Page 19 of The Hunted

Her father’s reign as King of the Blu Sea had long been tainted with questions and more unknowns than were favorable. He’d taken the throne after the previous queen had been captured and killed … or so everyone assumed. With no heirs and no family left from her bloodline, it was left to her advisor to fill the role.

Arelle’s father.

Many didn’t like that the people hadn’t been given a choice. Others were angry their queen hadn’t been avenged, or even … searched for, really. The landwalker’s hunting became far more common after that, leaving very little time for the colony to revolt against their new king when what they really needed was his protection.

Or so she had always been told.

Arelle had the distinct feeling their people regretted that now more often than they ever had before. She couldn’t say that she blamed them.

She didn’t try to meet their stares, either. Didn’t force any of the people in the colony to risk being seen stepping out of place on account of her. Undoubtedly, that would only earn them a punishment for their empathy or even their anger.

At the gates leading into her father’s palace, the guards waited in their usual positions. With spears at the ready. Instead of looking directly at her as she passed by to enter, they kept their stares turned on the sea floor beneath them. She wished she could be surprised to see her personal guards waiting just beyond the gates, but she wasn’t.

And they didn’t speak, either.

In fact, the two men who accompanied her almost everywhere—except when she’d escaped them earlier while the court was full—didn’t even move to follow her until she had passed them by entirely. They trailed behind at an acceptable distance, and it was only then that she considered what they might also face for her decisions today.

Arelle had never felt worse.

The entire guard had come out to witness her shameful return, it seemed. The mermen with their weapons in hand lined the pathway leading to the palace on either side, much like the rest of the colony’s people had outside the coral wall. Until that moment, she had kept her head high … fearing what would happen next, but willing to accept it.

As she neared the palace entrance, she finally lowered her head. The weight of her errors resting heavily on her shoulders had never been more present.

Her father’s palace—carved from an underwater cave and the largest part of the coral reef—was usually busy no matter the time of day. There was always someone coming or going. Servants moving from here to there to do their duties. And yet on that evening, Arelle swam through silent, dark halls. She didn’t need to be told where to go.

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?