If Ren meant to torment him, then Kuro deserved it for following him. Nestled in the heart of a two hundred acre estate, the emperor’s compound was every bit as private as Kuro had feared. If Kuro screamed, would anyone hear him? The monks would have a new koan to meditate upon.

Kuro sniffed for demonic miasma. If the Night Parade hid in the Imperial Palace, Kuro would smell them. Probably. But by the time they reached the compound walls as high as the palace’s bulwarks, he hadn’t sniffed anything but pine and humans.

A low-ranked samurai guarded the main gate, if leaning back against the pillar to stare up at the clouds could be called guarding. Ren snuck Kuro past the oblivious samurai to a crack in the crumbling plaster.

Kuro narrowed his eyes. A handy entrance for any visitors Ren didn’t want the Shogun to know about. But as Kuro crammed his body through, he only smelled Ren’s lingering scent on the stone.

The Sun Prince must have found a way to hide the demonic scent. Kuro gnawed his lower lip. Yet another handicap Ren had inflicted on him.

He fell out of the crack onto a gravel path. His eyebrows flew up. “Wow.”

Ren put a hand behind his head. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Nothing?” Ren had a whole private palace within his private palace! But Ren shook his head and led him through artistically placed boulders and crooked pines to a house three times the size of the shrine Kuro had negotiated. The place even had more paper screens than even a daimyo owned, and those were only the ones facing the veranda. Sure, most of the screens were torn and sealed with woodblock prints of beautiful geisha and spirits, but there were still more than any one human could possibly need.

As Ren led him along the veranda, Kuro peered through the tears and the cracks between panels for red eyes staring back, but only shadowed rooms lurked behind the screens.

Ren hopped over a plank. “Be careful—”

Even before Kuro placed all his weight on it, the plank snapped. His foot plummeted and his knee banged against the sides. “Ouch!”

Ren winced.

Kuro froze, crouched on one leg with the other extended into the hole. He’d broken the Sun Prince’s veranda. He’d broken—

Ren put one hand behind his neck, again. Was he reaching for a weapon? An ofuda? Signalling his demon horde? “Sorry about that. It’s been a while since… Never mind. Oh!” He quickly extended his hand.

Kuro stared at his fingers. He withdrew his foot, crouching on the opposite side. He sniffed the hole for demon sabotage, but only rodents and insects scurried underneath.

The hand hovered, then Ren withdrew it. Shoulders stiff, he strode to the final two panels.

Kuro waited, but Ren just stared at the screen. Was Kuro supposed to slide it open? That’s what servants did, didn’t they?

“Er, this is my bedroom,” Ren said. “We don’t have to…”

Have to what?

“I didn’t think.”

Of what? To instruct Kuro on proper etiquette? Kuro shuffled forward, but before he reached the panel, Ren knelt and slid it open. Looking over Ren’s head, he caught his first sight of hell.

“Were you recently haunted?” Kuro asked, mouth gaping.

“It’s not that bad.” But his voice didn’t reflect his words.

Kimono, scrolls, blankets and pillows were strewn across the eighteen-mat room. Eighteen mats! It was huge, yet with all the mess, it might as well have been a hut.

Ren ducked inside and knelt on a pile of blankets. Kuro followed, ducking in case one of the scrolls flew across the room at him.

Proof. He’d actually found proof that the Sun Prince harboured the Night Parade — except, Kuro clenched his jaw, any kit knew ghosts couldn’t join the Night Parade. They weren’t proper demons, and weren’t all there in the head to begin with. “You should have asked for the onmyouji instead.”

“My room’s not really haunted.”

Kuro gestured to the black ink scribbles on top of hunting scenes. “Really?”

“I ran out of paper.”

Humans. Kuro picked up a kimono older than he was. The dewy scent of a hundred wearers before Ren was as firmly woven through the silk as much as the embroidery. The silk deserved more respect than that to be tossed on the tatami. When he had his shrine, he wouldn’t treat his treasures so carelessly.

“You don’t need to do that,” Ren said.

Kuro arched a brow at him and picked up another. “So the real reason why I’m not staying with the servants is you drove them all away.”

“You’re not a servant.”

Wasn’t everyone of lesser rank considered a servant of the emperor?

Ren jumped up and took the kimono out of Kuro’s hands. “I got a bit frustrated.”

“So you drove your servants away.”

“No! Commoners are not allowed into the compound.”

“Oh right, you’ll boil their eyes out of their sockets.” Never mind that Kuro wasn’t noble, and that clearly that wasn’t true, since Ren had frolicked through commoners all afternoon without causing anyone so much as a cataract.

“The reputation of the emperor must be protected at all costs.” Ren held up a finger. “No, you needn’t say it.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Good thing too, for that was the sort of response that would end up with Kuro being beheaded.

“Here. Help me fold them,” Ren said. So Kuro helped Ren lay out the kimonos and fold them to properly store them in his closets. Underneath the scattered silk, Kuro also found a biwa, a flute, mummified flower stems, an incense bowl, six tea cups, a bow, and over a dozen brushes. Ren shrugged helplessly every time Kuro held up a new discovery. Apparently Ren liked to keep busy.

The only area of the room that escaped the tumult was the alcove. Calligraphy hung on the wall, but instead of the vase of seasonal flowers samurai and merchants liked to place there, a sword rack dominated the space. The Kusanagi. And before the Imperial Sword, the other two Imperial treasures, a covered round mirror and a jewel.

Ren’s gaze prickled the back of his neck, so he jerked away. If Kuro were to steal, better to pilfer the inconspicuous tea cups.

By the time Ren placed the last kimono into his closet, the room looked far more sumptuous than even Reiha’s quarters at Inari Shrine. Minus the scribbles.

And Kuro got to stay here. He couldn’t hide his grin. Lounging around all day, eating fine foods and caching more, never worrying about samurai and dogs — this was exactly the life he deserved.

Except he still didn’t know what Ren expected. And then there was the onmyouji and Shogun lurking in the shadows like a ghost.

Kuro collapsed onto the pile of blankets they hadn’t yet folded in the closet, then jerked back onto his feet, looking over to Ren to see if he’d noticed, and more importantly, how furious he was.

Ren smiled at him, and looked away to slide closed the closet doors. Kuro didn’t dare relax, and Ren startled when he noticed Kuro. “Sit. You don’t need my permission.”

Ren flopped down on the other side of the blanket pile. Kuro watched him, judged him sincere for the moment, and laid down on his belly. Nice and soft and warm. He grinned into the blankets. Over the ridge, Ren grinned back.

Kuro’s eyes dragged downward, his body relaxing into the blankets.

Yumi was wrong. Yumi was as wrong as a suspicious human could be. She was more likely to be involved with the Night Parade than Ren. Even Kuro was more likely.

He jerked himself back to kneeling. His shoulders clenched up around his ears. Of course Ren wouldn’t seem like he was involved with the Night Parade. Human or spirit, they all hid behind Noh masks of honesty and generosity. Then as soon as Kuro lowered his guard, they ripped off the mask to bare their fangs.

Nothing Ren did made any sense. He tainted his divine body — the body of the future emperor — by entering the Riverbank Settlement. No one sacrificed that much for the reasons Ren offered.

“Kuro?” Ren asked.

Voices floated through the air over the patter of butterfly steps and swished silk. Female voices.

“What is it?” Ren asked.

Really? Even in Kuro’s human form, he could hear that much. “Someone’s coming.”

He frowned.

“Females.” Not royal courtesans, unless the Shogun had lost his mind. A pup off Ren, legitimate or not, would ruin all his plans.

Or so Kuro thought until Ren jumped up, a grin bigger than any he’d ever given Kuro plastered across his face. That kind of exuberance only heralded one thing — lady parts.

“Come with me,” Ren said. “I’ll introduce you.”

He shoved away the scowl to pretend indifference. If Ren had his own harem of beautiful ladies, then Kuro’s plan never would have worked even if the samurai hadn’t caught him. The prince wouldn’t notice some commoner girls sold into indenture when he had the cream of the nobles’ crop waiting at home. “No, thank you, Your Highness.”

“Ren,” he said.

“What?” After a pause, he hurried to add, “Your Highness.”

“Call me Ren.”

“You’re the Sun Prince.” Even if Kuro couldn’t call this stick of a human His Imperial Majesty in his head, he could at least try not to be killed for breach of etiquette.

“And you’re a soon-to-be god. So call me Ren.”

“Fine, Ren,” he said. “I don’t need to be introduced. I’m not interested in girls.”

Ren choked, and coughed sputtering. When he looked back at Kuro, his skin was whiter than a ghost and his lower lip pinched.

Shit. He must have said something stupid, or assumed something. He repeated his words in his head, weighing each one as he thought a human would. Oh, Ren thought he presumed he thought Ren meant to share his courtesans with a lowly beast like him. “Don’t let me hold you back from your fun with your whores. I’ll take a nap.”

“Wh—” Ren choked on the word, like he couldn’t even utter such a low-class word. Kuro really shouldn’t be there.

“My apologies, Your Imperial Highness, courtesans.”

“Ren.” He flipped off the correction as if he really meant it, before barrelling on, “That’s my family.”

Kuro widened his eyes. Family?

“My mother and my sisters,” he said. “They must have finished up early. They usually come and visit me. I don’t like — I don’t have courtesans.”

He jerked straight, pinning his eyes and ears in the direction of the sound. The paper screens muffled them a little, but he could still pinpoint their approach. They were coming. He hunched his shoulders.

“Kuro.”

“What?” He flicked his eyes to the prince, but nothing more.

“Come, I’ll introduce you. Er, if you could not mention me leaving the compound. I’m not really supposed to, but this was an emergency, and…”

Introduce? As in, make Kuro skulk within a hundred yards of Ren’s mother? “You can’t do that!”

Ren frowned. “Why not?”

“Because—” because, because, because… Something that wasn’t the truth. “You can’t introduce the Imperial family to scum.”

“You’re not scum.”

Any moment then, the dowager empress would reach the room and throw open the screen, and render their argument moot. He stared down at the blankets. Perhaps he could burrow his way under the blankets to hide. He dug into the side of the pile.

Above him, Ren’s confusion had faded, the corner of his eyes falling and his lips placid. “Stay here, then. I’ll just be a moment.”

He left, leaving the screen open two inches. As if he didn’t mean to bring his family in to meet him anyway.

“Mother, Sisters.” Ren stopped them several feet from the screen door.

How could Ren just jump into harm’s way like that? Kuro crept closer to the gap, as if he could jump out and pull him to safety under his mother’s barrage of barbed looks and comments. He peeked through the gap.

Kuro had seen the dowager empress begging on the street, always from a safe distance. She might have held a begging bowl between her slim fingers, and she might have bowed her head, but nothing about her was weak or deferential. Replace the human black hair with silver, her human ears with fox ones, and she would have doubled as Kuro’s mother. Steel wrapped in petals, and only a fool got close enough to the petals to feel the sharp slice of steel.

Ren was that kind of fool.

He blocked Kuro’s view of his sisters, but his mother’s head poked above his shoulder. With eyes only for her son, she was all petals. The steel in her cheeks had softened, her complexion warming. Kuro crouched as far back into the room as he could, in case she twitched her eyes away and caught him. The steel would reappear if she did.

“Oh, you know, the usual,” Ren was saying. Kuro had missed the question. “Studying history, writing poetry, practising the biwa.”

Whatever the dowager empress’ response, it was lost in the rush of wind in his ears as the empress smiled. Not a calculated smile, ready to pierce its prey, but a real smile. A smile like Ren’s.

Reiha had never smiled at Kuro like that. She’d never smiled. Not even in the days when he’d still worn his brown adolescent fur, before everything had gone wrong. She hadn’t smiled when he’d caught his first rabbit, or when he won wrestling matches. She had never smiled at his litter sister either, but that wasn’t a comfort.

Warm words mixed with laughter floated around Kuro like an audible form of incense. He lost the meaning of the words, but his attention snapped to each time his sisters patted Ren. Ren shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck and touched them back.

The last time Kuro had touched his mother, his paw reaching to hold onto her, she’d snatched her hand away and had the human servant hit him over the head. The river had rushed under him, overflowing with monsoon rains, as the servant held him up by the scruff.

Cold, cold, frigid, his ears numb and his paws frozen, and he twisted and squirmed and bit but the human hands did not let up, his mother watching him as she tapped her sandalled foot—

Kuro yanked himself back into the room and burrowed under the blankets. His body quickly heated the hollow, and he pretended that he was far away in his own, safe den. He could even pretend he was in the family den at Inari Shrine, before everything had gone so horribly wrong.