A loud blast of thunder woke Ciaran from the first decent sleep he’d had in weeks.

His thoughts immediately turned to Asra. He slid Bane off his chest and glanced around the room for her. The chair she’d taken to sleeping in was pushed to the other side of the room. He looked down beside his bed and saw her there in her gazehound shape, trembling.

On instinct, he reached out a hand to stroke the soft fur between her shoulder blades, which rested only a few inches below the top of his mattress. He ran his hand over the mountains of her shoulders and between the valleys of each rigid vertebra. As his eyes drooped, Asra’s breathing slowed down to normal and felt her heart rate easing.

He was awakened the next morning by two giant yellow eyes hovering right in front of his face.

He shouted and pushed himself backward, kicking Bane awake with a startled bark in the process. Asra jumped, her canine head slamming into a ceiling made for far shorter canids.

“What the hell was that for?” she snapped, shaking herself off.

“I could ask you the same thing!”

“I was just waiting for you to wake up.”

Ciaran groaned as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. She could have found a less menacing way to do that.

“Well I’m up now,” he said. “What was so pressing that you had to give me a heart attack like that?”

Asra licked her nose a couple times before she spoke. “You’re doing a lot better now, and we haven’t discussed our plan in a while. You know, to kill Nolan. We don’t have much time.”

Ciaran’s stomach twisted. This was not what he wanted to talk about first thing in the morning. He felt truly rested for the first time since they’d been abducted, and he wanted to relish in the feeling for a bit longer before he had to return to reality.

“I’ve been thinking about what Vincent said,” Asra said, her claws clicking on the polished floor as she paced up and down the short length of the room. “About Nolan having a soft spot for you. He’s already been spreading around that I’m the one who kidnapped you. What if I pretended to hold you hostage?”

“Not a particularly pleasant thought,” Ciaran grumbled.

“We could tell him to meet us in a secluded place, no guards. You know, ‘if you ever want to see him alive again,’ or something.” She stopped pacing and fixed him with a keen gaze. “Do you think that would work?”

“I think I’d like some breakfast before we continue this conversation.”

Asra pointed to the tray of food on the bedside table with her muzzle as she said, “I already got you some.”

Ciaran groaned. He should know by now that he needed to be more blunt with Asra.

“Honestly, I don’t want to discuss this right now,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I’m still not feeling well and I just woke up.”

He expected her to argue, to remind him how short on time they were, but she remained silent. She licked her nose several times and shifted her weight back and forth on her front paws. Ciaran could see the words trying to fight their way out of her mouth. Asra was a woman of action, and being cooped up in this hospital room for the last week must have been hell for her.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” she blurted, her ears perking up.

Bane’s ears followed suit. He leapt to his feet, tail wagging hopefully.

Ciaran nodded. He’d walked to the bathroom several times a day, but otherwise had been confined to this bed. He was as eager to stretch his legs as the other two. He rubbed his chin, and the stubble there scratched his palm.

“Could I shave first?” Ciaran asked.

Asra cocked her head sideways. “Why? There’s no one else here to see you.”

He gestured toward the door. Asra sighed and trotted out, Bane hot on her hocks.

Ciaran shook his head as he peeled himself from the bed and hauled himself to his feet. He shuffled to the pile of laundry on the bed on the opposite end of the room. This one was far larger, presumably for shapechangers who were sick or injured in their fox form and unable to utilize the much shorter, narrower bed Ciaran had been living in for the last week.

As he fished out his own clothes from the pile and dressed, Ciaran considered how much work Asra had done keeping him alive, plus herself and Bane, in addition to trying to figure out where the foxes went and doing chores like laundry. Though, admittedly, Ciaran had no idea how much effort was involved in doing laundry—he’d never done it himself before.

After he dressed, he headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth and shave. It was a task made far more tedious by the fact that he had to use a scalpel, since, as he’d learned from Asra, shaving was not a common habit among shapechangers. “We spend a good portion of our lives covered in fur, anyway,” she’d said when he asked her. “What’s the point in shaving while in our skin?”

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When Ciaran finally finished, he studied his face in the bathroom mirror. It was gaunt, and dark circles hung from his eyes, but he felt more alive than ever before. He hoped he and Asra made it to the other side of their little coup. It would be a shame to spend all this time and effort turning his life around just for it to end in a few days.

Ciaran headed outside, closing his eyes against the sunlight as he pushed through the entrance doors. The sun was bright and pleasantly warm as it beamed through the morning mist, but it was the first time Ciaran had been exposed to it for several days, and he couldn’t help but wince against it.

After having spent so much of his life in Windemere City, the ambience of a large city should have been comforting, but the desolate cityscape only unnerved him. The air smelled stale, notably absent of the scent of food or cigarette smoke or other smells typical of a large city.

Asra clearly felt the same way Ciaran did, judging by how high her hackles were raised. He shuffled his feet a little as he approached her to keep from startling her.

“Everyone really is gone, aren’t they?” he said.

Asra exhaled through her nose, a cloud of mist spraying from her nostrils. “I can’t find any sign of anyone. I even ran the perimeter of the border. I only found a few foot and paw prints. I think they’re covering their tracks with hound’s woe.”

Ciaran’s brow knitted together. “You think they ran from something?”

Asra opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by a cough.

“Are you all right?” Ciaran asked.

“Yeah, I’ve just had a cough the last few days. I think my body is still recovering from my infection.”

“That was weeks ago now. Does it take that long for you to heal from an illness?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been that sick before.”

Ciaran followed her as she headed down the wide road in front of the hospital entrance.

“Maybe it’s a normal occurrence?” he said. “Do foxes have some kind of religious pilgrimage or something?”

“Even if they did, I don’t think that’s what happened here. Look.”

She pointed with her muzzle to the wide window of a restaurant. The tables were still covered in dirty dishes and half-drank glasses of wine and water with an unpleasant film. He thought of the messy hospital rooms he’d passed on his way out. The city’s inhabitants had left in a hurry. This was no planned event.

“There’s a type of bison that we hunt back home every year,” Asra continued as she resumed her walk down the street. “They migrate through this area to our desert. But Sophie and Liam said they came early this year. I think they normally get hunted by the foxes here. And if there weren’t any foxes, they could have passed on without any resistance.”

“How long ago was the migration?” Ciaran asked.

“Not too long before we met. So, what, two months ago?”

That would explain the thick layer of dust on every indoor surface they encountered.

“Why would they all just leave?” Ciaran asked.

Asra shook her head as though she were trying to shoo a fly with her ears. “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I thought maybe a distemper outbreak, but there’s no signs of a quarantine, and they still have a full stock of fluids and antiemetics. They would have tried to contain the outbreak here, rather than go out in the forest and risk having to deal with it with no medicine.”

Ciaran supposed he shouldn’t have been so surprised to hear the shapechangers were susceptible to canine viruses. He thought of how dangerous distemper could be to human-owned dogs, of his own puppies that deteriorated and died in a matter of days despite the best veterinary care in the kingdom. It was scary enough when it just affected pets or working dogs who could be easily quarantined. A disease like that that affected people would be devastating.

“Vincent said your people were dying,” Ciaran said gently.

“Yeah, he wasn’t making that up. We’re not doing great.”

“Is that why you hide yourselves away? To reduce distemper outbreaks?”

“No,” Asra said, sitting down to scratch her neck with her hind foot. “And distemper’s not the only reason we’re dying. We fought with each other for a long time.” She stood and shook herself off, then added darkly, “Or rather the wolves went around slaughtering anyone weaker than them and those of us who were able tried to fight them off.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. Why does anyone with power do the things they do? To get more power, probably.” She continued down the road and said, “Anyway, that was when we invented concealment spells. Kept ourselves hidden away from each other. And on top of that, canids with the gift are becoming harder and harder to find. Like they’re all dying out, too.”

The fur along her back stood on end. “I don’t know how Vincent knows that, though. I never even told Nolan we were dying.”

“I mean … I’m sure you’re not the only shapechanger hiding around humans. The couriers are around us all the time, aren’t they? Someone’s bound to let something slip.”

“Couriers would never reveal anyone’s secrets. It’s the only reason we all trust them enough to let them inside our towns. They would die first.”

“Margot told us about this place.”

“Obviously Margot had reason to.” She sighed. “I still haven’t heard from her.”

Ciaran placed a hand on her furry shoulder. “I’m sure she’s fine. Maybe she met up with her wife and they’re having a nice holiday together.”

They stopped in front of a small square with a fountain in the center. The sun glinted off the windows of the surrounding skyscrapers, casting prisms of light onto the water feature. A ring of stone foxes sat in a circle on their hind legs at the bottom of the fountain. Above each fox’s head was a symbol, different for each fox, and at the top of the ring of symbols was a single fox cub. Ciaran wished there was someone around to explain its meaning.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that Nolan had something to do with this, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it could be. He obviously didn’t want the land, if it had sat here for at least two months untouched. Ciaran wasn’t aware of any prime resources in the area, either. He turned to Asra and assumed by the pensive expression on her face, she was going through the same thoughts.

A raven perched on top of the fountain. It ruffled its feathers, let out a single croak, then flew off again. Ciaran imagined there probably wasn’t much garbage left for it to scavenge here.

“Well, I think I’ve had enough of the creepy abandoned city,” he said, rubbing a knot out of his shoulder. “Are you ready to get going?”

Asra turned to him, alarmed. “Are you sure you’re healthy enough?”

Ciaran nodded. “I’m mostly just shaky now. We’ll probably have to go slow, but going slow is better than not going at all.”

She tilted her head to one side as she regarded him. “Are you actually feeling well, or are you just saying that for my sake?”

Ciaran smiled. The woman was surprisingly astute sometimes.

“No,” Ciaran said. “I am truly feeling well enough to move on now.”

Asra eyed him for a moment, then said, “All right, let’s get everything packed up.”