Page 39 of The Hunted

Arelle managed to free the knife she kept secured on her hip with a bit of fabric that she used to tie around her waist.

“Arelle!”

She couldn’t answer her sister—not when she had to focus on getting free of the netting first herself before she could make her way to Poe. She was all too aware that with every passing second, they were both being pulled closer to the ship.

Her sister had precious moments left.

“Arelle!”

“I’m trying, Poe!”

Arelle pulled the blade of her fish-bone knife along the netting and watched the ropes fray with the first slice. It wasn’t nearly enough, so she yanked the blade across it again. And then again. Finally, the first rope split, making a small hole, although it wasn’t nearly big enough for her to fit through.

She kept cutting.

Kept slashing.

Even when she sliced both her palms in her efforts. The purple hue of her life source leaked into the water, and trailed down her skin, sticking to her flesh and reminding her that inside … she was warm until she began to bleed.

Still, Arelle worked.

She barely even felt the pain.

When she had finally created a large enough hole to fit through, the netting spun around her as she tried to slip out through it. Her tail became twisted in the crisscrossed ropes, leaving Arelle mostly out of the net but still trapped.

“No, no, no,” she mumbled, looking back over her shoulder at her sister.

She was so close to the ship.

The netting around Poe seemed to lift up even more.

Poe stared back, horrified.

Now, though, her sister didn’t shout for help. She didn’t say anything at all. Arelle couldn’t speak either.

She cut at the netting around her tail, but she knew without needing to be told that it took entirely too long to get the job done. Not to mention, the tightening of the net around her fin left small cuts that bled into the water as she finally pushed away from the netting.

“Arelle!”

It would be the last time she’d hear her sister’s voice.

Arelle spun around in the dark water in just enough time to watch Poe, twisted and bound by the netting, be pulled up to the surface of the water.

Gods.

A cry stuck in her throat.

Hopelessness raged.

“I’m sorry,” she tried to say, even as she rushed to cut through the water. It didn’t matter that it would be too late because she still wanted to try. “Poe, I’m sorry.”

Even to her own mind, it didn’t sound right.

Nothing was right.

The only thing that stopped Arelle from breaking the surface of the water was the heavy wave that pushed her backward. She spun into the water, twisting and spiraling around and around. It was dizzying, and when she finally came to a rolling stop, she had no sense of her direction.

From which way had she come?