Chapter Three

The door was open, allowing him to enter the workshop without knocking. He found her bent over the desk, several open books before her. Her long blonde hair fell against one shoulder, exposing the lovely slim column of her throat. The sight of it had his fangs coming out, and memories of the taste of her blood had his body hardening. There just wasn’t any pleasure that could match what he felt when drinking from her.

His presence masked, he was able to stand directly behind her without her hearing a thing. He cupped her nape, and as she gasped in surprise, he already had her facing him and stealing a kiss from her sweet lips.

When he pulled away, the way she looked at him had Alexandru kissing her again and again, until both of them were panting, bodies straining against each other.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” she said breathlessly when he lifted his head.

“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 DAMASCHIN stood 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 enter and exit 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 were green. So he died in a forest, but not this forest.”

“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 thought she was 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 feel alive.

Only Zari did.

When he had been dying, she had come to his aid, uncaring of the rules she would break. That they had been strangers then didn’t matter to her either. “That day,” Erou heard himself say. “Why did you do it? Why did you let me feed on you when Alexandru’s your Master?”

“You were dying—-”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t think that’s just it.” He captured her wrist when she was about to turn away, using his strength to pull her back. She gasped as their bodies came into contact, his muscular body making her feel even softer against him.

Zari said nervously, “Lord Erou, please let me go.” She couldn’t understand what had gotten into her friend. He had never been this...insistent. Although he had let her know from the very start that he wanted her to be his pet instead of Alexandru’s, he had always respected her decision.

Until now that was.

Erou said quietly, “I’ve been called by my father. I need to go back to Chalys and stay there indefinitely.”

Oh.

“I want you to come with me.”

Her heart broke at the words. “Lord Erou...”

His lips curved in a bleak smile. “That’s what I figured.”

Her heart hurt a little more. “I can’t,” she whispered.

“That’s why I asked. That’s why I hope you can answer.”

She wanted to look away from his gaze because she knew what she was about to say would hurt. But she didn’t. Lord Erou deserved her to face his feelings head on, just as he had shown her his feelings openly, even if he had known from the start that she belonged to someone else.

“I was thinking of my Master.” Even though her voice wavered, her gaze remained steady on him. “I thought that if I gave my blood to you, the day would come that when he needed the same help, there would be another person who would do the same thing for him.”

And so it was always the hunter , he thought. Always had been the hunter.

“YOU HAVE BEEN CRYING .” Rhapsody’s words were matter-of-fact like they always were when she made the observation. Zari was in the other girl’s room. When Erou had insisted on walking her back, she had found herself blurting out about wanting to visit Rhapsody first. Anything was better than having Erou take her straight to her Master’s rooms. Above all, Erou and Alexandru should not come face to face, especially not today.

At the girl’s words, Zari leaned back to check her reflection on the full-length mirror mounted on the wall, and the red eyes that stared back at her made Zari wince.

“Did Lord Erou make you cry?”

Zari was startled. “You know him?”

“Part of my lessons during home schooling was to know every important member of Chalysian society.”

“You’re amazing,” she told Rhapsody honestly.

“No. I’m just being practical.” The tone was as practical, without any sense of bragging or false modesty.

Zari sighed. “I wish I could be more like you.” If she was, maybe none of this would hurt as much. Something occurred to her, and she asked haltingly, “Have you...have you studied about heartkeeping?” She held her breath.

“Of course.”

“You have?”

“What do you want to know about it?” No curiosity, just a practical offer of help.

Zari beamed. “I think I love you, Rhapsody.”

Slowly, the other girl blinked. “I apologize. I am not a lesbian.”

Zari burst into laughter. “It was just an expression, silly.” She turned to face Rhapsody directly, who was seated in front of the computer, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she typed her daily letter to her Master – information that Rhapsody had also voluntarily given up. With the other girl , Zari thought with a smile, what you saw was what you really got.

“What is a heartkeeper?”

“The closest term to it would probably be ‘soulmates’. Every creature with demon blood—-”

Zari paled. Demon blood? Lord Alexandru had... demon blood?

“—-is born without a soul. Not having a soul makes it difficult for one to be good. That’s the simplest way to define their challenge. Their only hope of gaining a soul is through a heartkeeper – a person destined to share his or her soul with the one with demon blood.” Rhapsody paused in her typing, looking at Zari as she asked, “Do you wish to know more?”

“Lord Alexandru...he has demon blood?”

“He is half-demon, yes. His father was a demon, his mother a vampire.”

“And all the years he’s lived, he didn’t have a soul?”

Rhapsody hesitated. “I do not like talking about hearsay.”

“I do,” Zari answered promptly.

“What I will tell you has not been confirmed,” Rhapsody warned.

“I still want to hear it.”

The other girl said slowly, “It’s been said...that in his younger days, he had fallen in love with another vampire. And that girl was the one who saved him, her heart acting like his soul.”