“I bow to no one.”
“We’ve spent all our lives hunting though,” Destin said and sighed. Was he getting soft? I frowned at him, ready to knock some sense into his skull. He was dreaming again.
It drove me crazy.
“I am a huntsman,” I said. “I hunt. And as long as I’m hunting, I am the one in power.”
Destin’s eyes riveted on the mass below that no longer resembled a humpback, but a carcass with a metallic stench. “No man is too powerful to be hunted, Alaric.”
That was enough. I shoved my cousin, and he gasped, buthe didn’t fight back.
Never did.
He was too loyal.
Instead, he frowned, and before he could speak, I snapped. “Iam the huntsman, Destin.” I slammed my fist on the rail and added, “You are distracted again, cousin. Get that sea witch out of your mind or I will.”
Sea witch.Destin fell in love years ago with a mysterious young woman but the witch disappeared.
“At least I have a witch,” he muttered.
I cursed and shook my head. I didn’t need a witch. I didn’t need anyone.
I stormed off.
No man is too powerful to be hunted?Did Destin even realize what I’d built? The power in my hands? I had become so wealthy, so notorious, so large thatnobodycould touch me. Anyone who touched me would be killed.
My men were loyal to me, this business, and this life on the stormy sea.
As I walked onto the helm and took hold of the ship’s wheel, I noticed two figures standing to the side. They were tall for teenagers, and very slender. Sereth asked if I might give them safe passage to the kingdom of Corallure, the home of her estranged husband, Elias.
She didn’t explain who they were, but paid a handsome sum for their safe delivery. “You must ensure they are promptly taken to the king and queen of Corallure.” Sereth had handed me a sealed envelope. “With this,” she added. That note was in my quarters now.
Curiosity may have forced anyone else to open it, but I didn’t have time or a care for that.
Sereth asked a favor.
She offered good money.
And I said yes.
The teenagers stared at the whale, somber looks in their eyes. The girl then glanced my way, her expression hollow. Her name was Lilo, and, for whatever reason, I felt myself mirrored in her.
A haunted look.
An invisible guard around the soul.
Her twin, Niko, glanced at me too, and it was then I noticed he was holding something. A knife? He fidgeted with it before it disappeared in his fingers. No, his sleeve?
I dismissed it as a hallucination.
Whalers did that a lot, possessed by what we did.
And while we killed, the teens kept to themselves, which I appreciated.
The last thing I needed was to have two troublesome teenagers meddling in my whaling empire.
I frowned, and the twins, who were obviously scared of me like everyone else, quickly redirected their attention to the remnants of the dead whale.
