When Kuro had listed off his demands to the onmyouji, he hadn’t really expected to get them. Humans were like that. Untrustworthy. Cruel. Sadistic. They tricked you into sharing what you wanted, then used it against you.

When Ren had asked Kuro to become his familiar, Kuro hadn’t asked for anything. Well, except a ton of reassurances that Ren hadn’t gone completely insane. That Ren had actually wanted him as a familiar.

He’d sort of hoped that what Ren said was true, not predawn dew that burned up as soon as the sun rose.

Turns out, the universe hated him. Or maybe his own stupid chaos powers did. Because he’d got one, and not the other.

After Ren had kissed him — ahem, made him his familiar, Ren had given Kuro a lofty room high up in the castle, a room with at least eight tatami mats, the edges only a little ragged from whatever weather-ruined castle the Night Parade had scavenged them from.

As the autumn leaves fell and the cold northern wind blew in, Kuro found a new kotatsu table in the middle of his den. The charcoal brazier underneath the blanketed table was stoked by an imp who snuck in and out and hissed if Kuro even glanced in their direction.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the absolute treasure hoard of warm blankets in the corner that Kuro had arranged into a comfy nest.

Kuro raised his arms, the silk sleeves of his rather nice indigo kimono brushing over the kotatsu. He had a whole trunk of kimono, with plain men and married women’s styles, and the beautiful flowered-covered young ladies’ kimono that were more like works of art than clothes. They weren’t as nice as the ones Ren had gifted him in the Imperial Palace, but Kuro could hardly complain. They were still far nicer than the rags he’d worn before.

When Kuchisake had brought them, Kuro had poked at them and asked how many corpses they had needed to rob to get this many quality kimono. Kuchisake had acted shocked at the implication, telling him that they’d been scavenged from abandoned castles and mansions, just like the tatami he knelt on. Kuro had stared at her, adding pressure until she cracked, but with the blank Noh mask hiding her ghostly expression, and what with her being dead, she could stand as still as a granite Buddha statue for far longer than Kuro could glare.

He’d sniffed at the robes, but while he smelled a dozen different human scents, he caught no whiff of blood, so he grudgingly believed her. Or rather, shut up about it, and didn’t tell Ren or Yumi.

Not that he saw Ren all that much, or Yumi at all. They were both far too busy. Yumi stayed with the Undesirables, or the Sun Parade as Kuchisake now called them, as if leaving their barracks for even a few minutes would result in the Night Parade swooping in to finish them off.

And Ren… Well, Kuro couldn’t complain.

Kuro opened his basket of dried leaves, and tried to ignore how the bottom of the basket peeked through the remaining leaves, and how the wind howled outside the screen doors.

He toyed with a stem. Maybe he should practice his fox fire instead. That wouldn’t take up precious leaves. But he was even worse at fox fire. If Kuro wanted something to show Ren, then it had to be transformation.

He picked a small brown leaf and pressed it to his forehead. Focus. Think of a human lady, hair bound up and chest flattened by kimono and absolutely no tail. Not even a small one.

Hell, he should think of Yumi, since that was his second strongest human form. He clapped, and vapour enveloped him.

Transformation, a kitsune’s ability to take on whatever form they pleased, was the most basic kitsune ability. Most kitsune mastered transformations at one hundred, shortly after taking human form for the first time.

The smoke cleared, taking the leaf with it. A polished silver mirror rested on the chest of drawers, but Kuro ignored it, keeping it covered by brocade silk at all times. All it would show was his true self, and that was the last thing he wanted to see.

Kuro patted down her chest, feeling the rise of her breasts, then brushed her fingers over ample lips and high cheekbones, her human ears and the soft black hair where fox ears otherwise would have popped out. Not even a single rough fur stuck out.

Kuro grinned. Maybe she’d struck out and was really a pretty young man, but she felt female. She’d done it! Her tail whipped behind her. She’d mastered transformation — she—

Wait, tail? Kuro whirled, but the tail whipped out of view, and she spun around trying to catch it. She managed to grasp it in one hand.

The paper panel slid open.

Kuro froze, mouth open an inch above her tail.

Ren knelt on the other side of the panel, his head to the side as he focused on the panel. A sleek ponytail fell over his shoulder. The Night Parade had also clothed Ren in the finest scavenged kimono, but he probably took it for granted.

Ren started to raise his gaze. Shit, Kuro did not have time to consider Ren’s clothes when he was about to catch Kuro’s failure.

Gah! Kuro hurried to undo the transformation. The tail remained, captured by Kuro’s hand. Kuro shoved the tail down behind the kotatsu, but it twitched, as if it wanted Ren to see what a loser Ren had chosen as a familiar. Stupid tail!

But maybe Ren hadn’t noticed the vapour. Kuro peeked up to meet Ren’s stone-cold eyes. Before, in the Imperial Palace, Kuro would have described them like a doe’s, all shiny liquid and gentleness and love. Or maybe wet ink, if wet ink had feelings. So many feelings. But now they were flat, without even a single dot of reflected light, and definitely not liquid.

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Kind of like the Shogun’s eyes. Kuro shuddered, but otherwise couldn’t move, not even to rip his eyes away.

Ren broke eye contact first, his gaze dropping to the kotatsu Kuro sat behind. Idiot! Kuro had forgotten the open box of leaves. He slammed the lid shut and swept it under the table.

Kuro looked up to see if Ren had noticed, but Ren was watching him instead. Ren’s mouth opened, but only a short puff of air escaped. A sigh. Ren was sighing over him.

Kuro tightened his grip on his tail. So Ren had seen. He must have seen.

After sliding the panel closed, as if that provided privacy in a castle full of demons who could hear a needle drop a half-mile away, Ren knelt on the other side of the kotatsu, but he didn’t look at Kuro, not again. He stared at the panels covering the windows. Kuro kept them closed. They didn’t even have a view, just the open sky, constantly grey at this time of year. “For a moment there, I thought you might actually be training.”

If Kuro could have used the heat of his blush to ignite fox fire, he might have finally made Ren happy. As it was, it was just embarrassing. Kuro hugged his tail to his chest.

At least Kuro had one saving grace: Ren assumed he wasn’t even trying. That Kuro might actually be worth something if he tried, rather than a complete failure.

“Why do I even bother…” Ren trailed off, then gave another of his new, short sighs. He jerked his head to the side, as if he couldn’t even give Kuro the benefit of shaking his head in disappointment, and pushed his hands on the tatami mat to lever himself up to standing. Up to leave.

“Wait!” Kuro let go of his tail and reached to grab Ren.

Except he hadn’t expected Ren to immediately turn back to him, hadn’t expected that flat gaze to land on him again. Ren tilted his head to the side, expecting something further.

Kuro opened his mouth, but it was like spirits had snuck into his room at night and tied his tongue in knots. Kuro bit his lip, then yelled wordlessly in his head. He was so tongue-tied he couldn’t even swear at himself. Kuro cringed.

Ren watched him for a long time, as Kuro sank further beneath the kotatsu. Finally, he said, “You should.”

“Should?” Kuro whispered, as his heart lightened.

“Train, I mean,” Ren said. “I can help you, if you like.”

Ren, help him train? Ren, witness Kuro failing over and over, until he got so tired of disappointment that he grabbed Kuro by the fox ear and shoved him into a pitch-black storehouse for days?

Kuro tightened his grip on his tail. Ren wasn’t his mother. He wore a soppy grin half the time, and pushed mackerel into Kuro’s bowl when Kuro tried to steal it, and… But that was before. Before Kuro led the Night Parade to attack the Imperial Palace, to kill his family. Before Kuro made Ren lose the Kusanagi, his last link to the throne. Before Ren’s eyes hardened.

Pulse quickening and banging in his hearing, Kuro bristled. “What do you even care?”

Oh, so he was capable of words, so long as they were embarrassing words so close to the truth. Ren only came to Kuro’s room once a day, long enough to leave a whiff of his scent, usually just to give that disappointed sigh.

Kuro forced himself to shrug. Ren could not know that. He couldn’t even suspect how Kuro waited, curled up at the kotatsu sniffing at the door, hoping that the next time the panel slid open, Ren would be there — and when it wasn’t, he’d be half-relieved it wasn’t him here to deliver yet another disappointed sigh. “It’s not like I need to…” His words stuck on all the basic kitsune abilities he completely failed at. “All you need is for me to be alive, and I’m doing that. Look at me, breathing. Blood flowing. All alive.” Kuro puffed out his chest to demonstrate all the fine breathing he was capable of, but Ren narrowed his eyes and his breath stuck in his lungs.

Kuro really was stupid.

“You just need to breathe?” Ren barely spoke, the words no louder than a hiss. “I’m challenging a legendary hero to save my empire, and you’ll hand it to me by breathing?”

“I—” Any protest he could have made stuck in his throat. This was bad. Worse than the worst. Ren expected Kuro to defeat the Shogun and regain the throne for him?

“If I’m to defeat the Shogun,” Ren continued, seeming oblivious to Kuro’s choking and subsequent exhale of relief, “then I need everything bit of help I can get. Except apparently my own familiar couldn’t care less.”

Kuro’s jaw was stuck. He cared. He cared so much. He just couldn’t deliver.

Ren pressed his hands to the kotatsu. “Perhaps if you lost a few of your comfort pleasures, you would.”

A rock formed in Kuro’s throat. He couldn’t go back to scavenging food from merchants, to digging holes in the mud just to find some shelter from the frozen wind and driving snow.

His mother Reiha wouldn’t have hesitated to throw him out of the castle.

Ren would hesitate, but it was only a matter of days before he too ran out of patience.

Kuro tried to shrug again, but his shoulders were so tense, he didn’t think even an oni would be able to move them. “Whatever. Kuchisake will give me whatever I want. She knows my true value.”

Ren jerked back. His teeth ground audibly even to Kuro’s somewhat human hearing. “You’re supposed to be my familiar.”

“I—” Back at the Imperial Palace, Kuro had always had a word for Ren. Usually several, or hundreds, strung into sentences. But with each new barb, Ren rendered him speechless. “I am.”

“Then perhaps you might take my desires into consideration, instead of Kuchisake’s.”

But Kuro did. Oh gods, he did. If he didn’t, his intestines wouldn’t be all twisted up. He wouldn’t yearn for and dread Ren’s occasional visits. His tongue wouldn’t get tied up in so many knots.

Kuro stared down at his tail. It sagged in his lap, perhaps finally understanding the consequences of it popping up when it wasn’t wanted. But who was Kuro kidding? It would still pop up, and then Ren would get tired of waiting, and he’d…

He wouldn’t call it an execution. Perhaps something innocuous like tying up loose ends. Kuro wasn’t even worth executing.

“Fine,” Ren muttered, and retreated to the door. Kuro jumped as the panel slammed close.

Kuro hugged his tail close as he listened to the retreating footsteps. Waiting for the pause, waiting for Ren to stop, to turn around, to march back. To bring his sword. Or maybe just a stick to beat Kuro with.

But the footsteps kept going until they reached the stairs, and then they descended, fading away.

Kuro fell onto his side, and curled closer to the kotatsu’s heat. One day, Ren would regret his choice in Kuro. One day… and each day that passed, that day came just a bit closer. And apparently, not even Kuro was safe from the disaster that the Black Kitsune brought, for Ren to come then, just as Kuro kept failing.

Kuro glared at the tail he wrapped around. “This is all your fault.”

His tail wriggled. Not even sorry. It never was.

Kuro snatched the tip in one hand, the brush-like end waving. He’d make it sorry. He yanked the black fur out by the root. His tail bristled, sending waves of pain up his spine. Kuro snarled at it and plucked more out.

Black fur drifted to the tatami mats even as his tail fought his grip, whipping back and forth. It didn’t care that it made him useless to Ren. That because of it, he had to make Ren storm out, furious at him once again.

A thick pile of fur had grown next to Kuro’s knee. Kuro grunted, and released his tail. His tail whipped behind him, and huddled against his thighs.

“Pathetic,” Kuro whispered to himself. Blaming his tail, as if his tail wasn’t part of him. The loser part. Maybe if he looked into the mirror, all he’d see was his tail.

Kuro squeezed his eyes shut. No wonder Ren fled the first chance he got. He had so much Very Important Work to do, training the armies of Sun Parade and Night Parade alike, and Kuro couldn’t help with any of it. Loser. Failure. Kuro didn’t deserve his company.

He had to keep trying. He had to make Ren not sorry that he’d chosen such a worthless creature as his familiar. Before the Dark Days arrived. Before Ren finally lost patience.

Kuro pushed himself back up to seated and reached for his leaf basket.