Page 8 of The Hunted

She merely smiled.

Once he was close enough for his mother to reach out and touch him, she did just that. Her warm palm came up to rest against his cheek, soft against the roughness of his few days’ worth of facial hair. A heady gust of wind pushed back the hood of her cloak, causing it to fall around her shoulders and open a bit to showcase the velvety green dress that had been chosen for her to wear that day. The low neckline did nothing to hide the collar at her throat.

She preferred her hair up, when the style of the time was to wear it down, and she refused to let them paint her face to hide the spattering of scales at her temples. Because if she was going to be kept as a prize, then she demanded to be shown like one. She liked sandals on her feet instead of the tightly laced shoes with clunky platforms on the heels that gave women a bit of height. They showcased the empty spots where her pinky toes had once been, before the surgeons clipped them to devastate her. They would have become the tips of her fin tail should she shift in water. The loss made it harder for her to escape.

His mother was a slave.

A mermaid.

Everyone in the land would balk at the title, and yet his mother seemed to wear it all with pride. She shoved it right back in their faces, and her favor from the king allowed it.

“You never tell me about it,” he said.

“What, the sea?” Anthia asked.

“That, and them … any of it.”

“I did when you were younger. Sang the stories, when they allowed me to have you. Someone told them that’s what I was doing, and they made me stop.”

Eryx’s brow dipped. “Why?”

“You already know the answer to that.”

He really didn’t think he did.

Anthia shrugged almost helplessly when he didn’t reply, and her hand slid down from his cheek to allow her fingertips to glide over the side of his throat. The pulse of his heart beat there, overtop scars that had faded with time. Just because they were faded, however, didn’t mean that the gills the surgeons had sewn shut after his birth hadn’t once allowed him to breathe. They existed, even if he now was incapable of using them.

After all, he couldn’t be a slave.

He had to be human.

Or he had to look like it.

“Because then you’d empathize, Eryx. And you can’t be what your father wants you to be when you care more for a slave than you do the people that slave is meant to serve.” Just as quickly as his mother’s mood seemed to turn dark, she smiled brightly and dropped her hand back to her side. “Walk with me?”

“You know, if they catch you leaving the estate without a guard …”

“They’ll whip me until I bleed purple, lock me in a chamber, and … well, what else could they do? They’ve already done and taken it all. If only the punishment scared me now.”

He wished it did scare her. Wished so much he could protect her more.

He stayed close to his mother’s side as they headed down one row of the trees. Plucking one of the low-hanging, white and red fruits from the tree, he offered it to his mother, knowing it was her favorite. She didn’t get it nearly enough.

“How did the hunt go this season?” she asked, her fingernail dragging through the soft skin of the fruit to peel it back like a knife might. “I’ve only heard whispers about it.”

“Not well,” he replied, “and it looks like most of the catches will be used for trading to harvest, because they can’t afford to keep any of them. Not with what the hunters promised the king, and what he promised the neighboring realm for the coming year’s trades.”

His mother hummed under her breath, nodding but otherwise saying nothing about the hunt. She never did—or maybe it was that she learned not to over time. He couldn’t be sure. Sometimes, he found it interesting how she could stand to listen to people talk about the hunting, capture, and subsequent sale of her own people without as much as a frown on her face. He supposed she didn’t have much of a choice.

And neither did Atlas.

Their realm was only guaranteed safety from war with other kingdoms if they could continue to produce worthy goods in their trades. Creatures from the sea, with blood that bled purple and could produce results in medicines that cured ailments and slowed aging were definitely a commodity most other realms in the world weren’t currently offering. It was also why the mermaids remained young-looking once reaching adulthood, their aging taking a decade to show what a human’s year would for them. And while mermaids elsewhere had the capability and power to defend their people, the ones in the Blu Sea did not.

The people of Atlas took advantage.

Often.

While his mother chewed on a piece of the fruit she’d broken off from the five prongs at the bottom, he listened to the wind dancing through the orchard. Others wouldn’t dare to stand out in this weather, knowing a storm was on the way while the sky swirled black overhead. He’d never been as afraid of it as the rest of them were.