The 13th Hunt

My name is Iris, and I'm a mid-ranked hunter with the Demon Hunters Guild.

The title sounds impressive, but when I graduated from the guild's rookie camp two years ago, I ranked third from the bottom in my class. I barely passed swordsmanship, missed forty percent of my shots in archery, and got yelled at so badly in tracking class that I cried in front of everyone three separate times.

The only subject I was any good at was monster taxonomy—not because I was smart, but because I was scared of dying. I had every common monster's weakness memorized cold.

Though the second it came to real combat, I forgot all of it.

After graduation, my first assignment was to clear out a panther-tiger beast on the edge of Black Forest.

One of the veteran guild hunters told me panther-tiger beasts were low-level monsters, somewhere between a leopard and a tiger in size. They were incredibly fast, but their defense was average. As long as I could drive a silver sword into its throat before it pounced, I'd be fine.

What he didn't tell me was that panther-tiger beasts never hunted alone.

I crouched in the bushes for two days and two nights, surviving on three hard biscuits and a single flask of water until the third night.

The moon was full that night—so full I could clearly see my hand shaking around the hilt of my sword.

The beast lay on top of a jutting rock, its tail slowly thumping against the stone, its ears twitching now and then as it listened to the woods around it. I should have made my move while it was sleeping, but my palms were slick with sweat, and the grip kept slipping in my hand. Then it heard my heartbeat—or at least, that's what I figured out later. It sprang off the rock and lunged at me like a shadow. I didn't even have time to raise my sword.

A hand pressed down on my shoulder from behind.

The grip wasn't strong, but it was steady. It pushed me back into the brush.

Then someone stepped out from behind me and walked toward the charging beast, unhurried.

Moonlight fell across him—white hair, a face too refined to belong to a hunter, and gray-green eyes that caught the dark like an animal's.

A hunting knife hung at his waist, the blade so worn its edge was chipped. He wore a ragged travel cloak and looked more like a wandering bard than a fighter.

The panther-tiger beast twisted in midair and came down at him.

He simply turned aside to avoid its claws, then drove his knife into its throat in one smooth backhanded strike.

The motion was as clean and effortless as chopping vegetables in a kitchen. The beast hit the ground, twitched twice, and went still. Blood ran down the nicks in the blade as he crouched and wiped it clean on the corpse.

I stood up from the bushes, still clutching my silver sword, still sheathed.

"You a demon hunter too?" I asked.

"Something like that." He slid the knife back into place at his waist and turned to face me. Moonlight washed over his white hair, giving it a pale silver sheen.

His face looked young, but those gray-green eyes were striking—deep, melancholy, like a very old well.

"What about you?"

"This is my first solo job."

"Your first assignment, and you took a panther-tiger beast? You've got guts."

He nudged the corpse with his boot. "This one's female. The male's probably still nearby. You sat here alone for two days, and the only reason it didn't attack you was because it was testing you too." He said it casually, not showing off, just stating a fact.

"Thanks," I said.

"No need." He slipped his hands into his pockets and tilted his head at me.

His white hair looked soft in the moonlight, almost haloed, making him seem a little unreal. "My name's Damian. Want to partner up? You find the jobs and deal with the guild, and I'll kill the monsters for you. We split the pay fifty-fifty."

"Why help me?" I asked, blinking.

"Because I'm bored." He yawned. "Not like I've got anything better to do. Besides, that sword of yours is the basic guild-issued model, right? The edge hasn't even been sharpened. How long do you think you'll last on your own?"

I looked at him for a long time. A helper like that would be perfect.

"Fine. But you'll be my assistant. I decide which jobs we take. I decide the route. And if you ever want to leave, you tell me ahead of time."

He smiled. It wasn't gratitude. It was amusement—like I'd just said something entertaining. "Sure. Whatever you say."

From that day on, he stayed by my side.

After our first hunt together, we spent the night in an abandoned hunter's cabin on the edge of the forest. I made a pot of rabbit stew—my specialty, even though all I had for seasoning was salt and wild onions. He sat across the campfire holding his bowl without drinking it. When he was quiet, he looked like a porcelain doll, white hair falling over his forehead, his lashes casting small shadows in the firelight.

"Iris," he said suddenly, "I like you."

I nearly dropped my spoon into the pot.

"I mean it." He set down the bowl, those gray-green eyes fixed directly on me. Firelight flickered in his pupils like two golden flames. "From the moment you were shaking in those bushes and still insisting you were fine, I liked you. Go out with me."

"No." I set the spoon back in the pot. "We're partners. Partners don't do relationships."

He looked at me for a long moment, then lowered his head and went back to drinking his soup. "Okay." His voice was quiet, and he didn't sound angry.

Over the next two years, he confessed to me many more times.

Always after a job—by the fire, on the road back to the guild to report in, in the middle of running from monsters. He would suddenly grab my wrist and pull me to safety, make sure I was unharmed, then look straight at me and say, "I like you," or "Still won't consider it?" or sometimes just my name—"Iris."

Softly, like he was asking a question he already knew the answer to.

And every time, I turned him down.

Sometimes because I was too tired to talk. Sometimes because I thought he was embarrassing me by bringing it up at the worst possible moment. Sometimes just because I wanted to take him down a peg. He was too capable, too strong—but in front of me, he was always obedient and accommodating, and that contrast gave me a strange kind of satisfaction I couldn't quite explain.

And he never once complained about anything I asked of him.

If I told him to take watch, he would sit outside the tent all night. In the morning, his lashes would be beaded with dew, and he'd still smile as he handed me warmed-up rations.

If I told him to scout ahead, he would go. When he came back covered in cobwebs and dead leaves, the first thing he'd say was, "The path ahead is clear."

If I told him to jump into an icy river in the middle of winter to retrieve a silver dagger I'd dropped, he would climb back out with purple lips, shivering so hard his whole body shook, and before I could even speak, he'd say, "I'm fine. Not cold."

One time, he came down with a fever. It was probably because he'd fallen into that icy river three days earlier and never fully recovered. His forehead was hot enough to fry an egg. I said we still had to cross the mountain ahead that day, and he just nodded, picked up the gear, and started walking. I was behind him and saw his back sway more than once in the wind. One time he nearly tripped over a tree root, but he caught himself, turned back to me, and forced out a smile. "Wasn't watching where I was going."

I never asked if he was really okay.

Because he never said otherwise.

The ninth time I rejected him, we had just finished clearing out a nest of gargoyles north of Black Forest. After the fight, he sat on a pile of ruins wiping down his knife. His white hair was covered in pale stone dust, and his shirt had been torn in several places.

When he finished cleaning the blade, he looked up at me and said, "Iris. That makes nine."

I knew exactly what he meant. Without even looking up from sorting through the loot, I said, "Clean up over there. We're heading back to the guild to report."

He answered with a quiet "Okay," slid the knife back into his belt, and bent down to gather the scattered gear. The movement was completely natural, just like every other time in the past two years when I had brushed the subject aside.

The tenth time was three months ago.

I'd just turned in a job and was in a pretty good mood. For once, he picked a quiet moment—at the far end of the second-floor hallway in the guild, where the setting sun slanted through the windows and turned his white hair a pale gold. He looked at me and said, "It's been two years. You have to give me an answer eventually."

I leaned against the windowsill and looked at his serious expression, finding it a little funny. Two years, and he still hadn't learned. "I said I don't do relationships. End of story. Are you ever going to let this go?"

He didn't argue. He just looked away, then handed me the silver sword he had polished for me. "Where are we headed tomorrow?" he asked.

His voice was as steady as always, as if what he had just said amounted to nothing more than a trivial interruption. I took the sword from him, and the hilt was still warm from his hand.

He never once acted like he was going to leave. He was like some big dog that kept wagging its tail and following me no matter how many times it got kicked away. I thought he would never leave. I believed that completely.

The eleventh time.

That evening, I had just come out of the guild after turning in another job when I found him waiting in his usual spot by the door. His white hair glowed warm in the sunset, and his gray-green eyes curved slightly when he saw me. He straightened up and fell into step beside me, taking the gear bag from my hand. I walked ahead, moving a little faster than usual. When the wind blew, I lifted a hand to smooth my hair back and glanced over my shoulder at him.

"Hurry up. What are you dragging your feet for?" I said. "We've got another job tomorrow. Get the gear sorted tonight, and don't do what you did last time—showing up and realizing you didn't bring enough arrows."

"Got it," he said.

After a brief silence, I heard him mutter under his breath behind me, almost to himself, "Eleven times..."

My steps paused for a moment.

He hadn't said it loudly. It sounded more like a habit, just absentminded counting, not any kind of challenge. But he had the number right. He remembered every rejection, every single one, counted each one carefully like he was keeping track of something that belonged only to him. I didn't know why he was counting them. Did he think once the number got high enough, he'd finally give up? Or that at some magic number, he'd stop asking?

For some reason, the thought irritated me.

I turned around.

He was standing there with his head lowered, lost in thought, white hair covering half his face. In the fading evening light, his gray-green eyes looked dimmer than usual. When he noticed I had stopped, he looked up, not yet realizing what I was about to say.

"What are you muttering about?" I said. "Eleven times? You think keeping count means you can cash it in later and make me owe you something? Let me make this clear—count all you want, it won't change anything. I don't do relationships, and that's that. If you want to keep track, go ahead—but don't stand there saying it in front of me. Got it?"

He froze for a second.

Then he quickly nodded.

"Got it." He shifted the gear bag to his other shoulder and caught up with me. His expression returned to its usual gentle calm, without the slightest sign of temper, as if I hadn't just snapped at him.

I turned and kept walking.

Behind me, I could hear his footsteps following at the same steady pace, never too fast, never too slow, always keeping two steps' distance.

Just like every evening over the past two years.

The sunset stretched our shadows long and thin. His outline fell at my feet, quiet against the ground.

I thought he could never leave me.

I was certain of it.