Page 17 of The Hunted

The rest of them, however?

Well, the other sisters knew where they stood.

“Go home,” Arelle said, finally finding the strength in her voice again, “but I am going back for Coral. Even if it is just for her body.”

“Do what you must.”

“And you, sister.”

Poe nodded once, her gaze flicking behind Arelle into the darkness of the sea from which they’d swum. She didn’t even look at her sister before turning in the water and darting away. Arelle waited until she could no longer see her sister’s shimmering scales, or the glowing purple streaks of blood that would remain stained on her for days.

Only then did Arelle turn back for Coral.

She already knew, though, that the chances of retrieving her sister’s body was unlikely. The water had risen too much, and with the currents becoming stronger from the waves on the surface, chances were Coral’s remains had been pulled out to the sea.

Not that it mattered.

She had to try.

This was her fault. She’d brought Coral along, even though she’d known the girl was too young. The very least she could do was go back for her.

Wasn’t it?

• • •

Arelle didn’t make it far enough to enter the same canal of the water orchard where the attack happened because she knew that she wasn’t alone. Even if she couldn’t hear the noise coming from somewhere above the surface of the water, she would have still felt that something wasn’t quite right.

Before she could think better of the decision, Arelle skimmed to the surface of the choppy water. Overhead, a blackened sky shifted and circled with clouds that were already creating tunnels that would be most dangerous if they reached down to the ground. Add that into the violence of the sea, ready to drag its next victim under the waves, and she could practically smell the season’s arrival with every breath she took.

But none of that really mattered.

Not when the form near the shore of the water orchard caught her attention, and suddenly, she was unable to look away. He stood nearly chest-deep in the dangerous water. Without a shirt or cloak, even in the darkness, the landwalker’s skin gleamed with a golden tint as the bands of muscles that made up his chest clenched with his next shout.

“Anthia!”

Arelle dragged in a lungful of sea-salt-infused air.

“Mother!”

She had wanted to cry earlier for her sister.

He was crying.

And that just made her so mad for reasons even she couldn’t understand. That sudden swell of rage, as risky as the sea she waded within, had her wishing she could take the landwalker’s life away from him.

From all of them.

If not for everything they had done to her people, this wouldn’t have happened at all.

He shouted again.

Arelle almost sank under the water.

Before she could do that and get as far away from the hauntingly beautiful man on the shore who made her want to kill, and this terrible place … his gaze skimmed the surface of the sea again. His stare landed right on her. They locked eyes; there was no denying the fact he could see her just fine from her safe position where she doubted he would go.

For a second, nothing happened.

The wind seemed to quiet.