Page 7 of The Hunted

And he couldn’t find her.

Eryx had a feeling he knew exactly where his mother had gone when she’d had the chance to slip away from the room and people. Events like these often allowed her less attention from his father, and she used it to her advantage.

“You have that look—the quietness in you—again,” Mattue noted.

“Do I?”

“Mmhmm.”

Eryx stood from his throne, saying, “If they ask, tell them I went to take a piss.”

“Are you? Taking a piss, I mean.”

He gave Mattue a smirk, feeling the weight of his crown tilt with his head as he met the man’s dark eyes with his own stormy blues when he replied, “Well, as long as that’s what you tell them, then it really doesn’t matter what I actually do, now does it?”

His uncle didn’t respond.

Eryx didn’t really need him to.

• • •

If there was such a thing as love—if it was true and real like fairy tales and myths suggested—then that’s what Eryx felt for his mother. Not the romantic love that women in the realm cooed about when they thought men weren’t close enough to hear, but something else entirely.

A love worth more, maybe.

More loyal.

Far more coveted.

His father spent years fucking his way through slaves before discarding them. A lot like he did to any wife he took, almost all of whom died under circumstances no one really understood when the truth had never been told. A number of his brothers had come from women kept in his father’s harem of slaves, and yet none of them had ever seemed to care for their mothers the way Eryx did.

He wasn’t sure why that was.

Perhaps it was because their mothers hated the children they’d been forced to birth, and his mother never had.

He also didn’t understand why it felt like he could hear his mother wherever he went. Even when she wasn’t with him, she was there. As much a part of him as the blood running through his veins, she was just there. He didn’t tell anyone—they wouldn’t understand—but he knew his mother was aware. She simply wouldn’t tell him why.

“I knew you would be here,” he said, smiling when Anthia turned her hooded head in his direction when the horse approached the water orchard. Rows of water fruit trees stretched through long channels with deep sea water on either side. He listened to the wind whispering through waving branches with low-hanging fruit. The water fruit was best at the start of the storm season. Harvest would happen soon, and the fruit would be good to store for the coming year. “Always your favorite spot, Mama.”

He had her dark hair, twisted with curls down past his ears, while hers was long enough to touch the small of her back when she let it down. He also had her small lips that seemed perpetually turned into a smirk, even when he didn’t realize it. And the sharp lines that made up her delicate features, although from his boyhood to adulthood, his had become harder and more masculine.

“You’re going to ruin your cloak,” he added, dismounting from the horse that he’d taken from the estate’s stables earlier. “It’s not meant to be worn in the rain.”

At least, not the one she was currently wearing. The satin fabric would be ruined by the time he got her back to the house.

“It’s not raining.”

“Yet.”

Anthia shrugged, her hand raising to touch the silver shackle at her throat. Unlike most, his mother’s was always kept shined and gleaming. The three-pointed crown resting upon a cursive B carved into the metal designated her a royal whore.

He hated that.

More than even she knew.

“I like the wetness, Eryx,” his mother returned, “because it smells like home.”

“The sea,” he returned. “That’s what you mean.”