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“Then don’t look at me like that. Like you want me but can’t have me.” He brought her hand to his cheek, and turning his head slightly, he brushed his lips against her palm. It was made coarse by hard work, but it didn’t repel him. Rather, it made him proud, the way she fought so hard to be independent and carve an identity for herself. This coarseness was the result of the many people she had helped, of lives she had saved with her very own hands.

“You have me,” Alexandru whispered. “You always had me. Just say the word and I’ll let everyone know who owns me.”

LORD EROU DAMASCHINstood next to her in the forest, his boyishly handsome face sober as he studied the outline on the ground. Or at least that was what he had said. The outline of where the corpse had been found was drawn using a special ink, one only otherworlders could see.

Zari tried to keep still as she waited for Erou’s conclusions. With golden hair and eyes, fair skin, and a gentlemanly air about him, he looked every inch the nobleman that he was, being the son of the Earl of Avere. If not for the soldier’s uniform he was wearing, no one would have guessed what his chosen profession was.

“To reach this spot,” Erou murmured, “you would either have to come from the school or the other end of the forest, which borders the town proper.”

“I don’t think he’d have been able to enterandexit the school without anyone noticing,” Zari said.

“I think so, too.”

“But...” Zari glanced at the forest, which she herself hadn’t ventured into. “He couldn’t have made it here through that, could he? Unless all those stories about poisonous plants are just stories?”

‘Creepy’ didn’t just cover it. The trees were bent with age, their leaves not just dark and withered but black. No matter how much she squinted, everything in the forest was black. The age-spotted trunks, the rotting leaves, the mud-swathed ground...it was all just black.

Something inside her head clicked. “Lord Erou,” Zari gasped. “He didn’t die here.”

Erou straightened. “What do you mean?”

“In my vision...one of the last things he saw was green. The leaves above him, they weregreen.So he died in a forest, but notthisforest.”

“So that’s why.” Erou crouched down, brushing his fingers on the ground. “When someone dies, the person would usually leave some kind of essence, a remnant of his last dying moments. But this one...I wasn’t able to sense anything.”

When Erou came to his feet, his gaze was troubled. “I hope you haven’t made your interest in this case obvious.” If it had been up to him, he wouldn’t have allowed her to come here. But since he wasn’t her Master, all Erou had been able to do was accompany Zari and make sure she was safe.

Zari couldn’t meet his gaze.

That wasn’t good. “Lady Zari?”

“I, umm, might have...befriended...one of the suspects in the case?”

Erou groaned.

“But it’s just because everyone thoughtshewas the one who killed the man even though they have no proof at all,” she said defensively. “I felt bad for her and so I just wanted to talk to her and then...” Her voice trailed off.

“You know what I think?” He took a step closer to her. In the past, doing so would have made her back away. But she didn’t, which convinced him further that his hunch was right.

“All this is just your way of distracting yourself about what’s really bothering you.”

She looked away, muttering, “Nothing’s bothering me.”

“Yes, there is. Something has been bothering you since the time we caught the serial killer at the library.” She had almost died there, and thinking about it still made Erou’s heart race. Even though he had spent so many years in the company of humans, pretending to be like them as part of his job, their fragility had never really dawned on him until he realized how Zari had placed herself in mortal danger, using her visions to track down a killer who had been preying on the humans in town.

Since then, Erou had been unable to stop himself from keeping an eye on her, and it was for that reason he was able to tell her, “I know you’ve been skipping classes, too.”

Her eyes widened.

“The school’s administration is very understanding and forgiving, but it has its limits. If you continue with what you’re doing, you could be suspended – even expelled.” He paused. “I’m sure it was what’s on Lord Alexandru’s mind as well and why he came back mid-hunt.”

This was news to Zari. “I didn’t know he hadn’t finished the hunt.”Alexandru had made it seem like it was done, she thought uneasily. Was that so she wouldn’t feel guilty like she was feeling now?

The revelation didn’t please Erou. Anything that hinted of the powerful hunter thinking of Zari as something more than his human pet was definitely not good news, at least not where he was standing.

He looked at Zari. Eighteen. Soul seer.Human.They were not the ideal pair, but the urge to claim her vibrated strong and constant like his heartbeat. There was something about her that made him feel. All these years, honor and pride in his work had been the only things that kept him going. But they had not made him feelalive.

Only Zari did.