The night reigns over the palace surroundings as Bom stalks closer to the tree line, doing her very best not to step on any twigs that might alert the male ahead of her presence. The music from the festival echoes vaguely in the background, a path leading inside the forest getting darker due to the sparse light streaming through the foliage; a lone owl hoots somewhere above. The youngest Hwa daughter clutches the small dagger she holds to her chest, not liking the eeriness that makes her almost regret having chosen to follow Sehun. To her worse predicament, when she looks forward again, he's not there.

A figure comes from the cover of another tree and she nearly screams: it's him.

She hadn't known he noticed her and hid to corner her.

"Are you following me?" Sehun's grouchy about the whole thing, his arms crossed over his chest.

"I一I'm not!" the shy girl blurts, failing to conceal the dagger. She points it at him instead, as if he's the one in the wrong.

"Then what are you doing with that?"

Realizing her sheepish posture, she glances to her weapon and back up, quickly putting it behind her. "Nothing..."

"You're an assassin." Sehun scoffs. "You, your sisters and your father are liars. You came here to kill us all."

"What...no!"

"Guards!"

"Wait!" her round eyes widen, running after him because the prince starts going torwards the palace. "Your Highness, you have to listen to me!"

"Get away from me! Guards!"

"Please be quiet! It's not what you think!"

"Guards一"

His yelling gets cut off as Bom reaches the taller young man and grabs the back of his robes, the movements of their running and her panicked pull causing the pair to lose balance and tumble to the ground: they land, with her face up and Sehun halfway crushing the female under his weight.

Both freeze, abruptly aware of their closeness.

Bom is flustered by his looks and Sehun thinks to himself that she's cute...

"Your Highness...can一can you get off?"

His mouth twists with annoyance, coming to his senses. Wishing to distance himself from her as soon as possible, he rolls to the side, lifting himself on his hands and knees. While he's doing that, Sehun catches something peeking from the bushes at the bottom of a tree from the corner of his eye, something that's not a tree stump, he swears一 it's a pair of legs.

Bom dusts herself off but when she sees him check out the spot, she trails after him. There's a dreading aura about his scrunched brows.

A body, likely of one of the noblemen at the palace given the rank of his robes's design, lays lifelessly there. 

His skin is deathly pale under moonlight.

...

Narae doesn't know how she and Baekhyun ended up like this. The third prince is clinging on to her like she is the sturdiest piece of land he claws at against the waves that rise to sweep him under with the revelation of the unimaginable truth, his long fingers gripping the fabric of her attire so desperately, so tightly, that it makes her soul melt to his heart-wrenching cries, his face buried in the crook of her neck. They're sitting on the floor, the walls of the deserted east wing being their only companions, her arms wrapped around him with careful affection; he's mourning his childhood friend, Hyesu, who has been long dead before he could have ever guessed it whilst a demon paraded around using her body as a vessel. She still can't understand why watching his emotions unfold makes her feel like it's her own heart breaking, his puffs of breath that knot his chest warming her skin. 

"Her family forced her to become a court lady. She was really kind and funny..." he murmurs, his crying lodged by a wistful laugh at memories of Hyesu.

"I'm sorry..."

"A demon...a demon took her away from us."

His disbelief sends her thoughts to what really brought this soft vulnerability between them.

Narae told him everything.

"Let me explain." she looks into his distrust filled eyes, conveying her sincerity through her expression. Once his body relaxes, she pulls her hand from his mouth, getting off the prince. "My father and I, we are demon hunters. So are my sisters. It is our secret, we are a part of a small group called the Hunters of Garam."

She tells him that she has trained with her father ever since she was twelve, for a purpose she believed to be superstitious during younger years, but which turns out to be true. Her father is the second in command to Do Kwanghae, the man who leads their group, they are descendants of the previous hunters who have fought and eradicated demons in the war at the beginning of the Joseon era. She tells him how feeding works, possession and the signs of a death at the hands of a demon, about their progenitor, their weaknesses, their skills at blending in with the humans. Throughout her stories, because that's how he perceives them initially, Baekhyun is speechless and uncertain. He has a hard time digesting this new reality he has been clueless to. Atleast he's not loud anymore though a haunted, sad look replaces his characteristic playfulness, lost to his own mind that goes through the scenarios of the dangers that might lurk in the palace as its inhabitants continue their lives brushing shoulders with demons.

"You have to believe me." she stresses.

But his mouth opens and closes, tears b his eyes. "So that means Hyesu died days, months ago...who knows..."

She's the only person that he can ask for comfort right now, ignoring all other proper obstacles to quell his moment of loss.

The girl's arms stiffen at his sides as he throws himself at her and wraps her into a crushing embrace, using the soothing feeling her calm evokes to alleviate his sorrow. He cries, one of her hands eventually settling on his back, the other to the crown of his head, the long strands of his pure black hair that slide through her fingers.

They don't feel like strangers so much as they feel like two pieces of beautiful pottery fit t