by Bethany-Kris
Especially when it left stains on his cock.
Those memories flashed through his mind as the invisible rope came to wrap around his middle. He didn’t even think about it, simply crossed the room to join her. She had already turned to reach for him, as though she’d known he was coming, when she hadn’t even been looking his way.
The man kept the tune.
Arelle continued to sing.
It was haunting, really. The melody soaked into every corner of the house, he was sure. And yet, she pulled him closer, molding his hard lines against her soft curves so that every movement she made dragged against his body. The swish of her gown when she swayed her hips had his own moving to the beat with hers. One of her legs stepped in between his as she moved forward to him, and then back out again for him to come to her.
One of his hands tangled into the hair at the nape of her neck. His other wrapped tightly with hers before he pressed it over the racing beat of his heart. His teeth found her bottom lip and tugged just enough to make her voice hitch in the song.
The closeness, their movements …
All of it was not appropriate for dancing.
More erotic than he knew it should be.
He was certain no servant in this house had ever seen a royal behave the way he currently was, and yet Eryx didn’t care at all.
Of course, someone always had to ruin his fun.
Why would this be any different?
“My lord, you have a visitor.”
Eryx slowed the dance just enough to answer to whoever was talking—he didn’t care to look. He didn’t take his eyes of a grinning Arelle, though. “I’m not taking guests.”
“Prince, he’s already here. It’s your advisor. Mattue. Sent by the king, he says. Your appearance is required and not a request, my lord.”
Perfect.
• • •
“Mattue.”
The advisor glanced up from the map he was surveying in the library with the large doors that faced the sea. He smiled at the prince as though there wasn’t a thing wrong with his presence at the estate, and then had the nerve to say, “Oh, don’t look so sour, Eryx.”
“We haven’t been separated long enough to excuse your ignorance.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know how to address me, Mattue.”
The advisor gave a little shrug under his cloak before sweeping his hand over the edge of the map. Instantly, the paper curled and then violently rolled itself up into the middle of the table. He would have corrected the man for that, too, because those maps were precious.
He didn’t think the fucker would care, though.
So, he stayed quiet.
“I always loved this room when I stayed here,” Mattue noted, peering around like he hadn’t already seen it a million times before. “Barring the doors leading out to the sea, of course. I wanted to rebuild that piece and get rid of the steps. No need for them myself, but someone denied the request.”
Eryx was not here for a conversation.
He wouldn’t indulge one, either.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
Mattue rolled his eyes back in Eryx’s direction, clearly annoyed. “Where is your couth?”
“Where is yours? You don’t announce your oncoming arrival?”
“I have made attempts to get a word through to you, but you either ignore them or have the guards turn them away. Apparently, you’re so very busy—with whatever you’re doing here, of course—that you can’t even write back a proper letter with a seal, Eryx.”
His jaw worked to relieve some of the tension starting to form there when he replied, “It’s storm season, Mattue. No one wants to be out in those winds on a fucking horse delivering letters.”
“But they’ll do it for a prince. What are they supposed to tell you—no?”
Why did the man have to be right?
“What do you want?”
Mattue leaned down to pick something up from one of the chairs pushed into the long table. Standing straight, the man brought up with him the piece of white silk that he’d used the day before from Arelle’s dress to gag her when he fucked her while she was bent over the table exactly where Mattue currently stood.
“Is it the storm season keeping you locked away and busy, Prince, or something else? Say … someone, perhaps?”
Eryx simply stared at the man. “Do you have something to say to me? And next time, don’t use my father as a reason for you to interrupt my day. He won’t send word to me until at least after the season passes, and we both know it.”
A chuckle echoed from the other man. “Fair enough. And yes, I do have something to say. You’re well aware, I have eyes and ears everywhere. Do you think they wouldn’t get word to me that you’re becoming a little too enamored with your new slave?”
“Arelle,” he corrected instantly.
Mattue’s brow raised. “Oh, you use her name?”
“Mattue—”
“Her name is nothing. She is nothing—a creature, Eryx. Owned. That is what she is, and you would do well to remember it before you take her out somewhere and think someone else will forget her place, too.”
“I don’t like your tone. Don’t forget your place, Mattue.”
The advisor grinned and shook his head. “See, that right there. It’s concerning. We had a deal, or did you forget it? You have gotten what you wanted, and now I want what you promised me.”
“Take the fucking crown,” Eryx snarled. “If you want it, then take it. Who do you have to go through, when in one way or another, you’ve killed every brother I had?”
Mattue’s head snapped back, and his gaze zoned in on Eryx with a warning flashing brightly.
“Oh, you think I forgot about that, too?” Eryx asked. “He fell from the horse, Eryx, that is what you must say. I might have only been four, but you still sound the same now as you did then. If you want the crown, I’m certainly not stepping in your way.”
It took him a minute, but Mattue made his way around the side of the table and all the way to where Eryx stood on the other side. That piece of white silk was still tight in his hand, and he dumped it to the prince’s feet without warning or care.
Then, Mattue said, “You don’t seem to understand, Eryx. While you remain alive, the crown will always be yours when it is not your father’s.”
“I will abdicate.”
The advisor stared at the piece of white silk like it meant something more than either of them would say. “I’m not sure you will, actually. Not if the crown means you get to keep something … your father did that once, too. Thought he loved a slave. Thing was, she never loved him back. She only ever loved you. Did you ever see your mother without her collar?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It has to do with everything that you are. Your father, well, he would have allowed her anything. And then you were born, and everything had to change. She didn’t need the collar with her fin clipped and you on her hip, but she wore it to hide what you and the rest of them could never know. Not if she wanted you to live. And Anthia … your mother only ever wanted for you to live.”
“What are you—”
“The crown is yours while you’re alive. More than you know, Eryx.”
What?
Eryx would figure it out.
Another time.
“Leave,” he demanded.
Mattue did.
Still, Eryx heard his advisor’s parting words before the door closed. They would haunt him for days, he was sure.
“You’ll regret this, Prince.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Zale, King of the Blu Sea
“ARE YOU listening to—”
“I hear him perfectly fine,” Zale replied shortly, his tail fin snapping hard to the floor of the private palace chambers before he continued his pacing. “I’m hearing too much, in fact.”
The silence that answered his outburst satisfied Zale, but he knew it wouldn’t last l
ong. It couldn’t. That had been his biggest problem since the last of his daughters had been captured by the landwalkers.
Nothing was as he wanted it to be.
Not as it should be.
“You have to understand how dangerous this could be for you, your highness,” one of his advisors said, daring to be the first to speak in the group of four. “The Emerald prince has been seen gathering guards—we know he’s sent back a messenger for his father, but we were unable to intervene before the man was out of our colonies. He’s been spotted nearing Atlas, probably scouting. There are talks, Zale. Talks between the people of an uprising. They feel even more unsafe than before. They don’t believe you can protect them. And if someone is willing to say they will be the one who will do it, what do they have to lose after everything? Don’t you understand—”
“I’m not stupid or foolish. I understand what it could mean.”
“There’s more,” another one of the men said.
Oh, really?
What more could there be?
Zale had agreed to the mating between Arelle and the prince, Mav, from the Emerald Lands when she’d been only fourteen, nearing her fifteenth year. He’d assumed it would be a good match, and even better for his rule. Yet another one of his princesses married to a strong royal bloodline of merpeople from another realm.
It meant power and a hand he could extend.
Things his people needed.
Unfortunately, that merman had been nothing more than a prickly thorn in his side from the moment he swam into Zale’s sea.
“What else?” Zale asked.
His pacing finally came to a stop, and he dared to shoot a look over his shoulder at the enclave entrance that would lead to his wife’s private chambers. She had made it very clear he was no longer invited in there unless she said otherwise.
He didn’t even get to see his grandchild.
Not that those things really bothered him. It was the fact that she’d refused his presence because he’d asked for another child—an heir to replace the ones he’d lost these past two seasons. It only seemed fair, to be honest.
He couldn’t force a child on his mate—one of the only choices they had in mating was the woman’s decision to have the child. Spill the first seed outside of the womb, and she was safe from impending pregnancy. And even if she didn’t waste the first, it seemed like chance whether she even would conceive otherwise. The man was helpless to his partner’s control. As the stories went, it prevented children from arriving to a merwoman in a mated pair that was not a happy or good one. But they didn’t have to be happy or good at the moment. They needed an heir.
“Well?” Zale demanded when his men stayed silent.
His gaze skipped over his gathered advisors, waiting for yet another grievance about Mav that would put him one step closer to either banishing the man from his kingdom or killing him altogether. That option, however, would probably mean a war for him.
The favored son.
An heir to a far larger realm than his own …
Killing Mav would not end well for Zale, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t considering it or thinking about it more often than he should.
“Seems he’s been asking about the last queen,” the man in the middle of the others said quietly. “And what anyone might know about her … unfortunate end.”
Zale stiffened into ice. “What?”
“We told you—we told you the stories of her capture would be spread. You could only twist the narrative so much when there were witnesses. The kingdom knew the prince on land had an obsession with hunting her after the talks of peace she’d attempted with the king. And if the truth comes out that she wasn’t killed like you said she was, then it’s not that far of a step before they learn you planned for her capture, too.”
Disbelief and rage swelled through Zale like never before. He darted closer to the advisor, his hand already reaching for the dagger he kept sheathed at his back as a last defense. Glaring at the man, his hand wrapped around the butt of the knife, but he didn’t pull it out just yet.
“You will watch your tongue, or I will cut it out and place it in your hand for you to stare at for the rest of your days,” he warned.
The man to the right of the one he’d just threatened let out a sigh before saying, “The sacrifice of the last queen didn’t do what you promised it would do, Zale. They continued hunting us. And look at us now—decades later, and even your own daughters have been captured. What now?”
The sea king had a good mind to cut the throat out of the man instead of his tongue. At least then, not only would he be unable to talk and anger his king, but he’d also be dead. A good thing for Zale, at the moment.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t do it.
He had so few people left who he could trust, and these advisors were some of those. He couldn’t afford to lose anyone.
“Bring him to me,” Zale ordered, finally letting go of the end of the knife and dropping his hands to his sides. “Mav, bring him to me now.”
He didn’t need to say it a second time. The advisors were quick to scatter from his presence, but then again, that seemed to be happening to him a lot. Even his subjects couldn’t stomach to be in his view for too long before they, too, found a reason to leave.
He’d wanted to be king, once upon a time.
Wanted the world for his mate.
Complacency would always be a death sentence for men like him.
While he waited for the Emerald prince to be brought to his chambers, Zale went back to pacing. The entire time, the brand on the back of his hand of the two arrows—the only thing other than the crown he wore and the throne he sat on that deemed him a Blu Sea royal—burned and itched.
He swore when it did that, it was telling him you don’t belong—you’re the false king.
Even his own heart knew the truth.
“If he’ll usurp you,” came a soft voice from behind, making Zale spin around to find his mate had come to stand in the shadows of the enclave leading to her rooms, “then at least allow me the freedom of escape before he does it, Zale. If you know you’ll die for what you’ve done to these people, let me take the baby and run. You can’t kill him, and if you do, it’ll be a season before his father’s army lands in our kingdom and burns it to the ground. Either way, you lose. Allow me to save the baby.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but she was quick to ask, “What happens, Zale, if they find Anthia alive somewhere on Atlas with the brand of her reign still on her throat? If you think what the Emerald prince or his father would do to you will be even a fraction of what these people will do to you … in the end, you will still lose.”
“Don’t say her name again, Rosel.”
She tipped her chin up, ever defiant. “You were wrong, Zale.”
“About what?”
“You are both stupid and foolish.”
She didn’t give him the chance to respond before spinning on her tail fin and heading back into the shadows of her rooms where she couldn’t be seen. Not that it mattered; he couldn’t focus on her for long, when the noise outside in the corridor signaled the Emerald prince had been found and would soon be delivered.
But what good would it do?
They were all right.
His advisors.
His wife, too.
No matter what Zale chose, he would eventually lose.
TWENTY-FIVE
Arelle
WHEN THE SEA threatened the House of Miller a short few days later, reaching so high that it began seeping into the house, Arelle found herself put in the back of a carriage without Eryx and returned to the stable estate where she was first delivered after being captured. A small break between storms allowed them the reprieve to travel, but with every gallop of the horses’ hooves against wet ground, her heart hurt a little more.
Eryx joined her soon after, with the rest of the small army of servants that seemed to follow him wherever he went.
She liked this house far les
s.
It was farther from the sea.
Her heart felt every single mile traveled away from it, and it was only made worse by the fact she had to travel alone, but for Mara, who sat across from her in the carriage. Not that she would consider herself friends with the servant Eryx preferred to look after her, but the woman never treated her as though she was just a slave for the prince to do with what he deemed fit.
That couldn’t be forgotten.
Despite her feelings about the stable estate, there was one single room in the house that she enjoyed. Well, it wasn’t so much a room that was a part of the house, as it was attached to the east wing. A small corridor led out from the house to the glass doors that allowed entrance into what a servant had explained to her that they called a solarium.
Filled with plants, trees and more from all the many realms, it smelled like the earth. Inside, the air was always hot and damp, no matter if it rained or the wind blew so hard the trees toppled over. From the walls to the ceiling, glass that was kept clean allowed them a beautiful view of the miles and miles of fields.
The few birds and butterflies that called the solarium home weren’t bothersome and tended to stay away when anyone was inside. Water continued to dribble from a stone fountain in the middle, which was fed from the water wheel outside that took from a creek that ran along the side of the house. It overflowed just enough to fill the cracks in the stone floor of the solarium that then led to the many beds of flowers and plants to feed the soil.
Currently, the entire space was filled with purple light from the sky above. A promise of peace.
Even the white, flowy gown made of soft satin with yards of chiffon blowing out the skirts was stained with the purple hue from the sky. Standing in front of the farthest wall in the solarium, she stared up and watched the clouds roll by faster than she knew was normal. It meant another storm would soon be coming in, and in a blink, the wash of purple would be gone. Replaced instead by the blackness of the rain and wind.