was no longer waiting for him.
For herself, because another man giving her attention, either with concern or lust, made her stomach twist with sickness like never before.
But it also made her heartache for the man she’d left behind on an island that morning. Because he couldn’t possibly know what she had done to them both.
Yet, she could still hear him.
Deep in her mind, echoing with the beats of her heart … she could hear him.
Eryx.
Where are you, little mermaid?
What have you done?
TWELVE
; Eryx
“YOUR HIGHNESS—”
“That will be all,” Eryx said to the servant still lingering in the doorway of the House of Miller’s library. “If I need you, or anyone else, I will call on you.”
He didn’t even bother to glance up from behind the desk where he had stayed most of the day. Even going as far as taking his meals in the library, yet never cracking a book because he had far more interesting things to pour over. What with the newest map the hunter had delivered to him since their last discussion a good week ago. The place touted a full list of servants to handle whatever needs Eryx might have. They’d proven useful since he’d arrived a few days earlier, but he still wanted to be left alone.
For the most part.
It seemed no one here understood what that meant, considering they were constantly asking what the prince would like them to do next. Then again, he supposed on the rare occasions his father used the estate that had once belonged to a rich grain farmer … well, the king was quite demanding. Perhaps they assumed Eryx would be the same.
Fortunately for them, no.
Unless they continued to work his nerves.
Knowing the woman was still standing in the doorway, Eryx sighed and glanced up from the map. Sure enough, she was standing exactly where he’d assumed she would be. No doubt because she was confused about why, with the sun still peeking over the sea through the glass doors and wall of windows on the other side of the library, the prince said he would no longer need anyone for the remainder of the day and evening.
“I did say that was all, yes?”
The woman, in her plain gray gown that all the servants here seemed to prefer to wear, nodded quickly. “Yes, Prince Eryx. I will let the rest of the house know that you’re not to be bothered as well. However, if you do want something, please don’t—”
“I will shout until all of your ears bleed so that someone will immediately help me. Even though I am perfectly capable of doing it all myself, thank you.”
Her jaw fell slack.
Eryx simply smiled.
All it took after that was a wave of his hand, and the woman made herself scarce. Thankfully, she did manage to close the door behind her, allowing Eryx privacy to continue pouring all his attention into the map spread across the surface of the desk.