Page 79 of The Hunted

Another wanted to hide.

“Arelle,” he repeated thickly.

Her chin trembled.

It was done.

She’d spoken.

Like she could for him, he would hear her forever.

What good was her silence now?

“Arelle,” she whispered in kind. “And you are Eryx.”

His hand tightened on her throat, and she swallowed hard.

“Prince—”

“Eryx,” Arelle said. “To me, you are only Eryx.”

He stiffened.

She looked past him at the horse who was now grazing from a bucket that hung on the door of his stall.

“What will you do with me now?” she asked.

“I wanted to kill you.”

Arelle’s stare snapped back to his in a blink. The hard planes of his face called to her in a way that nothing else ever had. Like the scar through his right eyebrow, or the way his lips curved with his satisfaction. Not in a smile, but something else entirely.

Something more wicked.

She could study his features forever.

It would never bore her.

“But why?”

He exhaled a shaky breath.

Arelle sucked it in.

“You killed my mother. Or do you even remember her at all?”

Of course, she did.

But that hadn’t been her.

She didn’t lay the final blow, but a part of her knew that probably didn’t make a difference to him. It had been late—the sky was blacker than the seas. She and Poe looked a lot alike, but especially to someone who didn’t know them well. He could have easily mistaken her sister for her. Perhaps, because she had been the one to come out of the water after it had ended and watched him from a safe distance … maybe that was why her memory had seared into his own.

What did it matter?

Here she was.

“Now,” Eryx murmured, leaning closer until their noses touched and his hand at her throat flexed just a bit, “I’m not so sure what I’ll do with you.”

As quickly as he’d caged her, he stepped back. Not that it made any sort of difference because Arelle could still feel that man on every inch of her body in more ways than one.