“Amira,” Lucian began as they neared the road, his voice steadier than before, “can I visit you again?”

  She didn’t stop walking, but her shoulders tensed. Lucian could see the faint pink rising along her neck. She raised the hood of her cloak to cover her face.

  “I’d like that too,” she admitted, “but it wouldn’t be a good idea. You’ll understand once you leave the forest. So… please, don’t come back.”

  Her words landed like a stone in his chest. Lucian didn’t know why it stung, only that it did.

  “Here we are,” Amira said quietly, voice tinged with sadness. “This is as far as I go.”

  Lucian opened his mouth to argue, but before he could, the sound of hooves drew his attention. A carriage rolled to a stop beside them, dust curling off the road.

  “Excuse me, stranger,” the driver called, “you wouldn’t happen to know which way it is to the city of Palin would you?”

  “Just follow this road,” Amira answered quickly, ducking her head and pulling her hood lower. She stepped partly behind Lucian’s broad frame. “Once you crest the next hill, you’ll see it.”

  The driver leaned forward, squinting, trying to peek around Lucian. Lucian shifted, blocking his view, and interjected smoothly picking up on Amira’s signal.

  “It just so happens I’m heading that way myself. Would you have room for one more passenger?”

  The man beside the driver leaned close and whispered something. He was scarred across one eye, a sword at his side, something about him set Lucian’s instincts on edge.

  “Not at all,” the driver said at last, smiling. “Plenty of room in the back. My associate here says you’re more than welcome.”

  Lucian turned back to Amira, lowering his voice. “Thank you, for everything. I hope one day we’ll meet again.”

  “Hopefully,” she whispered, still staring at the ground. A single tear slipped from her chin before she turned abruptly and walked back toward the trees.

  “Is your companion not joining us?” the driver asked.

  “No,” Lucian said, forcing his voice steady. “She has business elsewhere.”

  He climbed into the carriage, glancing back only once. Amira’s pale form vanished into the shadows of the woods.

  “Shall we?” Lucian said gruffly.

  The driver tipped his hat, flicked the reins, and the horses lurched forward. Dust kicked up behind them, and with each turn of the wheels, the ache in Lucian’s chest grew heavier.

  The road stretched on, hills rolling in the distance. Lucian sat quietly in the back, but his ears pricked when he caught the scarred man muttering to the driver about the demon they called the Moon Witch.

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  The words stirred an old wound in him.

  Lucian was scarred long before he ever became a man. His older sister fell in the brutal War of the Three Kingdoms, her death the first wound. Grief had barely begun to scar over when illness claimed his little brother soon after, leaving the house hollow and silent.

  Then came the cruelest stroke: the noble demon bloodline, cold, ancient, and mysterious, murdered his mother.

  His father, once a revered swordmaster whose soul flame burned with terrifying power, was consumed by rage. In that fury he found purpose. From the moment Lucian could grip a blade, the forge began. No mercy, no childhood, no reprieve, only steel meeting steel, day bleeding into night. By nine he had learned to kill. By twenty he had become a general.

  It left him a weapon, but one ignorant of the world outside the battlefield. And ignorance was a weakness he now hated in himself.

  He leaned forward, pretending to stretch while keeping his ears open. The scarred man was speaking now, his voice low.

  “…demon hunter…. On contract…. The bounty’s huge… Moon Witch is worth more than 100,000 soul stones.” Was all he could make out.

  Lucian had heard of demon hunters, though he’d never met one. Appointed by the church, they tracked demons who crossed into human lands illegally. But his men had told stories, dark ones. How hunters slaughtered innocents under the guise of justice, how the greed for fulfilling their contract for soulstones often outweighed duty.

  Lucian didn’t care for rumors. What caught his interest was this Moon Witch.

  From what he gathered, she carried the highest bounty in recent memory. No one knew the exact crime, just rumors, but both humans and demons wanted her dead. Supposedly she had killed over thirteen thousand humans, burned villages, and her one identifiable trait: silver hair.

  Lucian frowned. In all his years fighting demons, he had never once seen them target their own. Honor, in their way, bound them. For both sides to want one woman dead, that was new.

  Finally, curiosity got the better of him.

  “Why do they call her the Moon Witch?” he asked.

  The driver and hunter turned in surprise, as if forgetting he was there.

  “My apologies,” Lucian added smoothly. “I was getting bored back here in silence.”

  The driver cleared his throat. “Well… she’s only ever seen under a full moon, so they say.”

  “Glowing red eyes, and hair so silver it glimmers, are how the survivors described her.” He said with a smile licking his teeth.

  Lucian tilted his head. “And red eyes are her mark as well? I saw that combo on the battlefield plenty of times. Are they really so rare? Couldn’t that be anybody?”

  The driver gave him a look of disbelief. “Sure you did buddy!” He laughed. “You must’ve been a common foot soldier for one of the big family’s so you probably were just hallucinating under pressure, but even my four-year-old knows that red eyes are a bad omen, human or demon.”

  “I’m not from around here,” Lucian said flatly.

  The scarred man finally spoke, his deep voice carrying weight. “If they’re a confirmed demon then red eyes mark demon nobility. Almost always. They’re born of the upper houses from the demon kingdom.”

  “Almost always?” Lucian pressed.

  The hunter’s lip curled with faint irritation. “Occasionally, halflings are born with them, spawn of a human and a demon. But those abominations don’t live long. Never past the age of six.” He waved a hand casually, chuckling at his own cruelty. “So yes! almost always.”

  “Why don’t they live past six?” Lucian asked, his tone sharp.

  The laughter cut short. The hunter fixed him with a cold, piercing stare. “Where did you say you were from again?”

  “I didn’t,” Lucian replied, his own voice hardening.

  The hunter’s hand drifted slowly toward his sword.

  Lucian shifted, fingers curling around the bucket at his feet, an improvised shield if needed.

  “Ah! There she is!” the driver exclaimed suddenly, pointing ahead. “The city gates of Palin! We’re nearly there!”

  The tension eased, though not entirely. The hunter released his sword hilt, and Lucian set the bucket back down.

  “Hopefully there’s a decent tavern inside,” the hunter muttered, stretching. “I could use a drink.”

  Lucian said nothing. He leaned back against the wooden boards, eyes narrowing as the city walls of Palin grew closer.

  Silver hair.

  Red eyes.

  The description echoed in his mind like a stubborn splinter.

  Slowly, Lucian looked down at the small black ribbon tied around his wrist.

  Then he looked back toward the forest disappearing behind them.

  “…I knew she was a demon, but could it be?”