Page 143 of The Hunted

“Why doesn’t he call?” she asked. “Why doesn’t he answer me?”

“This may give you the chance to find out exactly why.”

Finally, she looked his way.

Poe nodded.

Eryx nodded back.

“Good luck, mermaid,” he told her.

That earned him a cunning smile from Poe when she replied, “Luck has nothing to do with winning a war.”

He didn’t have the chance to tell her she might be right because in the next breath, Poe ran forward and jumped from the high cliffs.

At least, he thought, I managed to get her collar off.

• • •

Arelle

There was nothing more uncomfortable than the feeling of the spikes in the leather collar around her throat being pulled from her gills. It was entirely unnatural, and her gills flared with the first exhales it’d had in far too long.

“Beautifully made, this,” the man said, admiring the collar in his hands. “But not acceptable if you’re going to be staying here, young one.”

Arelle side-eyed the man she’d been told was a blacksmith there to fit her new, and permanent, collar. He talked as though they were friends, and even dared to ask her permission before putting his hands on her to remove Eryx’s collar.

Thing was, she didn’t care to talk back.

And they were not friends.

She wouldn’t pretend differently.

“Now, tip your head up, I like to get the measurement a bit loose, despite what everyone else thinks. It may be the law to wear it, but you should at least be comfortable in it, I suppose. Lift up for me, thank you.”

Arelle’s jaw clicked in her annoyance, but she did as he demanded. The man—whose name she didn’t care to learn, though he had been respectful enough to ask hers—pulled what appeared to be a strip of material from the pocket of his waistcoat. He wrapped it around her throat, and for the first time, she tensed.

He clicked his tongue; his gaze darted to hers. “I know you must think badly of me, but I am only doing my job. I try to do it kindly, little mermaid, because they give me no choice. I am either here to do what they demand, or they kill me and mine. Do not worry, it is not my hands who will hurt you.”

For the first time since she’d met the man, Arelle acknowledged him with a nod and a soft, “Thank you.”

“Let me measure.”

“Sure.”

He took the measurement of her throat in a tense position, and then proceeded to mark the soft material with a piece of black charcoal.

“There we are,” he said, packing the items away. “And that is it for today. I’ll put this one back on you for the sake of doing it, although what good it does, I don’t know. You could have removed it yourself.”

Arelle smiled. “I couldn’t.”

“Ah, I know. The law again.”

“Not at all.”

Her mate placed it.

She wouldn’t remove it.