The onmyouji didn’t kill him immediately, but Kuro just couldn’t summon the energy to care. He forced Kuro to transform back into his human form. As his flesh disappeared and condensed, the arrows clattered to the ground. His wounds still bled. The onmyouji ordered two samurai to drag him up Merchant’s Road to the Shogun’s Palace, the onmyouji following behind, waving a fan.

As if Kuro could even lift his head long enough to notice an escape route. The battle raged on behind them. Black filled Kuro’s eyes, and he passed out.

When he blinked his eyes open, the sun spread its fingers to light the world as if everything was okay. How could the Sun Goddess continue her work as if her descendants hadn’t been murdered? As if Ren wasn’t missing and Kuro wasn’t about to die? Kuro blinked wet eyes, the timber beams above him blurring.

He wiped his eyes, and a dozen wounds pulled at the motion. Trickles of blood flowed down Kuro’s skin and scattered on the dirt floor. Plain wood chest were piled high against the stucco walls. Beyond his feet, a wooden door was closed without any sign of ofuda. Kuro could have run, if he hadn’t ached so much.

He curled on his side to lick his wounds. A human tongue with human saliva didn’t stop the bleeding. If only he could transform — but he hadn’t the energy or the leaves. The onmyouji or the samurai had removed everything from inside his blood- and mud-streaked yukata.

Where was Ren? He never would have snuck out of the Imperial Palace during the fighting to save himself, not without his family, and probably not even with them.

Unless Ren had known the attack was coming. Kuro had only caught up to him at the end of his conversation with the ghost. And being able to hold a conversation with a ghost was too odd, not when the ghost should have asked him right away whether he thought she was beautiful. But she’d only asked when Kuro had arrived, and she was no mere ghost.

The door — a hefty thing made from actual wood, not paper — slid open.

“Take it,” the onmyouji said.

Human hands grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him out of the workshop. It. Kuro was an ‘it’ to the onmyouji, not a god.

The onmyouji didn’t mean to honour their agreement. He dragged Kuro to his death.

The men hauled him up the step, letting his knees bang against the edge. They carried him past gold-leaf painted landscapes and under ceilings coffered in red and gold flowers. They couldn’t mean to—

They did. They reached a golden chamber four times the length of any of Ren’s rooms. Three government officials or daimyo — their robes swam too much for Kuro to tell — knelt in obeisance along the side, but the samurai carried him past them. They dropped him in front of a dais. Kuro hit his chin on the mat. The gold walls danced around him. But he didn’t need to see to know where he was.

The Shogun’s audience chamber.

The samurai shoved him onto his belly. “Kneel,” the onmyouji said.

Or they’d kick him until he pulled his legs under him for protection. Kuro obeyed, resting his forehead on the mat. If not for the onmyouji looming over him, and the Shogun kneeling on the dais, he could have fallen asleep.

“Yusuke,” the Shogun chided. “Have a heart. He’s been through so much.”

“My apologies.” The onmyouji stepped back. More talk flew over Kuro’s head before he realised that the onmyouji was Yusuke.

“Kuro, Kuro.” The Shogun had to say it several more times before Kuro also made the connection between his pseudonym and himself, and that Kuro was the one who’d been through so much.

“Your Excellency,” Kuro mumbled.

“Can you sit?”

Not likely. The samurai gripped his shoulders and pulled him up straight. When they released their hands, Kuro balanced upright. Oh, so apparently he could sit.

Swamped in the splendour of the audience chamber, even an oni of a human like the Shogun should have been rendered a mere wood doll. But Kuro was the only one made tiny. In a plain black kimono, the Shogun filled the chasm in a way that had nothing to do with his broad shoulders.

“That’s better,” the Shogun said to the onmyouji. Kuro blinked. No, the Shogun said to Kuro. His eyes were focused on Kuro, rather than dismissing him as a mere servant at Ren’s compound. The sharp lines of his face had softened like he had regarded Ren.

Ren! Kuro looked behind him. The onmyouji waited three paces to Kuro’s side. The samurai knelt in a line on the opposite wall. No one stood behind him. His shoulders sagged.

“Such a terrible night it’s been,” the Shogun said. “My samurai have finished off the last of the injured demons, but in the chaos, most fled to the mountains.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Terrible that more demons hadn’t died in the Shogun’s trap, he meant. What a coup that would have been, destroying both the Sun Prince and the Night Parade in one blow.

“My men are searching the wreckage.” The Shogun tilted his head down, as if to conceal his dry eyes. “Tell me where Ren is.”

Kuro pressed his lips together.

“They haven’t found his…” The Shogun closed his eyes, as if the words choked him. “Ren may have escaped. The Kusanagi was missing from his compound. Did you see it? Have you seen him? Tell me everything you know.”

Kuro stared at the Shogun.

“Anything you can add to the search would help.”

“He’s dead.” Is that what the Shogun wanted to hear?

The Shogun hissed in a breath. “You saw his body.”

Kuro jerked his hand to the side. “You know what Ren’s like. He probably led the charge into the heart of the demon army.” The very weakness the Shogun had exploited before.

“But you’re not certain.”

So this was why Kuro had woken up. This was why he hadn’t been drawn and quartered. The Shogun needed confirmation that he’d won.

The Shogun covered his mouth with one hand, his eyes still closed.

Kuro glanced at the page boy, the government officials, the samurai and the onmyouji. They were all the Shogun’s men. Why was he putting on this show? He acted as if he hadn’t sent Kuro to kill Ren. He acted as if—

The onmyouji smiled, unperturbed by the Shogun’s fake grief. Were they pretending the Shogun didn’t know, so Kuro believed the onmyouji had tricked Kuro? He only had the onmyouji’s words that the Shogun wanted Ren’s assassination.

Kuro tightened his hands, his claws digging into his palms. The Shogun made all the right motions, but if he couldn’t cry on command, he’d never trick a fox half as clever as Kuro. What game was the Shogun playing?

“I sent my men to search for him, but they’ve found nothing so far,” the Shogun said. “Tell me where else he might have gone.”

And if Ren was still alive, he’d walk straight into their blades. Kuro winced. But Ren was dead.

“You know Ren’s favourite places.”

Kuro narrowed his eyes. “The prince was not allowed outside his compound.” The Shogun had lectured Ren in front of Kuro, but he’d probably forgotten the moment after he left that Kuro had been there, a mere servant.

“I’m well aware that he liked to sneak out,” the Shogun said. “I’m not angry. Don’t fear telling me.”

“Ren was in the compound.” If by some miracle Ren had escaped rather than die for his stupid honour, Kuro wasn’t going to encourage the Shogun to find him.

“He could have snuck out at night.”

“He wouldn’t. Not without me,” Kuro said. Of course Ren would, but the Shogun didn’t need to know that.

“You have nothing else you could contribute?”

Kuro bit his lip.

The Shogun straightened, eyes turning hopeful. Almost like Ren’s eyes, when Kuro had promised to show him the city.

“No, Your Excellency.”

His eyes shuttered, as quickly as a slamming screen door. “I see. Fate is a funny thing.”

Oh yes, so funny, the way it contorted to do exactly what the Shogun wanted.

“It’s quite the coincidence that only two days after you entered the prince’s household, the Night Parade broke through the Western Barrier.”

Kuro snapped his eyes up. Nothing could have been less a coincidence. The Shogun had sent him there to kill Ren. And now Ren was dead.

“Quite the coincidence for a boy to show up out of nowhere and contrive to meet the Sun Prince.”

The Shogun was pinning the attack on Kuro. He pressed his lips together to keep from cursing out loud. The Shogun would grieve publicly, and announce he’d executed the prince’ assassin.

“The events last night were tragic,” he said. “You must be rattled, the night confused in your mind. Perhaps now you might remember something more.”

Pretending to know something would have been so easy. He’d withhold the clue and extend his life. Dole out fake information inch by inch to make the Shogun run in circles. The Shogun was begging for it. But if he tried, the Shogun would torture him for it and he’d be executed anyway.

Kuro glanced back at the onmyouji, who smiled back at him with that infernal smile. This version seemed smug, as if he knew that before long, Kuro’s blood would be strewn across the tatami mats.

He never should have left Ren.

“But you know where the sword is,” the Shogun said.

Kuro stared at the long sword in his sash.

“My men found the Imperial Mirror and the Imperial Jewel,” he explained, “but not the Imperial Sword. If Ren had been killed, they would have found the Kusanagi.”

“Perhaps it was taken as a trophy,” Kuro mumbled.

The Shogun stood, his long sword shifting in his sash. The page jumped up as well, and Kuro wondered if he was supposed to stand. The Shogun placed his hand on the hilt, not his sword hand, but the other one to hold it steady as he stepped down from the dais.

Kuro glanced from his left to his right. The panels were shut, with no clue whether they led to a corridor or a closet. His fox form would tear them down, if the onmyouji hadn’t reinforced them with ofuda. But his legs wriggled beneath him like red bean jelly. If he leapt for the walls, he’d crash into the tatami with the samurai’s blades following.

The Shogun approached, his socked feet sliding soundlessly on the tatami. The onmyouji loomed behind Kuro, as impenetrable as the storehouse wall. Running forward would land him in the Shogun’s path.

Kuro squeezed his eyes shut. He was going to die. The Shogun was going to kill him.

The Shogun lifted his hand with a rustle of silk.

The hand landed on Kuro’s head. His eyes flew upon to find the Shogun’s knees. The hand stirred Kuro’s hair. The Shogun petted him, like he had petted Ren.

“Good boy,” the Shogun said in a soft voice that lingered around Kuro instead of carrying down the hall.

Good boy? Kuro tilted his head up, blinking at him.

The Shogun smiled at him, deepening the crow’s feet around his eyes and mouth. He’d smiled at Ren like that.

“I hear someone is having their shrine made.”

“Really?” Shock cracked the word. And by that, he meant, the Shogun really wasn’t going to kill him.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Yusuke has arranged for an architect. He’ll start designing it today. I believe you said you wanted six torii gates?”

Kuro nodded, eyes rounded like a hare with a fox bounding after it.

“It’ll be quite the sight to see.” The Shogun sighed. “A shame that Ren will never see it.”

“Right, a shame,” Kuro murmured.

The Shogun paused, as if waiting for Kuro to spill his secrets. He’d be waiting a long time, since Kuro didn’t have any besides he hadn’t smelled Ren’s blood. Or he waited for the inevitable conclusion to sink in. If any human had been responsible for the attack, if anyone else discovered Kuro was a Dark Kitsune, then they knew who to blame: the onmyouji. Did that smiling bastard even suspect?

The Shogun patted his head again. “Yusuke, our friend here needs rest. Why don’t you show him to his new quarters?”