Scarlett Calloway has no bloodline, no power, and no business being at a monster hunting academy. She ends up being the most dangerous thing inside it.

The Fell Academy, a brutal fortress carved into a volcanic mountain, is where those born with Hunter blood are sent to train as the last line of defense between humanity and the creatures that hunt them in the dark. Seekers who track monsters. Binders who use blood to contain them. Wardens who kill them when nothing else works. Scarlett has none of that blood - or so everyone believed - until an attack by a water-demon in disguise reveals power where there should be none and gets her dragged through the Fell's doors anyway. She fails every test. Breaks every expectation. But when a field mission ends with her pushing her thoughts directly into a creature's mind and negotiating a ceasefire where others would have fought, she's given a name that has never existed at the Fell before: a Listener.

The one person willing to train her is Ashren, a Warden hardened by a fifteen-year vendetta against the Strzyga, the half-human apex predators that slaughtered his mother when he was nine. He agrees to help her on one condition: she must truthfully answer every question he ever asks her. What Scarlett doesn't know is that every question has a purpose. And Ashren has been hunting his answer since the moment they met.