As soon as the Shogun disappeared from the veranda, Ren prodded Kuro with his folded fan. “Is this normal?”

Kuro slapped the fan away. His throat hurt from gekkering so long and his head ached from the Shogun’s punishment for daring to do so. And now Ren pretended he hadn’t seen the latter.

“I didn’t know foxes… well, made noises.”

What humans didn’t know could fill a burial mound. “Well, I didn’t know princes grovelled, so we’re even.”

Ren pinched his brow together.

“Although your grovelling far outpaces my gekkering. I have never seen such fantastic grovelling,” Kuro continued. “Princes really do everything better than common folk, just as expected.”

“I did not grovel,” he said.

“Hmm, maybe grovel isn’t the right word. You’ll have to tell me, oh wise and learned one. Is there a word for when a stray dog begs for scraps? There must be a haiku you can quote me.”

“We talked,” Ren said. “I don’t know how that constitutes begging.”

“Only because the Shogun never gave you that vaunted ‘good boy’ you craved.”

Ren fought to keep his face smooth, but his eyes squeezed shut and his brow furrowed.

“I don’t even see why he bothered to come.” Kuro waved his hand. “He couldn’t have been more bored. He doesn’t care.”

“He cares. Of course he does. He’s brought me mochi cakes ever since I was a toddler.”

He brought bribes for Ren’s affection. Why he bothered to spend the money when a pat on Ren’s head swung Ren’s favour so easily, Kuro didn’t know. Kuro shrugged. “I guess he needs to check in on you to make sure the puppy keeps to his cage.”

Ren slammed his hand on the planks. “Enough with the dog comparisons.”

“Why?” Kuro flicked his fingers over Ren’s crown, where Kuro’s ears would be. “The only thing you lack, little pup, are the triangles on your head.”

Ren raised his hand, not to slap away Kuro’s wrist, but to block his hand. “What is wrong with you?”

Kuro crossed his arms, turning his head away as he closed his eyes. “Who wouldn’t be peeved that you brought them into your palace to die?”

“Die? Uncle Gorou wouldn’t hurt you. He knows you’re a fox, but…”

The Shogun had murdered plenty of spirits before. “But when you get yourself killed trying to impress him,” Kuro pointed to his own neck, “this is where his sword will end up.”

The prince huffed. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“I know it’s difficult for someone like you to understand, but I do like my head firmly attached to my neck.”

“Yet you claim that you wouldn’t bother to lift a finger to save me,” he said.

Kuro snapped his jaw shut.

“So you do care,” he said. “You just don’t care about me.”

“I’m embarrassed for you,” Kuro snapped. “Bowing here, listening to you suck up to the Shogun when he doesn’t give you two thoughts. Watching you moon over him like some besotted youth. No wonder you hid your fancy from me. It’s so obvious you’re head over heels in love with him. And he doesn’t even see you.”

“That’s not true,” Ren said.

“He pet your head like you were a mutt.”

“He cares for me.”

“He cares that you stay leashed and out of his way.”

“He doesn’t…” Ren’s shoulders shook. “I don’t fancy him. I fancy—” He stopped himself.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Kuro laughed. “So you do know you’re a terrible liar.”

“I don’t like him like that,” Ren repeated. “He’s my uncle.”

“Not by blood.” The Shogun came from samurai stock, and not even a family that had married into nobility. “Why else would a proud prince who treated the Shogun’s onmyouji like trash, beg for treats from the Shogun? Who is also his inferior.”

“The Shogun is a great man.” Ren wrapped his hand around Kuro’s wrist, his fingers pressing hard until Kuro had to bite back a yelp. Ren almost broke his bone, but that wasn’t his purpose. He wasn’t beating Kuro into submission.

Ren dragged Kuro back into the room, as Kuro struggled to dig his knees into the tatami. Ren dumped him by the desk and turned back to his scrolls.

“He’s a great man,” Ren repeated, searching through the scrolls until he found a blue-lined one. He spread it across the table. In the opening drawing, a samurai in full armour galloped his horse into an army of demons. A samurai built like an oni. “See?”

“Oh, is that supposed to be the Shogun?” Kuro peered closer at the drawing. “I see that he’s a master of propaganda.”

Ren stabbed a finger at the scroll. “This is history. Forty-three years ago, Uncle Gorou was leading his battalion through the mountain pass to rejoin the main human army. They had to move quickly, as the current lord general was under siege by the Great Demon Lord Oyakuzo. They couldn’t afford to rest at night, as they moved through demon territory. Oyakuzo’s vassal led a demon battalion down the mountain, attacking them in the pass. It should have been an easy victory for the demons. But Uncle Gorou bolstered his men, gained control of the battle, and defeated them. No demon escaped.”

Kuro looked down at the drawing. Serpents flew through the air, and oni waved their clubs. Wolves darted between them, and a great number of other demons ran with them. In the corner, overshadowed by the horde, was a small fox. A dead fox, according to Ren. Kuro looked up at Ren. “So?”

“So?” Ren waved his arms. “With this victory, they joined the Lord General’s army and crushed them in a brilliant pincer manoeuvre. That battle changed the course of the war. They even say this battle ended the Warring Demon era.”

“In the Shogun’s hearing or outside it?”

Ren rolled up the scroll. “The Shogun reunited the human empire, bringing peace for the first time in centuries.”

And ending the emperor’s rule in everything but name. Kuro just watched him.

“He’s a great man. A great leader. He deserves respect.” Ren stared down into his lap. “I haven’t done anything but be born.”

He was right. All Ren had ever done was sneak out of the palace walls and fight some samurai trying to uphold the order that the Shogun had mustered. He lived in the lap of luxury, always fed and warm, while Kuro had scrambled on the street, searching for scraps. Stealing offerings. At least Kuro had a plan.

“Even isolated here, I’ve heard the rumours,” Ren continued. “The Shogun can’t protect us from the demons. They’re punishment for perverting the Way of Heaven. They forget everything he has done for them. Everything he has done for me. They plot against him, claiming it’s in my name.”

Ren huffed as he paced. “I can barely live up to being the Sun Prince. You heard him. Everything rests on me. The Empire. The title. My family. Everything. Sixty-six emperors, a thousand years of the Tendo, and I’m letting it end before we get to sixty-seven, never mind sixty-eight.”

“Meh.” Kuro shrugged. “I think you just want to seduce him.”

“I have much bigger plans.”

“Marriage?”

Ren slammed his hands onto the desk. The poor little spindles groaned under the barrage. “First, I’m going to protect the people in my city, whether they’re nobles or Undesirables.”

“Impress the Shogun, you mean,” Kuro said.

His lips curled back in the angriest look Kuro had ever seen on him. “Then I’m going to secure the farmlands. Once they’re safe from demons, the farmers can return and grow their rice. The famine will end, those defectors will be shut up, and I will be enthroned. My family won’t have to beg anymore, because we’ll finally have the budget. And to do that, I need you.”

Kuro waited, expecting Ren to burst into laughter, assuring Kuro he was only joking. But Ren remained as serious as when he’d slammed his hands down. He stared into Kuro’s eyes, waiting for Kuro’s vow of continued service and loyalty. “You are insane.”

“I have it all planned out.”

“Except for the part about me,” he said. “I’m a fox, not a samurai.”

“You’re a soon-to-be god,” he said, “and I’m a samurai.”

No, he was a prince, coddled inside a palace who the Shogun — a real man of the samurai class — occasionally sparred with when it caught his fancy. “You’re living in a delusion.”

“I know how humiliating my situation is, sending my sisters and mother out to beg. I have no delusions about that.”

Ren reserved his delusions for ideas that somehow Ren and Kuro would defeat the Night Parade.

“How are you supposed to fight demons when you’re too afraid to even tell your mother you like males?” Kuro demanded.

Ren flinched back, as if Kuro had stabbed him with his own sword. Kuro inched his hand forward to take Ren’s, but if he did, he’d babble out that he didn’t really mean it. His mother was more frightening than a demon, but she wasn’t as likely to eat Ren, no matter who he fancied. If hurting Ren meant he lived a bit longer, than Kuro would pull out the bamboo shoots.

“The Shogun is better off if you die.” Kuro froze as soon as the words left his mouth. Kuro had finally told him the truth rather than tiptoe around it waiting for Ren to come to his senses.

“Uncle Gorou loves me like a son.” But that wasn’t the kind of love Ren wanted.

Kuro closed his eyes. It wasn’t even real. “He loves you under his thumb. You’re the last emperor, Ren. If you die, no one else could challenge his rule. Ever.”

“I didn’t know fox were deaf.” Ren turned away.

“What?” Kuro’s jaw dropped. “I have excellent hearing.”

“Then listen to me, for once. There’s only one man fit to rule, and that man is Uncle Gorou.”