Page 82 of The Hunted

Huh.

“And the walking?”

Her gaze darted to his. “Sixteen—like all of my kind. Three years ago.”

“And yet, it’s like you’ve been doing it your whole life.”

He couldn’t help but smirk at the way her brow furrowed. The little knot in her otherwise smooth forehead said she was confused about their conversation, and the softness in her stare told him that she didn’t know what to do here. But that wasn’t really his problem. Not at the moment, anyway.

Just as fast as she’d showed the vulnerability, it was gone when she looked over the spread on the table. Without asking if she could be seated, she dropped gracefully into the chair at the opposite end from him.

Eryx might have chided her for it. Then again, he never cared for royal semantics, either.

“So, is this how a prince of Atlas spends his days?” she asked, leaning over to pick likely one of the only things on the table she recognized as food for her to eat. The fish. “By being spoiled and pampered in a big house far away from the sea. Although from there, I suppose you wouldn’t have to be bothered by the sight of my kind being pulled from the seas. How many of us do you own?”

Eryx made a noise under his breath.

Appreciative and surprised, really.

The nerve of her …

“Just you,” he decided to reply. “I don’t have a taste for slaves, really. Bit too much work to keep them as you want them.”

Her lips formed a grim line.

“Is that because of your mother?”

If his new ward felt the change in the air at the mention of Eryx’s mother, he couldn’t say. Of course, she would know … not only had he told her the woman she’d killed was his mother, but she’d undoubtedly heard him calling and begging for Anthia the night she’d been dragged into a dark sea.

Swallowing hard, his appetite entirely gone without warning, Eryx decided he no longer wanted to entertain while he took his breakfast. Perhaps allowing Arelle entrance to the house and giving her a dress and a brush for her hair had been just a little too much.

She’d forgotten her place here.

Standing from the table, he tossed the linen napkin from his lap down to the mostly untouched plate. “Enjoy the meal, Arelle. I understand your kind can eat like the rest of us do.”

That was all he offered before rounding the table and heading for the guards at the doorway. It was only the question she threw at his back that had his steps halting and his shoulders tensing like they were made of the same stone as the echoing hall.

“What, you can dress me up after you rip me from the sea, but you can’t hold a conversation at the same time? Were you only raised to be talked to, Eryx? Does the problem start when you need to talk back? Seems like poor treatment for a prince, doesn’t it? How dare you.”

How dare he?

Yes, she certainly had forgotten her place and he didn’t mind giving her a reminder. Starting right now.

Spinning on his heel, Eryx lost what remained of his cool, controlled demeanor with every step he took back toward the table. Arelle stood from the chair as he neared, not looking the slightest bit scared of her current situation.

Which was wrong.

He wanted her scared.

Needed that.

That was the entire fucking point of her being here. Not for him to dress her up into something she wasn’t, and play pretend at the table with breakfast spread out for them both. No. She was here for him to make her suffer for what she had done to him.

Eryx’s palm connected with her throat, but even when he shoved her back to the table, spilling contents to the floor and staining her white dress with the red wine that had already been poured into gold goblets, she never once flinched. He realized, as her legs widened for him to move between her thighs, that the shoes he’d sent out with the maid hadn’t been put on her feet.

She was barefoot.

Like she just came right out of the sea.