Yusuke lied. The teahouse was too small for Kuro, and it grew ever smaller.

“As of sunset, there won’t be a single demon left alive in the Capital,” Yumi continued. “That is my proof.”

Kuro shivered as if her words were frozen arrows buried deep inside his chest. Ren replied with some repartee, but Kuro didn’t care. He yanked open the panels and stumbled onto the veranda.

The maple spilled leaves over the pond, like spilling blood. He shuddered again, wishing for his fur pelt to warm him. His fox ears to hear and his nose to smell. How humans managed to survive day to day when they were so blind was the ultimate mystery.

The barrier around the garden thrummed as Kuro strained his human ears. He cocked his head in every direction, and then side to side, but the barriers were too loud. They muffled all outside sounds.

He rose onto his toes, but the garden fence reached too high for him to see over. Perhaps Ren could, with his extra head of height. But Ren wouldn’t care. It wasn’t as if humans were being rounded up for slaughter.

If he became his true self, he could break the barrier like he’d broken all the barrier gates. Yusuke had claimed they weren’t the same as the ones that had imprisoned him. They might not even hurt.

Kuro clenched his hands. But if he broke the barrier, then what? He’d gallop to the spirits’ rescue? A stupid move, only ensuring that the Shogun allowed him to be mauled by demon-hunting dogs.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Ren said from the teahouse. He and Yumi bickered as if their words mattered. As if through sheer force of arguing, they could force their delusions onto reality. As if whether the Shogun or the onmyouji had betrayed them was the most important thing happening at the moment.

But they wouldn’t understand. They were humans. Humans liked to pretend neutral spirits were demons, so they could pick on defenceless spirits and pretend they saved the empire from demons. As if bullying weak creatures made them powerful.

For a few days, Kuro had thought Ren might be different. He’d known Kuro was a fox — a Dark Kitsune — and had still invited him into his home. He’d been so interested in neutral spirits, as if they mattered as much as humans. But unlike Ren and Yumi, Kuro didn’t claw onto illusions to keep them from slipping. He saw the world as it was. He couldn’t pretend Ren was a friend. To him, Kuro was the enemy.

It didn’t even matter whether Kuro had agreed to the Shogun’s plan or not. Bartered Ren’s life for a shrine. The Shogun could have dropped Kuro into Ren’s lap with only threats of torture if he left Ren’s side, and Ren would still hate him. Ren would still think him the foremost villain. Just so he didn’t have to believe one ill thing about the Shogun.

Anything that wasn’t a god was a demon to humans. There weren’t a thousand colours. There were only two.

Kuro tightened his fists. He wouldn’t end up like them. He’d get his shrine. A god was at the mercy of no one.

“Kuro!” Ren still called him by name. He stomped to Kuro’s side. “You lied.”

“About what now?” Kuro was a demon, so of course he was a liar. It didn’t matter what Kuro had actually said.

“You can leave the teahouse.”

“Oh, that?” Had Yumi revealed that a human could break the barrier? No, Ren meant Kuro could enter the garden. “The barrier extends around the garden wall. It’s almost as if I’m a guest, not a prisoner.”

But the comment flew over Ren’s head. “She believes the onmyouji is actually executing demons.”

“He’s executing someone.” Rivers and rivers of blood. Would the onmyouji and samurai attempt to capture the spirits and drag them to the execution grounds first? Or would they even care to keep the Capital pure from mass slaughter? It was only spirits dying. Their deaths didn’t count as murder.

“You can hear them?” Ren asked.

“Not at all,” he said. “But the onmyouji would do that. Demons attacked the Imperial Palace. Humans are baying for blood. It doesn’t matter to them that there’s no demons in the Capital during the day.”

“Then it is a ploy.” Ren sent a triumphant look back at Yumi.

“I said they didn’t care,” Kuro said. “There’s plenty of harmless neutral spirits to murder. Spirits who are as frightened of the forests as the humans are. Who took shelter in the City to avoid the demons. And in exchange, they kowtow to the humans. They wash dishes for scraps of food and at night, lick dirty bathrooms clean.”

Ren frowned at the pond. Did he see blood in the reflection too?

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“They’re beyond pathetic. They should know better than to trust humans.” Kuro rolled his shoulders, his muscles creaking. “They think humans know the difference. They think humans will be grateful. But humans are too stupid to tell the difference between a neutral spirit and a demon. Even though the main difference, that only demons eat humans, is pretty obvious. But that’s humans. Stupid. Just like you two are too stupid to see what’s plain in front of you.”

“Thankfully, we have you,” Ren said, “to deliver your favourite rant over and over again.”

“Thankfully, you have me,” Kuro corrected, “because otherwise you’d be dead, a bloated corpse floating down the dragon god’s river.”

“Just watch me. I’ll bring the onmyouji to justice.”

“Oi!” Yumi called from behind them.

“You’re wrong, Ren,” Kuro said. “It’s not my favourite rant. I’m more bored of it than you are. You’re what, twenty-one in human years? And you,” he turned to Yumi, “you’re…”

“Seventeen,” she said.

“Which is somewhere between a hundred or hundred and ten in spirit years.” Around the same age Kuro was, but clearly human years didn’t equal spirit years, no matter the arithmetic tricks. “More than old enough to know you can’t trust the words out of people’s mouths as the truth. You definitely can’t trust anyone who claims they’ve only your best interest at heart. And most especially anyone you think you should trust. Brothers and crushes included.”

And especially mothers.

“You can’t trust those closest to you,” Kuro told them. “You must always be vigilant. The only ones who can betray you are those you trust.”

“You’re right,” Ren said. “I trusted you. Then you murdered my family.”

The Sun Prince didn’t even pause to think about the Shogun. Idiot. Neither of them would. They would both continue in their delusions, unaware that those with whom they lived would betray them. They’d only be suspicious of Kuro. They never dreamed that family could betray them.

He could tell them. He could explain why Kuro never trusted anyone. He flipped up a hand, shrugging. “I feel like attending upon the Shogun.”

“Now?” Yumi asked.

“Why?” Ren demanded. “So you can—”

“Because that’s step one of your plan,” Kuro said, loudly interrupting. They didn’t trust him, but they both were poor planners. They’d never get to step one on their own, and so they’d flow down Kuro’s created stream. “Get information from the Shogun.”

“I told you, he isn’t involved,” Ren said. “He loves me like a son.”

“Yes, yes, so you keep saying.” Kuro waved off Ren’s refrain, before it incited Yumi to start again. “But whether he’s involved or not, he might know something. And if I talk to him, we might find out what that something is.”

Yumi watched him out of the corner of her eye. “And we’re supposed to believe your word because…?”

“Because you want evidence, not words,” Kuro said. She wouldn’t have believed Ren, like Ren wouldn’t believe her, just on the basis of some overheard gossip. At least that consistency meant Kuro wasn’t completely alone. “So step one of the plan — your plan, because I already know who masterminded this treason — is for me to talk with the Shogun and see if he can’t point us to some physical, incontrovertible evidence.”

He felt particularly proud of himself for using the word ‘incontrovertible’. It was a word Ren would use.

“You’re planning to alert the Shogun that we’re onto him,” Yumi said.

“I’d rather not.” Kuro moved two steps, pretending to pace when he was actually adding distance down the veranda from them both. “Since he’d probably kill me for revealing his plan — not,” he added to Ren, “that he’s the one behind this. Well, he is, but until I can prove it…” He shrugged.

As if Kuro could dig up any evidence they’d believe. But the easiest way to get large sums of money was through the Shogun, who had, after all, promised him a shrine.

“The Shogun will only frame my brother — oi!” She smacked her fist into her open hand. “How do we know you’ll even tell us the truth? You’re in on it.”

Kuro dropped his head, sighing. “Because Ren will kill me if I lie.” And he really didn’t want Ren dragging him through the forest to die. “Besides, you need more practice in discerning fact from fiction. That’s the thing about all evidence. It never screams ‘red herring’.”

“But—” Yumi started.

Ren held out his arm in front of her, but he stared intently into Kuro’s eyes, making him slouch back as if that could hide him. “I really will kill you.”

“I never doubted you’d try,” he said. “So in the meantime, don’t run off after the Night Parade, or you’ll die before you can kill me.”

Ren coughed, turning his head away. It sounded like a laugh. It sounded like the old Ren, before the attack, hiding his amusement at Kuro’s antics. Kuro’s shoulders relaxed. “I still need supplies.”

“Anything else you want to heap onto my list of monumental feats?” Kuro asked. “How about switching Mount Crow with Mount Fox?”

“I think the crows would protest.” There it was. Ren’s smile, despite himself.

“Who cares what they think? They’re jerks.” They pretended to be gods, or at least three ranks above lowly, ordinary spirits like Kuro.

“Supplies and clues will be fine.” Ren watched Yumi, the smile slipping away. Kuro shuddered. He looked more like the Shogun then. Still stick-thin, but with the same commanding aura. “A signed confession would be nice.”

“I’ll do my best.” Kuro bowed from the waist, then swept past Yumi back into the teahouse. He tapped his toe on her lacquered box. “Come along, Yumi. The sooner you transform me from my mongrel appearance, the sooner I can stop biting humans for comparing me to dogs.”

Yumi raised her eyes to observe Ren as coolly as he looked at her, but her aura felt subdued. She hadn’t been raised to rule. Then she flipped her head and returned to Kuro’s side. “Are you really going to investigate the Shogun? Or will you try to spare his feelings?”

“It’s not me you should worry about.” As soon as he broke both of their hopes and dreams, he’d be a lot safer. “Keep an eye on him.”

She raised her brow. “If he isn’t involved…”

“But he’s as idealistic and self-righteous as you are,” he said. “He’ll stop at nothing to uncover your brother.”

“My brother—”

Kuro held up a hand to stop her.

“—isn’t involved. He must have been tricked.”

So raising a hand didn’t work when Kuro did it. “Oh, of course. But your brother isn’t married, right?”

She pinched her brow together. “Right.”

“And he rarely has the time to head into the pleasure district.”

“My brother wouldn’t fornicate with prostitutes.”

Big brother complex. Kuro rolled his eyes. “I wonder how many sordid ukiyo-e prints your brother might have hidden in his quarters. For all that time he’s not in the pleasure district.”

Her eyes widened, twin red spots dappling her cheeks. Her eyes snapped to Ren.

Good. They’d keep each other out of trouble until Kuro returned. If only Kuro could promise himself the same.