Page 134 of The Hunted

“You were willing to defy the crown once for me—”

“Plausible ignorance,” Corval interjected with a sardonic glint to his eye. “I could easily have said I assumed the hunts with you were for the crown, given who you are, and that you tricked me so I didn’t know otherwise. Might have saved me from getting my head cut off. A banishment, I could deal with. The other bit, not so much.”

“And you think they would have taken the word of a hunter over that of a prince?”

“A shunned prince, you mean.”

Corval certainly knew where to hit so that it would hurt. Eryx might have appreciated that on another day, but on this evening … it only served to anger him more.

Standing from his chair and waving at the doorway to the dining room where they sat to converse, Corval said, “If the king has claimed a slave, then there isn’t anything one can do. I can’t—and won’t—help you. I cannot be more involved in this mess than I already am, my lord. I think—possibly—there is more here than you’re telling me, and I can’t risk doing business with a man who holds secrets. You’re a prince. A royal with the only claim after your father to the Bloodhurst throne. And what, you’ll risk it all for a creature with a beautiful face? Find another. I hope you understand why I have to ask you to leave.”

“She is not just—”

“Do you know what will happen to her, should she not obey? Or if you cause issues for the royal house because of a slave?”

Eryx swallowed hard but stayed quiet.

Corval didn’t seem to mind because he continued on without missing a beat, saying, “The same thing that they did to the one we believed to be her sister—she’ll be taken to a whorehouse in the west village and taught her fucking place, under whichever men pay for her time until all she knows is how to please, Eryx.”

His heart ached.

Because he knew it was true.

Still, Eryx didn’t show it.

“And if she’s my mate?” he asked the hunter. “What am I to do then?”

He didn’t need to explain more to Corval. After all, it had been the hunter who explained to Eryx the dangers of a male being separated from his other half. How they would sooner kill him than risk giving him any opportunity to get his mate returned to his side.

Well, now it was Eryx.

He was the mate without.

And Corval was looking him right in the face.

Corval tipped his chin up, eyeing Eryx with a bit more wariness than before. “That’s not possible. You’re a—”

“Oh, but it is,” Eryx returned as he pulled the scarf from his throat so the gills flaring at his neck with each heavy breath would be easily seen. He stood from the table, his gaze locked with the widening stare of the hunter as he came closer with purposeful, rage-fueled steps. “See, I am far more like her than I am any of you.”

“Prince—”

“You did give me something I might possibly be able to use, and for that, I’ll make this quick. Easy, even.”

The sister, that was.

He could find her now.

What he would do with her was another matter, and one he would deal with once he retrieved the mermaid.

As for Corval …

Eryx used the knife on the table that Corval had been using to carve a little mermaid from a stick of wood. He drove it straight through the other man’s throat. Corval bled out on his table.

He made sure the man kept his eyes on the half-merman while he gurgled and choked on his blood. Eryx wanted the hunter to know why this had happened as it had—he wanted no question as to why he’d taken the man’s life. Perhaps, he should have felt some remorse or guilt for the murder, seeing as how Corval had been the one who’d brought Arelle to him. But no. The hunts had become an inevitable part of their lives and ways on Atlas.

That didn’t make them right. Neither was the man dying in front of him.

All he thought about was his mate and where she needed to be. Where she wasn’t. With him.