Page 54 of The Hunted

“I followed Poe,” Arelle admitted, “and I knew that the guards would stop because they wouldn’t disobey their king, but I had to try. I had to try to bring her back, Father.”

Still, Zale stared hard.

Arelle waited her father out.

At this point, what else could she do?

She was all too aware of the many, many eyes watching her. Yet, none of their people said a word. Perhaps they had been forewarned before she made her way to the palace, or even threatened to remain quiet.

It didn’t matter.

She felt their stares, and their judgment; she didn’t mind taking it for what it was.

When her father continued to say nothing Arelle wrung her sore fingers together. She twisted them, needing that distraction. She had only one thought to ask in that moment, one little soul to worry about. Everything else was a background thought.

“Where’s the baby? Poe’s daughter?”

Zale let out a heavy sigh. “With your mother.”

“Poe would want—”

“Well, it doesn’t matter what Poe would want, does it?”

Arelle flinched. “Yes. It does matter. She’s not dead; she’s simply—”

“Caught,” her father interjected sharply. “Caught, Arelle. A slave. Another of my daughters, gone. Do you know why we are all gathered here today?”

She hesitated.

Did he really want her to answer that?

Sometimes with her father, it was hard to tell. He asked a question like he intended to get an answer, but really it was just a trap. She played these games with him more than enough over the years of her life and she knew when to not engage. The only way not to lose a game was not to play the game.

Or to win.

And with Zale, a person could rarely win.

“I don’t,” she said.

If only because she knew she had no other choice.

Not only her father, but everyone else watching her, too, wanted an answer.

This was their life now.

The landwalkers.

The hunts.

Their missing.

All the pain.

“I gathered them,” her father said, rising from his throne with his crown dangling from his fingertips.

He took a moment, just long enough to set that crown atop his head, and to make a show out of glancing around the room. She didn’t bother to look at the other faces, of the people she would recognize, and others who came and went—people of their colony. People they were supposed to protect, people who were terrified all the time. Wondering if it would be them or theirs next.

Now, she supposed, this was the absolute worst situation for her father because he’d lost two daughters to the landwalkers. And how was he ever supposed to protect his people and the ones they loved when he couldn’t even protect his own?