This was not clear in the comic to me, but I went over to Lily on the Valley to read the novel from this chapter, and the king actually hits the dog when he says "don't covet my prey"??? Like the novel describes the sound of a crunch when he smashes the dog's paw before wiping the blood that was drawn on the dog's body, and then explains that the king will often hurt people needlessly in front of Arjen when they meet. That's also what he's referring to when he asks "does this torment you," he means "did it hurt you to watch me hurt that dog?" Which good god. The amount of fucked up that exchange was would have been completely lost on me. More than that though, Arjen approaches the dog and heals it with expensive medicine that he bought for Elliot and he even tells the dog that it ate Elliot's medicine, so it has to survive until the end
TW: Animal abuse
This was not clear in the comic to me, but I went over to Lily on the Valley to read the novel from this chapter, and the king actually hits the dog when he says "don't covet my prey"??? Like the novel describes the sound of a crunch when he smashes the dog's paw before wiping the blood that was drawn on the dog's body, and then explains that the king will often hurt people needlessly in front of Arjen when they meet. That's also what he's referring to when he asks "does this torment you," he means "did it hurt you to watch me hurt that dog?" Which good god. The amount of fucked up that exchange was would have been completely lost on me. More than that though, Arjen approaches the dog and heals it with expensive medicine that he bought for Elliot and he even tells the dog that it ate Elliot's medicine, so it has to survive until the end