Mr Marule stands in front of me, his head tilted to the side. He has the kind of angular features I can't help but notice. The shadows of his lashes sweeping across his high cheekbones catch my attention. His electric eyes follow my movements closely, and I can't help but feel self-conscious of the dirty state of my dress.

"Mr Marule." My knees shake as I curtsey for him. "I'm pleased to meet you."

"That makes me sound rather old, don't you agree?" His mouth tilts upwards in a way that makes my stomach flip. "Call me Will."

I have just met this man and he wants me to call him Will. Not Mr Marule, not William – Will.

I gather the stones in my arms and pile them back into the bucket. When I look up, Will leans lazily as his eyes trace my hands. I dart my gaze to the ground when warmth flourishes in my cheeks.

"I still wonder what use you have for pebbles."

I brush my hands on my dress. "I – my father is a painter."

Rising to my feet, I leave the bucket on the ground next to all the fallen stones. For some reason, I can't bring myself to pick them up in front of him. Mr Marule is from the palace; he probably finds the concept of painting designs on stones as a living humorous.

"I see." He pushes off the wall and steps towards me with confidence. I hold my breath. "And I don't suppose he would approve of you venturing beyond the wall?"

"Oh no." Blood rushes to my cheeks. "He wouldn't. Not at all."

His mouth tilts into a charming smirk and I almost forget how to breathe. "Yet here you are."

I open my mouth and then close it, short of a retort. He has caught me breaking the rules and putting myself in danger.

As if recognising the panic on my face, he quirks an eyebrow. "I, however, do not."

I frown in confusion and take a wary step back. "You do not...?"

"Disapprove." He leans over to lift up my bucket full of stones and holds it towards me with two fingers. I gape at him. I have to hold the bucket with every bit of strength I have but he holds it like it's nothing more than one stone. "I think it's nice outside the gates."

"It's not," I say darkly. "You wouldn't approve if you knew what lurked beyond the trees."

Mr Marule doesn't seem intimidated; he tilts his head with a curious smile. "And what would that be?"

"Monsters." I shiver.

"Monsters," he repeats, his eyes shimmering under the sun.

"Are you mocking me?" I demand when I see the grin pulling at his lips. "Because I am being quite serious. The forbidden forest is dangerous. The monsters do exist."

"Oh, I am not mocking you." The grin doesn't fall from his lips as he brushes his dark hair off his forehead. My breath hitches in my throat as he leans closer, towering above me. "I am simply disagreeing."

"About the monsters?"

I take a step back.

"About the danger." The smile on his face twists into something more teasing.

My cheeks burn as I stare at him. The way we are talking is so... friendly - as if we know one another much more than we really do. But it doesn't feel improper like it should.

I suppose I should blame the charm that Mr Marule carries, for the effect he has on me is something I cannot explain. I wonder if this is how Imelda felt when she spoke with him, I wonder if he would tease Kenna the same way if they spoke.

"You are here to investigate a death. A man was killed last night." I say. "A kind man who did not deserve that fate. But his throat was torn out in the forest and you try to convince me that the forest has no danger?"

Mr Marule's face sours at the mention of Alyx and his eyes narrow. I lurch my arms forward and retrieve the bucket dangling effortlessly from his fingers. As I suspected, it's awfully heavy.

"Here, let me." He reaches forward to help me.

I briefly wonder what it'd be like to accept his help. I can imagine the looks I would receive walking through the village with him carrying my father's bucket.

"I'm quite alright" I step back towards the hole in the wall as I stare at him. A new question arises in my mind.

What are you doing beyond the wall?

"You seem to be struggling a great deal," he points out, still walking confidently beside me.

We reach the hole in the wall but I don't respond. He's right; he carried the bucket with ease, while my hands are turning red from trying to hold it up.

"Miss Thelene," He puts his hand on the sleeve covering my arm. "I do wish you would let me help you."

I spin around and then wish I hadn't. Mr Marule is inches behind me giving me no choice but to crane my neck to look up at him. His dark eyes flash unnaturally as they did in the clearing. I inhale sharply at the energy that fizzes between us.

"How do you know my name?" I demand with a frown. I have never told him who I am.

He shrugs. "The woman in the clearing - she's your sister, isn't she?"

"We are." I bite my lip. "Though I don't understand how you could come to that conclusion from one glance."

"Oh, I didn't." He tilts his head sideways. "I wouldn't have associated you with her if I hadn't asked around."'

My stomach flips. He asked around about me. Me, Alera Thelene – the girl with scars on her arms, the outsider.

"You asked around?" I step back till I'm pressed against the wall. "About me?"

The left side of his mouth tilts upwards. "Is that so hard to believe?"

I swallow the lump and take a deep breath. A beautiful man like Mr Marule is someone who belongs in the beautiful Palace in Vaema, so the way he continually makes me blush unnerves me.

"I should go." My throat dries as I realise that if Mr Marule tells anybody he saw me here, I could be in trouble. "Thank you for your help."

Shimmying through the hole, I pull the bucket through after me to see that Mr Marule's feet are no longer on the ground beneath the hole. Turning around, I leap back when he lands on his feet in front of me, having jumped cleanly over the wall.

"How did you –"

"You left half of your pebbles on the ground," he interrupts me and looks at my half-empty bucket.

"Oh." Over his shoulder, a group of girls are huddled by one of the carts in the marketplace, staring at us and whispering in hushed voices. "No matter."

"There are a lot more pebbles beyond the wall, you know," he says, pushing off the wall when I begin to walk away. "Maybe you should forage there more often."

I frown and brush my hair off my forehead. "I shouldn't have gone beyond the wall. It was foolish of me and I won't do it again."

My cheeks warm at the confrontation. I turn hastily, hitting the tip of my shoe on a rock. When I stumble forward, the rocks inside of my bucket fall to the ground. Mr Marule's hands grip my wrists to steady me from falling. But that isn't what shocks me, it's the feeling of his hands against my bare skin.

His touch is like fire. It burns – but it feels good.

I leap back a few feet when shivers run down my spine, my eyes darting up to Mr Marule's. If I thought his eyes were unnatural before, they're glowing now. His once dark eyes remind me of the luminescent insects that sometimes line the walls of the well at night time.

"What did you do?" I snatch my hands back as my voice strangles in my throat. "What happened to your eyes?"

"I'll see you soon, Miss Thelene," he says, his velvety voice a pitch deeper. And then he turns on his heel and begins to walk in the opposite direction towards the gate. I look down at my hands in awe, half expecting them to be burning.

When I look back up, Mr Marule is gone.

#

"Alera!" Imelda's head basically explodes when I return to our humble cottage just before dinner. "Where have you been? You've been out for hours!"

I stare at the bucket in my hands, it is still pathetically half full – half of everything I collected lying on the other side of the wall. The entire afternoon was spent frantically searching for more inside the walls and wondering about Mr Marule and his flashing eyes and how his skin felt when it brushed against mine.

I've convinced myself I imagined it. There was no way that what I felt could have been real. If it had, Mr Marule would have reacted just as strangely as I did. But he just brushed it off like it hadn't happened and then disappeared, nowhere to be seen for the remainder of the day.

"I –" I fumble for an explanation. The sky is dark and smoke rises from the chimney. "I was wandering around."

"Where did you go after you brought the stones home?" She queries, following me inside the house.

"What?" I splutter with a frown. "After I brought the stones home?"

When we enter the living room, Papa is sitting by the open fire with a bucket of stones at his feet. He has his design laid on the table and his brushes to his left. He looks up when I enter with a wide smile.

"Alera, these stones are wonderful – the perfect shape. I do hope there are more where you got them."

I stare in bewilderment. The stones in the bucket are identical to the ones that fell out of my bucket outside of the wall.

I place the bucket in my hands next to the table. "Here are some more."

"You went out for more?" Papa beams at me, eyeing the half empty bucket. "Such a good girl, Alera. Thank you."

"I –" I stare at the rocks, biting my lip. The bucket is certainly not one I recognize, but Papa obviously doesn't notice. "You found the bucket outside?"

"By the front door, where you left them," Imelda says stepping forward to stare at my face. "What has gotten into you, Alera? You're acting strange."

"I'm just tired is all." I say.

I certainly didn't leave those stones there, and I know they can't have come from inside the walls. The only person I can think of in the entire village who could have done this is William Marule. My heart pounds a little harder at the thought. But why would he do something for me? And how would he have known this was my home?

Papa stands up and presses the back of his hand to my forehead. "You're looking a little off colour. All this fuss about young Alyx must be getting to you. Perhaps you should go to bed."

"Yes." I plant a hasty kiss on his cheek. "I will. Goodnight, Papa."

I brush past him and head towards my bedroom, pulling the door shut silently behind me as I try to calm my racing mind. Sitting on the corner of my bed, I pull the pins from my hair and let it fall down my back, peering out the window as I do so. Something catches my eye.

Ethii Toledano and Krysta walk past my window, their hands linked together. My vision blurs as I narrow my eyes and step towards the window. They disappear behind the cabin next to ours, covered in darkness.

Without a second thought, I sling a black cloak over my shoulder and pull it over my head, sneaking out of my bedroom and down the hall till I reach the back door, closing it behind me inaudibly and stepping onto the pavement. The dark village is eerily quiet.

No music wafts from the Golden Cavern and nobody hovers in the marketplace. Ever since Alyx's death, people have become afraid of not only the forest, but the shadows that lurk in the darkness.

Shadows stretch along the walls of the village as I pass through, the absence of noise sending shivers down my spine. But the silence is interrupted by Krysta's high pitched giggles from around a corner.

My heart sinks into my stomach at the thought of my friend Krysta and my sister's suitor creeping around after dark. There is only one thing that I can imagine the two of them doing.

Ethii doesn't surprise me. I've never liked him, just the way that he never liked me, but Krysta is my friend, and she's known Imelda since we were kids. She grew up with us. Imelda is like an older sister to us all, how could she do this to her?

I conceal myself behind the empty Golden Cavern and peer around the corner. In the shadows of an abandoned market stall, Ethii and Krysta are locked in a passionate embrace. My cheeks burns as I dart my gaze away and duck backwards, my chest rising and falling as I press myself into the wall. All I know is that I need to get out of there before Ethii or Krysta see me.

I push off of the Golden Cavern wall and rush through the village, making sure to pause against the well to check that nobody is behind me before leaving.

A flicker of movement by the gates catches my eye. One second, there's nobody standing there and a second later Mr Marule has landed on his feet on the opposite side of the wall to where I ventured to get stones.

I let out a shaky breath as my nails dig into my skin. Mr Marule has been outside the gates, and after dark, too.

I duck down underneath the well to conceal myself from his view as my heart pounds in my chest. Do I confront him? Do I ask him what he was doing outside the gates? Do I ask him questions that I'm not sure I want to know the answer to?

But the village is silent, nobody but Krista and Ethii are outside of the shelter of their homes. Mr Marule is a charming man, but he is a stranger, and I am nothing more than a commoner. The best thing I can do is go home and pretend that I didn't see anything.

When I look up, Mr Marule is no longer standing by the wall. In fact, he is nowhere to be seen at all. Had I not been sure that I saw him, I would think that he was simply a figment of my imagination. I peer around the clearing in search of him, but he is nowhere in sight.

I shake my head and then stand to my feet, sighing before turning around and nearly slamming right into a dark figure standing directly behind me.

My heart picks up while my stomach plummets.

For a few seconds, I think the monster who killed Alyx is inside the village and is about to kill me – but then I look up into dark, luminescent eyes and my heart starts to pound for a very different reason.