Page 25 of The Hunted

“He’s going to banish me.”

“Yes.”

“Like a shameful secret.”

“Well—”

“Even though he has spent his entire reign over this realm catching mermaids to breed with them, so he could have an army of heirs and spares.”

None of his statements were questions.

Just truth.

“Eryx—”

“Unless you’re going to tell me something I wish to hear, you’re to say nothing at all, Mattue.”

The rage that coursed through him mixed heavily with his grief as he spun back around to face the mirror once again. Only this time, he recognized all too well the fractured reflection of the man staring back at him.

The boy he’d once been.

Forgotten.

Paraded like a trophy when needed.

Discarded otherwise.

Only his mother had been a constant. Only she had shown him true affection and love when everyone else in his life treated him like the spare to the throne he’d always been. Until he was suddenly the heir, and everything had to change.

And now what did he have?

Nothing.

Again.

Just nothing.

With a shout, Eryx put his clenched, shaking fists right through the glass of the mirror, shattering most of it as he watched the shards fall to his naked feet on the floor. A shift of his left foot caused one of the pieces to slice the side of his heel, but he didn’t even care.

He was crying again.

He hated that more than anything else.

“I’m sorry,” Mattue said in a whisper behind him. “I know you cared for your mother a great deal, and that—”

“I want her dead.”

That quieted the man.

But only for a moment.

“Who?”

Who?

Such a simple question.

He could describe the little mermaid in a single breath. How the lines of her face made up the shape of a heart. The fiery shade of her hair. Those wide, haunting violet eyes that matched the color of the skies after a storm had passed. Silken, olive skin.