Page 61 of The Hunted

Drip, drip, drip …

Right down into the water.

Time to come back to me, my little mermaid.

THIRTEEN

Arelle

“HE’S NOT … uncivilized. I had the fortune of meeting him when I was invited to the gathering your father had. He—Mav—seemed pleased with you.”

Of course, he was.

Arelle was everything Mav of Emerald should need, want, and look for in a proper mate. Her status complimented his; she was well behaved; there was nothing about the match that would bring cause for concern to his own realm when he returned with her.

Except he wouldn’t return with her at all.

That was the thing …

“That isn’t the issue, Mother,” Arelle replied. “He’s a fine man.”

Perceptively so, really.

Arelle simply couldn’t go through with a mating ceremony with Mav when she had already done so with someone else. It wouldn’t break the bond she’d already made, and another one couldn’t take hold.

If she didn’t figure a way out of this mating, and soon, then all her secrets would soon be on display for any and everyone who wanted to see them.

Her mother, content to rest in her nest where she spent most of her days locked away in her palace chambers, made a soft noise from the other side of the room. “Then, what is it? The last time we talked, I thought you were happy for the chosen mate from the Emerald Lands.”

Once upon a time, perhaps.

But fairy tales were not real.

This would not end well.

Certainly not happily.

Instead of answering her mother, Arelle glanced up from the cradle of coral where Poe’s daughter slept with her tail tightly wrapped around her own tiny hand. Across the large space that her mother had filled with bright colors and pretty things, she found Rosel was still watching her.

And maybe that unsettled her.

It never escaped her notice how Rosel seemed far more like an unmated mermaid—living on her own, essentially, and inserting her own style and little pleasures into the spaces where she was forced to stay most of her days.

“Do you like your life, Mother?”

Rosel blinked, the shimmering blue scales at her temples winking. “What sort of question is that?”

“Did you choose him, or did he choose you?”

“A bit of both, but what does it matter?”

“I just … wonder.”

“Is that what it is? You worry you won’t love the Emerald prince?”

If only …

“That isn’t my worry,” Arelle said, drifting away from the baby’s cradle to near her mother’s nest, made up of seagrass and the softest of moss. “My worry is that the time will never be right, I suppose.”