Page 20 of The Hunted

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.