Ren had — used to have a hundred rooms to himself. The Shogun had more. And his weren’t as empty as a haunted castle.

Yusuke led Kuro through a maze of corridors and verandas until he lost count of the number of rooms they passed by. His ears twitched with the scuffle of so many inhabitants. Maids and servant boys dropped their foreheads to the floor. Government officials and daimyo all bowed to Yusuke.

And this, Kuro knew, was only the main bailey. The outer bailey contained the estates of the daimyo, keeping them under the Shogun’s nose.

Kuro hated them all. They hid their faces, their condemnation or their joy. None of them seemed to care that their prince was dead. Yet they were still more upfront than the Shogun. Just what was his game?

When Yusuke stopped at the veranda edge with a flat granite step below, a maid appeared out of nowhere with two sets of sandals. Kneeling in the dirt, she slid them onto Yusuke’s feet. Kuro’s eye twitched. Yusuke smiled up at him. Kuro glanced away, exhaled, but slipped the sandals on himself. He ignored Yusuke’s raised painted-on brow.

Yusuke led him through storehouses and along the barracks guarding the main gate, but Yusuke didn’t take him outside the bailey. He took him to a thatched-roof building nestled in the side of the outer bulwark. Kuro strained his ear, but he and Yusuke were alone.

“Does the Shogun even know what I am?” Kuro asked.

“Of course he does.” Yusuke tipped off his sandals as he stepped up into the entryway. No servants appeared to whisk them away.

“He doesn’t seem to.”

Yusuke tipped his head to the side. “He doesn’t wish to advertise that you’re not human. The Night Parade attacked the Imperial Palace. The shock is spreading throughout the city. He thought it was prudent.”

Kuro stopped in the doorway and kicked off the sandals. If he had to run, he preferred bare foot. “Doesn’t that make it a little difficult to justify building a shrine?”

The onmyouji shrugged. “Who would stop him?”

That was true. The only human who held greater authority than the Shogun had been Ren, and even Ren had to bow and scrape to him.

“Do come in. I’m afraid it’s not much, but it’s a great deal more sturdy than the Imperial Palace.”

Kuro clenched his toes. “So I’m supposed to stay here, in my little corner, where no one knows that I exist… and just hope that my head stays on my shoulders?”

“The people are afraid,” Yusuke explained. “The Night Parade have never managed such an attack. A new shrine and a new local god will bring them peace and joy.”

And the Shogun would capitalise on that, using it to tighten his knuckles around his power.

Yusuke raised his index finger to his lips. “But for now, it’s a secret.”

Or he kept Kuro a secret until he was ready to execute him. Kuro stared down at the red straps of the borrowed sandals. Then he slid his feet out and stepped up onto the foyer.

He couldn’t trust Yusuke or the Shogun’s word. But he could trust that they’d always look out for their own best interest, and raising Kuro to god-status was in their best interest. Human politics.

Except for one small niggling matter.

Yusuke knelt and slid open the door to the main room. Kuro staggered under the weight of spiritual purity.

Every sliding door and every coffer of the roof was covered in ofuda. If Kuro pried up the mats, he’d probably find more. The spiritual power prickled his skin as if he’d been dropped inside the Dragon God’s shrine, and he hadn’t even entered. Yusuke couldn’t have built a more perfect cage.

Kuro bared his teeth and backed up. “So I’m your prisoner.”

“Not at all.” Yusuke’s painted brows rose up in surprise. “But the Shogun is aware of what you are.”

He blinked several times, trying to catch up. He knew, which was exactly why the Shogun couldn’t allow him to live.

“This barrier is more sophisticated than the one I used before,” Yusuke said. “It’s not meant to keep you here, but to trap your presence inside. The Shogun’s demise would be too much of a blow for the Capital to handle. That’s why I designed this to contain your power.”

Kuro narrowed his eyes. The squiggles did look different, and the spiritual power more a tightening of his skin than a crackle. “So I can leave whenever I want.”

“You may go wherever you like in the Shogun’s compound,” he said, “so long as you don’t stray into anyone’s path.”

They’d passed over twenty people on the way. But Yusuke didn’t count them. They didn’t rank high enough. He meant that Kuro couldn’t be allowed to be seen by the government officials.

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“And you must be escorted, to maintain secrecy.”

“But I can cross the barrier.” He folded his arms.

Yusuke’s painted brow twitched. “With an escort.”

An escort to open the barrier for Kuro.

“But you’ll notice it’s more than six tatami mats big.” Yusuke gestured into the room.

“So?” Even without the barrier, Kuro was not impressed. It was only half the size of one of Ren’s rooms.

“And private enough that a certain someone can sleep in his fox form.”

If the barrier allowed him to transform. The residual power itched on his skin.

But if the Shogun meant to kill him, he could have shoved Kuro into a pit. But he’d given Kuro his teahouse. Calligraphy hung in the alcove along with a fresh maple branch in a vase.

Yusuke clapped his hands. “If you’d please.”

Kuro breathed in deeply. One last chance to escape.

“Quickly,” the onmyouji urged him. “Before—”

Delighted girlish voices popped up behind him, led by one very off-put Yumi. They carried covered lacquered trays. Kuro’s stomach grumbled.

“The sooner you’re inside, the sooner you can eat.”

Or the sooner that Yumi would punch him until he fell inside the barrier. Kuro stepped inside and leaned against a pillar opposite the alcove. Yusuke stood next to him.

The girls set down the trays, peeking up at him and stifling their comments as they glanced to Yusuke.

“And a meal isn’t complete without a beautiful view.”

Yumi knelt beside her brother, opening up the sliding doors — opening the barrier — to a red-soaked garden.

Blood. Kuro jumped away. Samurai falling to the ground, their arms torn off. Blood spraying everywhere. The dowager empress’ blood soaking the tatami mats. Blood, and death, and screams everywhere—

“Do foxes have heart attacks?” Yumi asked her brother.

Kuro blinked, his heart settling as the real view replaced memories of the palace. A red maple leaned over a pond, reflecting the leaves like a pool of blood. A bamboo filter struck a rock, emptying water into the pond before flipping back for the stream to refill again. The ideal garden.

The Shogun had been right. Ren’s garden looked like an abandoned graveyard compared to this.

A stone fence taller than Kuro contained the tea house and garden, the stones decorated with folded white paper. Not ofuda, but barriers all the same. He was still trapped, but the Shogun had put too much effort into his accommodation to simply execute him. Or so Kuro thought. Humans were tricky that way.

“Here’s your offering. Come, eat.” Yusuke gestured to the trays. “You must be starving.”

He was. The maids lifted the lids from the tray. His jaw dropped, saliva spilling out. Three trays of inari-zushi. Three trays.

“I heard Celestial Kitsune have a fondness for this treat.”

If Kuro had worn his tail, it would have been wagging. “I’m yours.” He dropped next to the tray. Three trays, all his. He didn’t even need to trick any humans out of their share.

Sometime while Kuro had shovelled down the treats, Yusuke had shooed away the maids. Kuro leaned back, rubbing his full belly. When was the last time he’d eaten so well? Never, that was when. He groaned in contentment.

“And one lucky fox gets dessert.” Yusuke waved and Yumi moved the last tray into prominence. Three balls of mochi had been arranged in the centre. Balls, not even the cheaper square version.

Kuro didn’t have much time to think after that. Ren had been a whirl of energy, but even he seemed like a flickering flame compared to the entertainments Yusuke devised. Exhaustion tugged at Kuro’s eyes and limbs, his wounds stinging. He needed sleep to heal them, but when his eyes closed for too long, and his fogged mind tumbled down, Yusuke shook him awake.

He brought in puppeteers, forbidden for common-folk other than merchants, since merchants were already deemed too morally decrepit for it to matter. Kuro watched, entranced, as the puppeteers guided their colourful puppets through their bawdy tails.

Then the Shogun’s courtesans had wished to give Kuro a demonstration of their prowess in dancing and shamisen. Kuro barely had a moment after that to comment to Yusuke that it didn’t seem like they knew how to keep a secret, before his next meal showed up. Then Yusuke pressed Kuro into fumbling through a tea ceremony, with his full attention on trying to imitate Yusuke. He dropped the bowl twice and nodded off in the middle of eating the red-bean sweet.

Yusuke dragged Kuro to the bath. A bath attendant scrubbed him, but his touch was no where as nice as Ren’s. Kuro wobbled over to the pool, but the attendant grabbed his shoulder, fingers digging into the wound.

Kuro yelped.

Yusuke, waiting fully clothed outside of the splash radius, said, “You’ll be able to soak once your wounds heal.”

Kuro glanced down at the scabs littering his body. Oh, right. The attendant turned him back to the stool, this time to bandage him.

“How long do you think that will be?” Yusuke asked.

Kuro yawned. His spine bowed as exhaustion weighed him down.

The bath attendant prodded him. Kuro jerked straight.

“When will your wounds heal?” Yusuke repeated.

“Oh.” Kuro yawned again. “After a few days of sleep.”

“I see,” Yusuke said as Kuro leaned forward. The attendant had to prop him up.

With the attendant’s help, Kuro stumbled back to the teahouse. Yusuke disappeared in the process, but Kuro focused on the futon already laid out. He stretched his feet under the blanket. The maid had tucked a ceramic hot water bottle next to his feet. The only thing more perfect would have been his fox form, but that would have to wait for another night.

The second his head hit the pillow, he escaped into dreams of living in his shrine, of lazy days in the sun with trays of inari-zushi appearing whenever he felt peckish.

He woke in the dark. The bottle warmed his feet. Sleep dragged down his eyes. Why had he woken?

The sliding door to the garden rattled.

Kuro snatched his hand to his chest. Only the wind. He exhaled.

The screen rattled again.

A storm? Kuro sniffed, but the barrier dampened his sense of smell. He was nose-blind.

The wind didn’t howl past. He’d have heard a wind that strong. Kuro thrust himself up onto his knees.

A shadow darkened the paper, shaped like a kneeling human. But the garden wall was too high for humans to climb.

The lantern still burned, making it lighter inside than out. Outside objects couldn’t throw shadows against the paper, and that wasn’t Kuro’s.

Only one creature did that. But it was impossible. The barrier kept spirits out as well as Kuro inside.

Sweat slid down his spine.

The panel slid open.

Kuro bared his teeth. He was injured, but he could take care of any spirit. Never mind his quivering non-existent tail.

The maple loomed black through the gap. A human figure knelt, head bowed, grey knuckles tight around the doorframe.

“Ren,” Kuro whispered.

His skin was grey. His kimono streaming off him like rags. He leaned against the pillar. He looked up at Kuro, but his eyes were black shadows.

Kuro screamed. “GHOST!”