Page 2 of The Hunted

It wasn’t that which bothered her. It was everything that had to come before.

Coral shrieked as the purple octopus Poe seemed to like so much flicked a sticky tentacle a little too close to her face when they passed by his small den before entering the largest portion of their sister’s grotto. “It feels dark and … where is the color or the pretty things, Arelle?”

“Tak leads Father’s royal guard but also spends his time hunting creatures in the sea,” Arelle returned, “and you think he wouldn’t have a penchant for all things malevolent? The man doesn’t go anywhere without something sharp in his hand.”

Her sister chuffed but didn’t reply.

In the water, they went back to their mother tongue. A language made up of clicks and cheeps and noises produced from their throats that traveled even in the choppiest of seas; one the humans hadn’t learned, despite how easily the mermaids absorbed their language and ways.

“Could always go back to the palace if you don’t like my grotto,” Poe said as the two entered the largest section of the underwater cave.

The cave reached so high under the island that, at the very top, a hole big enough for two allowed them a view of dribbling water and a rocky ledge.

Arelle didn’t want to go back to the palace though she wouldn’t tell her sisters that fact. There was nothing waiting for her there. Except, perhaps, the suffocating control of her father, and a court that couldn’t seem to look away whenever she was in view.

Poe didn’t give the two a chance to respond before she lifted herself to sit on the ledge. What seawater remained in her lungs exasperated in her next exhale, sliding down from the gills at her throat and over her breasts, which were covered by the long length of her hair. Just like that, with her first breath of air instead of water, her sister’s shimmering scales disappeared by the churning water where she rested her tail.

Gone was her fin.

The blue-green scales.

All the black markings.

In its place were her sister’s very human legs and bare feet. Poe stood from the edge, walking to sit where she kept all her favorite things in her grotto. Arelle followed suit, pulling herself out of the water at the rocky ledge and letting the curse—although some believed it to be magic—take hold and change her, too. Despite how it looked to see her scales melt away into legs and feet, it never felt like anything more than a tickle racing over her skin and through her blood.

Coral, on the other hand, stayed skimming the surface. Arelle passed her a look, shaking her head at the same time and asking, “How are you ever going to be comfortable on your legs if you don’t use them?”

“I use them,” Coral replied.

A bit too defensively, really.

“Not nearly enough,” Poe muttered when she picked up an old, leather-bound book from the floor. She flipped through the pages, clearly knowing where she had left off. Arelle often wondered how her sister managed to get books, not to mention, keep them from getting ruined in the very damp, earth-smelling grotto. Besides that, how had she even learned to read? “Yet, you want to take to land every other day.”

“I just—”

“Need to learn to use your legs. What if you need to run?”

Coral quieted.

Arelle dropped next to her sister’s seat, enjoying the smooth, cold rock against her skin. As naked as the day she slipped from her mother’s womb, she stared up into the hole of black overhead, considering the storms again.

“How long do you think the storm season will last this year?” she asked.

Poe grinned slyly.

Out of all of her sisters, Poe could be the most dangerous, Arelle thought. Calculating, always able to say the right thing, and capable of great violence when she knew she could get away with it. Beautiful, too, and the only one of Arelle’s sisters who had been able to pick her own mate—a merman who was just as prone to violence and dark things as she was.

“Long enough, I hope,” Poe replied.

“For what?” Coral asked.

“I’d like a child this season.”

That silenced the grotto but for the constant drip drip drip of water.

“Will Father—”

Poe’s stare cut to Coral, stopping her from asking more. “I’ve been mated for a year—why wouldn’t he allow me to have a child this season?”